Hacker News: URSpider94

New comment by URSpider94 in "An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking"

URSpider94 — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 23:28:42 +0000

Tile never gained enough market traction for it to be an issue. No use using a system to track your stolen goods that can't provide you with a location because there's no phone running the Tile app within hailing distance.

New comment by URSpider94 in "The Block Protocol"

URSpider94 — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 02:32:16 +0000

Reading The Fine Manual here : (https://blockprotocol.org/spec) - blocks are expected to include code to render the block information in a displayable format. So, a block isn't just the data model, it's also the view layer. Some options suggested in the spec include React, vanilla HTML, and Web Components. This part feels a little mushy at the moment, since there's no proposal yet for how a Block identifies which rendering context it expects.

New comment by URSpider94 in "The Block Protocol"

URSpider94 — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 02:19:10 +0000

I can see how, if you get to critical mass, the network effect will drive adoption. For example, building a Blocks-based project management system becomes much, much easier if it can tie into one of many (hypothetical) Blocks-based HR information systems, so that you can pre-populate a list of employees at the company. As much as big companies love lock-in, there's tremendous potential value in enabling small companies to build open value-add tools that focus on solving a narrow problem extremely well.

New comment by URSpider94 in "Bouncing a LoRa message off the moon"

URSpider94 — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 20:29:41 +0000

Check out https://helium.com - it's a blockchain-based LoRA network, where the blockchain is used to reward uptime and certainty of location of the base stations. Transmissions can be received from 10 miles or more away, if the receiver is located high enough.

New comment by URSpider94 in "Wyoming natural gas flared for cryptocurrency mining exempt from taxation"

URSpider94 — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 00:29:56 +0000

The thing that people are missing here is that these aren’t natural gas wells, they are oil wells. Natural gas is a byproduct of oil production (crude oil can have a lot of natural gas dissolved in it, which bubbles out when it’s pumped out of the ground). It’s usually not economical to capture this gas and make use of it, so it’s usually just flared, or worse - vented. To the degree that this makes use of this waste gas, it’s better than nothing. However, if it encourages continuing to tap gas off of shut-in oil wells, then it’s potentially less good.

New comment by URSpider94 in "Ultrawhite BaSO4 Paints and Films for Daytime Radiative Cooling"

URSpider94 — Sat, 18 Sep 2021 17:11:48 +0000

Specifically, it needs to absorb/emit in a frequency range called the “sky window”, where the atmosphere is transparent. In this range, the object is basically seeing the cold of space at a few Kelvin, so that almost no energy is absorbed and a lot is emitted.

The trick is to design a system where the total power absorbed across the solar irradiance spectrum is less than the power that is emitted in the sky window, so that the system is a net power sink (in this case to the tune of 100W per sq. meter or so).

New comment by URSpider94 in "Tesla opens a center on Native American land, selling cars straight to consumers"

URSpider94 — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 20:00:56 +0000

They don’t have to do this in most states. Only a few states have laws against selling cars factory-direct.

New comment by URSpider94 in "Tesla opens a center on Native American land, selling cars straight to consumers"

URSpider94 — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 20:00:08 +0000

Car manufacturers contracted with car dealers back when the car business was uncertain - they needed a local dealer network to sell and service their cars. Once dealers were established, they lobbied to get laws in place to prevent them from being disintermediated by the manufacturers, who could have easily just put them out of business and replaced them with manufacturer-owned stores.

Not a great reason …

New comment by URSpider94 in "I Got a 'Mild' Breakthrough Case"

URSpider94 — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 21:59:48 +0000

Not entirely true. Certain classes of jobs, like working in health care, have always mandated vaccination. Additionally, when most vaccines are given in childhood, making sure everyone is vaccinated in grade school has the effect of ensuring that most adults are vaccinated. No need to keep re-checking throughout life.

New comment by URSpider94 in "Ask HN: When do you not give out stock options?"

URSpider94 — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 18:54:55 +0000

This. What’s your long-term business plan? If you plan to keep this business as a privately held enterprise in the long term, equity is basically useless and worthless. Are you planning to hand out equity to investors or employees? If not, this person would be one of a handful of shareholders. Unless you have a plan to sell the company or go public, then I would advise that you explain the situation to the salesperson and explain to them why they wouldn’t want equity.

New comment by URSpider94 in "Colorado county's voting machines banned after security breach"

URSpider94 — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 16:34:35 +0000

The issue is, most of the things you mention never happened. Not even close.

New comment by URSpider94 in "Colorado county's voting machines banned after security breach"

URSpider94 — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 16:31:57 +0000

In most places in CA, the touchscreens spit out a marked paper ballot that is then counted and stored with the rest.

