Hacker News Reader

ryanmarshon Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

Can a lawyer please explain what the word "overturned" means in this context? This wasn't an appeal in Roe v Wade was it? I'm super confused.

ryanmarshon US Army deploys its first floating solar array

All fair points. I assumed utility scale solar in the US.

ryanmarshon Cold Showers

You can pry typescript from my cold dead hands. All these “inconclusive” studies but has anyone ever tried a trial where 20 nearly identical teams tried implementing the same spec using a typed or untyped language? It’s inconclusive because a post hoc review of projects is going to be spurious at best.

ryanmarshon Cold Showers

Title should be “Cold Showers for Straw-man Arguments”.

ryanmarshon US Army deploys its first floating solar array

This is not true. Enron was famous (notorious) for leveraging the, then, capacity of long distance interconnects to move power from far off generation capacity to advantageously priced markets. Just take a look at the sheer size of CalISO, MISO, and ERCOT. You could build solar anywhere and wheel it to where it’s needed. That’s not the long pole in the tent (right now).

ryanmarshon US Army deploys its first floating solar array

“We” aren’t building anything. Utilities are an income producing asset for their investors. There are, in fact, a multitude of utility solar installations going on right now all over the US. These things take time to build and learn from. It’s not a slam dunk and the profits aren’t guaranteed. Not withstanding the unsolved engineering challenges, of which there are many startups exploring.

We’re not stupid it just takes time.

ryanmarshon US Army deploys its first floating solar array

This. As a former infantryman the one thing that still strikes me with awe to this day is the destructive power of artillery. People cannot fathom what it’s capable of.

Go up in a tall building, maybe to the 20th floor or so. Eyeball a built up area 1km square. Now picture every structure reduced to rubble in an instant. Now imagine 10km square reduced to rubble in just a few minutes.

Quick work for an artillery battery.

ryanmarshon US Army deploys its first floating solar array

I appreciate the sentiment but this is a permanent installation for a US base in North Carolina. Also there is nothing tactical about a solar farm.

JP-8 (similar to diesel) is easy to source the world over, has high energy density, is easy to transport and runs nearly everything in the military.

Solar is a nice idea but we’re nowhere near (economical) panel efficiencies necessary to transition field electricity use. Keep in mind, the further you get from the flag pole the less electricity you need. Things are designed that way for obvious reasons.

ryanmarshon Indoor air filtration could lead to increased airborne endotoxin levels (2020)

The contrast indicates that regularly replacing the HEPA filters of APs could represent an effective method of avoiding increased endotoxins in the filtered air.

That's a pretty clickbaity paper title. The lede was buried. A better title would have been: Regularly replacing HEPA filters may reduce endotoxins in filtered air

I'm a high school drop out so what do I know.

ryanmarshon Australia confiscated 650k guns. Murders and suicides plummeted

It also gave authorities the flexibility to implement pandemic policies which would have been unenforceable in a place like the US.

ryanmarshon Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

I’m going to offer a counter point, anecdotally of course. My daughter is in university right now. She’s a in pre-nursing. She says most of the people in her major this year switched to nursing from other majors during the pandemic because they saw it as the most economically viable major compared to their previous major. In a nutshell the pandemic scared people into being pragmatic about their degree plan.

So hospital administration will have a fresh crop of graduates, new to the system, to abuse. The cycle will continue unabated.

ryanmarshon FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

> NRA accomplished some wicked and absurd goals

Perhaps by the standards of those outside the gun community. For our agenda they've been a failure. The modest policy successes, by our measure, have been obtained in-spite of them.

I don't expect you to agree with our agenda, but don't forget that we define our agenda. All the NRA did was water it down.

ryanmarshon FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

You'd think the NRA would be all over this: a legal gun owner killed in his home by police? Nope

In the gun community the NRA is generally seen has having failed gun owners. There are many cases similar to Amir Locke's. One in particular is Duncan Lemp.

ryanmarshon Crazy Eddie: The popular electronics chain that scammed America

It's because these loans usually don't make it through underwriting. Most of the time they don't even make it past the originators desk. Banks have no incentive to prosecute people who "forget" to mention there's a lien on their house. Also, who is to prosecute in cases where documentation of income isn't required? For instance, if I say I make $200k/yr because my boss told me I'd make that much in this new sales job am I lying if it turns out I won't make that much and documentation wasn't required?

