Hacker News: SteveGerencser

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Writing a Demoscene Intro for the ZX Spectrum"

SteveGerencser — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 21:10:48 +0000

I was in high school when the demoscene took off in the 80s. It forever tainted my view of software development as full of lazy programmers not bothering to optimize code as hardware got better and better. Myself included.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall"

SteveGerencser — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 17:15:29 +0000

We are clearly talking about different things. I'm talking about protecting single home homeowners on a fixed income from being forced out of their homes. Staying in the only home she owns is not hoarding.

Telling people that the solution is to sell their home to an insurance company as a solution is most certainly a corporate land grab.

You seem to be arguing about people/corporations that own multiple homes or even entire portfolios of property. These are not the same argument.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall"

SteveGerencser — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 16:53:19 +0000

Of course, let's let yet another corporate land grab take even more residential property off the market for profit-based motives. This can't possibly do any more harm than locking property taxes at the time of sale.

Where I live, we are looking at locking property taxes once you hit a specified age (65) and have under a specified income ($40k+/-). The current debates revolve around exactly what those numbers are and at what level the taxes get locked. The goal is to protect the elderly who have already contributed to the economy and society for 40+ years and not force them into a financial situation forcing them to sell their home just to pay even more property taxes that they have paid for the entire ownership.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall"

SteveGerencser — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 16:38:41 +0000

So your solution is to force her to sell her home and move? Move where? I've seen this in so many areas of the country where property taxes on your property are tied to market value rather than purchase price. It drives retired and lower income people out of neighborhoods that they have lived in for decades, forcing them to move down the scale of home ownership.

Perhaps the retired person is living on a fixed income of $40k/year. Over time their proterty taxes on the home that they have lived in for decades can now be more than half of their total income? How is this fair at any level?

New comment by SteveGerencser in "How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads"

SteveGerencser — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:08:44 +0000

And it's still 100x easier than trying to add your own business or set up a Google Business Profile. Shoot a video from outside showing the buildings around you, show the address and permanent signage on the building (they don't always accept door signs), unlock the door to show that you own the space, then show the interior of the space with things like signage, letterhead, business cards, etc. Then hope that the video was 'good enough' to get a listing.

And heaven help you if you choose to get an office on an upper floor where an elevator ride is required, or you get a space in a building that also has/had a co-working space in it.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database"

SteveGerencser — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:09:23 +0000

Surveys, at least here and I assume everywhere, also contain parcel numbers, the neighbor's parcel numbers, and the legal owner of each parcel's name right on the survey. Along with the date of the survey. I live in a pretty rural area where 20 acres is a small lot, so having proof of where the property lines are tends to be just as important as the title.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database"

SteveGerencser — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:53:33 +0000

Not saying that this is the only reason, but it is a big reason why we have a land survey of our property on hand on paper and stored online. If something ever happened to the registry, we could at least establish our claim to our land.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets"

SteveGerencser — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 03:56:24 +0000

I had a client send me an ACH that was legitimately a fat finger extra zero. For me, it was a "lot" of truck payments. For them, it was a rounding error that they were unaware of until I reached out and let them know about their mistake. I couldn't wait to make it right with them because it bothered me so much because suddenly I had a pile of money that was theirs and not mine.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "The origins of the school system aimed to produce independent, critical thinkers (2024)"

SteveGerencser — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 20:40:30 +0000

I'm fine with a simple, basic test to be able to vote. 5 T/F questions, you only need to get 3 right to vote. Basics. Is the earth flat? Did humans land on the moon? Do brown cows produce chocolate milk? You know, the basics. If I couldn't pass such a test, I should not be allowed to vote.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]"

SteveGerencser — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:36:54 +0000

I agree. I have never taken a discount from a friend or family member for work that they do for a living. It never made sense to me how anyone would want to underpay someone in their family or close circle of friends. I do however, go out of my way to make sure that they are charging what they are really worth.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]"

SteveGerencser — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 05:36:32 +0000

I began migrating from network/hardware/IT work and into marketing after nearly 2 years of heavy lifting getting ready for Y2K. In the end, "nothing happened," so all that time and money was wasted, according to nearly every company I worked with. Even had one demand a full refund. I agreed as long as I could revert all the work that I had done. They agreed, and the next day after that their entire system collapsed.

I couldn't even get my own dad to pay for network support for his company since he would never pay my rate for anyone no matter what. After 2 other people failed to solve his problem I fixed it in 15 minutes and then he "really" didn't want to pay because it only took 15 minutes.

I was very good at what I did but got no appreciation for keeping things from breaking, only for fixing things after they broke. Marketing paid better, and I could point at real world numbers daily and justify my pay. I don't like it anywhere near as much, but at least it gets more respect than any other IT work I did.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection"

SteveGerencser — Thu, 28 May 2026 21:41:17 +0000

Why would a billion-dollar company pay their employees so little that they need assistance to live? Or need to urinate in a bottle to keep their delivery times up? Greed and a belief that the rules don't apply to them.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts"

SteveGerencser — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:34:04 +0000

This is a direct result of pretty much all of the LLMs using Reddit as a training tool. People are selling GEO services with reddit spam being a big part of that.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Someone bought 30 WordPress plugins and planted a backdoor in all of them"

SteveGerencser — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:52:15 +0000

The cost for access can be surprisingly low. Not all that many years ago it was pretty cheap to pay an editor at wiki or DMOZ or any of a few dozen other 'trusted sources' on the internet to get something added, or removed. I stopped traveling in those circles a long time ago, but I know that they are still very active and the cost is still surprisingly low.

While not code level access, these sorts of things are far more common than anyone wants to admit to.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "US destroying its reputation as a scientific leader – European science diplomat"

SteveGerencser — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 20:07:07 +0000

It wasn't very welcoming in the 90s either.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Frank Gehry has died"

SteveGerencser — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 22:26:24 +0000

I got to meet Frank in the mid 90s while studying architecture in New Mexico. He was incredibly generous with his time and ideas to us students that stayed extra late to catch him touring the studios with the dean around midnight. His midnight critique of my design that was due the next morning made me throw it out and start over to include some of his ideas.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Data centers contribute to high prices as energy bills electrify local politics"

SteveGerencser — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 17:20:29 +0000

We cancelled our install after TN removed the state level breaks. It pushed the payback out past the expected lifespan of the panels (25 years). I would have been fine with a 10 year payback, but 25+ was just not worth doing.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "Meta announces new data centers"

SteveGerencser — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 19:29:39 +0000

You would be surprised how little water drop is required to cause wells to "go dry". When wells are punched into an aquifer, they stop when they hit water, they don't keep going to be deeper. A water level drop of just 2 inches caused all sorts of issues for locals when Intel built its new Fabs in New Mexico.

Intel said that it wouldn't be an issue, yet when it happened, they did nothing to help and forced a huge number of people to have to put in new wells. The same will happen in Ohio.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek used its model to train competitor"

SteveGerencser — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 15:57:33 +0000

> don't aspire to be like Altman

Aspire to be like Aaron Schwartz.

New comment by SteveGerencser in "AI Checkers Forcing Kids to Write Like a Robot to Avoid Being Called a Robot"

SteveGerencser — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 20:22:37 +0000

I submitted several scientific/research papers my wife wrote or co-authored in the late 90s early 2000s and they were all flagged as AI written by multiple tools. It was good for a laugh.