Hacker News Reader

streptomycinon All AI models might be the same

Is it closer to Mussolini or bread? Mussolini.

Is it closer to Mussolini or David Beckham? Uhh, I guess Mussolini. (Ok, they’re definitely thinking of a person.)

That reasoning doesn't follow. Many things besides people would have the same answers, for instance any animal that seems more like Mussolini than Beckham.

streptomycinon Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

Biggest differences:

- You can fairly easily list them in the Google's app store, whereas they are basically banned from Apple's app store

- iOS/Safari is much more aggressive about deleting data from PWAs

streptomycinon That white guy who can't get a job at Tim Hortons? He's AI

He's AI, created by an Indian guy as a marketing stunt for his AI company lol

streptomycinon I don't think AGI is right around the corner

He's probably mostly thinking about AI 2027 and comparing his predictions to theirs. Since he did a podcast with them a few months ago. Compared to that 2032 is not right around the corner.

streptomycinon Air pollution may contribute to development of lung cancer in never-smokers

Wikipedia says "In 1912, American Dr. Isaac Adler was the first to strongly suggest that lung cancer is related to smoking." but I guess there could be other less strong suggestions before then. Regardless, I think it is true that it wasn't conclusively proven until decades later, and then took some more time for the general public to be aware.

streptomycinon Air pollution may contribute to development of lung cancer in never-smokers

A century ago, the idea that smoking causes cancer was quite new and was decades away from being conclusively proven.

streptomycinon Ask HN: Why privacy consent is NOT part of Browser setting?

This doesn't answer the question though. Like okay, everyone ignored "do not track". So the correct response is to make an even more annoying system that can also be ignored just as easily as "do not track"?

And before someone says the new system has a law behind it so it can't be ignored as easily as "do not track"... that is irrelevant to the discussion of "built into browser" vs "each website implements its own custom thing".

streptomycinon How many PhDs does world need? Doctoral graduates outnumber academia jobs

For someone thinking about grad school who does not want to go into academia as a career, a PhD advisor with industry experience is not a bad idea. They will understand what you need to succeed in industry and have connections. Might be easier to find in engineering departments.

streptomycinon The hamburger-menu icon today: Is it recognizable?

A full menu bar would take up too much space, then they wouldn't have room to put huge amounts of padding everywhere.

streptomycinon Endometriosis is an interesting disease

The uterus is not the only thing involved in infertility. More generally, endometriosis probably affects fertility in multiple different ways, and a woman with endometriosis and fertility issues may never know what her specific problem is.

On the plus side, IVF works pretty well for many women with endometriosis. IVF patients with endo have only somewhat worse stats than other IVF patients.

streptomycinon Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

Here is a chart of Saudi Arabia's fertility rate, which has dropped from 7 to 2 over the past 40 years: https://www.consultancy-me.com/illustrations/news/detail/202...

streptomycinon Designing Cities for Families

To be fair, it's also plummeted pretty much anywhere without a socialized retirement system too.

streptomycinon NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

I will give you credit for having an explanation that at least makes more sense than "the diversity statement is just for fun and doesn't do anything", which is the explanation that I usually hear!

But yeah I am aware that the more reasonable DEI supporters say things similar to what you said. Just be aware that there are other people who are skeptical that the "improve outcomes for a variety of minority groups" part actually happens, and also think that DEI has various other negative consequences in addition to that.

I wouldn't really say I needed to "suck it up" since not winning the GRFP is a pretty minor thing - it's very hard to win, so a negative outcome was not really surprising and didn't really cost me anything more than a line on my resume. I was happy to even get honorable mention! My actual concern is when similar tactics are used for more meaningful things, and the second order effects of such policies. The GRFP was just the biggest example of it directly affecting me personally, since I didn't stick around in academia too long (for multiple reasons, not just DEI), so it makes a good enough anecdote I guess.

streptomycinon NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

Those grants tend to have similar requirements.

streptomycinon NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

Yeah anecdotes don't tell you much. You may have noticed I was also replying to an anecdote.

What tells you more is that the diversity statement exists and they say it's used as part of scoring. Therefore, unless the amount of score it counts for is infinitesimally small, some people win/lose based on the content of their diversity statement.

Was that me? Who knows. But unless the whole thing was just busy work for no reason, it was probably a bunch of people.

How many? Who knows. I'm sure you'd agree that it would be interesting if somebody published that data! Maybe the new NSF will be more transparent than the old one.

streptomycinon NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

Yeah that's what I would have done. Don't get me wrong, I am very anti MAGA!

