Hacker News: ddoran

New comment by ddoran in "Grandpa’s Basement House"

ddoran — Sun, 22 May 2022 21:27:42 +0000

A basement house featured on Zillow Gone Wild this week [1] . According to the same account it went sale pending after 1 day on the market.

[1] - https://twitter.com/zillowgonewild/status/152662553013669478...

New comment by ddoran in "Moving House"

ddoran — Wed, 11 May 2022 21:30:49 +0000

The Shipping news [1] (Pulitzer and National Book Award winner) featured a house being moved over ice and Oscar and Lucinda [2] (Booker Award winner) featured a glass church being moved on water, as did their respective movies.

[1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7354.The_Shipping_News [2] - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/316496.Oscar_and_Luci...

New comment by ddoran in "Lessons from Owning a Bookstore"

ddoran — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 18:13:00 +0000

Rough Draft in Kingston, NY is another one. It's definitely my favorite bookshop right now. It helps to have a great coffee bar and booze bar and a cool historical building, but most of all it helps to be in a city to which hipsters have been migrating in droves in recent years. To be fair Rough Draft are as much a driver of that recent migration (along with other new similar businesses) as it is a beneficiary. They do a great job in curating their book selection, unfortunately the crowds and morning coffee queues keep me away more than I would like.

https://www.roughdraftny.com

New comment by ddoran in "No news is good news"

ddoran — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 16:13:21 +0000

> Fake news is a term to describe news that is merely untrue

In my experience it is more commonly used to describe news which the speaker does not like.

New comment by ddoran in "The global streaming boom is creating a translator shortage (2021)"

ddoran — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 19:09:00 +0000

Or that translators are paid. But ideally a combination of paid and volunteers - just like most other roles in charity/relief work.

New comment by ddoran in "Uber funds new lobbying group to deny rights for gig workers"

ddoran — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 18:16:24 +0000

A driver won't just chose profitable over unprofitable, but also more profitable over less profitable, and this ends up hurting some passengers on less profitable / less desirable routes.

If you wanted a cab to Brooklyn from Manhattan 20+ years ago, you had to get in the back of the car before telling the driver where you wanted to go. Otherwise the driver would just drive off without you. The ride was definitely profitable, but they knew they'd pick up another Manhattan ride on the next block and so on - a more profitable option that to risk not having a fare back from Brooklyn. Many drivers wised up and wouldn't let you into the cab until you told them where you were going. It was a major PitA.

The Battle of Snake Island

ddoran — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 02:15:46 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Snake_Island

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30462983

Points: 59

# Comments: 6

New comment by ddoran in "Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda"

ddoran — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 15:29:36 +0000

As someone who moved from Europe to the US, the pervasiveness of the military in televised professional and college football game is incredibly jarring to me yet is so normalized to Americans. Count the number of times there is a reference to the military, a cutaway to uniformed people in the stands or by the touchline, a clip of troops watching the game while deployed overseas, flyovers etc. Still, after 10 years, my reaction is "what has that got to do with sport?".

I've always assumed this to be a very deliberate strategy to build an implicit association between the "nobility" of sport and war, to boost recruitment and win over the hearts and minds of the American public for past, current and future military action.

Now count how many times you've seen any sign of the military at a sports event in Europe - rare to never. It's not normal and it's sad to me that it is so normalized in the US.

New comment by ddoran in "Jerrycan"

ddoran — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 16:59:54 +0000

Related article and discussion from 11 years ago: "The Wehrmachtkanister, a/k/a Jerrycan: Astonishingly good industrial design from the 1930s" [1]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2692840

New comment by ddoran in "Computer History Museum curator picks for holiday reads"

ddoran — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 14:10:13 +0000

On the topic of computer history museums, I strongly recommend a visit to the American Computer & Robotics Museum in Bozeman, MT if you're in the area [1]. It's a small space born from a personal collection, which Edward O. Wilson describes as "inch for inch, the best museum in the world". An original cuneiform tablet, Principia Mathematica, Enigma machine, NASA artifacts, early Apple computers - All here and much, much more. Run, don't walk.

