Hacker News: bertjk

New comment by bertjk in "The Cost of Safetyism"

bertjk — Mon, 25 May 2026 17:12:43 +0000

To be fair, good noise cancelling headphones nowadays have "transparent" or "ambient aware" modes that actually electronically pipe the outside noise in. (Whether the cyclists in question are actually using that feature, who knows?)

New comment by bertjk in "Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued"

bertjk — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 05:26:52 +0000

I always assumed their free open weight models were either a prestige thing or else part of a poorly executed commoditize-your-complements strategy.

New comment by bertjk in "Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon"

bertjk — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 10:06:33 +0000

If dollars were being repatriated, but as investment into financial instruments and real estate instead of purchases of goods and services, then that would not affect the trade deficit, right?

New comment by bertjk in "Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout"

bertjk — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:24:00 +0000

Fracking. Before fracking people were worried about "peak oil", and being dependent on unfriendly governments for our basic energy needs. Then with fracking we realized we are actually sitting on huge available oil reserves, and peak oil quickly became a quaint outdated concept.

New comment by bertjk in "Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?"

bertjk — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 20:21:49 +0000

Did you need licensing / training to take on electrical work? Do you market yourself as an electrician or more just a handyman that does minor electric jobs?

FTC Chair Lina Khan's Exit Interview: Challenging AI, Big Tech and More [video]

bertjk — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:45:11 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enHn9R_T2R8

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42688970

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by bertjk in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

bertjk — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 10:16:01 +0000

It would have been pretty silly for Harris to campaign on a Hope and Change™ platform, since that would imply she is doing a very poor job as incumbent.

New comment by bertjk in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

bertjk — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 10:03:41 +0000

> From 2014 to 2020, migrants from outside Mexico and Central America — known as “extra-continentals” — accounted for 19 percent of immigration court cases.

> In the last four years, those “extra-continentals” have risen to 53 percent of all court cases. They have arrived from countries such as India, China, Colombia and Mauritania.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/interactive/2024/...

New comment by bertjk in "The richest people borrow against their stock (2021)"

bertjk — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 06:08:19 +0000

The key difference here is whether your investment remains at risk. As long as the value of your investment is at risk, then the investment is considered unrealized.

Once you cash in your chips (sell) then the investment becomes realized.

Someone getting a loan against their stock portfolio is still at risk of loss of value of their holdings, therefore the investment gains remain unrealized.

New comment by bertjk in "Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing"

bertjk — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 14:28:14 +0000

So does this mean that every sale of any building can take at least two months?

New comment by bertjk in "Incompetent Middle Management Killed Google"

bertjk — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 19:21:26 +0000

Only $800,000? Hahaha I wish it were so affordable!

New comment by bertjk in "The website vs. web app dichotomy doesn't exist"

bertjk — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:16:59 +0000

It depends on what you think YouTube's product is. Are they a service that streams videos and recommendations to consumers, or a service that streams eyeballs and tracking data to advertisers? The first one might get by with HTML5, but the second one definitely requires some JS.

New comment by bertjk in "Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS"

bertjk — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 18:27:15 +0000

How is it different? Squandering typically means spending, which means the money is re-entering the economy, typically to people at lower rungs of the wealth ladder, and is not much different than other forms of redistribution.

Unless you mean the squandered billions was through literal setting piles of money ablaze or losing it all in a poker game to bigger billionaires, it seems if redistribution was the goal then squandering should be encouraged.

New comment by bertjk in "Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?"

bertjk — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 04:58:44 +0000

Which brand / model? Please name and shame.

New comment by bertjk in "Four ways to build web apps"

bertjk — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 20:54:15 +0000

> Eliminate the need to manage and inject API tokens into containers and servers and instead authorize containers and servers to perform those operations.

What does this look like in practice? Can someone provide example scenarios that this is describing?

New comment by bertjk in "Ask HN: Do you or someone you know give money to your parents?"

bertjk — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 20:09:41 +0000

What do you mean by M's and Z's?

New comment by bertjk in "The science of having ideas in the shower"

bertjk — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 19:29:57 +0000

Can I ask, in places where showering that often is the norm, does one change into a new set of clean clothes each time? And does this basically triple the laundry chore burden?

New comment by bertjk in "Global shipping container shortage is now a container surplus"

bertjk — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:23:53 +0000

Of course, if you do warehouse products, and then try to take advantage of a squeeze, then you may get accused of price gouging.

New comment by bertjk in "Raytheon, Northrop Grumman to build Air Force scramjet hypersonic missiles"

bertjk — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 05:56:06 +0000

I understand deterrence. I am commenting on the doublespeak. "Holding a target at risk" here exactly means wielding a credible way to destroy said target.

I would argue that replacing the phrase:

> ...weapon designed to hold high-value targets at risk in contested environments from standoff distances

with:

> ...weapon designed to destroy high-value targets in contested environments from standoff distances

leaves the meaning of the quote and overall press release completely unchanged.

New comment by bertjk in "Raytheon, Northrop Grumman to build Air Force scramjet hypersonic missiles"

bertjk — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 22:43:13 +0000

I love the phrasing used in this press release.

> hypersonic weapon designed to hold high-value targets at risk

We don't destroy targets anymore. We hold our targets at risk.