Hacker News: ljcn

New comment by ljcn in "PDF: Still unfit for human consumption, 20 years later"

ljcn — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 17:33:20 +0000

Not all html pages - what about hackernews? It's mostly tables with minimal CSS (a bit of padding and font*/color), I bet it continues to be perfectly rendered practically indefinitely. At least snapshots on archive.org from 2007 still look perfect.

New comment by ljcn in "Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects"

ljcn — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 16:42:23 +0000

Wouldn't you rather share a garden with insects? I would.

New comment by ljcn in "Formal Systems in Biology"

ljcn — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 14:34:18 +0000

> bioinformatics, systems biology, computational biology

Of those bioinformatics is more specific (usually genomics data); the other two are overlapping and pretty non-specific terms.

For example I started a Sys Bio PhD and ended up in a Comp Bio research group. A friend started the same way but ended up in control theory/microbiology.

The title and even the department are somewhat arbitrary and more to do with the organisation at the university than anything else (e.g. I was in CS but my friend was Engineering I think).

If you can find a good interdisciplinary course they will be familiar with people moving around depending on their interests.

New comment by ljcn in "Why Our Intuition About Sea-Level Rise Is Wrong"

ljcn — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 12:59:31 +0000

Radius of 6 km is comparable to the size of Halley's comet :-)

New comment by ljcn in "Why have contestants on “The Price is Right” become so much worse at guessing?"

ljcn — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 14:42:45 +0000

> Wasn't able to read the article through the paywall

Try turning off javascript.

New comment by ljcn in "Sun's surface seen in new detail"

ljcn — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 16:50:56 +0000

About 200 actually (you mistook the diameter for the radius).

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+au+%2F+radius+of+the...

New comment by ljcn in "First mathematical proof for a key law of turbulence in fluid mechanics"

ljcn — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 17:38:29 +0000

Indeed, natural science deals in models, not 'the truth'.

In most cases 'correct' isn't an option, rather a degree of accuracy. If it's consistent with the measurements, or even better if it has predictive power, then it's useful.

New comment by ljcn in "Welsh Password Generator"

ljcn — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 17:51:50 +0000

It's got 80-120 ish bits of entropy, why is it not secure?

(Assuming you're not referring to it literally being a well known password from a web comic.)

New comment by ljcn in "How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer"

ljcn — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 16:50:58 +0000

> maybe even only if you're American?

Works fine in UK English too, although the "r:uk" modifier is often needed.

New comment by ljcn in "Medieval Price List"

ljcn — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 13:06:16 +0000

> using an inflation calculator defers to someone's idea of what a basket was

In this case that someone is Greg Clark (Professor of Economics at UC Davis). The link goes direct to a .xlsx which reveals the "basket" and all the figures - it's a mixture of several (presumably average) wages and a "cost of living".

This is probably the research paper (2009) http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Macroa...

New comment by ljcn in "Air pollution causes brain structure changes that resemble Alzheimer's disease"

ljcn — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 15:29:16 +0000

Sadly tyre, brakes, and road abrasion apparently account for far more particulate pollution than the exhaust does. I'd like to find another source for this because it's so surprising.

The only solution I suppose is no cars.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7236155/Elec...

New comment by ljcn in "China Set for Coal Expansion in Threat to Climate Goals"

ljcn — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 15:00:15 +0000

OK, matched grid prices without subsidy, and cheaper than coal in a fifth of cases.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0441-z

New comment by ljcn in "Tesla Cybertruck"

ljcn — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 12:35:40 +0000

As your example numbers here show though estates are often better for storage than crossovers. So there must be other factors behind crossover popularity.

Their being higher is a big factor I bet (less stooping and more road visibility, although the latter is less of a factor as they get more popular).

New comment by ljcn in "China Set for Coal Expansion in Threat to Climate Goals"

ljcn — Thu, 21 Nov 2019 17:42:21 +0000

Right, but decades ago coal was the cheapest source of power. We didn't have cheap renewables in the 70s. Solar is cheaper than coal in China.* They could certainly grow (at least) no slower by building huge amounts of renewables rather than coal.

*(I'm not sure if this is on a "spot" basis or annualised to account for intermittency, but then it probably doesn't account for the negative externalities of coal either so let's chalk it up to a draw.)

New comment by ljcn in "Why aren’t Americans rising up like the people of Chile and Lebanon?"

ljcn — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 15:31:11 +0000

Wouldn't have thought sick people make the best revolutionaries.

New comment by ljcn in "Pinephone – “BraveHeart” Limited Edition Linux SmartPhone"

ljcn — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 12:45:25 +0000

Is the early adaptor included?

New comment by ljcn in "Eating food from plants that have struggled to survive toughens us up as well"

ljcn — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 16:39:54 +0000

Very interesting. Will add it to the (already large) "eat lots of (and a good variety of) fruit and veg and do enough exercise" pile of life advice.

New comment by ljcn in "Nokia’s collapse turned a sleepy town in Finland into an internet wonderland"

ljcn — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 11:36:56 +0000

None of the links in the sister support home ownership being below 50% in London. The third link shows a difference between white and non-white British ownership levels but that's it.

New comment by ljcn in "Budapest declares climate emergency, teases carbon-neutrality"

ljcn — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 11:33:22 +0000

Budapest isn't the whole country, but your point is correct, Hungary is certainly a highly developed country. Not G7 levels, but close.

New comment by ljcn in "Nuclear fusion is 'a question of when, not if'"

ljcn — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 12:59:22 +0000

The gp might have been thinking of more interesting methods of cooling - space sunshades, aerosols, massive creation of artificial snow... (not sure if the latter is a net heat loss)