Hacker News: devilbunny

New comment by devilbunny in "Three Theses on the Literacy Crisis"

devilbunny — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:22:02 +0000

One major shift has been the death of newspapers. When that was the primary way to get information about the world around you, it wasn’t just readers who benefited - it created a steady stream of capable, workmanlike writers. They weren’t literary geniuses, but they were capable of stringing together a few paragraphs of readable prose on a deadline. And they got paid for it; how many people can make a living off their Substack?

New comment by devilbunny in "It's a shame what's happened to radio"

devilbunny — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:18:13 +0000

Since you worked in radio, at WZZQ no less, you probably would enjoy the story of the earlier WZZQ.

https://www.pbs.org/show/wzzq-the-movie/

New comment by devilbunny in "The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time"

devilbunny — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:49:24 +0000

It is vanishingly unlikely, or would have been, but given that the US has started examining people’s social media, it is not unreasonable to think tit-for-tat might happen.

Again, I agree it is very, very unlikely. But it’s possible, and in an age of mass outrage it isn’t incomprehensible that some activist, somewhere, might latch onto something they don’t like and just doggedly pursue someone. It does happen.

New comment by devilbunny in "The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time"

devilbunny — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 22:55:10 +0000

Because they have identifiable owners who might wish to travel to Europe and not risk someone deciding to make an example of them.

New comment by devilbunny in "Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s"

devilbunny — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 21:33:22 +0000

In high school, I was invited every time even tangential friends wanted to go bowling because I was the only person who knew how to keep score on paper (the nearby lanes didn’t have electronic scoring). And that was over 30 years ago.

New comment by devilbunny in "Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s"

devilbunny — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 21:21:24 +0000

That one relay is the only connection between the pinsetting machine and the scoring system.

New comment by devilbunny in "Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet”, is retiring"

devilbunny — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 18:41:30 +0000

I first heard about this internet thing from Cliff Stoll in The Cuckoo’s Egg. I got on a few years later.

For all that we complain, it’s still the most amazing thing ever.

New comment by devilbunny in "Brit supermarket giant triples down on facial recog to nab shoplifters"

devilbunny — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 01:20:45 +0000

I, for one, don’t care if thieves are excluded from stores. They can buy and get curbside delivery in the parking lot, and if that is a little more expensive than shopping for yourself, well, you’ve made everyone else’s groceries just that little bit more expensive for years while getting them for yourself for free.

New comment by devilbunny in "Farmer, marketer at odds over sales of white nectarines"

devilbunny — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 21:35:18 +0000

This is how legal reasoning should work.

New comment by devilbunny in "The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing"

devilbunny — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 03:14:07 +0000

Yeah, before capitalism you just worked until you died, or your children took care of you. That’s still an option, but you must have kids and they must like you.

New comment by devilbunny in "The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing"

devilbunny — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 03:10:00 +0000

> If a criminal misuses his own resources to commit crimes and then you take that away from them, it only affects him.

There is certainly a case to be made here for “if it seems too good to be true…”, but realistically we are not going to impoverish the retired teachers of X state because X state chose poorly.

New comment by devilbunny in "The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing"

devilbunny — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:16:31 +0000

The owners of corporations are mostly pension funds and the like.

New comment by devilbunny in "Bring back crappy forums"

devilbunny — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 05:07:36 +0000

One thing that Slashdot moderation got right is that you can’t be more than +5 or less than -1. Groupthink is much less forceful with those limitations.

New comment by devilbunny in "Study suggests most Americans would be healthier without daylight saving time (2025)"

devilbunny — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:21:03 +0000

Cape York is also 10 degrees west of Brisbane. That alone gets sunset 40 minutes later even if you stay at the same latitude.

New comment by devilbunny in "Study suggests most Americans would be healthier without daylight saving time (2025)"

devilbunny — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:13:31 +0000

> The average is like past midnight

Jesus, for what age group?

I'm an outlier because I have to be at work at 6:30 AM daily (so I get up around 5:15), so staying up past 10 PM is a rarity and I see midnight maybe two or three times a year. I don't think I've slept past 8 AM in the past decade, even on vacation. But I haven't even frequently stayed up past midnight since my mid-twenties, and even then didn't do so every night. I'd have been too sleep-deprived.

New comment by devilbunny in "How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)"

devilbunny — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 03:33:49 +0000

Kroger can and does run nice stores. Kroger Signature, Harris Teeter are two I've been in relatively recently.

You're also only going to find those in the same kinds of places you'd find a Trader Joe's or Costco - only in the nicest parts of town unless it's very densely populated or a small but rich enclave.

New comment by devilbunny in "Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads"

devilbunny — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:58:20 +0000

Yeah, it's one of the products where you are clearly paying an Apple tax for the hardware, but OTOH it's also one of the products where it's clearest that the Apple tax is paying for software that's both good and consumer-friendly. It's not a hackable box, but if you want to just hand something to a non-technical person to use in their house, it's considerably better than the alternatives.

New comment by devilbunny in "Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics"

devilbunny — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 13:43:44 +0000

Somehow wires got crossed here. I'm saying that once-a-week cleaning won't be 4 hours each time.

It is expensive, just not four times as expensive as a once-a-month job.

New comment by devilbunny in "Did my old job only exist because of fraud?"

devilbunny — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:59:03 +0000

> capitalism is inherently corrupt

People are inherently corrupt. That's just life. The Soviet Union was corrupt as hell.

If you want to put down capitalism, feel free, but don't blame it for something that isn't unique to it.

New comment by devilbunny in "Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics"

devilbunny — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 01:09:38 +0000

If you clean a house once a month, it will take longer than doing the same thing once a week. You will end up spending more hours total, but it won't be four hours per visit, more like one or two. You spread the tasks out. Clean kitchen and den one visit. Clean bedrooms one visit. Clean bathrooms one visit. Or whatever.

The total cleaning time (and thus price) goes up, but it's not 4x what you're getting now, which a whole-house cleaning once a month would be.