<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: Tanoc</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Tanoc</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 23:47:16 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=Tanoc" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Why We've Filed a Referendum"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Because in reality they don't actually bring in any revenue for the first few years thanks to all the subsidies and tax breaks they demand upfront before construction. At best it would be state and federal taxes used for operations that any operating business brings like federal payroll, but there wouldn't be any property taxes for at least five to ten years and the federal corporate income tax would likely be from the state the company is based in rather than the state the datacenter is based in. The municipality, be that the county or city the datacenter's in, gets screwed.<p>Meanwhile just to run a trucking depot you'd have the heavy vehicle tax, international fuel agreement tax, registration tax, sales taxes for the trucks and trailers, property taxes, and whatever incidental taxes required by the state you're operating in. The property tax, IFAT, and local payroll taxes meanwhile all go to the municipality and don't skip straight up to the state or national level. This is with no expectation of any of this being waived or delayed because the trucking industry doesn't have the surface visible financial performance of the industries municipalities are more lenient towards.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 16:02:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48248771</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48248771</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48248771</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "The death of the brick and mortar toy store"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One could feasibly make their debate topic that the U.S. is not actually a functioning country but instead has morphed into an extensive financialization scheme, and they could win that debate.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 06:40:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245296</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245296</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245296</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Why We've Filed a Referendum"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Datacenters are financially a net negative for whichever municipality they end up in. They're operated mostly remotely with little staff and they have no tangible production, meaning any wealth they generate ends up vast distances away. Meanwhile the municipality ends up with increased costs because of the inefficiencies of bruteforcing computation, and because of the subsidies and tax breaks that the companies not only expect but demand for construction, there's no revenue being generated even for the local government.<p>That alone is enough of an argument against them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 06:29:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245255</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245255</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245255</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As far as I know it's mostly rich hobbyists or people purchasing for decoration that buy Fenders just because of name recognition. Almost everyone else gets guitars from small custom shops because they're cheaper, better built, and you're not stuck with a single bridge style and two choices of pickups. That's if they don't just buy off the rack stuff from ESP or Ibanez, who have absolutely devoured Fender's market share in the under $2,000 category. Which incidentally is the largest consumer base. The only thing Fender sells consistently is the Telecaster and the Jaguar, both of which people prefer off the shelf versions of rather than getting from the custom shop because you can't really mess with the design of either without drastically altering the sound.<p>If you want an example of when this kind of lawsuit backfires and causes reputational loss like you say, look at Gibson. A few years ago they sued Music Man, First Act, Jackson, Dean, and a few others over the "flying V" design that came out in 1958 and had already been genericized by the early '80s. They won on trademark grounds against Dean and the resulting fear over the other open lawsuits caused a few Flying V and Explorer lookalikes to go out of production. Since then anyone who remembers the ordeal has warned people away from ever purchasing their guitars. Gibson were in terrible but improving condition in 2024 having just left bankruptcy in 2019 and the fallout from the lawsuit being revived last year has massively hurt their sales and left them right on the track to death again.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 06:06:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245161</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245161</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245161</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "We've made the world too complicated"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Pre-education is swinging too far in the opposite direction for your own argument. Jacobus Uys the guy who wrote The Gods Must Be Crazy was sixty when the film came out in 1980. He watched the entire shift from the machine age to the nuclear age to the information age. His required childhood education in the 1920s and 1930s would've been six to eight years with highschool as optional. His parents who were children in the 1890s likely would've had education be entirely optional. He lived through the change from school being a privilege to being required and watched as it grew from six to eight to twelve years. The film itself is literally about the dichotomy between a post-agrarian tribe and nuclear age civilians and how less than a century separated most of the world from being one before they became the other. He wasn't reaching back to some pre-modern past, he was commenting on the rapid expansive changes he had seen during his own lifetime.