Hacker News: QuarterReptile

New comment by QuarterReptile in "For first time since World War II, US national debt now larger than its economy"

QuarterReptile — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:35:47 +0000

The overnight fix, to be perfectly clear, would require illegal firing of federal judges and getting rid of the filibuster, just to start fixing.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "For first time since World War II, US national debt now larger than its economy"

QuarterReptile — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:33:15 +0000

Deficit spending is one place where the major parties are in complete agreement. So it just wastes political capital, unless you see Thomas Massie somehow amassing a majority of Congressmen interested in his issues.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid"

QuarterReptile — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:24:57 +0000

I think, despite all the furor whipped up and attempts by high-ranking officials to foment a coup, the military is actually very unlikely to disobey Presidential orders; this is based on my frequent interactions with military officers over the last ten years. Do you perceive some other, more likely, coup scenario?

New comment by QuarterReptile in "US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid"

QuarterReptile — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:20:19 +0000

In fact, the current administration, not headed by someone from the military (and VP has military credibility but not leadership) is not at all aligned to the military except in that their base appreciates the imprimatur of honorable military service. In fact, Trump 1 was in many ways a huge refutation to Trump of the idea that the military guys were leaders he could count on. Their brain-trust positions had more left-alignment than he maybe imagined. His administration, in 2025, fired high-ranking officers in a way that suggested he entered with the reverse conclusion: not military leaders as high-competence straight-shooters, but as all being suspect for having risen unstoppably in a system pervaded by partisan platitudes and shibboleths. Fortunately, the administration didn't take the Soviet approach of purging all those under suspicion.

They just finally had to fire their SecNav because reality butted heads with their ideological conclusion was that business experience was more conducive to military success. Unfortunately for their very-much-not-military-led plan, SecNav probably needs a bit more user experience from time in Navy leadership to successfully work within that labrythine bureaucracy.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)"

QuarterReptile — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:38:17 +0000

Your "brighter kids" probably did their reps already, when you weren't watching. My 4 year old likes to quiz me on addition and subtraction at the dinner table -- two years from now, in some school, it'll look like he 'just gets it', which he will, but only because he already did his reps.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)"

QuarterReptile — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:32:11 +0000

For a long time, college education was the easiest way to legally discriminate against applicants. The signal is weakening and the expense of exhibiting the signal has skyrocketed.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)"

QuarterReptile — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:29:32 +0000

The school system is going to crash out in the US. The public school teachers will readily share symptoms ("enrollment going down", "2X the IEPs of 3 years ago", "non-verbal ipad kids", "kids only sleeping 4 hours a night because of ipads", etc.). As everyone with means or time escapes, the system increasingly distills problems and legitimate special-needs cases while no longer spreading them out among cooperative kids, and teachers will continue to burn out in such a thankless environment.

At varying times in various places, public school is or will become just like riding the bus: technically a viable option for a needed service, if you have no other choice and are ready to suffer in a place that tolerates all manner of dysfunction.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "Health AI Startup Has Helped Reverse Denied Health Insurance Claims"

QuarterReptile — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:42:58 +0000

Compared to what, and measured by what?

New comment by QuarterReptile in "Health AI Startup Has Helped Reverse Denied Health Insurance Claims"

QuarterReptile — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:41:34 +0000

On the other hand, healthcare administration headcount has grown over 1000% since 1970, and few things grow as fast. Feels like plenty of runway.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood"

QuarterReptile — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:54:25 +0000

I think Maryland deserves a special shoutout. It's illegal, and not just in a CPS-steamrolls-your-rights-and-family sort of way, for an 8 year old to be left with children <13.

Growing up, I think many girls had ended their babysitting careers by 13.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood"

QuarterReptile — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:48:50 +0000

We have a regulatory regime that requires that SUVs be bigger each year. It saves the environment that way.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "The beginning of scarcity in AI"

QuarterReptile — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 19:15:13 +0000

>dollar is an entirely fictional unit and trillions of it can be manufactured at no cost

If the abstraction works better for you this way, call them interchangeable units of American and Chinese insolvency. Or incremental forfeiture of domestic ownership.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "What being ripped off taught me"

QuarterReptile — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:28:37 +0000

FTA: China

New comment by QuarterReptile in "What being ripped off taught me"

QuarterReptile — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:25:47 +0000

I think OP needed "emergency service is cash up front".

In a different domain, this is the painful lesson of almost anyone who tries to help people in a bind -- you can try to help, but yours is unlikely to be the advice that sets them straight, so you shouldn't get too invested with unproven or, especially, proven unreliable actors.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "F-15E jet shot down over Iran"

QuarterReptile — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 01:36:09 +0000

North Korea was able to get nuclear weapons because we didn't want the carnage of artillery bombardment to Seoul that would have been the retaliation, had we stopped them.

Iran was close to achieving that same thing with ballistic missile bombardment of Europe.

The problem is that Iran, unlike NK, is run by a fanatical death cult with stated goal of attacking United States and history of running proxy militias in every nearby failed state, in a neighborhood that has no shortage of failed states.

New comment by QuarterReptile in "Two pilots dead after plane and ground vehicle collide at LaGuardia"

QuarterReptile — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 01:28:14 +0000

I wonder how much of this can be attributed to breaking the ATC training/hiring pipelines back in 2014.

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...

Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

QuarterReptile — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 12:58:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wbaltv.com/article/baltimore-bridge-collapse-key-bridge/60303975

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39827266

Points: 712

# Comments: 1108

New comment by QuarterReptile in "French cities trying to ban public adverts"

QuarterReptile — Tue, 24 Dec 2019 22:49:25 +0000

Or, at least, most of the people who thought their advertising strategies were worth mentioning spent almost nothing, relying rather on word of mouth.

Those may be quite different things.