Hacker News: interestica

New comment by interestica in "China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from thorium"

interestica — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 21:00:07 +0000

> Talking about “thousands of tonnes” of nuclear waste is comically misleading when you realise how tiny the volume is.

You’re mixing mass and volume here. From what I can tell, their numbers were essentially right. Are you saying we don’t have thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste produced?

New comment by interestica in "Outdated Samsung handset linked to fatal emergency call failure in Australia"

interestica — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 19:19:07 +0000

We have all lost functionality of a device we paid for after an update. You can’t fault a user for avoiding it. It’s the root that should be addressed.

New comment by interestica in "Tesla Is Recalling Cybertrucks Again"

interestica — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 17:47:19 +0000

This was genuinely innovative and intriguing. Did the numbers just not work out for manufacturing or some other thing get in the way?

New comment by interestica in "Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill"

interestica — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 17:15:45 +0000

Having representation based on land/physical space will increasingly be seen as absurd.

Maybe we will have “youth reps” in the future. Or reps based on other organizing group (hunters? Musicians?). The problem is…taxonomical? People won’t have to belong to a single group but can belong to several “unions”.

New comment by interestica in "Scripts I wrote that I use all the time"

interestica — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 19:38:10 +0000

Share yours!

I use this as a bookmarklet to grab the front page of the new york times (print edition). (You can also go back to any date up to like 2011)

I think they go out at like 4 am. So, day-of, note that it will fail if you're in that window before publishing.

    javascript:(()=>{let d=new Date(new Date().toLocaleString('en-US',{timeZone:'America/New_York'})),y=d.getFullYear(),m=('0'+(d.getMonth()+1)).slice(-2),g=('0'+d.getDate()).slice(-2);location.href=`https://static01.nyt.com/images/${y}/${m}/${g}/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf`})()

New comment by interestica in "Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)"

interestica — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 04:13:00 +0000

I was incorrect here. The letters were all from december 61 to jan 62.

New comment by interestica in "Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)"

interestica — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 04:08:08 +0000

You are absolutely right! The couple from 62 are correct.

New comment by interestica in "Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)"

interestica — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 18:07:06 +0000

They had a long history of correspondence. The preceding letter is archived and you can probably get a copy. (https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/79128)

> Jan 6/1962 Re nuclear disarmament and world government. BR is not inclined to agree or disagree with Mosley's views, but he does think that Mosley is "rather optimistic" in his expectations. BR provides criticism of his main two objections. (A polite letter.)

> Jan 11/1962 Mosley wants to lunch privately with BR about their differences.

These are basically all the letters exchanged with Mosley:

https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/bracers-basic-search?search_api_...

New comment by interestica in "Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)"

interestica — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 17:59:05 +0000

If you’re really interested in his works and correspondence, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario holds the Bertrand Russell archives.

Some stuff is online. Here’s a curated collection of some really interesting letters sent to him:

https://dearbertie.mcmaster.ca/letters

New comment by interestica in "Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy"

interestica — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 22:31:41 +0000

This is like cable with extra steps ;)

I think we are already seeing some packaged stream services and we will probably see more. It’s a lot of overhead to maintain a separate service to do the exact same thing (with only a different library and branding).

I think the NHL uses the streaming backend developed by MLB Advanced Media (they adapted it in 2015, not sure if still the case).

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/a-closer-look-at-nhls-pa...

New comment by interestica in "Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy"

interestica — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 22:22:06 +0000

I think we have it backwards by attaching it to the life/death of the creator (or the works’ creation). People should be alive to experience the works they consumed in new and open ways. Creation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It builds on the collective works. There’s no point in a work becoming public domain if no one is alive from the time when it first had an impact on culture. Seniors should be freely able to listen to access the culture of their youth and experience it in new modified ways without restriction.

15 years or less from the date of first public consumption.

New comment by interestica in "Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy"

interestica — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 22:12:44 +0000

In a weird quirk that must be a bug, you can watch the first season of the Good Place in French in the USA but not in Canada.

New comment by interestica in "GPT-5: It just does stuff"

interestica — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 18:30:18 +0000

I mean this is already kind of the case with general search (eg google) as it is now.

New comment by interestica in "Try and"

interestica — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 18:26:04 +0000

> "Truly", we understand each other better and communicate faster ~when we out speech draws from a a collection of words~, idioms, and grammatical constructions familiar to the listener. This linguistic inventory is not natural. It must be taught. Errors must he corrected, not validated. Not every utterance from someone's mouth has equal merit.

It’s okay. I still understood you.

New comment by interestica in "Try and"

interestica — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 18:22:25 +0000

https://www.bbc.com/pidgin

New comment by interestica in "Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year"

interestica — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 03:16:29 +0000

This was the (corp) argument in Canada for allowing companies to expire gift cards. They no longer expire.

New comment by interestica in "AI Stands for Artificial Inanity"

interestica — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 14:33:21 +0000

real inanity

New comment by interestica in "PHP: The Toyota Corolla of programming"

interestica — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:17:26 +0000

I think that wordpress probably had a big impact on PHP's success. It's on 40%+ of sites. It was set up in a way for people to make modifications to actual code (or at least see). Hosting providers had to make sure PHP was preinstalled and useful.

A Look at the Lasting Supersuit Swimming Records

interestica — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 18:58:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/what-remains-a-look-at-the-lasting-supersuit-records-which-will-go-next-and-which-are-untouchable/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44748908

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by interestica in "Severe turbulence forces Delta A330 to make emergency landing, 25 injured"

interestica — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 16:18:38 +0000

Interesting! As a continued hypothetical, it's interesting that the "No Smoking" permanently-lit sign is next to the seatbelt one. It's a weird contradiction: by being an electronic illuminated sign in the most prominent area (like a passenger HUD - reserved for critical info) it is given an elevated importance that doesn't really align with user expectation (is it really on the same level as the 'alert' implementation of the seatbelt sign?). So, there may be some kind of "cries wolf" subtle psychological effect in play: the cigarette signage is so obviously unnecessary in place and prominence that maybe the seatbelt signage takes on some of that cognitive placement (and implied importance) in mind. I think it kind of plays into that "respect for authority" you noted -- not unlike the possibility that programs like DARE that tried to group drugs like marijuana with heroin may have caused an increase in harder drug use when people realized that they were misled by that initial 'noble lie'. (See also mask use during the pandemic)