Hacker News: balderdash

New comment by balderdash in "California closed the Montana license plate loophole"

balderdash — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 19:21:39 +0000

I’m not sure what you mean by not that common. The ta millions of people a year- yes maybe it’s only ~1% of the population, buts it’s one percent every year, and I quarter you it’s no evenly distributed.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/2024-sta...

Drones buzz overhead, troops hunker underground in Ukraine's hellish kill zone

balderdash — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 03:16:48 +0000

Article URL: https://www.npr.org/2026/10/05/nx-s1-5925803/drones-buzz-overhead-troops-hunker-underground-in-ukraines-hellish-kill-zone

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49973739

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by balderdash in "A brief history of the Bloomberg terminal"

balderdash — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:12:53 +0000

Its breadth and depth - it’s about being able to see a forward for ISONE Vermont Pk power prices, swaptions on uk gilts, where 5yr forwards are pricing for the yen, freight rates and ship tracking, weather data, satellite analysis, legal and legislative data etc.

New comment by balderdash in "A brief history of the Bloomberg terminal"

balderdash — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:54:10 +0000

I’m pretty sure you can get a one month free demo (with limited data feeds).

New comment by balderdash in "500k facial scans at UK stations yield no arrests, 1 false positive"

balderdash — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:52:40 +0000

Here’s the thing - if your local you know they’re there - and if you’re planning on committing a crime they’re trivial (but inconvenient to bypass). So really they’re just recording the everyday movements of the towns populace “just in case”

New comment by balderdash in "Florida county discovers mysterious Flock cameras with no obvious owner"

balderdash — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:08:30 +0000

https://archive.is/aQw35

Florida county discovers mysterious Flock cameras with no obvious owner

balderdash — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:08:30 +0000

Article URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/10/01/florida-county-discovers-mysterious-flock-cameras-with-no-obvious-owner/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920202

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by balderdash in "500k facial scans at UK stations yield no arrests, 1 false positive"

balderdash — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:30:20 +0000

There was no crime before the alprs, no crime after

New comment by balderdash in "500k facial scans at UK stations yield no arrests, 1 false positive"

balderdash — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:18:59 +0000

my mom lives in small town that only has two roads in/out of town and the police have alprs on those. there's no violent crime there, and all the police department does is traffic (DWI's, speeding and parking tickets, and accidents) and respond to small town crime (noise complaints, stolen bicycle, stray/lost dogs etc). I think the only thing that the alpr has ever caught people for is out of date vehicle registrations - but now the police department wants a flock camera because they are "great crime fighting tools"

New comment by balderdash in "500k facial scans at UK stations yield no arrests, 1 false positive"

balderdash — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:53:19 +0000

I think people need to remember the extreme heterogeneity of crime even in the same city or town let alone across a nation.

I’m not disagreeing with the trend, but it effects people differently.

New comment by balderdash in "500k facial scans at UK stations yield no arrests, 1 false positive"

balderdash — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:46:06 +0000

Trying to be as charitable as possible, is that this is a technology that allows people (the average municipal police force) that can only solve the most obvious of crimes to solve marginally less obvious crimes - at the great expense of the general populace through loss of privacy and abuse.

New comment by balderdash in "California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops"

balderdash — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:48:32 +0000

I'd characterize it differently - america makes lots of medicore wine and whiskey, but it also makes some fantastic wine and whiskey - my problem has always been that the good stuff in the US is stupidly overpriced why pay 2x-3x+ for an american bottle of wine when you can have one of similar quality for a fraction of the price from south africa, spain, france, germany etc.

New comment by balderdash in "You are no longer invited to dinner"

balderdash — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:23:26 +0000

I’ve been there myself - but your actual friends don’t care.

Try easing into it - go on a late afternoon sunset picnic (ironically also on the list) - a blanket, cheese, crackers, cured meat and wine and a portable speaker. Everyone is happy and it’s super cheap, the outdoors is your living room and a couple hours before sunset never disappoints (though depending on where you are the weather might be a challenge).

New comment by balderdash in "Coding is not solved"

balderdash — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 19:27:35 +0000

I wish that were the case, my multiple experiences are quite different. its not that the software doesn't work - but the software doesn't actually capture the process, or properly talk with other systems, or isn't set up for a new business model or product line...then you have layers and layers of "tools" created to make it work, and a bunch of people using spreadsheets and csv files to do workarounds, and then the guy that wrote a bunch of the tool's 10 years ago leaves and there is no documentation or it needs to be re written in order to upgrade some other piece of the system.

i guess another way of saying this is that on the micro level a lot of this stuff is not rocket science, but at the macro level it becomes hugely complex.

New comment by balderdash in "Excel now supports multiple values in a single cell"

balderdash — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 15:36:27 +0000

Check out @Risk and crystal ball - both have been around for a long time.

I should also say what’s really nice is you can define the shape of the probability distribution and parameters for random variables, as well as the correlation of different random variables. Both are effective but also feel dated these days.

https://lumivero.com/products/at-risk/

https://www.oracle.com/applications/crystalball/

New comment by balderdash in "The Mafia may be keeping fentanyl out of Italy"

balderdash — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 13:52:11 +0000

Look up extreme indifference murder or depraved heart murder - I think you’ll find it exactly fits the context of this discussion

Also I think they charged people in the ford pinto case with reckless homicide but they got off.

New comment by balderdash in "The darker side of being a doctor"

balderdash — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 11:36:40 +0000

Agree - one sensible start would be to at least hybridize the European model where students are a whole lot closer to getting there medical degree as an undergraduate.

New comment by balderdash in "Bill to Ban Private Equity from Owning Medical Practices"

balderdash — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:41:22 +0000

Can you cite - antidotally the only doctors I know that would rather be an employee work for big hospital chains or already sold their practice for a pile and are happy with less responsibility.

New comment by balderdash in "Bill to Ban Private Equity from Owning Medical Practices"

balderdash — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:38:09 +0000

Yes they will earn above market return on a lower capital base with medical shares in medical practice trading closer to book value - and the economics are the profit share not equity value of the firm. Earning $250k/yr on a $1m capital contribution requires a whole lot less rent seeking than earning the same $250k on a $5m share purchase.

New comment by balderdash in "Bill to Ban Private Equity from Owning Medical Practices"

balderdash — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 01:18:27 +0000

While not perhaps the best argument is the private equity provides liquidity for founders that want to exit. If you started business X, you’ve grown it for 20-40 years and you want to retire, selling is typically the answer. Let’s say the business makes $1m/yr after tax cash flow, PE might buy for $10m, besides PE there aren’t a bunch of likely buyers for your business (of course maybe there is a big competitor, and maybe you could sell it to an employee (but they probably don’t have the money and would need you to seller finance etc)). So for entrepreneurs with a successful small business (say $2-5m+ of ebitda) selling to private equity is the clearest path to a liquidity event for them.