Hacker News Reader

taborjon Amazon to suspend delivery service that competes with UPS, FedEx

Yeah, but there are big problems to solve that potentially offset those two benefits.

Legality: how high above your property do you own? Would a drone flying at 50 feet be trespassing? 100? 200?

Loss: how do you recover a crashed drone? Or one intentionally downed?

Range: how much power can you pack onboard without compromising payload capacity?

Payload capacity: how much can you reasonably lift?

Cost: dollar for dollar, is it more cost effective than trucks (even robotic ones)?

And so on.

taborjon Xbox co-creator Rob Wyatt sues Atari for failure to pay for VCS console design

Another approach: I picked up an Atari Flashback 2 from Goodwill a while ago for about $6. It can be modded with a real cartridge port to play actual Atari 2600 games, plus uses Atari-compatible joysticks (side note: the joysticks that came with the Flashback 2 work out of the box on my VIC-20).

taborjon Play social games with friends over Zoom

My wife & daughter have been playing various board games via Duo with my in-laws. They went with this approach to add a level of "hands-on" to the gameplay. They have to limit their options to games both parties have, but that leaves literally dozens of options.

The nice thing is that any video-enabled platform will work for this.

taborjon The Dangers of Moving All of Democracy Online

Despite our vote-by-mail ability (which is nice, don't get me wrong), our voter turnout for primary elections has hovered around 50% or lower since the 1960s [0], with a few exceptions of course.

General elections see much higher turnout [1], often hitting into 80% or more, but generally staying in the 70s.

[0] https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/Voter-Turnout-His...

[1] https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/Voter_Turnout_His...

taborjon 1.1.1.1 for Families

> to quote someone from IRC "millions of kids can now learn how to configure DNS".

That's why you set up your router/pihole to do DNS hijacking. Any DNS request gets rerouted to the DNS server of your choosing.

taborjon These zoo live cams let you hang out with pandas, giraffes, and other animals

... And what if we are enjoying it? Could that mean there are animals that do, in fact, enjoy living in a zoo? Many animals at my local zoo are rescues, so perhaps living in confinement beats dying to those animals?

taborjon Can you kill coronavirus with UV light?

> I purchased a whole-home UV-C water unit.

Got a link for the system you use?

taborjon The coronavirus pandemic in five powerful charts

Can you tell that to my governor? 'cause every couple days she's throwing more things in, based on how "ineffective" the previous orders were. It's like, I get it, we need to contain the spread. But stop saying that you're doing this new thing because the rates are still climbing so obviously this thing you did two days ago didn't work. Maybe it didn't, but two days is not enough time to know.

taborjon The coronavirus pandemic in five powerful charts

Agreed. I have some friends here who are fairly certain they had it, based on symptoms. However, the hospital refused to test them because they were "young and healthy" (i.e. no underlying medical conditions to complicate things). 2 of the 3 family members recovered with no outside assistance; the third worsened, so they took her to the ER. Only then did they run a test on her.

The number of infected is way off, which will throw everything else off. You can't figure out mortality rates, infection rates, etc if you don't have an accurate number to start with. Garbage in, garbage out.

taborjon Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?

One of my many projects is taking the motor from an old battery-powered mower a neighbor gave away using it as a generator and hooking it to the exercise bike and some batteries (actually the batteries from the mower, since they turned out to be fine). Want to watch TV, play a game, etc? Better get pedaling. :)

taborjon Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?

Rewriting the NodeMCU-based chicken coop door in MicroPython (currently written in Lua). Also gotta rebuild/clean my anemometer and rewire the temp sensor for my homebrew weather station. Oh, and replacing the IRF510 on my Bitx40, since I blew it up.