[1] - https://acrmuseum.org

My accidental 36 years in video games by Jeff Minter (Llamasoft) (2018)

ddoran — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 18:10:58 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7MmGoa5qbs

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29244160

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by ddoran in "Billions and Billions to Be Wasted"

ddoran — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 02:48:24 +0000

Caveat lector. If you are looking for a non-partisan review of the pros and cons of the bill, this is not the article to read. The author of the article has been a long term advocate for defunding rail[1] and it is published by The Cato Institute, which is " libertarian in its political philosophy, and advocates a limited role for government in domestic and foreign affairs"[2] and has been funded in no small part by the oil industry.

I'm not saying the article is without merit, but it is utterly partisan, and like so much online and traditional publications in the US, it is critical to know the lens through which it has been written.

I find it increasingly difficult and tiring trying to find genuinely balanced/non-partisan analysis about important topics such as this, the spending of vast sums of our tax dollars.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38510332-romance-of-the-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute

New comment by ddoran in "When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost"

ddoran — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 12:28:09 +0000

I'm sticking with the show but as a huge Foundation fan, it's bitterly disappointing so far. For me the reason comes clear in the accompanying (official) podcasts. The writers are so enamored with their own smarts, that the story takes second place to literary navel gazing. Rock bottom for me was when Brother Day - a supposedly omnipotent figure - travels across the galaxy to quell a religious uprising but just stands silent as a new leader takes up the mantle with an overwrought speech, one of many in the show. The taking of terminus was another example of characters that speak with great intelligence and then act dumb. Ugh. I'm only hoping the writers take the feedback from Season 1 and change course.

New comment by ddoran in "When will the new MacBook Pro be refurbished?"

ddoran — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 17:10:07 +0000

No, you misspelt forager as forger in the URL :)

New comment by ddoran in "The Curious, Astounding Collection of the Magician Ricky Jay"

ddoran — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 15:05:36 +0000

Directed by David Mamet and exec produced by Joel Silver. I didn't see that coming!

New comment by ddoran in "Crews are abandoned on ships in record numbers without pay, food or a way home"

ddoran — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 19:47:54 +0000

I enjoyed "The Cargo Ship Diaries" [1] by Niall Doherty about his time traveling as a paid passenger on merchant ships.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21868783-the-cargo-ship-...

New comment by ddoran in "Houses in Japan are going for as little as $500"

ddoran — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 21:51:06 +0000

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Japan does not allow dual citizenship ... rather your children are young enough that they have not had to declare their ultimate citizenship?

My wife and I are naturalized US citizens. My country of origin allows me to retain dual citizenship, as does the US, but my wife was obliged to renounce her Japanese citizenship when she became a US citizen. It's annoying and unfortunate that she had to do so.

New comment by ddoran in "Redwood World – Pictures and Locations of Redwoods in the British Isles"

ddoran — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 13:48:10 +0000

I wish the English (and others following their lead) would stop using the phrase "British Isles" to include Ireland. Many Irish people find it highly offensive; at best it is simply inaccurate.

"In Ireland, the term "British Isles" is controversial, and there are objections to its usage. The Government of Ireland does not officially recognize the term, and its embassy in London discourages its use. Britain and Ireland is used as an alternative description" [1]

Ireland has not been a British Isle in more than a hundred years when 84% of the island re-gained its independence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles

New comment by ddoran in "The Surprising Effectiveness of PPO in Cooperative Multi-Agent Games"

ddoran — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 16:31:17 +0000

PPO = Proximal Policy Optimization

[https://openai.com/blog/openai-baselines-ppo/]

New comment by ddoran in "Show HN: I wrote the book Building Mobile Apps at Scale"

ddoran — Thu, 06 May 2021 13:53:56 +0000

Same issue for me. Just emailed you. Thx