Hacker News Reader

tamcapon In Response to Oversight Board, Trump Suspended for Two Years

He got a "at least 2 years" ban, to be exact. The 2 years is the punishment for the post. Then, at the end of those 2 years, fb will evaluate the restrictions you quoted, and re-assess if further ban is necessary.

tamcapon The story BCG offered me $16k not to tell (2010)

Makes you think of index funds / ETFs. For most small investors following what everyone is doing is the correct advice.

It might be similar for most businesses - you will never become a superstar, but you will likely be somewhere close to matching your competition in outcomes.

tamcapon Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

NC just announced they will give Apple close to a $1B tax break... (granted, over up to 30 years)

tamcapon The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

A lot of contract clauses have been found void and unenforceable. Same could (and should) happen to many HOA covenants. The fact that you are unable to buy housing in many zip codes without HOA, and there are even some states (ie Texas) where you can be forced into an HOA (even if you own the house clear of one) is just insane.

tamcapon A skeptic’s take on Neuralink and other consumer neurotech

Facebook is doing that... Look up CTRL-Labs.

tamcapon Brazil’s mismanagement of Covid-19 threatens the world

Lockdown depends on two core factors. Social contract (compliance) and enforcement. SP is currently lacking both.

tamcapon Half Doses of Moderna Vaccine Produce Neutralizing Antibodies

Just to make sure it's clear to everyone, you need to extract every dose with the special syringes - not just the 6th one. If you use the low dead space syringes for the first 5 doses, the efficiencies add up to enough solution left over for a guaranteed 6th one.

tamcapon Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

Natural "extension" of the OPT program is the H1B... It's even in the rules, where your "OPT visa" (F-1) is on purpose not dual intent - you need H1B if you want to apply for a green card. And that's how most students do it: F1 -> OPT (w/ extension if able) -> H1B -> GC

Increasing the H1B threshold makes the next step very expensive, and it will cause more companies to be unwilling to hire w/OPT, therefore reducing the attractiveness of top US schools to the best candidates.

Many countries (that I am familiar with) have a very straightforward path to residency after completing education in the country. US makes it on purpose very difficult. And one problem is, in the eyes of the "system", a degree from Stanford/Harvard/MIT is equivalent to a degree from any other school capable of issuing the "same" degree.

tamcapon The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

Wow, what a plot twist. The Broad Institute researchers got nothing, even though they are currently winning the patent wars. Fascinating.

tamcapon When we lose weight, where does it go?

You are right. While the energy of the chemical bonds is converted into heat, it's not like the bonds itself have any weight. It's a pretty obvious statement.

Now I am embarrassed! :)

tamcapon When we lose weight, where does it go?

The story is (likely purposefully) ignoring some other ways you can "lose weight/energy" from your body. But I am curious what would the complete list be...

* heat (the most obvious one, not explicitly mentioned I guess?)

* even in healthy humans, some fatty acids are excreted with bile into the gut and subsequently removed via feces

* if you are fasting (or in ketosis, such as via keto diet) you will exhale / sweat ketone bodies, which is a very ineffective way (energy balance wise) to use up fatty acids

* if you are a diabetic, you can excrete glucose in your urine; we have subsequently develop drugs that can help mimic this process as a diabetes treatment

* skin, hair and nails (very insignificant amounts)

* sperm & menses

Anybody got anything else I am not currently thinking about?

tamcapon ‘Better Yield on 5nm Than 7nm’: TSMC Update on Defect Rates for N5

I would say Elon Musk via his development of Tesla (first modern viable electric car) and of SpaceX (first almost fully reusable low cost space solution). They are different "type" than the ones you quote, but the sheer magnitude and long term impact of both those companies will likely reverberate for decades to come.

tamcapon British Airways announces immediate retirement of 747 fleet

4 engines = 2x the maintenance cost, even if you ignore the fuel. And 2x the overhaul cost.

tamcapon Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

That works for any service where you don't fully control the other endpoint. They are just being transparent. Although the wording re: website is peculiar. Could it be their form of a canary like warning?

tamcapon U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

To be honest, nobody is talking about very deadly exposure to pesticides in farmers populations. There actually have been papers published on that. While living outside a big city might be on average better for you, being a farmer is probably not.

tamcapon U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

No, they are not. They are likely to be much more dangerous for those groups, but the flu or pneumonia can kill anyone.

Some strains of the flu are believed to be more deadly to the "strong" patients, due to a phenomena known as "cytokine storm" - where the strong immune system response directly contributes to death.

tamcapon Transmission of cancer by a single multiorgan donor to 4 transplant recipients

Also, for blood at least: 5 years (cumulative) in Europe: Ineligible to donate permanently

Which drives me nuts...

tamcapon Ask HN: How to transition from academic programming to software engineering?

