Hacker News: RRWagner

New comment by RRWagner in "Renewables reached nearly 50% of global electricity capacity last year"

RRWagner — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 20:54:15 +0000

At the time, I stupidly thought Blockbuster would see what was coming and use their at the time larger size to pivot and do what Netflix had demonstrated would work. Kind of like when the Yellow Pages bought early Google. Oh wait...

New comment by RRWagner in "A laser-based process that enables adhesive-free paper packaging"

RRWagner — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 02:57:52 +0000

I thought that this was going to be illustrations of the marvelous ways that the Japanese wrap and secure gifts without using any tape. When I was in Japan years ago I would tell them that a purchase was a gift just to see how they wrapped things. I might even still have something that I never unwrapped because the finished thing was a work of art in itself.

New comment by RRWagner in "Small U.S. town, big company. Can it weather the tariff Blizzard? (Digi-Key) (2025)"

RRWagner — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 15:00:41 +0000

It seems that no one ever mentions that every dollar given up to tariffs is that much less for growing staff, equipment, facility and R&D expansion. It's literally a drag on the entire GDP and ecomomic growth.

More subtle is that every dollar saved in buying components from China is more money for all of the forementioned.

New comment by RRWagner in "Montana passes Right to Compute act (2025)"

RRWagner — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 20:01:29 +0000

You cant drain a swamp by filling it with billionaire alligators.

New comment by RRWagner in "Jury told that Meta, Google 'engineered addiction' at landmark US trial"

RRWagner — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:01:38 +0000

Here is an important difference. A century ago, the predator (seller) and the prey (buyer) were on equal evolutionary terms. Each generation of humans on either side of the transaction came into the world, learned to convince, learned to resist, then passed, and some balance was maintained. In this century, corporations and algorithms don't die, but the targets do. This means that the non-human seller is continuously, even immortally, learning, adapting and perfecting how to manipulate. The target, be it adult, adolescent, or child, is, and will be ever increasingly, at a severe disadvantage.

New comment by RRWagner in "If you've got Nothing to Hide (2015)"

RRWagner — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 06:07:39 +0000

It would be good to remember the Miranda warning: "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." (emphasis mine). It doesn't say, "maybe" or, "only if".

New comment by RRWagner in "Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)"

RRWagner — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 07:31:57 +0000

Every Roman fortification, medieval city & castle? Clarifying, compared to a single villager with a sword or even two.

New comment by RRWagner in "Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)"

RRWagner — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 05:25:14 +0000

Do many people think that with their single assault rifle or other weap9n, that they would successfully defend against one or more truckloads of vandals looking to steal whatever they have stored up "self-sufficiently"? History seems to indicate that in the absence of law, those with the most people inside a fortified structure and position are the most likely to survive.

New comment by RRWagner in "Computers that used to be human"

RRWagner — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 23:33:57 +0000

Sometime when you're in a used bookstore, thrift store or yard sale, keep an eye out for very old dictionaries, and if found, look up the word "conputer". You will find the proof of the human occupant of this definition surprisingly recently (as in 1930s)

New comment by RRWagner in "Presidential Immunity in the United States"

RRWagner — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 21:38:50 +0000

It would seem now that Sotomayer was not speaking totally hypothetically.

New comment by RRWagner in "Intricuit: A touchscreen add-on for Mac laptops"

RRWagner — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 17:37:49 +0000

Pretty much every school in the US has students using touchscreen Chromebooks. It's funnyish when a young person tries to touch my MacBook screen to do a quick action, and I have to tell them that it's necessary to go to the touchpad, diddle a little to find the cursor, then do a move action to get to get to the target. Dragging is even more puzzling, touch and drag on a screen vs. move, double-tap or ctrl-click, then drag, then tap to release. I'm sure some will help me with faster touchpad methods, but that aside, I've used Mac laptops for 30+ years, and generally feel that those who perceive touchscreens as a gorilla-arm problem just haven't used a touchscreen laptop. They provide a much more efficient interface for some common actions. Touchscreens are so common now that most Windows and Chrome devices have them as the norm. Always strikes me as a bit strange that Apple-priced Mac laptops lack a feature found in low-price competitors.

New comment by RRWagner in "State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship'"

RRWagner — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 07:16:04 +0000

Displaying Nazi symbols is allowed (protected) in the United States, but prohibited in Germany. Does that mean that any German person involved in enforcing pr even tangentially acting on that restriction would be ineligible for a U.S visa?

New comment by RRWagner in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)"

RRWagner — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 01:56:28 +0000

Working with a group of friends on a "microcontroller-for-makers" kind of thing called the MakerPort. (https://makerport.fun) Sort of similar to an Arduino or micro:bit, but uses the MicroBlocks programming editor (https://microblocks.fun) created by John Maloney, who was the original team leader for Scratch at MIT for 11 years. The hardware includes an mp3 player, I2C ports, accelerometer and true capacitive touch sensors.

New comment by RRWagner in "Montana becomes first state to enshrine 'right to compute' into law"

RRWagner — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 21:13:47 +0000

I used to do presentations at educational technology conferences and many (30+)years ago I speculated that "in the future" computers that could create would be licensed. This was based on the observation that every significant past technology under user control was eventually licensed for permission to operate - radio, television, cars, the list is long.

New comment by RRWagner in "Movie posters from Ghana in the 1980s and 90s"

RRWagner — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 18:41:36 +0000

Got it! Thanks!

New comment by RRWagner in "Movie posters from Ghana in the 1980s and 90s"

RRWagner — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 17:21:46 +0000

No comments here about the odd non-standard "say yes to say no" sliders for data collection and selling? I've only seen this a few times in privacy settings windows but enough times that I'm now wary of just assuming that gray means opt-out.

New comment by RRWagner in "What is intelligence? (2024)"

RRWagner — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 15:34:22 +0000

I have had the same suspicion. I can propose a new kind of ongoing Turing-like test where we track how many words are suggested on our phones (or computers) as we type. On my phone it guesses the next single word pretty well, so why not the next two? Then 3... imagine half-way through a message it "finishing your sentence" as close friends and family often do. Then why should it wait for halfway? What are the various milestones of finishing the last word, last 5 words, half the sentence, 80%, etc?

New comment by RRWagner in "How to Assemble an Electric Heating Element from Scratch"

RRWagner — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 16:27:09 +0000

I only half-humorously thought the article would include how to make the wire from ore, or at least a functional equivalent.

New comment by RRWagner in "Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android"

RRWagner — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 05:51:59 +0000

It's lawyers all the way down :)

New comment by RRWagner in "FCC abandons efforts to make U.S. broadband fast and affordable"

RRWagner — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 20:18:31 +0000

+1 and more to this. Democrats are not good at all at letting voters know what they have done for them. In California that Republicans love to hate, we have clean air, free beaches, more protections from corporate predation, and so much more. Republicans are better at complaining and spreading fear, which sadly is a lower-energy and more effective method for getting votes.