Hacker News: barney54

New comment by barney54 in "US–Indian space mission maps extreme subsidence in Mexico City"

barney54 — Sun, 03 May 2026 20:49:12 +0000

Nor does it say how much subsidence the satellite documented.

New comment by barney54 in "Palantir Workers Are Finally Noticing the Skulls on Their Caps"

barney54 — Sat, 02 May 2026 03:01:24 +0000

I mean, the likely democratic senate nominee literally has a nazi tattoo. Fascism still has its fans.

New comment by barney54 in "A Man Who Invented the Future"

barney54 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 12:43:04 +0000

I read some AI slop earlier today and then read this. The AI slop was better than whatever this is.

New comment by barney54 in "A Man Who Invented the Future"

barney54 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 12:41:33 +0000

The article concludes, stating that LLMs are the “apotheosis of knowledge stripped of animating spirit and reduced to mere utility.” Maybe, but LLMs have far more utility than this directionless essay.

New comment by barney54 in "NSA is using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist"

barney54 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 11:28:23 +0000

It’s funny that you say that tweets are US policy when the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs.

New comment by barney54 in "The secrets of the Shinkansen"

barney54 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:29:23 +0000

What is this corruption you are talking about? What specifically are you talking about? Things you don’t like aren’t necessarily the result of corruption.

New comment by barney54 in "The secrets of the Shinkansen"

barney54 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:24:22 +0000

The U.S. can build trains and has a good rail system—for freight not passengers. It’s not obvious how Japan moves freight, but the U.S.’s rail system evolved to move freight efficiently. That is a huge difference and not necessarily the result of corruption or incompetence.

New comment by barney54 in "The secrets of the Shinkansen"

barney54 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:21:33 +0000

What is seldom mentioned in these conversations is that the United States has a very good rail system—-for freight. That’s what the U.S. system did well, not passengers. From the article it isn’t obvious how Japan moves freight, but they obviously aren’t moving a lot of freight on the Shinkansen.

New comment by barney54 in "France to ditch Windows for Linux to reduce reliance on US tech"

barney54 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:51:43 +0000

I don’t think it’s a question that Linux has more jank. I recently installed a fedora spin on a laptop that came with regular Fedora installed originally and the WiFi didn’t work. That’s some janky stuff right there.

New comment by barney54 in "Trump fires Pam Bondi as attorney general"

barney54 — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 18:17:35 +0000

I don't know why you are getting downvoted for this comment. Bondi's promoting the DOW during a hearing was bizarre.

New comment by barney54 in "Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics"

barney54 — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 22:15:05 +0000

Are you saving that an organization should be able to put together a documentary to criticize Trump and his supporters? Because that’s what Citizen’s United allowed. If you don’t support that, then the criticism will only come from rich individuals.

New comment by barney54 in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

barney54 — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 18:31:56 +0000

That’s because net metering is a transfer from people who can’t afford solar to the rich people who can. https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2024/04/22/californias-ex...

New comment by barney54 in "Repair a ship’s hull still in the river in -50˚C (2022)"

barney54 — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 20:32:15 +0000

And it really want's Ewan that was put out about the KTM rejection--he wanted to ride the BMWs, but Charley Boorman was pissed. Charley had dreamed of the KTMs for years.

New comment by barney54 in "Microsoft Office renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app”"

barney54 — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 12:15:21 +0000

Wow this is dumb. The reason I’m on Windows is because of Office. For my needs Office on Windows is the best—otherwise I’d be on a Mac or Linux. I use AI everyday and never found a use case for Copilot. So why rebrand Office, their best product after Copilot, their worst product?

New comment by barney54 in "The US polluters that are rewriting the EU's human rights and climate law"

barney54 — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 10:58:07 +0000

Or they like staying in business and producing energy that people willingly purchase.

New comment by barney54 in "Amazon reveals 960 megawatt nuclear power plans to cope with AI demand"

barney54 — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 13:52:32 +0000

Sadly Amazon only revealed plans, not an actual reactor.

New comment by barney54 in "I tracked Amazon's Prime Day prices. We've been played"

barney54 — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 10:25:24 +0000

I don’t know of a shop that doesn’t have some sales at some time. Sales are just such powerful selling tools.

Factorio is a counter example. Factorio never goes on sale, which is kind of nice because when you buy it you know you couldn’t have gotten a better price, but without sales you aren’t as motivated to buy it for a lower price than usual.

New comment by barney54 in "Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did"

barney54 — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 10:05:02 +0000

It is not moral to break the law in the furtherance of fraud. That’s the point.

New comment by barney54 in "Tiny reactors could one day power towns, campuses; community input will be key"

barney54 — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 01:23:39 +0000

Community input is nice, but we first need working small reactors. Until we see that there is no need to talk about community input. And so far small reactors keep taking longer to get built than estimates.

New comment by barney54 in "ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair"

barney54 — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 01:53:26 +0000

The reasoning for the shooting is pretty clear. He told his transgender lover that “I had enough of his [Kirk’s] hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26098852-tyler-robin...