Hacker News: thomas11

A Possible Link Between ‘Oumuamua and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

thomas11 — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 17:43:07 +0000

Article URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-possible-link-between-oumuamua-and-unidentified-aerial-phenomena/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27594706

Points: 29

# Comments: 32

New comment by thomas11 in "New Racket Language Website"

thomas11 — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 22:49:03 +0000

The code is correct. That's a Lisp thing called `quote`. https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/Pairs__Lists__and_Racket_...

New comment by thomas11 in "Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030"

thomas11 — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 18:05:38 +0000

The bigger, of course also more distant and vague, announcement is that "by 2050 Microsoft will remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975."

Tempest: Startup says ‘Sober is the new black’

thomas11 — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 22:15:29 +0000

Article URL: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/08/tempest-virtual-sobriety-school/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21197876

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by thomas11 in "Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914"

thomas11 — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 22:41:18 +0000

In feed lots they're fed grain, but that's only the last few months of their life. That's why it's called grain-finished rather than grain-fed.

New comment by thomas11 in "Germany, seeking independence from U.S., pushes cyber security research"

thomas11 — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 11:09:07 +0000

I'm a German engineer in the US. The thing with these stories is that they won't happen to you. If you're employed by a tech company you have great health insurance.

Of course, it still sucks that it can happen to someone at all and you might not want to live in such a society. That's a separate issue.

Speaking of SV, I think the cost of living and the social problems there have made it increasingly unattractive. Seattle is nice.

AI to match human performance in translating news from Chinese to English

thomas11 — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 13:18:30 +0000

Article URL: https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/machine-translation-news-test-set-human-parity/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16584532

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by thomas11 in "57% of Americans Have Less Than $1,000 in Savings (2017)"

thomas11 — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 04:54:19 +0000

You can get 1.35% currently with the free online account at Ally (no affiliation). Still below inflation but much better than 0.02%.

Reliable access to a computer or smartphone can be an issue for the really poor but most should be fine.

A rare look inside the secretive world of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

thomas11 — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 19:00:09 +0000

Article URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-german-hacker-offers-a-rare-look-inside-the-secretive-world-of-julian-assange-and-wikileaks/2018/01/17/e6211180-f311-11e7-b390-a36dc3fa2842_story.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16206908

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

New comment by thomas11 in "MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and MySQL: more choices on Microsoft Azure"

thomas11 — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 17:07:21 +0000

The actual title on microsoft.com, "MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and MySQL: more choices on Microsoft Azure", has actually less marketing spin and more information.

New comment by thomas11 in "Show HN: Readwise – Review and retain your Kindle highlights"

thomas11 — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 18:30:58 +0000

This looks pretty cool!

What's the business model going to be? The ToU are quite far-reaching regarding user content: "By submitting User Content through the Services, you hereby do and shall grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable and transferable license to use, edit, modify, truncate, aggregate, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, perform, and otherwise fully exploit the User Content".

Also, are there other ways to browse, search, etc., the highlights in addition to the daily email?

Announcing tools for the AI-driven digital transformation

thomas11 — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 23:34:17 +0000

Article URL: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/tools-for-the-ai-driven-digital-transformation/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15335039

Points: 113

# Comments: 32

New comment by thomas11 in "Gut Germs Appear to Play Role in Multiple Sclerosis"

thomas11 — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 00:52:06 +0000

Do you have a recommendation for a soil-based probiotic? I've been looking recently and found them somewhat hard to research among all the lacto ones.

New comment by thomas11 in "Go 1.9 Beta 1 release notes"

thomas11 — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 01:46:21 +0000

Right. You could always define a new type with an existing underlying type, like Celsius with the underlying type int in your example. See the spec here: https://golang.org/ref/spec#Types

This would define a new, non-interchangeable type, even though it's just an int behind the scenes. The new type alias on the other hand define a new name for an existing type; you still have just one type. In the user ID example above that's not what you want, it would allow using an int where a UserID is required.

New comment by thomas11 in "Reading OpenBSD source code daily"

thomas11 — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 15:42:43 +0000

The Go standard library is very well written and depending on which parts you read you can learn about lots of things like file operations, HTTP, crypto, etc.

It's easy to read it all on the web, the docs are here: https://golang.org/pkg/ and clicking on a function name shows the source.

Txti – Fast web pages for everybody

thomas11 — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 19:25:32 +0000

Article URL: http://txti.es/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13805282

Points: 46

# Comments: 14

Using Elm in Production at Pivotal Tracker

thomas11 — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 22:34:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.pivotaltracker.com/blog/Elm-pivotal-tracker/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13555542

Points: 7

# Comments: 0

New comment by thomas11 in "Visual Studio Code 1.9"

thomas11 — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 20:15:59 +0000

I've used both extensively and I think they are fairly different, with different strengths and weaknesses. Bash is more pragmatic and more concise on the command line. PS is more uniform in its design and nicer for scripting IMO. It allows passing objects through pipes, has built-in JSON reading and writing, built-in parameter handling with defaults, mandatory and optional params, switches etc., and such niceties.

New comment by thomas11 in "Upping the volts will make hybrid cars much cheaper"

thomas11 — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 03:02:41 +0000

Isn't the Chevrolet Volt what you describe in your third paragraph?

New comment by thomas11 in "British Columbia to target foreign real estate buyers with new tax"

thomas11 — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 19:48:02 +0000

So why does it need to be Vancouver where prices are already very high? Why not buy in another city that's more reasonable?