People have such a school-house view of how the world works.

ryanmarshon Mourning loss as a remote team

In my 40’s now and watching my father (boomer gen) go to funerals of people he worked with for years (in some cases decades). It makes me wonder who from work would bother going to mine, not out of guilt or obligation. The previous generation, for all their faults, seems to have a closer connection with their colleagues. Granted we connect differently these days, the bonds seem so temporary, fleeting even. They’re often anonymous.

Sad really.

ryanmarshon Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

I’m ok with it as long as the maintainer is consistent and does it for “the current thing” every time. That means Sudan, Darfur, Iraq war, ISIS, Assad’s regime, etc… Heck why not even Florida after the “say gay” thing?

ryanmarshon 43 km line of sight with USB WiFi stick (2005)

From the diagram in the article the entire fresnel zone was unoccluded.

ryanmarshon Twitter based map of Russian troop movements

Internet doing the work of FO's everywhere

ryanmarshon U.S. is considering a radical rethinking of the dollar for today's digital world

Too late. The Fed requests ad-hoc reporting of all kinds and the banks comply. In addition to raw transaction flows which the Fed does in fact receive in many cases. People have no idea what all those people at the Fed do and people who work there are not free to discuss it.

ryanmarshon Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor

Most people who get started as an independent contractor “steal” their first client from their employer.

People will say this is wrong, people will say they didn’t, but I’m telling you this is just how the world works.

ryanmarshon Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

I surprised how few people have mentioned Remix. It's very Rails like (don't make me think). Albeit, Rails makes you have to think even less, Remix is headed in the right direction.

ryanmarshon A UX designer walks into a Tesla Bar

Updates are opt in. I wish I’d researched the v11 changes before upgrading though.

ryanmarshon Dataset and Model for “I built a system to take photos of planes over my house”

What’s with all the “Bank of <bank name> Trustee” jets?

ryanmarshon Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

Ironically some expensive restaurants in the states add “gratuity” (like a service charge) to the bill and do not rely on tipping. This ensures their hard to recruit staff (sommeliers, skilled wait staff, etc…) can be paid enough to keep working there.

ryanmarshon Gurman: Apple's headset will likely cost $2k and have two CPUs

You don’t think. How many units did quest and quest 2 sell?

ryanmarshon Gurman: Apple's headset will likely cost $2k and have two CPUs

The iPhone SOC has been capable of running a Quest like product for a few years now.

ryanmarshon Gurman: Apple's headset will likely cost $2k and have two CPUs

Were talking about initial entry into a market. Apple always enters with middling specs.

ryanmarshon Gurman: Apple's headset will likely cost $2k and have two CPUs

Thinking apple would ship a first version that maxes out in hw specs shows a lack of historical understanding of apples past behavior.

Given their history we can expect: nice form factor, minimal features, easy to use, minimal specs, priced higher than what the specs would suggest

ryanmarshon More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

> As far as a springboard for a career, I haven’t seen colleges come close to worth the price of admission.

This right here.

The strongest argument against the status quo is that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

In aggregate college graduates could achieve equal or greater levels of learning, relative to their chosen profession, and cost, with education regimes other than the typical four year state college experience.

ryanmarshon More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

My oldest daughter is in pre-nursing and is applying to nursing school at her university for next year. I know of no other way to get into nursing but though a typical university. Thankfully the state of Texas is paying for her education due to the Hazelwood Act.

My middle daughter wants to study art (she is an artist and sees a future in it for herself). My benefits will expire by the time she applies to college. So she’s not likely to end up at a four year university.

I have a hunch my youngest daughter may want to study computer science. Unless the cost of school changes I may put together a program for her myself mixed with online schools and traditional CS resources.