Hacker News: Mountain_Skies

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns"

Mountain_Skies — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:50:29 +0000

Felt the same way back in the Broderbund 'The Print Shop' days. Once my school purchased a copy, all the signs around the school looked nearly identical, just with variations in symbols and fonts. I was a huge computer nerd and that was one of my first times thinking that maybe computers weren't always the best solution.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail"

Mountain_Skies — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 08:38:29 +0000

Hammond spared no expense except when it came to Nedry, which was a critical mistake.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Why recruiters can't find workers and new grads can't find jobs (it's not AI)"

Mountain_Skies — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:12:22 +0000

Turns out the using the same pipeline from dating apps for hiring skilled professionals fails as miserably as it has in making lasting romantic connections. Maybe go back to what worked, starting with limiting the ingestion net to one's local area.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices"

Mountain_Skies — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 07:03:24 +0000

Singapore isn't high trust. It's brutal authoritarianism that squashes anything that looks remotely disharmonious between groups. High trust doesn't need a government boot stomping in the face of anyone who steps out of line.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0"

Mountain_Skies — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:39:35 +0000

Once a law is passed that permits abuse of power, that new toy is available to whoever is in control of the government, which could be the parties he likes. Seen this kind of thing over and over again when one group gains control of a level of government, passes a bunch of authoritarian crap under the belief they have a mandate to rule forever, and then lose power, giving their opponents control over that new authoritarian toy. In the end, the political class gains more power and the public loses. What rarely happens is a change in leadership giving up the power the previous leadership gave itself.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0"

Mountain_Skies — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:33:38 +0000

A surprisingly large amount of people are quite alright with that as long as they perceive that those undemocratic processes are producing the end results they desire. It's not unique to the EU, though they do play this game very well, or even to this time period. Once the powers have been granted, the public has only limited ability to revoke the power, with many of them easily swayed that it's good for this power to exist by having a red meat issue thrown to them to chew on as a distraction.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Papa Johns Can Predict When Your Fridge Is Empty"

Mountain_Skies — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 20:45:56 +0000

It needs to be pointed out that for food items, it's already against the law to engage in price customization if the retailer accepts SNAP, which pretty much all grocery stores do. SNAP recipients cannot be charge more than or less than other customers. If Walmart wants to charge someone 50% for a video game because their algorithm says that customer will pay it, they might be able to get away with that, but for food, no one is going to risk losing the ability to accept SNAP.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years"

Mountain_Skies — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 20:40:25 +0000

The current regime and the previous regime both reported extremely low unemployment outside of the pandemic but don't let your partisan bigotry get in the way of facts. You are the reason why the uniparty is able to do this, as you will always be willingly blind to it as long as it has the right color coating on it. You are personally at fault.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years"

Mountain_Skies — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 20:37:53 +0000

Your partisan obsessed brain is why the political class gets away with this.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality"

Mountain_Skies — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:14:01 +0000

On the plus side, there's enough surplus Tesla equipment that a boutique vehicle factory in Detroit is planning on using some of their cast off engine hubs to produce Kei style truck kits.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality"

Mountain_Skies — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:10:33 +0000

It would be interesting to see how much of Starlink's business is due to global conflicts, especially the one in Ukraine. If peace should break out, how does that impact Starlink's bottom line? I have strong doubts that rural villagers in the Amazon are a high profit customer base. In my area everyone was clamoring for Starlink to rescue us from DSL. Then fiber came and everyone lost interest in Starlink.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules"

Mountain_Skies — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:59:31 +0000

Corporate personhood has already been disastrous enough. We don't need to compound it with AI personhood on top.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online"

Mountain_Skies — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 14:55:25 +0000

Everything that happened during the pandemic period is an embarrassment most would like to forget. The authoritarians however remember everything and see how little friction there is against them expanding their power, especially if they can wrap it up in a threat.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online"

Mountain_Skies — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 14:53:53 +0000

There's a limited amount of radio spectrum, so it has to be managed. Though technically not unlimited in the strictest sense, internet communications don't have a real limit on how many people can communicate with each other, except limits artificially created.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Reid Hoffman says SpaceX 'not an AI company', xAI 'complete train wreck'"

Mountain_Skies — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:55:14 +0000

Given who are the biggest customers for Starlink services, the worst thing for the company might be peace breaking out.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Reid Hoffman says SpaceX 'not an AI company', xAI 'complete train wreck'"

Mountain_Skies — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:53:18 +0000

He's said many things that didn't come to be but since he controls over a trillion dollars in assets, anything he says will be impactful, perhaps even more so if it is something incorrect.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words"

Mountain_Skies — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:44:14 +0000

Used to get slick ads for nightclubs and events from promoters with the red squiggles printed on them. Nice, full color, glossy, 4x6 card size ads that they'd stick on car windshields, hand out on the street, and stuff into any nook or cranny they could find. I was somewhat mystified as to what production process they used that allowed for the squiggles to remain and why what they were trying to indicate was ignored as most of the errors were indeed errors. Simply sending a document to a print device normally does not preserve the squiggles but somehow, they would end up in the adverts.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia"

Mountain_Skies — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 13:09:02 +0000

Quite often in activist spaces, the primary goal isn't to convince others of a viewpoint or even the censor other viewpoints, though those are nice side effects. The real goal is demonstrating loyalty to the group's current core beliefs, whatever those might be on that day. In spaces where the values are in constant flux, there's a greater need to constantly reaffirm allegiance to the group's current world view.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia"

Mountain_Skies — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 13:04:30 +0000

Same thing for me when I used to contribute to our local transit system's page. Things were fine for years but one day an editor for some reason took an interest in me and started going after my contributions for all manner of petty legalistic policies that were usually "best practices" rather than rules. He even moved on to my edits on other pages, which mostly were where I'd corrected a spelling or formatting error. Never understood why that happened because I wasn't involved in any edit wars or even contributions on anything that could be considered political or ideological. I just moved on to other things and left Wikipedia behind. So he "won" something, but no idea what that was.

New comment by Mountain_Skies in "'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York"

Mountain_Skies — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:47:48 +0000

Calculate the aggregate amount of time candidates spent on applying the ghost job and use the job's purported rate of pay to calculate the amount of money the company stole from the public. Was it enough to be felony theft? The person posting, or whoever instructed it to be posted, gets charged the same as if they stole that amount from a till. Instant end of ghost job postings as most wouldn't even try to find the loopholes and edge cases when prison is a risk for getting a workaround wrong.