AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: After Slate Star Codex, where are the nuanced discussions?

Top comment by nkurz

I've considered posting exactly this same "Ask HN", with very similar wording, so thanks for doing it first!

I think you are right that HN is not the right venue. A lot of what has kept it functional for over a decade is the focus on tech. It's not followed to the letter, but an attempt to make HN into SSC would probably destroy it. It's valuable enough as it is, so let's not take the chance.

The bright part is that (so far as I can tell) if one could attract the core community, SSC should be fairly portable. Scott's top posts were sometimes really good, but I don't think they were essential. I'm tempted that the right approach may be just to create a new space, advertise it, and try to attract enough of the core community to jump start it.

I picture it to be like capturing a swarm of bees: put a large cardboard box under the tree limb that they are hanging from, give it a sharp shake, seal up the box, take it to a new location, and install in a new hive. If you managed to capture a viable queen in the transfer, you are done! If not, you need to get the swarm to accept a new queen, with a process that involves exposure to the new queen's pheremones (and sometimes marshmallows --- I'm a little fuzzy on the details).

If one was to take that approach (metaphorically) where would you begin? And technologically, is there some better tool for the job than a Wordpress blog?

2. Tell HN: Airbnb now opts in your name and photo to data sharing

Top comment by commoner

Airbnb also uses your personal information for direct marketing. You can opt out by sending an email to: opt-out@airbnb.com

> Where permissible according to applicable law we may use certain limited personal information about you, such as your email address, to hash it and to share it with social media platforms, such as Facebook or Google, to generate leads, drive traffic to our websites or otherwise promote our products and services or the Airbnb Platform.

> Please note that you may, at any time ask Airbnb to cease processing your data for these direct marketing purposes by sending an e-mail to opt-out@airbnb.com.

> In some jurisdictions, applicable law may entitle you to require Airbnb and Airbnb Payments not to process your personal information for certain specific purposes (including profiling) where such processing is based on legitimate interest.

> Where your personal information is processed for direct marketing purposes, you may, at any time ask Airbnb to cease processing your data for these direct marketing purposes by sending an e-mail to opt-out@airbnb.com.

https://www.airbnb.com/terms/privacy_policy

3. Ask HN: Recommend a maths book for a teenager?

Top comment by generationP

Concrete Mathematics by Knuth and Patashnik (already mentioned for u/pmiller2) if the kid likes numbers. That's perhaps the guiding thread of the book -- it's about the beautiful (yet usually very elementary and natural) things you can do with numbers.

Geometry Revisited by Coxeter and Greitzer and/or Episodes in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Euclidean Geometry by Honsberger if the kid is into plane geometry. It's an idyllic subject, great for independent exploration, and the books shouldn't take long to read. Not very deep, though (at least Honsberger).

Anything by Tom Körner, just because of the writing. Seriously, he can make the axiomatic construction of the real number system read like a novel; open https://web.archive.org/web/20190813160507/https://www.dpmms... on any page and you will see.

Proofs from the BOOK by Aigner and Ziegler is a cross-section of some of the nicest proofs in reasonably elementary (read: undergrad-comprehensible) maths. Might be a bit too advanced, though (the writing is terse and a lot of ground is covered).

Problems from the BOOK by Andreescu and Dospinescu (a play on the previous title, which itself is a play on an Erdös quote) is an olympiad problem book; it might be one of the best in its genre.

Oystein Ore has some nice introductory books on number theory (Number Theory and its History) and on graphs (Graphs and their uses); they should be cheap now due to their age, but haven't gotten any less readable.

Kvant Selecta by Serge Tabachnikov is a 3(?)-volume series of articles from the Kvant journal translated into English. These are short expositions of elementary mathematical topics written for talented (and experienced) high-schoolers.

I wouldn't do Princeton Companion; it's a panorama shot from high orbit, not a book you can really read and learn from.

4. Ask HN: Has anyone fixed their own bruxism?

Top comment by 11thEarlOfMar

Being that this is Hacker News, and thinking completely off the top of my head...

I fixed my sleep apnea by sleeping with an oxymeter on. When breathing was obstructed, my blood oxygen dropped. The oxymeter beeped and woke me up. I changed positions, and went back to sleep, ultimately changing sleep habits to the point that I can get through most nights without awakening. I was able to avoid using a CPAP that way.

Perhaps a muscle tension sensing device, such as https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13723 could serve a similar function. Place the sensors on your jaw muscles while you sleep (may only need to be one of them) and if you clench, it beeps or buzzes and wakes you up. May take some inventiveness to integrate it with power and alert, and then to get it comfortable enough to sleep in. And you'd want to avoid any cords that could wrap around you.

It may not lead to a cure, but might give you an idea of what's going on when you clench at night.

