Hacker News: hirundo

New comment by hirundo in "Mazda slaps developer with cease-and-desist for DIY smart home integration"

hirundo — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 22:26:36 +0000

My cheap home thermostat has that frustrating +/- 5 degrees F accuracy. Is it very difficult to build an inexpensive 1 degree sensor?

New comment by hirundo in "Former Google CEO Launched a Company with His Girlfriend. It's Not Going Well"

hirundo — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 14:44:38 +0000

Citizen Schmidt?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/h...

New comment by hirundo in "Astrophysicists Put All Objects in Universe into One Pedagogical Plot"

hirundo — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 14:37:19 +0000

Why is it "Forbidden by Gravity" but the "sub-Plankian unknown"? I thought that the Plank length was a hard limit like the speed of light. Is that not true, and there theoretically are unknown features smaller than that?

New comment by hirundo in "Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way"

hirundo — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 14:27:08 +0000

You could get the same distribution if everyone is assigned a random amount of selfishness regardless of wealth, but some people are better at achieving their selfish goals than others, or just luckier. How could someone know that the result is primarily due to non-uniform selfishness?

You could measure selfishness in small experimental scenarios and try to correlate it with the wealth of the subjects. Does that evidence exist?

New comment by hirundo in "Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way"

hirundo — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 14:13:05 +0000

Finance used to be the driver of marriage, and now that it is less so there are fewer marriages.

New comment by hirundo in "Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way"

hirundo — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 14:06:47 +0000

Wealth follows a Pareto distribution, and there are many Pareto distributions of things that are not caused by selfishness.

https://www.thelangelfirm.com/debt-collection-defense-blog/2...

If selfishness isn't a good general explanation for Pareto distributions, is there a reason that it's particularly explanatory for wealth distribution?

New comment by hirundo in "Are Temperature Levels Changing Due to Greenhouse Gases? [pdf]"

hirundo — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 13:02:17 +0000

"Using theoretical arguments and statistical tests we find, as in Dagsvik et al. (2020), that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years."

New comment by hirundo in "Town Repeatedly Surveilled Man's Yard with Drone Without a Warrant"

hirundo — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 14:27:10 +0000

I agree. Rule of law is critical and requires consistency. But given the choice I'd rather live in a jurisdiction where law enforcement tends to use their discretion in favor of less rather than more centralized control. That bias towards less control seems to be inversely correlated with population density.

New comment by hirundo in "Town Repeatedly Surveilled Man's Yard with Drone Without a Warrant"

hirundo — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 13:55:33 +0000

We have no garbage pickup in the county, we haul it to one of four collection areas. Those cost $140/year plus about $7/100lbs, so no doubt some more thrifty neighbors are burning household trash instead, but I just burn slash and take household trash to the dumpsters.

There's a high fire risk in this area and smoke watchers will report it, and the VFD gets dispatched. They don't respond individually.

New comment by hirundo in "Town Repeatedly Surveilled Man's Yard with Drone Without a Warrant"

hirundo — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 13:36:13 +0000

And it's self-reinforcing. I live in a rural county the size of Connecticut with just 5k people in it. The people that choose to live out here are frequently the ones who particularly value that extra freedom ... including law enforcement. It is almost routine here for the sheriff to announce that he will not enforce some state or federal code or another. Talk to a deputy about crime and he'll ask if you have guns, and then recommend that you buy one if you don't.

The county government does little and our property taxes reflect that.

I can and have burned very large piles in my yard, but we're not savages. I have to notify the local volunteer fire department first, or they're libel to show up, and not happily.

New comment by hirundo in "The Tech Industry Has a New Plan to Stop Proliferation of Right to Repair Laws"

hirundo — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 18:34:24 +0000

The absence of a shibboleth is a shibboleth identifying an outsider.

New comment by hirundo in "Nakatomi Space"

hirundo — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 14:12:10 +0000

You just spoiled my excuse to watch Die Hard again.

New comment by hirundo in "Nakatomi Space"

hirundo — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 13:55:49 +0000

I suggest that air ducts should not be considered part of Nakatomi Space.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/PlayingWith/AirVentPa...

Because rather than being inventive uses of architectural spaces they're generally lazy plot devices.

Now I have a reason to go back and watch Die Hard again to see if John crawls through air ducts.

New comment by hirundo in "Please be dying, but not too quickly: a clinical trial story"

hirundo — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 15:02:58 +0000

This is a great read, and a situation where an astute IT entrepreneur could make a fine business in return for doing much good. The main superhero power needed here is "software developer". I've been in the same position as the author and bounced off of the difficulties almost immediately. People are dying to find a better way to search a .gov site.

New comment by hirundo in "Ask HN: What outdated tech are you still using and are perfectly happy with?"

hirundo — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 15:10:31 +0000

I went shopping for a new bed the other day and hadn't for decades. So I got some future shock when I found out that they now not only have wifi and bluetooth, but also artificial intelligence. The salesman pitched me an $11,000 Smart Bed. Fascinating. Call me a Luddite but I honestly prefer a dumb bed.

New comment by hirundo in "Self-Checkout Is a Failed Experiment"

hirundo — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 12:38:23 +0000

I was standing at a Home Depot self-checkout, looking all over for an employee to help me with an item, finding nobody. The guy next to me was waiting too and I asked him "does anyone work here any more?"

He said "I guess we do."

I wonder how they're going to get me to stock shelves and clean the restroom.

New comment by hirundo in "Many bosses say they hired employees they've never met since the pandemic"

hirundo — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 12:31:23 +0000

I got hired for a remote job in 2011, and have yet to meet any co-workers in the flesh, including the guy who hired me. I've spent plenty of time looking at him, talking to him. I've seen him at his worst and best. We know lots of little details of each other's lives. The fact that I've never touched or smelled him doesn't seem like any kind of problem.

New comment by hirundo in "A little-known pollution rule keeps the air dirty for millions of Americans"

hirundo — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 13:39:40 +0000

From the graphs in the article it's clear that the omitted days were very close to each other, almost a vertical line in some. That seems to indicate that these are from particular events, rather than just chopping out inconveniently high readings that happen to cross the line. Not that this rule can't be abused, but these spikes look like relatively isolated events that local enforcers may have no control over.

New comment by hirundo in "2006 Palestinian Legislative Election"

hirundo — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 21:52:52 +0000

A two-state solution is contrary to the policy of the government elected by the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Election. No further elections have occurred. Recent events indicate that this government still prefers a one-state solution.

New comment by hirundo in ""Hallucinating" AIs sound creative, but let's not celebrate being wrong"

hirundo — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 19:54:22 +0000

Think of requiring a minimum amount of hallucination in AI output as a safety mechanism, like mixing the distinctive odor into a propane tank. The odor is a signal that there's a gas leak that must be dealt with. A high minimum amount of hallucinations is a signal that the source is untrustworthy and must be checked. Hallucinations may turn out to be a feature that protects against over reliance. And defers the need for a Butlerian jihad.