Which is kind of crazy... I'm here on the Internet ranting about DEI, and the MAGA movement is still toxic enough to completely alienate me. MAGA is probably worse than DEI.

streptomycinon NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

I could never get beyond "honorable mention" for the NSF GRFP. I found the diversity part of it most difficult to write. Like honestly my research had nothing to do with diversity and I'm not an underrepresented minority myself. But that was a major part of how the application was scored, so you had to come up with some bullshit and hope for the best.

And that was like 15 years ago, I hear things have only gotten more extreme since then. Well, at least until very recently...

streptomycinon Show HN: Hyper – Standards-first React alternative

So many front end frameworks that they can't even all have unique names https://hyperdom.org/

streptomycinon Evolving OpenAI's Structure

https://reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/1jyja0s/2_years_di...

streptomycinon An appeal to companies doing AI

> I do not actually believe “The Singularity” is a realistic threat due to every system that exhibits exponential growth encountering carrying capacities, which converts it into an S-curve.

Depending on the parameters of the curve, an S-curve may be effectively the same as an exponential curve. For instance if the IQ of AIs reach a plateau of 500 rather than exponentially increasing to infinity, we may not be around to see the plateau.

streptomycinon All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of their funding

> Getting rid of native SQLite in Chrome (Firefox was forced to follow), with the main reason is that ,,there are no 2 different implementations, all browsers use the same''.

You have that backwards, it was Mozilla arguing against WebSQL (and never implementing it in Firefox in the first place) and Google was arguing for it.

I agree with your point about file system persistence, that is probably the biggest limitation in web apps compared to native apps today. However again it was Google arguing in favor of the File System Access API (letting web apps read/write normal files) and Mozilla/Apple arguing against it and only supporting a neutered version (fake hidden files that the browser can delete whenever it wants).

streptomycinon Google Play sees 47% decline in apps since start of last year

They didn't explicitly ask for a home address, just a physical address. But for a hobbyist dev, home address is probably all you have so effectively that's what they're asking for. Or for you to rent an office somewhere, which I guess is what they wanted you to do by asking for a commercially zoned adddress.

streptomycinon Google Play sees 47% decline in apps since start of last year

It's not just getting a DUNS number. You also need to consent to having your home address (no PO box or virtual mailbox, needs to be a physical address for your "business") listed publicly on the DUNS website and on all your Google Play Store app pages.

Other app stores are similar, so probably it's some dumb government regulation.

streptomycinon Show HN: I created snapDOM to capture DOM nodes as images with exceptional speed

idk, your code is 170 lines, html2canvas and similar are 1 line to use.

streptomycinon Show HN: I created snapDOM to capture DOM nodes as images with exceptional speed

Looks cool, somebody should make a package that puts a nice API around it. However seems that those APIs are only in Chrome now, not Firefox or Safari.

streptomycinon Show HN: I created snapDOM to capture DOM nodes as images with exceptional speed

I've been using html2canvas for a long time in https://play.basketball-gm.com/ so I gave your library a try. It was much slower (I know your README has benchmarks saying the opposite so idk) and the result looked a lot worse.

html2canvas: https://i.imgur.com/zfSwNR1.png

snapdom: https://i.imgur.com/FxowTzp.png

Also I recommend putting the npm package name clearly in your README. I guess I don't really know what other people are doing these days, but I think most people are like me and consume packages like this from npm rather than a <script> tag.

streptomycinon Librarians are dangerous

When I was interested in programming as a kid in the late 90s, I too went to the library, but they only had books about computers from the 80s. idk whether my experience or yours is more representative. But today there are tons of free resources online, so idk if a kid would be looking for that stuff at the library these days.

streptomycinon Librarians are dangerous

I wish I could remember the link, but there was some website where it would accept uploads of banned books and host them so people could freely read them.

It had its own list of banned books that it wouldn't accept, The Turner Diaries and stuff like that.

streptomycinon Show HN: I built a tool to manage and compare credit card rewards

I use https://www.doctorofcredit.com/ , manual research (there's only so many credit card companies, doesn't take long to check their websites when you're looking for a new card), and also a decent amount of time the credit card companies send me pre-approved offers in the mail and sometimes they are actually pretty good. US Bank recently sent me one for a $750 bonus!

Overall Chase business cards seem to usually have the best deals, and they don't require you to have a "real" business to get them.

It does impact your credit score, so you are correct to be careful if you're going to get a mortgage soon. But in my experience, the effect can't be too big because my credit score is still excellent despite getting a new credit card every couple months.

streptomycinon Show HN: I built a tool to manage and compare credit card rewards

The small % you get on each purchase is crumbs, but the cookie is the big sign up bonus you can get. For the past several years I've been making about $2k/year from that, which is so much more than the % bonus that I don't know why anyone would care about getting 3% back rather than 2%. Like if you are that worried about your money, take the free $2k first.