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2026 03:38:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48165862</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48165862</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48165862</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "7 in 10 Americans oppose data centers being built in their communities"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Almost nothing this scale can be built without subsidies because in the U.S. no company is willing to actually buy anything on their own. Wal-Mart forces local municipalities to pay for the buildings to be built through subsidies and taxation delays. Amazon does the same with their warehouses, distribution centers, and Whole Foods. NFL and NBA stadiums as well. Either the locals pay for the "privilege" of having their money vacuumed out of the area or these places don't get built. And as many city and county level politicians are very poorly versed in terms of macroeconomics they fail to understand that the addition of those two hundred jobs will cost the area two to three times as much as the employees will make because they can't collect taxes from an entity that is increasing wear on the roads, increasing load on the electrical and water infrastructure, and creating new external costs in the form of garbage disposal or light and noise pollution.<p>These datacenters are like that, but taken even further because they're attached to an industry used to ridiculous tax breaks or lack of taxation in the first place, constant investor capital, and continuous rapid growth. Software production and digital infrastructure have grown up in a wildly different environment from traditional retail and shipping logistics, but they're taking the most successful (and harmful) expansion tactics from retail and shipping.<p>Unless you can kill subsidies outright for anything connected to a national or international entity and provide enough specifics to prevent them from hiding behind shell companies then it's a losing battle to say "don't subsidize them." They'll either force you to pay for them or they'll move somewhere that will, and those with a poor understanding of the situation will complain for years that everyone lost out on a "big opportunity" by refusing to pay for their own predation. That complaining can echo into local politics for years afterwards and affect the outcome of various policies, either by denials out of spite or misplaced regret over the previous big project, or by politicians being voted out because of their opposition to a Wal-Mart or such being built via extensive subsidies and an agreement to collect no taxes for ten years.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 07:48:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48145731</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48145731</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48145731</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Tesla is recalling its cheaper Cybertruck because the wheels might fall off"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>With electrically actuated brakes the default power off state is fully engaged. Meaning if the power dies the brakes lock up. That causes it's own issues, obviously, but a sudden deceleration is better than no deceleration at most road speeds.<p>edit: as formerlyproven below states, the ones currently for sale also have a hydraulic backup.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 22:01:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48069326</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48069326</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48069326</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "The Disappearance of the Public Bench"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Given a construction budget of $125,000 per residence for a particularly nice two bedroom single bathroom house of about 1000ft², that's 80,000. Estimates are that there are currently between 750,000 to 800,000 people that have no home right now. Taking the high number of 800,000 that $10,000,000,000 is 10% of those people housed. You could reasonably go down to $30,000 for a build for a single floor house of the same footprint if you used mass produced prefabs, and get 330,000 people housed, or over 41%. Do you realize how much that would uplift things if we suddenly had a 41% reduction in homelessness? Considering that companies like Google and OpenAI are throwing around hundreds of billions of dollars which never get circulated back into the wider economy, spending $10,000,000,000 to bring 330,000 people back into economic and societal participation sounds amazing. That's assuming a somewhat low yearly income of $45,000 per person, adding up to $14,850,000,000 in circulation, or a gain of almost $5,000,000,000 right there. Even if we only achieve half of any of this that's $7,000,000,000 for one year. Two years in and the cost has already been paid back and more.<p>This comes with the giant caveat that we exclude the external costs of such a huge project, like social welfare visits, probation or monitoring if needed, or even just placement programs. Likely those all combined would be a third of the total cost.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 19:25:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067568</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067568</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067568</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Tesla is recalling its cheaper Cybertruck because the wheels might fall off"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There is a difference between AWD and 4WD, because 4WD trucks are RWD until you manually change the mode. AWD is all on all the time and is FWD biased, usually something like 70:30 F:R. For most of their lives, even when towing, 4WD trucks are used as RWD only. As for specialized off-road vehicles that wasn't what we were talking about, but yes those people split hairs down to the micron for what constitutes what.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 18:01:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48066629</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48066629</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48066629</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Gambling ads on social media reach more than twice as many men as women: study"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's not just social media. At least once every two weeks I get FanDuel sending me garbage in the mail in the form of a giant closed envelope with their stupid purple branding all over it.