> remember that slow is fast in engineering

Coming from an academic field myself... be careful with this one. Depending on your personal habits in academia, you might have to learn the opposite - your code doesn't have to be perfect, it has to work.

Be careful not to end up overthinking the code/design and under-delivering on the timeline. Missing time estimate once in a while is usually OK, missing it consistently and by a lot might become a problem.

tamcapon Why Are Spaces in Science Fiction Not Wheelchair-Accessible?

Contrary to ableist opinion, a utopia is not a world where disability is a problem that’s been solved; rather, it’s an inevitable expression of genetic variance, and disabled humans are not just welcomed but fully included.)

This is something that's worthy a debate. My ableist bias is likely showing here, as I don't think I can just outright agree with this statement.

At the same time, our inability "to fix" (for better or worse) many of the existing conditions means this societal position might actually be a preferred one, in order to make everyone feel welcome and inclusive (included?). This sentence truly captures a personal dilemma for me.

tamcapon Mark Zuckerberg Tops Warren Buffett to Become the World’s Third-Richest Person

Quickly comparing Brk.b to vti over the span of the past 5 years (so no graph hacking) they gained 60.14% and 64.71%, respectively, dividends not included. That's a much smaller difference than your statement seems to imply.

tamcapon Mosaicism: The genome varies from cell to cell

X-chromosome inactivation is a type of an epigenetic change. It is one of many that happen throughout the body - I would say there are very few cells in our bodies that have the same epigenetic markup. We've known about this for a while.

The article discusses genetic post-meiotic changes that propagate differentially through the body. We knew it happened for a while now too, but it was always presented as a curiosity or an anomaly. We are now learning that it is much more common than we anticipated. Like presented in the article, it might actually explain some clinical phenotypes as well.

tamcapon Ask HN: How do you handle long-running workflows at your company?

We have developed a custom workflow system in PHP for our company (academic text editing and related work). Back then (I was not directly involved from the start) none of the out of the box solutions fit our criteria, and it made more sense to just build a bespoke, custom fitted system. Workflows range from a few days to a month+, with no technical upper limit enforced, as far as I know.

We also don't need a huge throughput, so having something super-optimized was not a large concern.

tamcapon Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

The current airport authority will sadly fight rail at the airport tooth and nail. I believe they make more money off parking fees than the flight ops.

Moreover, the strongest / largest municipality in the region (Wake/Raleigh) seems to be the least interested in serious non-road public transport projects, as they just withdrew from their chunk of the light rail connection with Durham / CH.

tamcapon Turning Soybeans into Diesel Fuel Is Costing Billions

The effects are connected. Converting more soybeans into fuel means it costs more to buy soy for food - higher incentive to make a new soy field anywhere.

tamcapon US Court Grants ISPs and Search Engine Blockade of Sci-Hub

There is a non-insignificant amount of work to take a paper from submission to publication. It's hard to determine the exact value / cost of that work, but article publication fees (and subscription fees!) is one way that work is paid for. So while I am sympathetic to your argument, one could then say that "rich" researchers should (based on an arbitrarily chosen morality) pay for open access, and the "poor" ones should go to low APC, subscription journals... I am not sure I like this argument either.

Now, researchers are slowly getting new tools where that cost is accounted for in other ways. I.e. The Winnower, biorxiv, etc. Whether one day one of those, or a future invention will replace academic journals, only time will tell.

tamcapon Scientists narrow down the mechanism whereby cancer cells metabolise sugar

They chose yeast because a lot of the basic eukaryotic biology is conserved (as compared to humans) and it's basically free to grow more yeast quickly. This means you can run your experiments super fast.

Conversely, the above has resulted in a big number of yeast trained molecular biologists, who end up applying yeast work wherever they can (see: law of the instrument). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

tamcapon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2017)

Research Square | Software Eng, Full Stack, PHP/JS | REMOTE and/or Durham, NC | Full Time

Research Square is the leader in ethical author-oriented solutions in the world of academic publishing and we help researchers succeed through our world-class technology-enabled services.

We currently have a challenging opportunity for a bright, hardworking, and self-motivated developer. We are looking for a mid- to senior-level developer who exhibits personal humility and who strives to enable the success of their team in our fun and collaborative environment.

More info, and apply at:

http://researchsquare.applytojob.com/apply/DSMAruTIla/Softwa...

tamcapon Appeals Court: Judge Can't Ignore the Supreme Court to Keep Patent Cases in TX

Are you sure about this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#Te... The article above states, a Senate trial is required, or finding of a mental / physical disability.

tamcapon The rich are hoarding economic growth

I'm curious, in what sense is it insignificant? Quoting from (likely faulty) memory, 30% of federal budget comes from income tax directly, and the another 20% or so is covered by employer associated employment taxes. So out of that $11bn a day, Americans pay in $6.5bn every day. If we were to adequately tax the 0.01%, the budget would feel the difference.