Hacker News: empraptor

New comment by empraptor in "Tesla Roadster"

empraptor — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 22:36:15 +0000

could be that Tesla making fans believe their level 2 driving automation is better than it actually is and marketing BS terms like Autopilot and FSD contributing to the fatal accident stat. even if the car itself is rated safe by IIHS, isn't that mostly about how well driver and passenger of the car fare when they are involved in different types of accidents? the safety rating wouldn't take into account whether the manufacturer has done its best to accurately communicate capability of its driving automation system to its customers. and i think pedestrian or passengers of other cars dying is counted under the fatal accident stat.

and if you've been in Teslas that are a few years old, you might have experienced phantom braking. random hard braking for no apparent reason. i try to avoid being behind Teslas on the road if i can help it.

New comment by empraptor in "Integer multiplication below n log n"

empraptor — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:18:29 +0000

reveal at the end of the story: the mysterious purpose for which all of that was built? high frequency trading.

New comment by empraptor in "Why hasn’t Sam Bankman-Fried been arrested yet?"

empraptor — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 21:51:12 +0000

my impression of prosecutors is that they are a narcissist bunch who are in that role because tough-on-crime reputation they earn by putting ppl in prison gives them a leg up in future political career. so more publicity a case gets and less resources the defendant has, more attractive the case is to prosecutors i would think.

New comment by empraptor in "Testing Microsoft's Windows Dev Kit 2023"

empraptor — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 21:08:46 +0000

Microsoft had preview for ARM64 Azure VMs earlier this year. Not sure if they've gone beyond that.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/now-in-preview-azure-...

New comment by empraptor in "What makes a senior engineer? Writing software vs. building systems"

empraptor — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 04:45:19 +0000

virtuoso? i'd settle for ability to think and learn. i have been surprised by someone hired as senior software engineer - two levels above me - struggle to understand simple multithreading and synchronization concepts even when provided with an article that gives comprehensive overview of the OS's scheduler.

New comment by empraptor in "Bikes, not self driving cars, are the technological gateway to urban progress"

empraptor — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:08:15 +0000

> I've seen bike lanes added to roads, and almost no one is happy. There's always idiot drivers and bikers and every now and then someone gets hurt or killed.

which is why we should allow only bikes and public transport in large cities.

New comment by empraptor in "Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)"

empraptor — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 07:38:29 +0000

i've always wondered why "Sent from my xxxxx" lines are tacked on. are those intended to blame poorly composed messages and typos on bad typing experience provided by mobile devices?

New comment by empraptor in "DOE to invest up to $165M to advance domestic geothermal energy"

empraptor — Sat, 27 Aug 2022 02:30:44 +0000

I don't know what the current state of thermophotovoltaics are but maybe that's one way to go about it. Or maybe the temps are too low for that. Not sure.

https://www.science.org/content/article/thermal-batteries-co...

UPDATE: Papers about geothermal source temperatures refer to tempratures up to 180°C. The thermal battery article above refer to TPV setups that use 1400°C source and efforts are being made to push temps to 2400°C for higher efficiency.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/geothermal-...

New comment by empraptor in "A fake job offer took down Axie Infinity"

empraptor — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 05:01:10 +0000

they said odds were good, but maybe they're not much of a gambler. and sounds like they views cryptocurrencies as being something akin to scammy MLM or Ponzi scheme rather than an investment.

i haven't bought any myself. i just enjoy reading tech and economics stories in general so i've been reading about cryptocurrencies since 2013 or so. but i don't intend to buy any unless one fulfills some need i have better than other solutions. and i certainly don't intend to hold onto any if i can help it.

New comment by empraptor in "A fake job offer took down Axie Infinity"

empraptor — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 20:33:33 +0000

and this is part of why i think cryptocurrencies should have died before large number of people wasted their money on it. for the average user without the time/knowledge/patience to handle cryptos "properly", the choice is between losing money while handling this shit yourself or losing money while trusting someone else to do it right.

New comment by empraptor in "Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity"

empraptor — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 22:20:34 +0000

i'm not sure why people keep thinking that there is a hard limit to number of bitcoins that can be mined when the network can be updated to allow more coins to be mined.

New comment by empraptor in "Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA"

empraptor — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 00:53:25 +0000

the few ivy league graduates i've worked with were idiots with no original thought who constantly needed handholding. they were good at parroting other people's opinions & ideas and at schmoozing with the boss so maybe those are the good ideas that students at their school had.

New comment by empraptor in "Elon Musk Tesla email: Remote work is no longer acceptable"

empraptor — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 06:02:51 +0000

Tesla has a culture of working 21/7 and sleeping at the factory. this is just typical asshatery from a ceo who gets paid millions while jerking off at the factory 24/7 and expects his employees to put in the same hours. the sooner Tesla goes bankrupt the better.

New comment by empraptor in "Jack Dorsey leaves Twitter's board of directors"

empraptor — Fri, 27 May 2022 20:01:21 +0000

i wouldn't have issues with him if that's what he claimed he was doing instead of trying to pass off every engineering feat of Tesla and SpaceX as his own. but the piece of shit has made himself the stereotypical entitled executive type by taking credit for other people's work.

New comment by empraptor in "Jack Dorsey leaves Twitter's board of directors"

empraptor — Thu, 26 May 2022 01:06:58 +0000

i've never trusted him ever since he promoted Leap Motion as some great piece of tech. and his notion that two cheap ass cameras should be sufficient to get self driving up to par with human drivers really sealed the deal. he's a fucking idiot. maybe he gets coached by people who actually know what's going on when he does pr shit.

New comment by empraptor in "Consumer prices rose 8.5% in March – highest since 1981"

empraptor — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 09:03:05 +0000

report on wheat market outlook from Jan 2021 is interesting to peruse. there's certainly no one simple answer to why the price rose, but it does indicate higher consumption and lower yield overall in the world (higher yield in Russia but lower in China and Argentina) played a role as well as US wheat planting acreage that had been trending down in recent years. and that rising price of corn meant wheat stocks were used as substitute in feed.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/100227/whs-21a.pdf...

New comment by empraptor in "She was missing a chunk of her brain – it didn’t matter"

empraptor — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 07:11:18 +0000

sounds like an episode of House.

New comment by empraptor in "Consumer prices rose 8.5% in March – highest since 1981"

empraptor — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 23:15:35 +0000

from what i've been reading up on the subject, the thin margin that service sector businesses operate on means many failed despite government intervention and the rest raised prices in order to make profit on lower volume, higher materials cost, and higher labor cost.

New comment by empraptor in "Consumer prices rose 8.5% in March – highest since 1981"

empraptor — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 19:09:22 +0000

from what I understand, the increased demand was at least partly due to shift in spending from services so goods during the pandemic.

New comment by empraptor in "Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says"

empraptor — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 22:27:59 +0000

"...helped the adoption of renewables and made them cheaper." How so?

Miners are chasing profit margin so they'll use whatever's cheapest. If that's renewable where some of them are, so be it. And if everyone else start reducing use of coal and that becomes cheap, miners who exploits that to derive higher profit margin will grow faster I imagine.

I would attribute growth and economies of scale that renewables have achieved to renewable proponents, industries, government subsidies and loan prorams. Crypto miners are energy consumers and some of them use renewable energy. But how do we go from there to miners being some kind of force for good in this context?