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weswilson commented on Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo   tempo.xyz... · Posted by u/_nvs
hvb2 · 4 months ago
It's a good example though, a country whose currency is unreliable and where access to another more reliable currency is hard. That IS a use case
weswilson · 4 months ago
It may be good for the individual, but is it good for Argentina or LATAM as a whole?

I'm no economist, but wouldn't shifting transactions from their currency to another (USD/stablecoin) inherently destabilize their economy even more?

weswilson commented on Show HN: Apple-like smooth corners for Tailwind CSS   github.com/gtokman/corner... · Posted by u/instagary
weswilson · a year ago
Obligatory video on splines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds

From what I've read, Apple rounded corners are using G^2 or G^3 geometric continuity to generate smoother curves.

It's hard to tell which smoothing function this library uses since it looks like it's based on PNG masking.

weswilson commented on NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on SpaceX Crew-9   twitter.com/NASA/status/1... · Posted by u/ripjaygn
hintymad · a year ago
I wonder if there are books or articles that analyze how and why Boeing declined so fast and so spectacularly. Boeing used to be able to build 747 under budget and ahead of schedule, just like Lockheed could dazzle the world by creating U2 ahead of schedule and under budget with fewer than 200 people (or < 100?) in 15 months with the cost of a few millions. It can't be just the change of geopolitics post Cold War, right? It can't be just that the fixed-margin structure imposed by the government, right? It can't be just the mismanagement or the greed of the leadership, right? It can't just be that Boeing is in the phase of accelerated decline as any old-enough company, right?

I'm curious about such questions because on a larger scheme of the things, I really hope that Boeing is not a miniature reflection of the US - an empire in its twilight that got entangled in irreconcilable interests, doomed to watch its own inevitable decline.

weswilson · a year ago
There was an internal whitepaper written by a Boeing engineer back in 2001 that warns against the dangers of excessive outsourcing.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/69746-hart-smith-on-...

It reads like a plea to not turn into McDonnell Douglas (this was only a few years after the MD and Boeing merger), which we all know it essentially has. The last couple of sentences fire shots at Douglas Aircraft directly:

"The fate of the former Douglas Aircraft Company, which was reduced to a systems integrator in the early 1970s by excessive outsourcing of DC-10 production, is a clear indicator of what will happen to other companies which fail to sustain the conditions under which it is possible to launch new products. It is hoped that this sacrifice can save the new and expanded Boeing from a similar fate."

weswilson commented on US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink   reuters.com/technology/sp... · Posted by u/adolph
tick_tock_tick · 2 years ago
So basically now 15/16th of the money goes into a void to never actually get service to anyone.
weswilson · 2 years ago
Anecdotally, my dad lives in a rural area with no cable/DSL broadband available.

Cellular broadband only got him 10-15 Mbps. He was excited when Starlink was available. I think he was pretty early on the preorder list. Once he finally got access to Starlink (Feb 2022) the speeds were close to the advertised ~100 Mbps.

Now the price has increased and on average he's back to getting like 15-20 Mbps down.

Luckily, the EMC that services the area received some rural broadband grant money to roll out FTTH and that build out has been pretty quick. They have already run fiber down his road and said that service should be available in a couple of months. The EMC is offering 2 Gbps down / 1-2 Gbps up (!!!) for $100/mo.

So this money is actually being spent effectively when it goes to the right place. Starlink made a bunch of promises that they couldn't fulfill and the money is being redirected, as it should be.

weswilson commented on The business of extracting knowledge from academic publications   theseedsofscience.pub/p/t... · Posted by u/efface
weswilson · 2 years ago
On the medical side, there are knowledgebases that offer clinical decision support like UpToDate (https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/uptodate) that are kept up to date (pun intended) by specialists in their field. Every year or so, the articles are reviewed and updated with new information that has integrated into practice. For a relatively small fee, a practitioner has pretty much all access to the latest evidence-based standard of care across any specialty. UpToDate is also a commercial product. With a claimed 2+ million subscribers at roughly $200-500/yr, there is clearly money out there for a well made product.

In regards to the article, parsing academic publications and spitting out a word cloud or k-nn graphs of topics isn't going to be useful to a professional. They've already built up a working model in their mind that they've honed over the years. They have years of filtering information and the ones contributing to these knowledgebases have the experience to curate that information to professionals which is what's lacking from these NLP experiments.

