Hacker News: MengerSponge

New comment by MengerSponge in "Where did all the public bathrooms go?"

MengerSponge — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 18:32:04 +0000

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1248664709

Well-meaning activists lobbied to make toilets free, but they didn't build a base to support the continued use and maintenance of those now-free toilets.

New comment by MengerSponge in "Netherlands lists Israel as a threat to its national security for the first time (2025)"

MengerSponge — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 13:39:37 +0000

Interesting that it's the influence/disinformation that caused this, not the open secret that they're a rogue nuclear armed state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option

"Most European capitals are targets for our air force... We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under."

New comment by MengerSponge in "Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco"

MengerSponge — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 03:18:17 +0000

> fundamentally different

fundamentally different how? Because they use your visual cortex to trigger neurons?

New comment by MengerSponge in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

MengerSponge — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 03:17:01 +0000

I'd love to be wrong, but I fear I'm not: https://www.wired.com/story/real-reason-data-center-gas-powe...

It's absurd, cruel, and criminal that any hyperscalers are using fossil fuels of any kind, much less simple cycle turbines.

New comment by MengerSponge in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

MengerSponge — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:07:12 +0000

Can we also talk about the sheer madness of using single-cycle natural gas turbines to power these things? It's tragic.

New comment by MengerSponge in "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative"

MengerSponge — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:04:29 +0000

Very solid? Bro. GitHub is at what, one 9 of reliability? That's a disaster. That's a mess and an embarrassment in any professional sense.

I use GitHub a lot and it does what I need well enough, but I wouldn't spend money on the level of service or performance it generally delivers.

New comment by MengerSponge in "The Amazon tax"

MengerSponge — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:59:22 +0000

I bet they don't see a line-item deduction, but they're paid a lot less than they should be for their work.

What about Amazon's business and subcontracting practices makes you think they're willing to eat any operating expenses whatsoever?

New comment by MengerSponge in "The Amazon Tax"

MengerSponge — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:45:53 +0000

Most likely they're sticking it to a delivery contractor. Amazon gets paid, you get your free stuff, and some working class stiff is peeing in a bottle driving a leased truck and not getting paid for their labor. Win win win, right?

New comment by MengerSponge in "Meta Files Patent for Facial Recognition, Automatic Recording of People"

MengerSponge — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:42:49 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People

New comment by MengerSponge in "Meta Muse Glimmer – Open weights 30B local coding model"

MengerSponge — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:38:26 +0000

The book title is a reference to The Great Gatsby: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald

New comment by MengerSponge in "Meta Muse Glimmer – Open weights 30B local coding model"

MengerSponge — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:04:09 +0000

Would you say those badass engineers were/are managed by Careless People?

New comment by MengerSponge in "Bioengineered chewing gum may offer a way to fight HPV and other microbes"

MengerSponge — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 02:43:22 +0000

In that way I'm like a bacteria. "Ah beans, gotta undo all this work"

New comment by MengerSponge in "Cops Used Flock to Track a Man Across State Lines for a Pretextual Weed Search"

MengerSponge — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:52:44 +0000

Necessary reading: "Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime"

https://ir.law.utk.edu/utklaw_facpubs/468/

New comment by MengerSponge in "In Memory of My Wife, Elise Cawley, with Thanks for 36 Wonderful Years"

MengerSponge — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 20:36:23 +0000

I remember reading about a personal CRM project called Monica years ago. Does anyone here still use it? Is there an actively maintained alternative?

New comment by MengerSponge in "There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]"

MengerSponge — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 03:03:24 +0000

With the right podcatcher* settings the back-catalogue issue goes away. It's still annoying when you want to share a particularly moving story with friends.

*) Overcast user here: "Smart Speed has saved you 419 hours beyond speed adjustments alone"

New comment by MengerSponge in "There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]"

MengerSponge — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 01:32:10 +0000

https://wnyc.org/story/bradbury-centennial-with-neil-gaiman

Yetide Badaki's marvelous reading begins at 3:50

New comment by MengerSponge in "Folding Paper Globes"

MengerSponge — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 21:27:48 +0000

That's slick. I use papermodel+Blender for my models, but I haven't bit the UV mapping bullet yet!

New comment by MengerSponge in "Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga"

MengerSponge — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 21:24:52 +0000

I have both a stovetop cooker (Zwilling) and an electric (Instant Pot). The stovetop gets hotter faster, so it cooks a lot faster too. The trade off is I can't leave home while it's cooking.

The electric lets me set and forget and come back to a hot meal hours later.

New comment by MengerSponge in "Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga"

MengerSponge — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 05:14:59 +0000

Plug-in pressure cookers like Instant Pots don't run at the same pressure/temperature as stovetop models. Electric models apparently run at ~12psi on high pressure mode, while stovetop models can run at 15psi. This means the timing is substantially different between the two.

Electric models can run unattended, so the slightly longer cook time isn't a deal-breaker. I'm a huge fan of Serious Eat's Colombian stew, which I can throw in the pot then go to the gym or out for errands and come home to a hot meal. https://www.seriouseats.com/colombian-chicken-stew-with-pota...

New comment by MengerSponge in "The first transatlantic telegraph cable was a bold, beautiful failure (2019)"

MengerSponge — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:48:06 +0000

https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

I'm very jealous of everyone who gets to read this for the first time this weekend.