Hacker News: TheCoelacanth

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "'Sloppenheimer:' Amazon employees mock the company's AI on Slack"

TheCoelacanth — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:36:13 +0000

It's a fool's errand to try to prevent criticism to that extent. It's mostly harmless and functions as a release valve for people's frustrations and helps to stop them from doing something more extreme than just complaining.

It's also possibly illegal to stop them. Employees in the US have a legal right to talk to each other about their working conditions and employers are not allowed to stop them. Most companies aren't above violating that law, but they want to save that for actual union-busting, not to stop people from sharing memes.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "Most Americans don't trust AI – or the people in charge of it (2025)"

TheCoelacanth — Wed, 20 May 2026 14:35:20 +0000

It's pretty obvious that they are referring to a specific person and which specific person they are referring to.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract"

TheCoelacanth — Wed, 13 May 2026 14:27:53 +0000

I'm aware but I don't see how that changes those devices being the most open 3D printers.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "Mythical Man Month"

TheCoelacanth — Tue, 12 May 2026 21:25:23 +0000

As always, the real money in a gold rush goes to the people selling shovels.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract"

TheCoelacanth — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:44:11 +0000

Isn't Voron/Soval more open?

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 07 May 2026 16:05:46 +0000

Fortunately insolvency in this scenario mean that they will only be able to afford to pay around 3/4 of promised benefits.

Closing that budget gap is a problem that will need to be dealt with, but it's not impossible to fix and it's a fairly long way away. There are a lot of proposals going around for how to fix it and those will become more politically palatable as it gets closer.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 07 May 2026 16:00:11 +0000

That might have as much to do with their insane system for choosing a Doge, which many historians think did a lot to force compromise and reduce corruption.

They took the full council, selected a random subset, had that group choose another group from the full council by voting, then repeat that random selection followed by voting another few times ending with a final group who voted to select a Doge.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "Spain's parliament will act against massive IP blockages by LaLiga"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:36:24 +0000

This appears to be using "government" in American English sense, where "government" refers to anyone who works for the state in any capacity, including courts, not just the executive.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "Waymo in Portland"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:27:48 +0000

That depends how you define "densely populated", but certainly most car trips are near where people live and work, not in wilderness camping areas you are describing.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "U.S. Debt Tops 100% of GDP"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:14:25 +0000

The ratio itself is less worrying than how fast the ratio is increasing. It was under 80% in 2019 and under 40% in 2009[1]. (This is excluding debt the government owes itself, which I believe WSJ is also doing).

[1] https://www.pgpf.org/article/how-much-is-the-national-debt-w...

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "U.S. Debt Tops 100% of GDP"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:04:33 +0000

Obama also cut the deficit by more than half. It didn't get all the way to a balanced budget because of how bad of a mess Bush left to clean up, but it was moving in the right direction.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "Waymo in Portland"

TheCoelacanth — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:11:52 +0000

You're describing places that have few people and hence few car trips. Most car trips, even in the US, take place in densely populated areas.

The point of public transit isn't to handle 100% of all trips. It's to handle the most common trips in a more efficient and scalable way.

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

TheCoelacanth — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:00:04 +0000

They literally did pass a law outlawing it in 2012. Enforcement has been very poor, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys"

TheCoelacanth — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:54:37 +0000

This is a problem that has always existed in presidential systems. The US is extremely unusual in having made it work for this long.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:27:42 +0000

If anything it's the opposite. Extremely low interest rates drove housing prices higher by making it easier to afford a higher price.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "To Protect and Swerve: NYPD Cop Has 547 Speeding Tickets"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:52:45 +0000

That's obviously not true. Camera evidence is used as evidence of crimes all the time. Security cameras would be utterly worthless if they couldn't.

Right to face your accuser in that context means that you have the right to cross-examine relevant witnesses about how that camera evidence was collected and applied.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:49:30 +0000

Regardless of what the Trump administration will tell you, that's not it's name. The executive branch is not empowered to unilaterally change the name of a department.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "US Department of Justice has officially reclassified cannabis as less dangerous"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:43:28 +0000

Marijuana is one of the most effective things we have for some types of chronic pain and nausea.

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "San Diego rents declined following surge in supply"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:26:21 +0000

That's nonsense. DC has gone from 297k housing units in 2010 to 369k housing units in 2024[1][2].

Developments generally involve more units than what they are replacing.

[1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/i...

[2] https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/time-series/demo/popest...

New comment by TheCoelacanth in "US saw record high of 5,668 books banned in libraries in 2025, says agency"

TheCoelacanth — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:13:05 +0000

> ALA defines a “ban” as the removal of materials from a library based on the objections of a person or group. A “challenge” is an attempt to have a library resource removed, or access to it restricted, based on the objections of a person or group.

Under that definition, it doesn't seem to me like it would be possible for a "ban" to happen without also being a "challenge".