Hacker News: timst4

New comment by timst4 in "US Department of Defense orders its cyber arm to stop operations against Russia"

timst4 — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 17:52:27 +0000

This is one fast coup! Congrats, Putin! You won

New comment by timst4 in "CDC data are disappearing"

timst4 — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 15:14:30 +0000

This is the war on Science. Next comes the war on Education. The obliteration of democracy comes next. If you imagine Trump gives up this level of power without bloodshed in the streets you are deluding yourself.

New comment by timst4 in "Majority of US teens have lost trust in Big Tech"

timst4 — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 13:58:57 +0000

And Facebook and X are not advocacy organizations vehemently pushing an agenda? The fact that there is an organization looking to speak for teenagers and their rights to privacy in the face of the aggressiveness of FAANG lobbying should be the best news you hear today. Organizations like CSM and EFF are the last points of light in an ocean of darkness.

New comment by timst4 in "Dead babies, critically ill kids: Pediatricians make moving plea for vaccines"

timst4 — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 15:44:30 +0000

Elections have consequences

New comment by timst4 in "Overtourism pushes residents in Spain and Portugal to the limit"

timst4 — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 16:27:36 +0000

I see the Disrupt movement has matured. Too bad the plan all along was to stick someone else with the externalities.

New comment by timst4 in "Treating bullying as everyone's problem reduces incidence in primary schools"

timst4 — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 22:51:25 +0000

OLWEUS most likely

New comment by timst4 in "Accountability sinks"

timst4 — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 13:01:10 +0000

The future iterations of this are purely terrifying. This is so elegantly demonstrated by the Oscar Nominated short film “Please Hold” from 2022. Picked up by mistake by a roving police drone, a young man is incarcerated autonomously and has no way of release outside of money or time.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11383280/?lang=en&ref_=ext_shr_ln...

New comment by timst4 in "TikTok Live became 'a strip club filled with 15-year-olds' (2022)"

timst4 — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 02:53:31 +0000

The fact that Tiktok wholesale bought the user base for musical.ly, largely preteen children, and converted them to an entirely different app meant to addict them and harvest their data seems pretty unconscionable.

New comment by timst4 in "Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?"

timst4 — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 15:06:29 +0000

So as someone who teaches robotics to middle school Students, FIRST lego is still the best program for kids. If you would like to learn CAD, EE, 3D printing, and microcontrollers, then certainly go the battle bots route. However, this will be a steep learning curve for your son and he may get frustrated. With FIRST, he will move from FLL to FRC in late middle school which has much more open road. He will also learn to work as a part of a team and solve problems in concert with peers which is different than a father son team. FLL is intense and almost a year round pursuit. Find a good home school team for him to join and he’ll get the best experience.

Ask HN: How are you preparing for the effects of climate change?

timst4 — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 16:52:07 +0000

From all available data and observations, the mean earth temperature is rapidly warming and causing significant changes to the amplitude of storms and weather events. Or, in the words of a park ranger I spoke with last summer, “It’s gonna be either droughts or floods from here on out.”

So, considering this future of rapidly increasing heat and unpredictability, how are you preparing? How are you arranging your ten year plan for work, finances, shelter, and family considering the realities before us?

Personally, I expect food prices to rise so I am growing a considerable garden and keeping chickens. I also have planted trees facing South to protect my home from the direct sunlight. I also plan on putting in solar panels and a heat pump in the next five years. I am curious how others who also realize what a pickle we are in are preparing.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39706266

Points: 11

# Comments: 18

New comment by timst4 in "Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers"

timst4 — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 12:28:51 +0000

Chief Seattle had it right all along it seems[0]. We should have been aggressive about considering the impact of technology on the next seven generations. It’s not too late to start of course, but it is too late to avoid dire planetary changes.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_generation_sustainabil...

New comment by timst4 in "Food companies ‘sweetened the world’ and increased the risk of disease"

timst4 — Sat, 15 Jul 2023 02:36:20 +0000

As if anyone had a choice about climate change. Cigarettes, oxy, sugar, and carbon are all alike in that their detrimental effects were hidden, downplayed, or denied for decades. Now, here we are with a destroyed ecosystem and rampant addiction. Choice is a meaningless word in the context of capitalism. There is only manipulation.

