Hacker News: georgeecollins

New comment by georgeecollins in "Sixteen Years After Deepwater Horizon, Deep Sea Life Shows Few Signs of Recovery"

georgeecollins — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:21:36 +0000

There is no oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast. There is plenty of oil there, they just care about different things. I agree it would be good to get rid gas cars, but you can't just outlaw them-- for practical and legal reasons. Maybe have the price of every environmental harm added to each gallon and let people adjust their habits accordingly?

New comment by georgeecollins in "90% of US working hours are spent on tasks not covered well by AI benchmarks"

georgeecollins — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:00:26 +0000

Perhaps in general but for knowledge workers or creative people, what is productive is hard to measure. That also happens to be the most valuable work.

New comment by georgeecollins in "CPI-U rises 7.2% annualized in September (3.7% YoY)"

georgeecollins — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:26:16 +0000

IMO he is doing a terrible job, full stop.

New comment by georgeecollins in "ICE Planning $100M 'Nightmare' Domestic Spy Program"

georgeecollins — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 17:43:09 +0000

Many citizens and some politicians spoke out.

New comment by georgeecollins in "CPI-U rises 7.2% annualized in September (3.7% YoY)"

georgeecollins — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 14:49:49 +0000

Stop trying to manipulate the economy before the midterms and just let the problem play out.

New comment by georgeecollins in "Chapter 1 of "Ways of Seeing" by John Berger (1972)"

georgeecollins — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 16:12:43 +0000

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

New comment by georgeecollins in "Deloitte falsified documents to evade tax on Abramovich's wealth"

georgeecollins — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 16:00:49 +0000

"when the USA government stole my money from a bank transfer claiming suspicion of whatever"

Details please! That is really interesting.

New comment by georgeecollins in "US imposes sanctions on ICC hours after former judge wins Nobel Peace Prize"

georgeecollins — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 17:10:41 +0000

This makes me think of all the guys with Punisher logos on their trucks. Very American.

New comment by georgeecollins in "Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program"

georgeecollins — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:34:13 +0000

Why "unlisted burgeoning tech companies"?? H1 Bs are going to big, publicly listed US companies. Which by the way, 60%+ of Americans own a stake in due to their 401ks, pensions, IRAs etc. So I think bringing in top talent from around the world could be really good for the average American.

New comment by georgeecollins in "The cost of lies: A Mineserver story"

georgeecollins — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:50:13 +0000

The thing that was / is a drag about Kickstarter was in the early days when some complete randos raised quite a bit more than the mine server project raised to make a “spiritual successor “ to a game I designed. Anyone who knew better knew they couldn’t, whatever they believed. Would have been nice to see that money go to a real game or a real developer.

New comment by georgeecollins in "What Meta got right with Muse"

georgeecollins — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 23:44:51 +0000

FB has a huge advantage launching any consumer app over any start up. Even ones that have higher valuations. If you think the market position isn't important, imagine what would happen if Apple changes their TOS such that Muse stops working as well on their devices. Or take it off the store because it's "dangerous".

New comment by georgeecollins in "Why the Bronze Age Collapsed"

georgeecollins — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 17:26:37 +0000

I read Bernal Diaz's book about the conquest of Mexico and in it he says that formations of Aztec warriors would break when a conquistador would charge into formations on an armored horse. They thought the horse and rider was one sort of monster. It was also a combination of a bunch of things they had never seen before: steel weapons, armor, the power and mobility of a trained war horse.

I don't think they could have taken control of the Aztec empire without allies and a lot of political intrigue. I think a good modern analogy was how the US quickly took over Afghanistan after 911. You could say we did it with a small group of special forces and a lot of air power. But really it is more like there were already (warlord) factions ready to strike at the Taliban who knew they could win with air support and everything that would come after. For the Aztecs, the role of the cavalry was like those B52 strikes.

New comment by georgeecollins in "What reversing, modernising old games tells us about the economic impact of AI"

georgeecollins — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 03:34:03 +0000

There is also trademark law to consider.

New comment by georgeecollins in "What reversing, modernising old games tells us about the economic impact of AI"

georgeecollins — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 02:57:23 +0000

Activision bought Infocom. We did have an archive of the Infocom servers which was kind of amazing. I remember notes for an adventure game set on the Titanic. There was a design document for Leather Goddesses of Phobos II.

New comment by georgeecollins in "What reversing, modernising old games tells us about the economic impact of AI"

georgeecollins — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 01:43:57 +0000

There is more value in remastering old games than you might think. And there always has been. One of my first gigs in the game industry was producing an Infocom Clasics CD-ROM at Activision. That’s games from the seventies and eighties re-released in the nineties.

New comment by georgeecollins in "What reversing, modernising old games tells us about the economic impact of AI"

georgeecollins — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 01:40:13 +0000

Something tells me you are not a lawyer who specializes in IP law.

New comment by georgeecollins in "What reversing, modernising old games tells us about the economic impact of AI"

georgeecollins — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:13:44 +0000

I don’t think reverse engineering a commercial game is legal. I don’t know if it is right or wrong, or if anyone can stop it.

New comment by georgeecollins in "Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain"

georgeecollins — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 13:32:53 +0000

Not going to do the math but in California gas is expensive and tax rebates still exist. Where I work there is a charger at most parking spaces.

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/gas-taxes-state/

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/08/07/governor-newsom-announces-...

New comment by georgeecollins in "How we learned to stop worrying and love campus surveillance"

georgeecollins — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 03:55:17 +0000

Maybe what has happened is Universities have become too rich and economically important to be places of free speech and independent thought. If so, some other institution will have to take on that role.

New comment by georgeecollins in "28% of job postings on company career sites have been open over 90 days"

georgeecollins — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 18:38:31 +0000

True. But if your job is HR taking a long time to hire people and maintaining a high level of turnover is probably good for your job security. I don't think it is overt, but I have noticed that large orgs have a lot of HR process, small companies just try hard to maintain staff.