<p>As I found out, they're so determined for it to reach you that they even plastic coat the envelope and the paper inside. Can't even get the minuscule joy of burning them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 16:11:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48065144</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48065144</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48065144</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Tesla is recalling its cheaper Cybertruck because the wheels might fall off"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The majority in that statistic are selectable 4WD, which isn't the same as AWD. Pushing the two groups together skews the numbers a bit. Most trucks since the 1970s have been 4WD, ever since companies like Muncie and Borg-Warner started selling axles to Ford and their cohorts. AWD trucks are a relatively new phenomenon, with the first one I can think of being the limited production GMC Syclone in 1989, and it being a truck was an emissions loophole. I think the 2005 Honda Ridgeline was the first real mass produced AWD truck, or perhaps the Subaru Baja from 2003 if you consider that a truck rather than an open deck car. Right now I think only the Ridgeline, Hyundai Santa Cruz, and Ford Maverick are sold as AWD, whereas every other truck is selectable 4WD.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 16:05:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48065060</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48065060</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48065060</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Tesla is recalling its cheaper Cybertruck because the wheels might fall off"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Some cars are going with entirely electrically actuated brakes, either inboard on on-hub, compared to the E-Tron which uses traditional hydraulically actuated brakes. One uses an electric motor to wind something to tighten the spring clip by pulling it that then pushes the pads to the rotor and the other uses pressure to overcome the spring by pushing the spring to compress it and push the pads to the rotor. I'm guessing Audi didn't go with entirely electric brakes because they have a reputation for being harsh and difficult to modulate with the pedal, and Audi is supposed to be both a luxury and sport brand where pedal feel is important.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 15:53:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48064875</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48064875</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48064875</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "AI slop is killing online communities"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Exactly, they aren't good at creating new material. But many discussions in comment section are simply regurgitations of existing material, which they are good at rearranging. New novel discussions in places like this are actually a very rare thing, as many comment sections are simply people who already know informing those who don't. I'm doing that right now, funnily enough.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 20:27:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48054487</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48054487</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48054487</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Texture resolution and shadow resolution do a lot to make a game look better. The big difference between the PlayStation 2 and 3 was the massive jump in texture resolution, shadow resolution and model polygon count. Play Gran Turismo 5 and go look at one of the cars imported from Gran Turismo 4 for a good example. However the PlayStation 2 was capable of some very high polygon count models, as evidenced by Lulu's cutscene model from Final Fantasy X that rivals most PlayStation 3 player models in detail. Those resolution upgrades, the number of objects and not just polygons displayable on screen, and the increase in distance required for low-poly LOD models all made that giant leap possible and very visible. Since then it's mostly been adding camera effects such as depth of field and ambient occlusion that are much less noticeable. Though for those with keen eyes, only in the current generation are there textures without noticeable anti-aliasing effects which came as a result of being able to split the UVs thanks to a higher resolution making small UV faces possible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 20:18:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48054342</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48054342</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48054342</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "The brave souls who bought a used, 340k-mile rental camper van"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Look at Nissan. Their CVTs are known to have an effective life of about 60,000 miles. Anything beyond that is betting against the reaper. Because of the way the transmission is mated to the engine (in order to reduce the overall size) most times the cost to replace it costs more than the car is worth. Many times insurance will total a seven or eight year old Rogue or Altima if the CVT needs replaced. This is because Nissans depreciate in value so quickly, and it's somewhat of an ouroboros in that they depreciate in value so quickly because of the short lifetimes of the CVTs.<p>Meanwhile Mitsubishi has been suffering issues with their AWD systems failing, and because the Eclipse Cross and Outlander Sport are sold primarily as AWD that affects a majority of their sales.<p>Ford's had the issue with the dual-clutch automatics failing on the Focus, Fiesta, and Escape.<p>Dodge has... Well, really only the Durango currently that's reliable. The Charger PHEV is having all sorts off issues, from the battery packs overheating to random software glitches to the engine refusing to disengage from the electric portion of the drivetrain. The Hornet's been getting the shit kicked out of it by Kelley Blue Book and Consumer Reports because the transmissions are ripping themselves apart and the BCMs are bricking themselves.