My wife runs https://www.saviament.com/, an open-access educational website in Catalan. She also sells printable content following the same style as the website, which has exploded in popularity this year and has become a decent source of income.
Readit Newssyrgian commented on Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell · Posted by u/cvbox
syrgian commented on The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain wastedwind.energy/... · Posted by u/bashy
The solution to NIMBY's seems simple... "We would like to put a power line through your village. Here are the plans. We will to give every resident £400 to compensate them for the trouble, and it will only happen if at least half the residents vote yes. If the plan goes ahead, all voters will be eligible for the £400, even if you vote no.".
It turns out most people don't really care about a power line, but do like money. You won't have to offer much money to have a majority saying yes.
Wouldn't all the houses in the village lose way more than £400 in value?
Last I was comparing houses in a neighborhood, the houses near a powerline were consistently worth 15k-30k less (3-6% less).
What do you think that difference in homicide rates proves? It’s caused entirely by racial disparities in homicide victimization rate. The NYC homicide rate for white victims is about 9 per million: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_p... (7% of 343 homicides divided by 2.7 million). The homicide rate among white people in London was also about 9 per million: https://aoav.org.uk/2024/londons-2023-murders-examined-key-f... (43% of 103 homicides divided by 4.7 million).
It seems unlikely that this pattern of homicides would be explain by differences in general government policies between the U.S. and UK, such as healthcare policies.
The post I was replying to was edited and originally claimed that London had higher murder rate than New York.
NYC is very safe for an American city, but London is not particularly unsafe for a UK one; its violent crime rate is about average for England as a whole.
You are right. Should not have relied on the most likely LLM-generated description attached to the data. I trusted it because I already had the wrong impression that it was less safe, but that was just because the raw number of crimes is high because it is very populated.
Western European cities have been getting more violent.
London murder rate per million in 2024: 11.6
NYC murder rate per million in 2024: 43
And from what I read, NYC is exceptionally safe for a US city, and London is exceptionally unsafe for a UK city.
syrgian commented on Magic Lantern Is Back magiclantern.fm/forum/ind... · Posted by u/felipemesquita
I've been waiting for Magic Lantern for my 6D Mark II for years now, checking the homepage every 6 months or so for an update, so this is great news!
Same boat. I have a 6D Mark II since 7 years ago now, and I misguidedly was counting on ML to be released within 3 years of my purchase. But luckily, it's still a fantastic camera.
Geopolitics are still in play. Why would a country that has been hammered with "Western" sanctions, and is effectively engaged in a proxy war against the "West" cooperate with the "West" when it comes to law enforcement?
* Australia is part of the "West" here - ironic from a strictly geographic perspective
Can't the Western government strongarm the receiving bank by threatening to kick them out of SEPA/ACH/Fediwire?
syrgian commented on iPhone 16 is much easier to repair engadget.com/mobile/smart... · Posted by u/vincentchau
I'm not upset anymore since i ditch my iphone for an android, i'm merely pointing the corporate hypocrisy from apple.
> If I buy a phone from someone else, asking them to remove it from their account before the transaction is already a good idea, and trivial to do. Beyond the physical parts, I don't want any of their data or account info on my new phone.
Do it with the ssd then. you don't need to lock the screen, the battery or the faceid sensor. it makes no sense security wise.
I'm all in for fighting against stealer and pickpocket, but also lucid enough to know that it doesn't prevent them from stealing it. They still steal them and then sell them on internet, only for people to buy it and receive a brick. It just doesn't work.
And honestly if i get my samsung stolen, i'd rather know it's been resold by some scumbag, but still being used, than having it get shiped to india for 'recycling' into one of the many landfill site.
If you are going scam people with locked iPhones over the internet, why send an iPhone at all? You should just send a literal paperweight. It will serve the same purpose. It's not like the marketplace will be like "It's an iPhone. Even if it is locked, the seller is right. We will remove the negative rating and let the seller keep their reputation".
By the way, I recently sold an iPhone 8 (through App, but the transfer was in person) and out of 5 potential buyers, all of them asked the same three questions: "Is it on and unlocked?, is it carrier sim-locked?, which is the battery %?".
syrgian commented on Google uses AI to reduce stop-and-go traffic on your route blog.google/outreach-init... · Posted by u/alach11
I understand the intention here of reducing stop time at stoplights for cars, but I think this is a dangerous project.
The word pedestrian, or bicycle does not exist in this article whatsoever. Traffic lights are a flawed, but useful tool for traffic calming. If we optimize for reducing the amount of red lights cars will run into, this will fundamentally increase speeds on roads, and increased speeds, equals increase pedestrian, cycle, and car deaths.
This is all conjecture, but it seems like the key indicator that Google is providing two cities is reduction in stop time. If that is their key metric, while also not looking at other things like bicycle stop time, or pedestrian wait time; we will be optimizing for average car speed indirectly. That is a bad thing inside of cities.
It seems to me that it would increase safety, but I guess only a simulation could truly tell. I understand your take, but I have a different one: most accidents happens when someone makes a mistake at stop light changes. Less cars stopping/starting at red lights seems less chances for accidents to me.
Let's go with an absurd example: If you multiplied by 5 both the length of red and green stages, I would expect much less accidents per day, but it would obviously also be much more frustrating to move around (and possibly more accidents if the amount of infractions increase because of the frustration). If you divided them by 2, I would expect much more accidents of all kinds.
syrgian commented on What spreadsheets need? LLMs, says Microsoft theregister.com/2024/07/1... · Posted by u/galaxyLogic
> agentic
This is the hot new word in the LLM space. Was this picked because LLMs are losing luster for broad, cross-domain applicability? What systems actually demonstrate this behavior?
I'm not short on LLMs, but I can see a future where Gen AI in the creative space (image, audio, video) outpaces LLMs in terms of impact.
I was trying to write a decent definition but Wiki does it better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model#Agency
In this context it could be able to do multiple actions in order to address an ask from the user: read cells, documentation, edit cells, and perhaps even read the result from the edited cell before answering. i.e. "Can you create a new sheet that focuses on the Countries where the sales happened, including YoY differences, and tell me which countries are outliers and for which reason(s)?" (probably very far fetched given the level of progress Excel has achieved in 20 years).