Hacker News Reader

tocs3on I went to Mexico to test-drive the cars Americans can’t buy

I think there are legitimate safety and national security concerns. I also think restrictions are imposed for protectionism / political / monetary reasons. We are living in a world where the people making the decisions wait until there is enough personal gain to act in one direction or another.

tocs3on Hackers expose the identities of more than 40k DHS employees

And no doom scrolling. There is a bottom of the page and no Next Page button.

tocs3on Jerry Rig Everything Trump phone tear down [video]

It is not too surprising. From first hearing about it, I always sort of assumed it would be some cheep knock off. I am not saying "I told you so." just what else could it, realistically, be.

Anyone know anyone that has one?

tocs3on Why is candy so expensive this Halloween?

I saw a piece today (on TV news: https://www.ksat.com/video/news/2026/10/15/the-rising-cost-o...) about high candy prices and they pointed to high (freight) diesel prices. They also have a piece about slow candy sales due to high chocolate prices and affordability concerns.

tocs3on The Chalk and the Airplane

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50211084

tocs3on 188-Year-Old Mystery of Photography's First Human Subjects Solved

The photo depicted at the top of the page is flipped vs the one on the plaque?

tocs3on SpaceX $40B debt deal gets pricey as AI fears spread

The thing that stuck out the most to me:

President Donald Trump purchased $5 million in SpaceX bonds in August.

tocs3on Is Chocolate Still Chocolate?

I got a seedling last year for Christmas. I hope to get one or two more soon. If I can get it to produce, in a few years, I hope to enjoy the fruits of my labor (as of now, just watering it and let it sit near a window). I did this, not to thwart Big Chocolate, but because it sounds interesting. I hope to see more people producing things they like in the future.

added: Chocolate is still chocolate. Just like in math. It is what ever you define / interpret it to be. You just have to know somehow how the maker is defining things.

tocs3on University of Leicester to make redundant all pure math professors (2021)

So, 6 years later on: How is it going?

tocs3on Americans' Confidence in Food Safety Drops to New Low

Maybe more people will start looking for food sources that they can have more confidence in. This is not a real option for most but gardening and raising livestock might make a little comeback.

tocs3on I sold all my SP500 yesterday morning

I have been thinking of selling my S&P500 fund shares for a little while (at least a majority). The past few years have been dips followed by sharp rises seemingly fueled by news events. The US midterms are a big event and if, after the election, there is an increase of hostilities in the middle east I think that might cause a drop. Of course the S&P has mostly gone up the past few years and trying to time the market is maybe not the best strategy.

tocs3on Tesla Roadster

I suppose I can see this also. It sounds horrifying. A head on collision is a pretty terrible thing but having one of the cars suddenly fly 30 feet in the air and crashing into on coming traffic does not sound like a great option. Reminds me of the cybertruck "this would make the perfect post apocalyptic vehicle."

tocs3on Why are we even doing all this?

This is not a very upbeat post. It does not say much about the AI Library of Babel but I have been wondering about the same thing.

tocs3on Banks are now trying to offload the AI data center debt they just underwrote

Are there some good investments I can make to cash in if the AI / Data center bubble bursts?

tocs3on Man discovers his parents' coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days

I hope its just a retry loop and not actually data.

Now that you have said that I am hoping (just a little bit) it is actual data and we learn what it is. What is life like for a toaster.

tocs3on Soaring Instrument Prices Could Stop the Music at Many Schools

Maybe this can increase the market for used instruments and shops that do meaningful repair. It could be good craftsmen making instruments. Note, this is not so much expectation as hopefulness. I would really like to see actual people making things, not just instruments but all kinds of things.

tocs3on A 'tsunami' of church closings is poised to remake America

Maybe we can recognize how dangerous politics can be next.

It may be that apathy has more to do with the decline of churches. People are less social and are wondering why they are getting up early on their day of rest. They are wondering why they are sitting quietly listening to some guy drone on about something. With fewer people going there is less social pressure to go. You can still hold public office. More people would rather sit at home and binge watch that show they have seen 10 times and buy something from Amazon.

