Hacker News: dirtmerchant

New comment by dirtmerchant in "Amazon accused of widespread scheme to inflate prices across the economy"

dirtmerchant — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:03:46 +0000

Amazon does not claim to be “pro-consumer “

Instead they claim to be “customer-obsessed “

Obsession is rarely a net-positive for the target of the obsesser.

New comment by dirtmerchant in "The Birth-Rate Crisis Isn't as Bad as You've Heard–It's Worse"

dirtmerchant — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 14:57:15 +0000

Caregiving is an amazing opportunity. It is life-changing for the person receiving the care. It is fulfilling and soul-affirming for the person delivering the care.

New comment by dirtmerchant in "Ask HN: What books have been worth your time?"

dirtmerchant — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 13:13:23 +0000

Imagine a world where Joseph Smith had chosen to lean into his undeniable skills as a writer of historical fiction.

Instead he chose the path of religious charlatan, and western literature is all the lesser for it.

New comment by dirtmerchant in "Ask HN: What books have been worth your time?"

dirtmerchant — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 13:10:16 +0000

Imagine a world where Joseph Smith had chosen to lean into his undeniable skills as a writer of historical fiction.

Instead he chose the path of religious huckster, and western literature is all the lesser for it.

New comment by dirtmerchant in "Neopets is still around"

dirtmerchant — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 23:35:43 +0000

I can’t believe someone wrote an article about Neopets without mentioning the founder, Doug Dohring’s, ties with Scientology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Dohring

New comment by dirtmerchant in "S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered"

dirtmerchant — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 17:28:21 +0000

Please enlighten us. What do you mean by "clean up"? Keep in mind, we're all engineers here, so details matter.

I'll wait.

New comment by dirtmerchant in "Queen Elizabeth II has died"

dirtmerchant — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 22:33:25 +0000

Let's leave aside the atrocities committed by British Colonialism. In fairness, those crimes are far bigger than any one person. Instead, focus on the individual. This is a woman who brow beat her daughter in law to the such a degree, that her two choices viable options were suicide or deportation. All for the crime of being born with a trace amount of black blood in their veins. This was not a good human being.

New comment by dirtmerchant in "Attorney general: Americans should accept security risks of encryption backdoors"

dirtmerchant — Wed, 24 Jul 2019 13:34:32 +0000

A lot more. Despite the fact that the US already imprisons a disproportionate percentage of its populate, AG Barr is a vocal advocate of vastly increasing the use of detention. https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/w...

New comment by dirtmerchant in "Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?"

dirtmerchant — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 14:28:12 +0000

I have enough in my todo list without adding “learn emacs” to it.

GM is going All Electric

dirtmerchant — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 15:25:54 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wired.com/story/general-motors-electric-cars-plan-gm

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15393013

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

UtahWatch evaluates and rates the HTTPS support of almost 300 Utah websites

dirtmerchant — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 01:07:05 +0000

Article URL: https://secureutah.github.io/utahwatch/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931397

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Say Allo to Insecurity

dirtmerchant — Thu, 19 May 2016 14:16:35 +0000

Article URL: https://pthree.org/2016/05/19/say-allo-to-insecurity/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11730346

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by dirtmerchant in "Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules"

dirtmerchant — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 17:41:12 +0000

Where can I send donations to the political party that proposes a license to breed?

New comment by dirtmerchant in "Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative"

dirtmerchant — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 22:22:19 +0000

Check the fine print. Even with the self-hosted version, Atlassian is scraping the chat data for analytic purposes. This was confirmed by Atlassian support via a HIPPA audit at my last gig.