Hacker News: ansmithz42

New comment by ansmithz42 in "What if we made advertising illegal?"

ansmithz42 — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 19:45:43 +0000

Having lived overseas, the US isn't a "veritable wonderland of consumer choice". There are 5 grocery store chains, for the great majority of the country there is one way to travel: car. At the store (Kroger), I can buy 2 kinds of salt on the shelves. Where is the "veritable choice"? It has been told in the advertising but the reality is very limited.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE"

ansmithz42 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 20:13:46 +0000

They are not executive employees, they are Musk employees, not the same thing.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE"

ansmithz42 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 20:10:04 +0000

Simple answer: No.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "Companies Lobby Against Giving the Military the Right to Repair"

ansmithz42 — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 22:10:51 +0000

Nah! I think the CEOs should be the first ones sent into the combat front line zones.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "Students invent quieter leaf blower"

ansmithz42 — Fri, 17 May 2024 14:02:08 +0000

I agree completely! My favorite weed killer is my own two hands and a weeder. Having said that, I live in Arizona and the dominant landscape design here is trees and bushes planted with rocks for the ground cover. A leaf rake is real good at picking up both the leaves and the rocks. I wish there was a leaf rake that didn't pick up the rocks. I have grudgingly bought an electric leaf blower because of the rocks :-(

New comment by ansmithz42 in "World War II 'rumor clinics' helped America battle wild gossip"

ansmithz42 — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 20:20:52 +0000

Don't trust the "Cloud" for your backups.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers"

ansmithz42 — Sun, 03 Mar 2024 04:58:50 +0000

My impression on both is that they are US/European centric. Not very true to their "scouring the world for newspapers" line. So, they only show events that impact or are reported on in those areas. I know that newspapers.com has a few (2 or 3) asian newspapers but that is all.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "American society wasn't always so car-centric. Our future doesn't have to be"

ansmithz42 — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 19:34:38 +0000

Very True! It is about choice of transit. The US has NO Choice of Transit. It is either Car or nothing. How very free that is to be limited to 1 choice!

New comment by ansmithz42 in "Factory construction boom in the US"

ansmithz42 — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 01:57:00 +0000

I worked at BEI Electronics and one key position there was the Industrial Automation role who defined how things got built. Another one to look at is Process Control.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "The Price-Fixing Economy"

ansmithz42 — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 09:46:42 +0000

Remember: Bigger is Better Economies of Scale

They both benefit the few and sacrifice the many but are sold as ways to "reduce" costs and hence prices for the masses.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”"

ansmithz42 — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 14:16:19 +0000

Oh but remember: "Bigger is better!" and "Economies of scale"/s

New comment by ansmithz42 in "UK Parliament undermined the privacy, security, freedom of all internet users"

ansmithz42 — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 13:13:25 +0000

I do so wish we could stop using the term "backdoor". When it comes to computer systems, there is really no "front" or "back" and so any access granted is just another door. This then removes the idea that it can be made "safer" just by calling it something different. There are so many cases of "hidden" or "secret" APIs being made public because people found them, there is absolutely no way that an additional can be made any safer.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "Death by a Thousand Microservices"

ansmithz42 — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 06:09:08 +0000

A post like this pops up every few months arguing one way or the other. I have lived in absolute nightmare monolith systems with so much cyclic dependency that you couldn't move without breaking something. So monolith isn't the answer. I have also seen many instances where people have completely missed the underlying principles of microservices and have ended up with an equal nightmare. Neither is a hero or panacea, what matters is to understand what you are building and why and get the interfaces correct. Then understand the principles of different architectures before moving forward. If you fail on this, you get predictably a nightmare. There is plenty of nightmare code sitting on this planet everywhere we look. My recommendation isn't to vilify either architecture but to understand their strengths and weaknesses.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "Morris Chang founded TSMC, the most valuable company in Asia"

ansmithz42 — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 04:05:27 +0000

What!?!?!?!

New comment by ansmithz42 in "To Save the Planet, Should We Be Moving Slower?"

ansmithz42 — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 04:28:10 +0000

What explains the "communist" countries behaviour is "Animal Farm". The "communist" countries are just a variant of Monarchies. They have replaced some of the birth-rite of monarchies but it is still the same with all the behind the scenes power plays and purges.

New comment by ansmithz42 in "National Treasure: tea utensils used by early modern practitioners of chanoyu"

ansmithz42 — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 12:56:14 +0000

You need to visit Taiwan. Tea drinking and tea buying is still practiced in many stores. They have even made the bags of tea leaves traceable to where the tea was grown. It may be the tea experience you are looking for!

New comment by ansmithz42 in "Deming Paradox: Operationally rigorous companies aren't nice places to work"

ansmithz42 — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 08:49:50 +0000

The infamous "fungible resource".

Ask HN: Could you rig the US Elections?

ansmithz42 — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 23:11:38 +0000

Here's my question: Through completely legal means, gerrymandering and redistricting, to redraw the district boundaries on a state by state basis to achieve the following goals: 1. Take a majority of state legislatures 2. Take a majority of seats in the House 3. Take a majority of seats in the Senate 4. Take a majority of Electoral College votes 5. For bonus points, take a 3/4 majority of state legislatures and thereby guarantee the control of constitutional amendments Is this possible? I know that it is ethically questionable, but when power comes into the game that doesn't matter. With cheap computing power, could you set up clusters to achieve these goals?

(Edited: Corrected the constitutional level to 3/4)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32515938

Points: 2

# Comments: 11

New comment by ansmithz42 in "Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends"

ansmithz42 — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 23:32:05 +0000

This is exactly "Fahrenheit 451".

New comment by ansmithz42 in "Watching an acquirer ruin your company"

ansmithz42 — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 08:47:10 +0000

I received a settlement from the case because I worked at Intuit, also a party to the cartel.