Hacker News Reader

st26on Things no one tells you before an Antarctic expedition (2015)

diet will dictate the primary fuel source (glucose or fat)

Diet, or training?

st26on The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers

That seems like nonsense. If things are that much of a mess, internet & electricity will presumably be spotty and computers will cease manufacture (& slowly decay until failure). Better to have tangible currency. Will that be USD, or precious metals, or ammunition? I don't know, but I'd bet on something you can touch.

st26on The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers

That sounds like the current to me. Too much is locked up

I wonder if you can trace parallels between this observed circumstance, and our current low interest rates & low levels of inflation.

st26on To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

The capacity of the road network cannot be increased forever. The Bay already has some damn big freeways, and Texas has already shown that "wider" does not mean "uncongested", with their 26-lane Katy Freeway, one of the most congested in the country...

st26on Using only open-source software on Android

I'd always heard that moving more and more functionality into play services was their strategy for end-running the carrier fragmentation problem.

st26on France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994

Phone numbers take you to an IMEI, which is looked up in some table.

st26on Ask HN: Has anyone switched from being a night owl to being a morning person?

Control your light exposure. Open the blinds during the day, invite in the daylight or get outside as soon as the sun is up. At night, ruthlessly purge lights inside your house. Shut off devices, tape over blinky lights. Cut way back on your screen time after the sun has gone down. (screen time during the day is kosher) Use only dim "mood" lighting around the house at night, except maybe if you're reading or cooking.

The rest will basically take care of itself.

st26on Larry Harvey, co-founder of Burning Man, has died

A better way to look at it is, in a million different places, the odds were a million to one. We happen to be observing from the one of those place where it did happen.

st26on Intel's 10nm Is Broken, Delayed Until 2019

Aside from the other reasons provided, there's also something called the reticle limit. The manufacturing process will have a maximum die size, due to the finite size of the optics used to expose the photoresist.

st26on Relative's DNA from genealogy websites cracked East Area Rapist case

The Wikipedia notes the police acquired a sample of the suspect's DNA and confirmed a match to the crime samples

st26on Relative's DNA from genealogy websites cracked East Area Rapist case

It's not like police & detectives haven't dealt with false positives for the past, oh, all of human history. Each bit of information produces a list of suspects; each list of suspects is compared for the union. If more than one suspect remains, further information is pursued.

st26on Relative's DNA from genealogy websites cracked East Area Rapist case

There are hundreds of years of precedent saying it's OK to figure out if someone was at a location at a certain place and time. See use of CCTV, eye witness testimony, purchases & receipts, etc...

st26on Relative's DNA from genealogy websites cracked East Area Rapist case

Or, literally, fingerprints.

st26on 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

The weather is nice, but nature is not really all that close. Sure, there's worse places. But growing up there I thought we had it good on the nature front, while really it was just the koolaid.

st26on Gerontopoly: Homeownership, wealth, and age

As a general rule of thumb, screwing people by changing the rules on them harms investor confidence. The promise of future stability is an underrated part of our economy. See the FDIC. This is why many legal changes go to great pains to grandfather the old rules.

That's not to say the rules could never be changed. But just imagine being, for example, a small time landlord in the UK. Recently the rules changed, and you can no longer deduct mortgage interest as an operating expense from the rents you collect. Old mortgages are not grandfathered. This means a lot of existing rentals are suddenly & out of nowhere going to be losing their owners money. Thanks, government. Maybe it needed to happen, but it's a bit chilling to have that kind of rule change happen on you.

st26on Gerontopoly: Homeownership, wealth, and age

I guess my first question is, when we say home ownership is a good investment, do we mean it will make you rich? Or that it will keep up with inflation and be cheaper than renting in the long term?

The latter is hardly incompatible with affordability, and can still be considered a sound investment.

st26on Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

Coincidentally, I just switched to consuming news mostly through RSS. There just wasn't any better news aggregator that let me focus on news I actually cared about, and filtered out the crap I don't.

What I long for is something like Google Newsstand, with the power to scrape the whole web for my interests- except Google Newsstand incessantly shows me all the inane "hot", "trending", "popular" etc mainstream stuff no matter how many hundreds of times I mark, "show me less like this".

Using RSS is a little limiting because there's so little discovery for related subjects from new sources- but I can completely turn off the firehose of pop news.

st26on California higher-density housing bill blocked in first committee hearing

I'm not making the argument to repeal prop 13. It's been made many times, better than I could ever make it. Only a google away.

st26on California higher-density housing bill blocked in first committee hearing

Is it abhorrent that the owners in a neighborhood can choose to come together as a collective and influence the neighborhood they all live in?

If yes, is it also abhorrent when a group of workers at a company band together to influence the working conditions they all work under?

st26on California higher-density housing bill blocked in first committee hearing

It might not fix the shortage, but could be expected to increase mobility, such that people can move to a different part of the bay when they change jobs, or downsize or upsize when life changes. That's at least a step towards addressing a shortage.

st26on Why Do Fantasy Novels Have So Much Food?

I have no objections to stew. I love stew! It's just ironic.

st26on Why Do Fantasy Novels Have So Much Food?

You linked a video of a man making... stew.

st26on The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees

existing, proven technologies he could get behind with his billions

Whether hyperloop is feasible, he's pretty clearly gunning for future, unproven technologies, and very much on purpose.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to spend your billions on trying to find new technologies.

st26on Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

The car cannot drive itself

It seems like Tesla is careful not to dispel the illusion it can. Like how alcohol does not get you women- but all the adverts deftly imply it can, without actually saying it can.

st26on Subscribers are the new, new thing in business

I would be happier to subscribe if <minor little tool> cost $0.50/mo instead of $10/mo. I only have room for a few $10/mo bills. But companies don't seem to be willing to drop below perhaps $5/mo.

st26on Nikon versus Canon: A Story of Technology Change

The adapters exist but are never quite as good as the "real thing".

They'll misbehave with certain lenses, or the autofocus performance will be poor, or...

Sort of like console emulators.

st26on Nikon versus Canon: A Story of Technology Change

Professional grade lenses are big and heavy, and mirrorless cameras do nothing to remedy that.

In fact, I added a battery grip to my APS-C body for long days shooting with my 400/f4 to add grip surface & balance the weight. I was getting carpel tunnel before I added the grip.

st26on Portland Anarchist Road Care Fixes Potholes Anonymously (2017)

My favorite recently was the model explained to me where instead of receiving civil services from a single government without a choice, there are multiple corporatist organizations that run business and provide protection/security, a judicial system, enforcers, an executive system, so on and so forth, and you can pick and choose which one you want to be part of, swearing into their system and agreeing to pay your share into their system.

Then it hit me- this form of government already exists, and it is called the Mafia.

st26on Why there are so many online mattress-in-a-box companies

My old Tacoma was 5k. My Subaru is 6k. Does that answer your question?

st26on Life is Short (2016)

It's a very bleak way to look at it, but sometimes it's a splash of cold water to help you get your priorities straight.