I do think that ML and tools like SemanticScholar can be used to identify new literature that may affect knowledgebase articles and flag them for review. I'd be surprised if that doesn't already exists to some extent.

weswilson commented on Tell HN: 3G sunsetting is remotely killing every Subaru Outback battery    · Posted by u/siftrics
hulkmusic · 2 years ago
I have a 2016 Subaru Forester with a seemingly parasitic drain issue. Every time I go to start the car, it's like rolling the dice whether it has enough battery power to fully start. I have a portable jump starter that I've had to use at least 20 times or so in the last couple of years. This has been happening even well before the 3G sunset period, so that is not the only source of the battery drain problem, for which there is a class action lawsuit: https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/.

Everything I've read online about the issue points to the STARLINK system, and the common wisdom in this thread and elsewhere is to pull the DCM fuse. Unfortunately, my Forester has no such fuse, so I'm at a loss what to do with my car.

It's so frustrating, because my wife has a Subaru Crosstrek of the same year that has never had a battery problem, even with the OEM battery. She has a base model without any additional "upgraded" electronics, so that's the likely culprit in my case. I'm currently on my third or fourth higher CCA battery and had to jump it again a few days ago.

I haven't taken my car to the dealer for the parasitic drain issue, but previously tried to get dealership service for an unrelated entertainment system issue related to USB media playback freezing up the entertainment system. That fix was unsuccessful, and I have no faith in Subaru mechanics being able to diagnose and fix a potentially more nebulous battery drain issue. It doesn't help that the dealership is now 45 minutes away, so I'm not interested in wasting even more time on a hit and miss solution.

Ironically, I bought Subaru because reliability was my number one concern when purchasing a vehicle, and I'm not sure I would do that again.

weswilson · 2 years ago
There is an ECU flash at the dealership that supposedly fixes the parasitic battery drain. I've replaced my battery a couple of times, but haven't had an issue since the ECU flash.
weswilson commented on LARPing and Violent Extremism   leb.fbi.gov/articles/feat... · Posted by u/lolinder
weswilson · 2 years ago
Most of us here probably think of LARPing as fantasy-genre LARPing, but I think this is more pointed toward Mil-Sim LARPing.

These are hardcore airsoft guys who go buy comms, night-vision, IR, with airsoft weapons that function like real weapons. There are multi-day events with NATO vs RUS forces. Look up "milsim west" on Youtube and you can get a sense of it.

There's a good amount of folks that just like to have fun, but there is a subset that use it as a type of militia-esque training.

weswilson commented on Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands   theguardian.com/business/... · Posted by u/cainxinth
IMRC21 · 2 years ago
Every brand is doing this
weswilson · 2 years ago
On Reddit, someone said that even Carrefour is doing this with their own labeled products.

Seems like just a negotiation tactic against their suppliers versus doing something pro-consumer.

weswilson commented on Free prison phone calls boost family ties, rehabilitation   latimes.com/politics/stor... · Posted by u/ohjeez
weswilson · 2 years ago
There is a nonprofit that is trying to address this called Ameelio (https://www.ameelio.org/). They were hiring in the HN Who is Hiring thread. I don't know much about them, but it seems like they have some traction in a few states. Their voice call product says that it offers free voice calling, with all the monitoring/security features built in.

I hope these types of nonprofit tech companies succeed as they are not profit seeking off of the misery of other people.

weswilson commented on Software engineers hate code   dancowell.com/software-en... · Posted by u/dfcowell
coding123 · 2 years ago
this is also not a good analogy because building codes will often just require 20" O.C or 16" O.C studs and those are in the plans- drafted by a person that designed the home (self, architect, drafter). Reinforcements for shelves or cabinets are also part of the code for kitchen walls. Those are not to be expected in every location in the house.

The framers are locked into the house plans as far as stud distances and special framing members that are specified. County inspections will make sure that's all there.

House construction is far, far more standardized and strict that programmers coding crap code. It's not a good analogy.

weswilson · 2 years ago
I'd say it's a pretty good analogy, the details aren't perfect, but it gets the point across.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfEX6GUxfZM

Here's an example of an arguably good builder who had one team install a in-wall tank toilet, then another team drills right through the tank causing a leak. The repair work essentially meant ripping out everything and doing it over, even though there should have been mitigations in place to prevent it and having the plans/documentation available to everyone.

While construction has more standardization, planning, and inspections, it still relies on implementation and is going to have failures.

u/weswilson

KarmaCake day222April 14, 2012View Original