5. Ask HN: Have any of you moved back home to save money?

Top comment by georgewsinger

I had to move from NYC to Oklahoma to save SimulaVR (https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula). This was over a year ago, and I'm still here. Because of this I have saved an enormous amount of money (such that I'm still able to work full time on SimulaVR while I search for VC funding elsewhere). The other co-founder of Simula is also remote (in Germany). Since this was pre-pandemic, it's been very hard to explain to VCs who are still pattern matching on previous waves of startups.

With that said, there has also been an enormous cost to this: living somewhere besides a major city. Yes, it's true that SF/NY have horrific governance, regulatory policies, taxes, and so forth (which cause high rents). The groupthink there is also unbearable. Other than these issues, however, these cities are indisputably better in every way than anywhere else in the country. People work much harder (and on cooler projects) in these cities. There's an extravagance to them that you simply can't find anywhere else, and if you're not careful, living elsewhere can eat at you subconsciously. Reading (or listening) to books of people doing great things is a good way to combat this: your brain can't ever think that things are easy now that you're living in an easy city. You're still competing against the same odds (and in some cases: the same people) who are grinding 100 hours/week back in NYC/SF.

As long as you account for this, moving elsewhere can be a great tool to save an enormous amount of money.

6. Ask HN: How to improve my abstract thinking?

Top comment by asciimov

Three things I recommend:

1 - Read lots of things unrelated to your field of study. Read about flowers, or art history, or music theory.

2 - Take long walks, get away from the screens and distractions. Walk some place that stimulates thought, like in nature, or in a city, or by a river. Skip the treadmill or places like malls that demand your attention. You need a place to allow your mind to wonder and to process/organize the info you read about.

3 - Dream, in a very literal sense. Do you ever remember those moments right before you fell asleep where your mind gets a bit too creative. Harness that. It has been said that Edison would take naps in a chair with heavy ball bearings in his hand. Right when he was just about to be asleep his hands naturally relaxed and dropped the bearings on the floor waking him. Quickly, he would pop up and recollect on dreams/ideas he just had. Use a similar technique to your advantage, see what randomness your mind designs.

7. Ask HN: What kind of ideas are not VC-backable but should exist in the future?

Top comment by colordrops

A new container system that gets rid of all waste - Design and manufacture a set of a few dozen or hundred re-usable containers of different shapes and sizes, and a system for printing environmentally friendly ink on them that can be easily removed. Start a department/grocery store that does not use any disposable packaging. Give tax incentives to companies that use this packaging. The printable labels would allow for market differentiation since package types are now standard. Trucks come around and pick up the empty containers from customers, or they can bring them back to the store.

8. Ask HN: Did you take any fresh MOOCs as of 2020?

Top comment by otras

MIT's 6.824: Distributed Systems (taught by Robert Morris) is completely open and available online, and it includes video lectures, notes, readings, and programming assignments from as recent as Spring 2020 (including half of the lectures recorded from home as the pandemic strikes). The assignments even include auto-graded testing scripts, so you can verify your solution to the assignments.

It's not necessarily a MOOC in the exact same vein, but given that the knowledge you gain from a MOOC is the valuable part (as opposed to any completion certificate or check mark), it's still extremely valuable and a great opportunity to learn.

https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/

9. Ask HN: Is Edge any better or worse than Chrome on privacy?

Top comment by bad_user

Edge does not (e2e) encrypt your synced browsing history and your bookmarks. In the help pages Microsoft tries to weasel itself out of it by talking about TLS or encryption "at rest".

Chrome on the other hand can do end to end encryption by providing your own password.

Windows 10 has an advertising ID that is passed via Edge to Bing Ads. Chrome does the same thing with a low entropy ID passed to DoubleClick. In both cases this is used to track you. The difference is that Microsoft can potentially track your behavior in other apps as well.

Google is also very transparent about what they collect about you. You can also opt out of any collection or personalization. Do you know what Microsoft collects about you? They sure collect a ton of telemetry, with no way to opt out in some cases. The terms of Windows Insiders for example are ridiculous.

And Bing Ads is generating about $8 billion per year which isn't pocket change. If you think Microsoft isn't making a shitload of money from ads, you're wrong.

In other words they are very equivalent, but due to lacking end to end encryption for synchronized data, I can't touch Edge.

Note that I don't use Chrome either, only for testing like you. Firefox is better than both if concerned about privacy.

10. Ask HN: Most life changing things that you bought?

Top comment by kylebenzle

Yes to the air purifier. People living without them are insane. Also, buying and running an air purifier destroyed my marriage! My wife said she didn't like the sound of it. So I bough a new, super quite one. Then she said she didn't like the "frequency" not the volume of the machine. One day I came home and she had unplugged it and we got into an argument. I told her to please just "shut up" and that was when she attacked and literally tried to kill me. I got away but later she went to the police and told them she had been "assaulted". Nothing happened but she filed for divorce.

I still love the air purifier though!