Hacker News: bediger4000

New comment by bediger4000 in "Cryptocurrency industry on track to surpass 2024 spending on Texas midterm races"

bediger4000 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:40:11 +0000

As near as I can tell, nobody use crypto for day-to-day transactions because it's deflationary. People do use crypto to buy illicit drugs and guns, pay ransoms, launder money, avoid taxes. Drug cartels settle debts, and oligarchs evade sanctions with it. It looks like particular oligarchs take anonymous crypto as bribes. That's all crime.

Occasionally people speculate using crypto, which isn't technically illegal, but does shade off into unethical. Crypto seems to enable new methods of scams ("rug pulls"), and make older scams easier in the category of "speculation".

New comment by bediger4000 in "U.S. banks may soon collect citizenship data from customers"

bediger4000 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:39:45 +0000

I did not realize that the number of Freedom Convoy truckers was roughly the same as number of immigrants. That is a big issue!

New comment by bediger4000 in "U.S. banks may soon collect citizenship data from customers"

bediger4000 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:31:30 +0000

If they don't have documentation, are they citizens?

New comment by bediger4000 in "Netgear Gets Mysterious Exemption to Trump FCC 'Router Ban,' Refuses to Say How"

bediger4000 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:26:41 +0000

This aligns with the theory that the router ban was due to a severe hardware vulnerability that the NSA couldn't figure out how to mitigate or to exploit itself. Netgear is always changing chipsets and hardware, they can easily swap out clean hardware for vulnerable hardware.

New comment by bediger4000 in "Cryptocurrency industry on track to surpass 2024 spending on Texas midterm races"

bediger4000 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:59:14 +0000

The only viable use case for crypto appears to be crime. Are we really letting crime finance our elections?

New comment by bediger4000 in "The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency"

bediger4000 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 04:21:58 +0000

Start with public campaign financing, and saner election procedures. Primaries, caucuses, first last the post, and electoral college? It all contributes.

New comment by bediger4000 in "MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science"

bediger4000 — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 23:38:45 +0000

No. Sure, MAGA Republicans are only 25-30% of the population, but most of the people share at least some beliefs that would hold the entire nation back. There's widespread economic illiteracy, that leads to people generally favoring monopolies, and not believing in economy of scale in some circumstances. It's an article of faith that the press has a liberal bias. Lots of people distrust elections. There are lots of authoritarians, which is the fertile ground that let Trump take power in the first place.

New comment by bediger4000 in "Can we make robots that eat other robots?"

bediger4000 — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 14:17:51 +0000

I recommend reading John Sladek's "Mechasm" (a.k.a. "The Reproductive System") before doing this

New comment by bediger4000 in "The Business Plot of 1933"

bediger4000 — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 03:47:06 +0000

Fascinating, but has no relevance for today.

New comment by bediger4000 in "Waves hit different on other planets"

bediger4000 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 22:08:49 +0000

The planet hosts liquid water, though because it is so large, it has a stronger gravity.

I suppose they mean: (A) there's liquid water and (B) that planet's acceleration due to gravity is larger than Earth's. You can just as easily read it as "The planet hosts liquid water, though because it is so large" and "it has a stronger gravity". The first assertion is untrue, and the second is unrelated

New comment by bediger4000 in "Stop Using Toilet Paper"

bediger4000 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:21:59 +0000

The easy conspiracy theory here is that NYT wants to sell more paper editions.

New comment by bediger4000 in "Two inmates at an Ohio prison built a secret hacking operation from behind bars"

bediger4000 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:13:27 +0000

This is admirable. They're meeting market needs, AND learning skills applicable to the modern world if they ever get released. I bet they don't recidivise.

New comment by bediger4000 in "Astronomers Propose New Way to Find Aliens Without Knowing What It Looks Like"

bediger4000 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 03:34:11 +0000

This sci.news summary is kind of dumb:

Outside of creating an artificial origin of life on Earth, the primary targets for the search for life are planets inside or outside our Solar System.

You don't say! Both inside and outside our Solar System? Steady on, chaps!

New comment by bediger4000 in "The asteroid Ryugu has all of the main ingredients for life"

bediger4000 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 23:50:44 +0000

What do you mean by "assuming no magic"? Can you elaborate on why that's a big assumption, because "magic" is usually non-existent.

New comment by bediger4000 in "Atlassian defends firing engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'"

bediger4000 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 23:45:52 +0000

Does Atlassian's CEO realize that we all now know that he really is a rich jerk?

New comment by bediger4000 in "A sufficiently comprehensive spec is not (necessarily) code"

bediger4000 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:21:51 +0000

Wayne is usually lots better than this. He basically defined the problem away, while missing the point of the comic. Maybe defined specifically "code" is not the tightly worded spec, but almost universally "code" is the result of the process of clarifying the vaguely worded spec. That's the point of the comic, after all. We all recognize the shorthand of "code" in the comic for the process we've all been through so many times.

New comment by bediger4000 in "New Mutiny"

bediger4000 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:48:59 +0000

This is some of the most buzzword laden prose I've ever read. What, for example, does "GTM" mean, and why are there teams of people doing "GTM"?

I think you've lost touch with anything real.

New comment by bediger4000 in "The asteroid Ryugu has all of the main ingredients for life"

bediger4000 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:02:44 +0000

I guess so what? What are the implications? Ryugu is not covered in cellular life. Fermi's Paradox has not been resolved. There's no obvious life anywhere we've landed robots.

New comment by bediger4000 in "The FCC just saved Netgear from its router ban for no obvious reason"

bediger4000 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 02:30:12 +0000

If by "doing things" you mean "accumulating mysterious anonymous crypto payments" and "getting a large draw from one of your shell companies", then yes.

New comment by bediger4000 in "What do you want out of a coding monospace font?"

bediger4000 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 02:28:09 +0000

Clear distinction between numerals and letters. O and 0, 1 and l, S and 5. Also distinctive punctuation. '.' and ',' are too similar in a lot of typefaces.