Regulation was needed 60 years ago, and now we are the ones left holding the bag.

New comment by timst4 in "Ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica hits new record"

timst4 — Wed, 24 May 2023 20:17:46 +0000

This is one of the most flawed arguments that get made. I’ve been to many places in North America and Europe. Everywhere you go, direct sunlight above 65F is nearly unbearable. Air temperature is one thing, but we are super heating the entire air column between you and the outer atmosphere. Places that used to be pleasant with lots of sunshine like the SFs East Bay are now searing hot in direct sun. Yes, Maybe Quebec is more pleasant than it used to be, but it will be uncomfortable most of the summer in 5 or 10 years. Humans will certainly migrate North but Eventually we will just run out of latitude. Climate Change isn’t linear. Each year will be getting hotter faster than it did the year before. We’re toast.

New comment by timst4 in "Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls"

timst4 — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 20:51:08 +0000

Middle School educator here. I can assure you that your daughters will not be alone when it comes to a moratorium on social media. However, the girls they may very well want to be friends with may be very much into social media and group chats. My advice is to be firm but also take steps to create social opportunities for your daughters. I have a 12yo and I host board game nights with amazing snack trays. I help her to play video games socially using air console.

You have to play defense. These apps are deleterious to your daughters self worth. I’ve seen too many hospitalizations and suicides to believe otherwise. But you also have to play offense. They will need guidance on how to be social in a world coopted by manipulation and deceit. Parenting these days is challenging but it’s possible to raise girls who thrive without phones.

New comment by timst4 in "The case for hanging out"

timst4 — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 19:21:19 +0000

Catan or DND has a similar competitive yet low stakes vibe.

Here’s my secret: I host a night about once every two months and I bake soft pretzel bites with varying dipping sauces. People know I’m going to bake pretzels and this familiarity is comforting, but they also come to see what sauces I’m gonna have. I try to make them exotic at times

New comment by timst4 in "CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon"

timst4 — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 11:43:42 +0000

This is a great project by CMU; however, it is designed for high school students specifically. An analogue to this would be Code.org. It is not related to their undergraduate CS curriculum which is rather rigorous.

New comment by timst4 in "Sea life bounced back fast after the ‘mother of mass extinctions’"

timst4 — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 20:01:51 +0000

Cool. They’ll bounce back fast after this mass extinction that’s happening right now. That is, unless humans succeed in terraforming Earth into a Mars clone. Then all life is screwed.

New comment by timst4 in "Glen Canyon Revealed"

timst4 — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 22:55:30 +0000

The slow moving disaster that is the Colorado River is a particularly American disaster. The manifest destiny mindset coming to an abrupt end. In the book Cadillac Desert Marc Reisner asserts that this could be the albatross that contributes to the downfall of the US. The more I learn, the more I’m inclined to believe him.

New comment by timst4 in "The Coming Dust Bowl"

timst4 — Sat, 28 Jan 2023 02:50:58 +0000

Certainly you are right. If all the golf courses are closed and agriculture is transitioned to more stable locales, the Southwest would have a fighting chance.

However, when you take into account human nature, especially American human nature, the forecast seems darker. More and more, I believe that Collapse seems to be hard-wired into the human collective. It almost seems as if there is a number of humans (n) that serves as an under/over for inevitable collapse. One person can have foresight. Two people, 10 people, 1000 people even. But once you hit 10,000 or so the ability to sway public opinion with money and media becomes too strong. All it takes is a certain percentage of people to be convinced the problem is a conspiracy or a mirage. That is enough to sow doubt more widely, and to sink any efforts towards a reasonable conservation of resources.

The Southwest will collapse, and soon. And the number of people denying the existence of a problem will be non-trivial even as the last reservoir dries up. It’s a shame, but it was as Cadillac Desert proves imminently avoidable.

New comment by timst4 in "First signs of spring have arrived in parts of south 3 weeks sooner than average"

timst4 — Sat, 28 Jan 2023 01:53:27 +0000

Anthropogenic warming is increasing at a non-linear rate. If you are not preparing practically, financially, and emotionally for this fact, you are being myopic. I still hold out hope for fusion-based geo-engineering or radical innovation to battery technology. However, with every day that passes the potential for these solutions seems to further elude us.