There are as many reason for people to not go to church as there are people that do not go.

tocs3on A 'tsunami' of church closings is poised to remake America

The Americans Having the Most Sex

Regular churchgoers have a surprising advantage over secular couples.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49855776

tocs3on A 12-year sequence of telescope images of a star and four planets orbiting

Amazing. Scrolling down one of the comments has an animation of starts around the center of the Milky Way. I have seen a few short ones of nebulae. There should be much much more of this sort of thing.

I appreciate that scientist are not always after the pretty pictures. They can be expensive, do not always give the data needed, and the experiments do not always produce data that has obvious pretty picture potential. Still, for the average non professional scientist (me) the pictures are about all I will ever get out of the science.

tocs3on Ideas for Fixing U.S. Schools, Ranked by Experts

There is lots of room for improvement in education. I am happy to see it being talked about in a large public forum. This though is a really strange article.

They asked experts to rank an idea on both cost and effectiveness using a scale of 1-7. Why a scale 1-7? Not that it is wrong just weird. There is some sort of uncanny valley effect to the article. Can anyone say more about it. Is it AI generated?

tocs3on No More Drugstore Head Shots: Passport Applications Go Digital

“You’re not going any longer to some drugstore to get your picture taken behind a white screen,

I went to a drugstore to get my passport photo taken earlier this year. It was sort of a comedy of error. Still, I stood in front of the white screen (that at one point fell off the wall) and not behind it. Also, you have been able to take and print your own pictures for a while. They just need to meet the requirements. I thought about it but decided it would be to much trouble.

Interesting changes:

will feature a larger and “more gold” seal on the front cover

and

When the passport’s pages are flipped rapidly, the eagle will appear to flap its wings

I and going to try flipping the pages in my new passport just to see if there are enough of them for this sort of flip book.

Does anyone know how the Trump “patriot passports.” did this summer (I am sort of imagining they sold out)

tocs3on Reanimated AI Greta Garbo stars again in a ball-bearing advert

This is both an AI story and a ball bearing story.

tocs3on Hate Beets? Science May Have the Answer Why

I cannot speak to why beets might taste like dirt (never noticed myself) but while I like beets they turn everything on the plate purple (especially mashed potatoes). Purple is a fine color and purple beets look nice but purple potatoes not so much.

tocs3on Ask HN: What are you reading?

Do you have any recommendations for translations? I have been reading from some I just have laying around.

I have been wanting to read Donald Knuth's "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated".

(https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/316.html)

tocs3on Ask HN: What are you reading?

I do not know if this is related to this comments but if you are reading The London Review of Books so that you do not have to read the whole book, maybe it is. I do not watch movies much anymore. Sometime though I want to know what a movie is all about. So, I just read the wikipedia plot review on it. It saves me the time by not having to sit through much tedium but I get a scenes of what it is about.

I have been reading The Bible. It has been a long time project and I have a long ways to go. I am much more agnostic that a true believer but it has been interesting. Hearing popular views about it and Christianity vs. reading The Book is sort of like the difference between reading a novel and watching the based on movie.

tocs3on EVs being trialled as giant batteries to power homes for less in Auckland

It looks like you might be.

From TFA:

That means households can charge their EV when power is cheap

If electricity is always the same price it would not make any sense unless:

That means households can charge their EV when power is cheap, and either use the stored energy themselves at peak times, or sell any surplus back when the price is high.

or maybe:

A charged EV with a two-way system could also help a household to get through power outages caused by storms or other severe weather.

I will also add that I have been thinking about getting an EV and installing solar panels. My power company does not buy back excess electricity (they give a rebate on the electricity I buy from them with any excess). It is a little of a special case as I only drive maybe 2 or 3 times in an average week. Having something that can serve as a charger for the car and also power the house at night might be nice.

tocs3on Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock

What sort of law suit rights can be sold? This is a new concept for me. If I was hit by a Mack truck could I sell my rights to sue. It would seem to be a different type of case or are they both sort of the some. Injured by a truck vs. injured by you not holding up your end of the bargin?

tocs3on Bill Gates Says Trump Is Wrong to Hold Out Against AI Safeguards

My biggest worry about the US setting up some sort of safeguards is just that I do not trust anyone in a position to do so to do a good job. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.