Hacker News: MPSimmons

New comment by MPSimmons in "Sens Ask Gabbard to Tell Americans That VPN Use Subjects Them to Surveillance"

MPSimmons — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:44:54 +0000

THEORETICALLY the government has _some_ restrictions against monitoring US citizens (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/soci...), and it sounds like none of those are deemed to apply if you're using a VPN, per the original article.

New comment by MPSimmons in "Tesla Is Sitting on a Record 50k Unsold EVs"

MPSimmons — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:18:19 +0000

Yes, Elon's trajectory has been absolutely unbelievable since 2019 or so. Talk about a guy who cratered his whole reputation. It's a shame.

New comment by MPSimmons in "SpaceX files to go public"

MPSimmons — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 12:06:51 +0000

Difference in cost per launch, cost per mass, or payload capacity?

New comment by MPSimmons in "SpaceX files to go public"

MPSimmons — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:41:35 +0000

> it’s not quite correct to suggest there’s a vibrant external market for their product

There is a very large demand for launch services. SpaceX balances launching customers and launching Starlink. It's not like they give every launch slot to customers and then launches Starlink whenever there's an opening they couldn't fill.

New comment by MPSimmons in "Migrating to the EU"

MPSimmons — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:06:39 +0000

SPF or DKIM maybe?

New comment by MPSimmons in "Some Things Just Take Time"

MPSimmons — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 18:56:03 +0000

I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I think the signals that we use to determine whether we're doing the right things are different with the new AI enhanced toolsets.

Refactoring decent sized components are an order of magnitude easier than it was, but the more important signal is still, why are you refactoring? What changed in your world or your world-view that caused this?

Good things still take time, and you can't slop-AI code your way to a great system. You still need domain expertise (as the EXCELLENT short story from the other day explained, Warranty Void if Regenerated (https://nearzero.software/p/warranty-void-if-regenerated) ). The decrease in friction does definitely allow for more slop, but it also allows for more excellence. It just doesn't guarantee excellence.

New comment by MPSimmons in "Passengers who refuse to use headphones can now be kicked off United flights"

MPSimmons — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 18:35:41 +0000

> give them parachutes at least

the first time

New comment by MPSimmons in "Nasdaq's Shame"

MPSimmons — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 03:19:21 +0000

Honestly, they're probably subsidizing Elon already via Tesla, but the super disturbing part here is what the author nails when he says the tail is wagging the dog. Indices should reflect market investment, they shouldn't drive it like this.

New comment by MPSimmons in "Nasdaq's Shame"

MPSimmons — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 02:14:43 +0000

If you are a financial brokerage and you want to offer the S&P 100 or the NASDAQ 100, you can't just do that. You have to license that - https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/custom-indices/solutions/

I imagine, though I don't know, that the requirement to use the index name and contents also dictates allocation.

New comment by MPSimmons in "Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters"

MPSimmons — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 21:18:21 +0000

A push on delivery dates is as likely to mean production issues as it is an influx of interest.

New comment by MPSimmons in "TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool"

MPSimmons — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 13:22:50 +0000

This is like QTdesigner but for the terminal. Huh.

New comment by MPSimmons in "Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit"

MPSimmons — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 21:15:11 +0000

I'm part of a pokemon go community, and the only time we ever do car raids is when the weather is terrible or freezing. What was the weather like?

New comment by MPSimmons in "The Rediscovery of 103 Hokusai Lost Sketches (2021)"

MPSimmons — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:19:16 +0000

I got to visit the exhibit when it was in Boston's MFA in 2014 or so, and it was really awe-inspiring. They had wood blocks from period prints and it's just amazing what artistry was able to come from that. I got a print of Red Fuji while I was there, and it still hangs on my wall.

New comment by MPSimmons in "After 800 episodes, 'The Simpsons' creators look back and ahead"

MPSimmons — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 23:25:40 +0000

There's probably a term of art for it, but that Family Guy style cut to some previous reference hadn't really been done before, certainly not to the extent that Seth McFarlane did it. Simpsons copied it, but it never felt good when they did.

If you watch The Simpsons DVD commentary on the very first season DVDs, they talk about how Matt Groening's team would draw the key frames and then they would ship them to an asian animation studio to provide the animation frames. The very first time they did this, they got an animation style that was all over the place - not just the quality of drawing, but the actual animation style was jello-y and way more wobbly than they wanted. You can see it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx-wjF5AMmk

The main reason that they sent it back was that the style and physics represented in the cartoon wasn't the one they were going for, and it changed how the show felt. I feel like the rapid cut references they adopted from Family Guy did a very similar thing. It changed the flow of the show, which, maybe (?) is actually more of a sign of the times and attention span than animated show style, but still, I wasn't a fan and I didn't feel like The Simpsons did it naturally or that it fit, and it takes me out of the narrative every time they do it.

New comment by MPSimmons in "Claude Sonnet 4.6"

MPSimmons — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 19:29:32 +0000

What is the grok feature? Literally just mentioning @grok? I don't really know how to use Grok on X.

New comment by MPSimmons in "Claude Sonnet 4.6"

MPSimmons — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 19:28:21 +0000

I signed up for Claude two weeks ago after spending a lot of time using Cline in VSCode backed by GPT-5.x. Claude is an immensely better experience. So much so that I ran it out of tokens for the week in 3 days.

I opted to upgrade my seat to premium for $100/mo, and I've used it to write code that would have taken a human several hours or days to complete, in that time. I wish I would have done this sooner.

New comment by MPSimmons in "A Pokémon of a Different Color"

MPSimmons — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 13:56:59 +0000

I am eternally grateful to media people who care a lot about this stuff. I know that it has an impact on my life that I’m not aware of, but I can’t bring myself to dive into this. I am glad that there are people who are into it, though.

New comment by MPSimmons in "Semaglutide improves knee osteoarthritis independant of weight loss"

MPSimmons — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:12:31 +0000

sorry, fixed!

New comment by MPSimmons in "Semaglutide improves knee osteoarthritis independant of weight loss"

MPSimmons — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:02:26 +0000

At what point do we start to re-evaluate and re-test old assumptions about how much weight/caloric restriction impacts things? It seems unlikely that a molecule that slots into receptors in the pancreas also does something(?) to cardiac muscle [1], addiction [2], and now osteoarthritis(!).

This feels like a stretch to say that this happens independent of weight loss, and much more like we may have underestimated the impacts of weight loss on all of these other facets of life.

[1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12431743/

[2] - https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2025/04/ozempic-addic...

New comment by MPSimmons in "Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk"

MPSimmons — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 01:30:53 +0000

The buffer exists to be used. Allowing people to merge into it makes the lane that they came from safer. Build a new buffer.