Hacker News: dwater

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

dwater — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 16:53:43 +0000

Let's not forget 1MDB, where $4.5B of government money was looted under the pretense of investment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1MDB_scandal

New comment by dwater in "A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs"

dwater — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:23:56 +0000

It was passed into law by congress and signed by the president:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein_Files_Transparency_Act

New comment by dwater in "KDE is now my favorite desktop"

dwater — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:00:22 +0000

Can you explain explicitly what problems you have with the design in this screenshot?

New comment by dwater in "VIM Master"

dwater — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 18:30:07 +0000

And if you have line numbering on you can y123G. I learned enough Vim 25 years ago to be good enough and I'm happy I did. When I was writing code every day I picked up a little more but I've lost most of it, and what I'd want people to know who are considering it is you never need to be a Vim Master. You can learn enough Vim in 30 minutes to make it beneficial to you for the rest of your life.

New comment by dwater in "How AI conquered the US economy: A visual FAQ"

dwater — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 14:31:32 +0000

That's a very Spinal Tap argument for why it will be more than just an incremental improvement.

New comment by dwater in "Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce"

dwater — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 15:51:54 +0000

How much of the time do you interact with federal workers?

New comment by dwater in "Using Sound Waves to Put Out Fire: Story of Two George Mason University Students"

dwater — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 13:57:14 +0000

Blowing on fire extinguishes it by removing heat. This device "agitates the air enough to separate oxygen from the fuel, starving the fire."

New comment by dwater in "Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte"

dwater — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 14:19:55 +0000

Yes, the president has made it clear through his actions that $1m will make him reconsider who's an enemy and who's a friend and any corporation that hasn't made a donation yet is probably calculating what the ROI would be and how big a donation to make.

New comment by dwater in "Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte"

dwater — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 13:51:13 +0000

The trend for decades has been shrinking the public workforce and replacing them with contractors, because Republicans have said that the private sector is more efficient. So the average government office worker is not a tech, they are a contract officer. The government does not have these skills internally at the level necessary, if they want this work done they have to contract it out. And if these contracts get cancelled that money will get spent with another contractor, and given how this administration has been acting it will a contractor that bends the knee and not one that the president has publicly voiced animosity for.

New comment by dwater in ""Final Usonian Home" by Frank Lloyd Wright Completed in Ohio"

dwater — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 17:29:16 +0000

I've always found Wright's work beautiful and was a fan for some time, but after reading more about his life and work, and happening to visit Fallingwater on a very rainy day, my opinion has changed. His buildings are beautiful art pieces but they are not good homes. He was too cantankerous and self-righteous to accommodate the reality that a home needs to be maintained and changed over the years if it will continue to be functional.

New comment by dwater in "Hackers stole billions in crypto to keep North Korea’s regime afloat"

dwater — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 15:07:02 +0000

What laws are a North Korean subject to that they have broken? Who decides when a transaction was cheating or stealing without a central authority and enforcer?

New comment by dwater in "East Asian personality may stem from Ice Age Siberia 20000 yrs ago"

dwater — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 15:45:50 +0000

I found that page, but it is labelled as editorial guidelines and not an editorial article, which is what I was expecting to find from the previous description. From my reading then, what is being labelled here as "forbidden territory" is this:

"Non-maleficence and beneficence are two fundamental principles in research ethics requiring the maximization of benefits and minimization of potential harms. These principles form a core part of general frameworks for the ethical conduct of research across the sciences and humanities (for example, The World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki; The Belmont Report; the International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans; Ethics in Social Science and Humanities)."

Which I see as more along the lines of the Hippocratic Oath rather than totalitarian thought crime. If this self-described neophyte didn't understand the risks for harm created by his research, that's his fault and not that of the PhD programs.

New comment by dwater in "East Asian personality may stem from Ice Age Siberia 20000 yrs ago"

dwater — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 12:44:41 +0000

I can't find a publicly available copy of the Nature Human Behavior editorial. If you can share it I'd be happy to read it and form an opinion on it. I personally won't take City Journal's opinions at face value.

New comment by dwater in "East Asian personality may stem from Ice Age Siberia 20000 yrs ago"

dwater — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 20:39:15 +0000

For me personally I require more evidence than a few quotes that do not appear to actually be direct quotations to accept his conclusion that the reason he was rejected was PhD programs were too "woke". It is possible, but it's also possible that he misunderstood what they were trying to tell him.

New comment by dwater in "Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation"

dwater — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 14:54:10 +0000

Yes.

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/about-us/our-story

New comment by dwater in "ICC issues warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas officials"

dwater — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 16:11:27 +0000

Many scholars argue that the US uses Israel to destabilize the region so that all other countries besides Israel are unable to form a bloc and resist US hegemony, but perhaps that's what you meant by "keep the region in check".

New comment by dwater in "The EdTech Revolution Has Failed"

dwater — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:20:52 +0000

"Education only camouflages stupidity, it does not remove it."

You are arguing that low intelligence is innate, unchangeable. Which sounds very much like saying stupidity is genetic.

New comment by dwater in "Optimizing Beer Glass Shapes to Minimize Heat Transfer – New Results"

dwater — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 15:13:00 +0000

Which as the link describes is the traditional glass used for serving Kölsch in Köln. When I visited the typical service was to have servers constantly circulating with kranz trays, delivering cold beers every few minutes, so that your drink was always cold and full.

New comment by dwater in "Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac"

dwater — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 23:56:59 +0000

TCPA and CAN SPAM.

https://www.fcc.gov/rules-political-campaign-calls-and-texts

New comment by dwater in "Who died and left the US $7B?"

dwater — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 17:06:46 +0000

Seems like splitting hairs to me. If the estate is put into an LLC or similar then the death of a member doesn't involve movement of money. If the estate is owned by an individual and then inherited by their beneficiary then money moved from the deceased to the living. The Family is not a legal unit; the beneficiary doesn't have direct benefit of ownership while the owner of the estate lives.