<p>Jeep's had issues with the Cherokee, Wrangler, Gladiator, and Compass because of the Pentastar engine nuking itself before 100,000 miles either by losing too much oil or the water jackets cracking. Meanwhile the differentials in the Wrangler and Gladiator have had problems that Stellantis denies.<p>Back before about... I'd say 2016? 2017? You had a lot less issues with new cars. Most issues were simple recalls like transmissions slipping out of gear or premature wear on the cams, not something that would entirely junk the car.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 16:04:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48051063</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48051063</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48051063</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Chevrolet Performance eCrate package (400v/200hp)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Back when people still watched cable Street Outlaws was Discovery's biggest show for a while. It is an oddly specific thing, but a question I heard a lot about ten years ago. The two places where drag racing are biggest are Oklahoma and Indiana.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 15:13:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050427</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050427</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050427</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Chevrolet Performance eCrate package (400v/200hp)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The valvetrain and fuel injection systems of any given internal combustion engine vehicle made since the 1980s are far more complex than the voltage controller of an EV drivetrain. The difference is that those mechanical components are in a system that can have multiple minor fail states before ceasing to function and contain far less energy than what's coursing through the voltage controller. The reason EVs are more dangerous currently is because they haven't gone through the decades of regulations and testing needed to provide multiple diagnostics and failsafes the way mechanical components have. That's easily fixed by just giving them a few years and letting people develop folk knowledge they way they did with internal combustion engines. Even now hobbyists are developing new ways to test for unbalanced cells, impedance hotspots, and integrating new monitoring systems that don't require costly proprietary sensors.<p>Most of this limitation from Ford and GM about their EV drivetrains is because they want control over deployment for monitoring, and so they can cover their asses legally if something like a manufacturing defect becomes widespread.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 14:59:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050249</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050249</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050249</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Chevrolet Performance eCrate package (400v/200hp)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>When you do that you're supposed to classify the vehicle as an OHV, or off-highway vehicle. Problem is a lot of states don't actually do emissions testing, others don't do vehicle status inspection, and some don't do either. You ever wonder why Indiana has such a huge number of drag racing cars in the Prostock and Superstock classes? There's no emissions testing outside the capitol.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 14:48:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050139</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050139</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050139</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Iran hit more U.S. military targets than has been reported, satellite images"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One thing I do not understand is the sheer ridiculousness of the participation rate within the military. As you stated, many of these people in positions of command know exactly what they're violating, be it domestic law, international law, standards of decency, or their own morals. Enough of them seem to disagree with the current directions being given that they could refuse orders and draw down, effectively paralyzing the military with a sizable non-compliant command structure. And if they're all removed from their posts the ensuing chaos would ensure the implosion of the current operation and likely cripple the military for decades. There's a very powerful position these people are in, and they know as much. What's even more important from this entire interaction is that they stand to lose more than they would gain from continuing the war, while they would gain nothing but lose very little if they just stopped and refused. The continuation is actively detrimental to the military because it increases fear of petty or capricious reprisal, reduces trust, makes international cooperation during crises less likely, and pushes foreign militaries away from buying U.S. equipment.<p>So why continue listening to the order to punch the brick wall and break their knuckles? There's some deeper cultural issue at play here, likely that's been there since Vietnam and only grown over the last sixty years, where refusal of orders even if clearly detrimental is a betrayal of your country and fellow servicemen rather than an exercise in judgement and consideration of consequences.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 02:22:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48044670</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48044670</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48044670</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Tanoc in "Xbox CEO ends Copilot AI development and overhauls leadership"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Runescape as well. Gold farming for membership bonds severely stratified the game's economy and pushed people towards Oldschool Runescape. From the introduction of bonds until 2017 the number of bots raised at a rate unseen since the switchover to the new skilling menu in 2002.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 00:53:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48044061</link><dc:creator>Tanoc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48044061</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48044061</guid></item></channel></rss>