New comment by URSpider94 in "I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem"

URSpider94 — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 02:16:31 +0000

Can you please explain how criminalizing homelessness, for example by enforcing sit/lie ordinances, would help homeless people find homes? Likewise, getting people into mental health services is not likely to get them a place to live. You seem to think that somehow “getting tough” on homeless people is going to make them straighten up and find a place to live, when in reality it will just cause them to move out of your view, so you don’t have to see them any longer.

New comment by URSpider94 in "“Does induced demand apply to bike lanes?” and other questions"

URSpider94 — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 16:31:06 +0000

There have actually been studies done on this. The estimate I’ve seen is that for every year of life that would be prolonged by mandating helmet use in NL, 25 years of life would be lost from the loss of exercise by people who don’t take bike trips because they are put off by helmet wearing. This is a real thing that has to be taken into account.

The other interesting stat is that an hour of bike riding in NL carries approximately the same risk of head injury as an hour in a car in the USA. So, should we make all car passengers wear helmets? It would make them safer…

New comment by URSpider94 in "“Does induced demand apply to bike lanes?” and other questions"

URSpider94 — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 05:52:46 +0000

I probably would have agreed with you until I spent a lot of time in the Netherlands. Imagine saying the same thing about pedestrians: “I think we should normalize walking among cars. Sidewalks just create the mindset that pedestrians should be separate traffic.” Yes, to do this right, you need more than just bike lanes down each street that end in normal intersections. You need intersections with separate signals for bikes and cars, with no right on red, with grade-separated crossings at major roads. The Netherlands has done this for nearly every road in the country, and no it wasn’t always thus - it was done starting in the 1960’s as the result of a massive grass-roots people’s movement.

New comment by URSpider94 in "“Does induced demand apply to bike lanes?” and other questions"

URSpider94 — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 05:42:39 +0000

This is wrong on so many levels. I’ve spent years biking in the Netherlands. People from age 7 up into their 70s ride their bikes regularly and safely - so safely that bike helmets are a total rarity. People ride ebikes and even gas mopeds on the bike lanes, and it all works out just fine. People drive electric mobility scooters in the bike lanes. People in wheelchairs have special adaptors that let them pedal with their hands and use the bike lanes. Your statement that most parents are physically incapable of moving their young children on bikes is proven false by the tens of thousands of Dutch parents who transport their kids in bike seats every day.

Bike travel is about as egalitarian as it gets. You can buy a serviceable bike for a couple hundred dollars, with basically no extra costs - compare that to a car, or even a bus pass, and it’s a screaming deal.

New comment by URSpider94 in "First U.S. Covid deaths came earlier than previously thought"

URSpider94 — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 03:11:32 +0000

Not quite. It was called the Spanish Flu because the Spanish press, being neutral during WWI, were free to write about the flu epidemic, while wartime censors in every other major country blocked any mention of it. But nonetheless, it almost certainly didn’t originate in Spain. https://www.history.com/news/why-was-it-called-the-spanish-f...

New comment by URSpider94 in "First U.S. Covid deaths came earlier than previously thought"

URSpider94 — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 03:08:05 +0000

They aren’t spreading misinformation at all. They are merely pointing out that the placebo injection used in the study has almost exactly the same serious adverse event rate as the vaccine itself. People yearn to attribute every event to a cause, but most of them are just random. Everyone has a “I got sick in October 2019 and I just know it was COVID” story.

New comment by URSpider94 in "Longitudinal analysis shows durable immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection"

URSpider94 — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 16:12:26 +0000

I’m still learning, but the concept of “sterilizing immunity” has started to come up recently. What I infer from cursory reading is that “immunity” means the body will mount an immune response immediately upon exposure to the virus, but it doesn’t mean that an infection won’t take hold. “Sterilizing immunity” means immunity strong enough to prevent the virus from growing at all.

The issue at hand is that those who have been vaccinated and/or recovered from COVID seem to be able to contract the disease again, even to the point where they can be infectious to others, even if they don’t get terribly ill or even show symptoms.

New comment by URSpider94 in "Tesla AutoPilot – I give up, it's downright lethal"

URSpider94 — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 04:49:11 +0000

Well, there’s nothing in their marketing copy that says that any of this is in doubt - it’s all in terms of what the car will do, not what it might do someday. This is all associated with Tesla’s $10k “full self driving” package that they are selling today with the promise of future capabilities.

Put another way, there are a lot of people who are going to be really pissed when they realize that their car will never do those things, and they paid $10k for practically nothing (ok, technically they get autopilot and the ability for the car to stop at red lights today).