Aside from that, I'm getting a lot of non-technical work done around the house, from painting to gardening.

taborjon Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

FHIR APIs are allowing a standards-based approach to accessing healthcare data from external sources, such as an app. In addition, there are national networks for sharing data between clinics and hospitals, like CareQuality and Commonwell. I'm most familiar with CareQuality, as that's the system my company's EHR software integrates with. It uses SOAP calls to exchange CDA documents.

taborjon Windows Subsystem for Linux is making inroads with developers

I always felt this was named incorrectly. It's not a Windows Subsystem for Linux operating systems, it's a Linux Subsystem for the Windows operating system.

taborjon Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

The solution depends on the problem. The standardizing body is HL7.org, but there are multiple standards depending on what you're trying to do. Currently, the market is focused on FHIR API, which is a RESTful API.

I'm on mobile, but that should give you enough to search for.

taborjon Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

Hopefully some of these aren't re-inventing the wheel. For instance, currently the first one is helping build APIs for getting healthcare data. This is potentially a solved problem; indeed, interoperability is rather a large market in the healthcare world (I speak as someone who does this for a living).

taborjon Questioning the Clampdown

Very well written.

taborjon How Much Toilet Paper? – The Coronavirus Toilet Paper Calculator

I've been saying this for years -- I've worked full-time from home for the last 9 years. One of the first things I noticed was TP consumption went up considerably.

I didn't realize how much of my employer's TP I really used prior to that.

taborjon How to get your money back on a non-refundable hotel

You're right, we shouldn't even bother trying to be kind. /s

I don't accept your assertion that it's not practical or realistic. People have been doing it for thousands of years, and will -- and should continue to do so. Just because it's hard, just because it doesn't directly benefit you, doesn't mean it should be abandoned.

taborjon Social Distancing Festival

It specifically says: The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected

So, yes, they downsized and consolidated, but the area of importance at the moment is still there, still functional. That's very different from what's being portrayed and parroted here and elsewhere.

taborjon The Longest Record Broken: Gold/Silver Ratio Hits Highest in Over 5,000 Years

Buy .22LR, some chickens, and a goat. You can use the chickens for egg and meat, the goat for milk and meat, and the .22LR for varmint hunting and trading.

Better hurry up, though; ammo prices are skyrocketing, though .22LR has been fairly stable at a touch over $0.03/round.

taborjon Social Distancing Festival

>One government specifically did this.

Except they didn't, see my reply above.

taborjon Social Distancing Festival

> Governments shutting down pandemic response units

Check your source. This appears to have been disproved.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/16/no-white-...

taborjon How to get your money back on a non-refundable hotel

Or, we could all be kind to each other.

taborjon Shelter in place for Bay Area counties

Trust me, you want your police and fire (and doctors and nurses) to be "going into the office."

taborjon Shelter in place for Bay Area counties

But some people using their cars is a solution (for those people). After all, not everyone has the luxury of a job that can be worked from home.

taborjon 2020 Stock Market Crash

I'm not a financial...well, anything, but it's my interpretation that most large stock market drops are due to massive selloffs. Basically, people who own the stock are trying to unload it before something bad happens to those stocks. The result is something bad happens to those stocks, and things start crashing.

Like in Sneakers:

People think a bank is financially shaky

Consequence: people start to withdraw their money

Result: Pretty soon it is financially shaky

In other words, stores running out of things and/or online sales being strong aren't, by themselves, the cause of major market movements right now; it's speculation about what'll happen tomorrow, and making sure you don't own any of the stocks if & when it tanks. Which incidentally causes the stocks to tank.

taborjon Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do?

Not been my experience in the 20 years I've been doing it. Perhaps it depends on the type of bread?

taborjon United hides cheapest flights from passengers affected by Coronavirus

How is this different than the price gouging the hand sanitizer guy did?

taborjon Contrary to Trump’s Claim, Google Isnt Building a Nationwide Coronavirus Website

The leading Democratic candidate is no better. According to him, half the country has been killed by gun violence since 2007.

taborjon Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do?

There were similar situations during Y2K, which my friend reminded me was a generation ago now, so many younger folks don't remember.

As others have said, this is a temporary blip, but when things are restocked, you should build up your supply. The ideal thing is to build it up slowly over weeks or month, and always have a rotating supply (make sure you use and replace items before they expire).