Hacker News: RRWagner

New comment by RRWagner in "US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search"

RRWagner — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 04:37:25 +0000

I've been on jury duty several times and in each time the entire jury pool was dismissed an hour or so into the morning, with "all cases have been settled". As I was leaving, the official said, "see how efficient we are now?". I replied, "The guillotine is efficient, but it's not justice." Look into Aaron Swartz. The % of cases that go to trial is very small, in no small part because plea bargaining is no bargain at all. "Plead guilty and we'll do the minimum (whether you're actually guilty or not), or go to trial and we will seek the maximum sentence, which could be 30 years in prison. What's your answer?"

New comment by RRWagner in "Writing by hand is good for your brain"

RRWagner — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 03:02:45 +0000

Thank you for the heads up! There was an error in the conversion process. All the images are there now.

New comment by RRWagner in "Writing by hand is good for your brain"

RRWagner — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 22:44:07 +0000

The book is "Making Good in Business" by Roger W. Babson. Babson gifted the book to Edison in 1921. Here is a link to a scan of another copy of the book in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bwb_P9-DAU-349/mode/2up

Here is my github repo with scans of the marginalia from Edison: https://github.com/RRWagner/Making-Good-in-Business-Babson-E...

New comment by RRWagner in "Writing by hand is good for your brain"

RRWagner — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 18:04:40 +0000

The current administration

New comment by RRWagner in "Writing by hand is good for your brain"

RRWagner — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 18:00:19 +0000

I have a book (not authored by Edison) that Thomas Edison scribbled his comments in the margin and I was quite happy to read them! Changing my own nearly-religious belief to never write in a book,I found that it totally changed my experience with the book and the author. There are thousands of copies of any particular modern book and it's no longer my task to preserve that unique copy for after the apocalypse. I would like to imagine my children one day being able to see their father's thoughts and dialogue with authors.

New comment by RRWagner in "AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers"

RRWagner — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 03:09:45 +0000

And if the company didn't need $XX,XXX*0.90 (or more) that you would have paid them to further develop their product and stay in business? If that other company now paid their own $50 in tokens? Maybe the overall flow of money in the economy went from $XX,XXX (you) + $XX,XXX (them) + $(not much, AI didn't exist yet) equals or is greater to $50 + $50 + ($xbillions in AI)? Dunno.

New comment by RRWagner in "For Most of the World, Open-Source AI Is the Only Way Forward"

RRWagner — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:46:09 +0000

I would propose that copyrights not be eternal

New comment by RRWagner in "Moody Mush: An Interactive Mushroom Robot"

RRWagner — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:04:05 +0000

This is a lovely project, and if you do the 3D print and assemble it, even if you use a different microcontroller inside, it is continual series of delightful discoveries in the details of the 3D and mechanical design and engineering, coding and artistic skill of the maker of this, SayaNIGHT. I could easily imagine this as a pair of "friendship lamps", or any number of other delightful variations.

Moody Mush: An Interactive Mushroom Robot

RRWagner — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:04:05 +0000

Article URL: https://www.instructables.com/Moody-Mush/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48654956

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by RRWagner in "Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot"

RRWagner — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 21:30:02 +0000

A friend said at one of those moments, "And other than that, how was the play Mrs Lincoln?" And the 3rd person replied, "I don't know, I've never seen the play 'Mrs Lincoln'"

New comment by RRWagner in "Astronauts told to return to ISS after sheltering over air leak repairs"

RRWagner — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:17:25 +0000

Daily

New comment by RRWagner in "I made my phone slow on purpose"

RRWagner — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 01:15:04 +0000

I only doomscroll HN to 90 n times/day

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.