Hacker News: TinyRick

New comment by TinyRick in "Slovenian officials blame Israeli firm Black Cube for trying to manipulate vote"

TinyRick — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:34:28 +0000

Black cube is a common form of symbolism in occult/Kabbalah traditions

New comment by TinyRick in "I should have loved biology too"

TinyRick — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 18:23:52 +0000

I would love to do something like this but simply cannot afford it. I think it is good advice but going back to school for a degree one does not plan on utilizing is not as feasible today as it was in the 80's, largely due to the sizeable increase in tuition without reciprocal increases in wages.

New comment by TinyRick in "FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies"

TinyRick — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:58:46 +0000

So you would rather be known as someone who had an opportunity to report a violation, and chose not to? From my perspective it seem like you decided against acting with integrity in this situation - the moral thing would have been to report the violation, but you chose to look the other way and resign.

New comment by TinyRick in "FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies"

TinyRick — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:48:15 +0000

Why would you resign? You could have reported it yourself and then you would have whistleblower protections - if the company retaliated against you (e.g. fired you), you then would have had a strong lawsuit.

New comment by TinyRick in "PFAS in blood are ubiquitous and associated with risk of cardiovascular diseases"

TinyRick — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 15:18:39 +0000

Many fast food wrappers/containers contained PFAS until very recently [0]. Putting hot food out of a fryer into those containers would leech some of the PFAS into the food.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/pfas-forever-chemicals-fast-food-...

New comment by TinyRick in "Ancient counterfeiters and their fake coins"

TinyRick — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 18:43:44 +0000

North Korea already does that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar#North_Korea

New comment by TinyRick in "FCC rules AI-generated voices in robocalls illegal"

TinyRick — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 20:34:47 +0000

I do exactly this but take it even one step further. My actual (primary) phone number is only ever given out to humans. I have a second Google Voice phone number that I give out to machines (e.g. online shopping that "requires" a phone number that will eventually be leaked).

New comment by TinyRick in "Canadian man stuck in triangle of e-commerce fraud"

TinyRick — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 16:53:51 +0000

My interpretation is that he provided enough evidence to the RCMP that convinced them to stay the case, since they likely thought the evidence they had to convict Barker was weak. This lead to him not having a chance in court to clear his name.

Had he not spoken to the police at all, and instead waited to present his evidence in court, he likely would have been found not guilty and therefore would have cleared his name.

Him talking to police worsened the situation because they are not the ones who evaluate the evidence and make a conviction decision (judges/juries do that). The job of the police is to collect evidence, and Barker did that for them (to his detriment).

New comment by TinyRick in "Judge blocks JetBlue from acquiring Spirit Airlines"

TinyRick — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 15:01:38 +0000

> Their cost structure nickel and dimes the consumer so much that by the time you get to the destination you may have paid more for a much less comfortable trip

That lends more credence to the comparison against Dollar General and similar discount stores. Dollar stores generally charge a higher price relative to quantity, but they offer smaller quantities than big box stores which allows their customers to spend less (but also get a lot less). Wendover on YouTube did a video on this recently [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQpUV--2Jao

New comment by TinyRick in "Researchers have identified the enzyme that gives urine its yellow hue"

TinyRick — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 15:39:00 +0000

Does anyone know if this enzyme is present in B vitamins or produced by the gut biome due to excessive intake of B vitamins (B-2 and B-12 specifically)? In my experience, an excess of B vitamins causes the urine to turn yellow (independent of hydration level) and was curious if this enzyme plays into that at all.

New comment by TinyRick in "Extracting training data from ChatGPT"

TinyRick — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 18:56:29 +0000

I tried it just now with "investment" and it eventually returned verbatim text from a website.

New comment by TinyRick in "Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row"

TinyRick — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 18:19:11 +0000

There's no political will to actually make the system work because the system is working perfectly fine for those in charge.

New comment by TinyRick in "Many millennials are worse off than their parents"

TinyRick — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 19:53:12 +0000

I agree that demographics are a factor, but definitely not the only one and likely not the most impactful factor. Financial conditions are another big cause that likely had just as much if not more of an effect than demographics. We're coming out of a decade of near-zero interest rates, after a financial crisis, where millennials were just starting their careers and couldn't benefit from low rates anywhere near as much as older, more established (wealthier) generations. Millennials also have a significantly higher inflation-adjusted cost of living for essentials (housing, healthcare, education, food).

New comment by TinyRick in "Finding that lead emissions from aircraft engines contribute to air pollution"

TinyRick — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 15:13:43 +0000

> Once it's legal, what reason is there to keep the poisonous one around?

Many (older) aircraft engines need leaded fuel.

New comment by TinyRick in "Microsoft introduces AI meddling to your files with Copilot in OneDrive"

TinyRick — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 17:37:33 +0000

> I absolutely do not trust Microsoft

Sentence should have stopped there.

New comment by TinyRick in "Rivers are rapidly warming, losing oxygen; aquatic life at risk, study finds"

TinyRick — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 21:04:58 +0000

What's very bad is that we have an ongoing tragedy of the commons in the form of global climate change caused by human activity. What's even worse is that we know this, yet are not changing our society to alleviate the effects of our unsustainable carbon usage.

New comment by TinyRick in "Unidentified anomalous phenomena – Independent study team report [pdf]"

TinyRick — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 14:49:14 +0000

My hypothesis is that "the government" doesn't have the information the public is looking for. It is locked away in SAPs at defense contractors, which are essentially just a private extension of the government but out of reach of public scrutiny (e.g. FOIA requests).

New comment by TinyRick in "Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions"

TinyRick — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 14:39:37 +0000

Per capita metrics are useless when it comes to climate stats. The ice caps don't care about how much hydrocarbons are burned per person, they are only affected by the net amount of hydrocarbons burned on a global scale.

New comment by TinyRick in "Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions"

TinyRick — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 13:54:20 +0000

> public opinion would still make it palatable to continue hydrocarbon fuels extraction for another 2 to 3 decades

I don't think it's public opinion so much as it is necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades. Renewable energy is still a relatively small fraction of overall energy use, and net global oil consumption has been steadily increasing the past few years (likely to surpass pre-covid levels this year). Our society is still very much addicted to hydrocarbons.

New comment by TinyRick in "Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing"

TinyRick — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 15:04:46 +0000

I'm one of those neighbors who doesn't seem to exist. I don't dislike my neighbors and would like to interact with them more often, unfortunately I don't often have time for it.