Hacker News: giarc

New comment by giarc in "U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications"

giarc — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:49:13 +0000

Podcaster Scott Galloway puts it best. The US is like a sports team that gets to draft the best players in the world and yet they are doing their best to stop that. Top talent from almost every country wants to come live and work in the US, producing incredible companies and advancing tech. But because most of them are not-white, the US wants to stop that.

New comment by giarc in "Pollen Robotics (Hugging Face) Microduck"

giarc — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:43:56 +0000

Or can it dock itself on a charger?

It appears to have a battery pack so a docking station is unlikely but hopefully can design and open source something.

New comment by giarc in "Oceans hit highest temperature on record"

giarc — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 21:37:06 +0000

I fell in the same trap "So it'll be 25C in summer instead of 23C!". Sometimes it's small things that make you realize how small changes make big impacts. For example, I was watching a documentary about caribou in Northern Canada. A whole herd starved and died because of a slight warming during winter. Normally they dig through the snow to find food in the winter. But a slight warming meant the snow fell as freezing rain and left a thick layer of ice on top of the snow. The caribou couldn't dig through it and therefore couldn't eat and they died. A tiny change in temperature wiped out a huge colony.

New comment by giarc in "Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down"

giarc — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 14:10:47 +0000

Motor vehicles is funny - tariff the vehicles owned by American companies (GM, Ford, Stellantis). I wonder how the CEOs of those companies react or communicate with the White House their feelings on this.

New comment by giarc in "Remote workers report the highest well-being in study of 7,700 employees"

giarc — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 21:49:08 +0000

>I guess that's just me, though.

It's definitely not just you. It's the "camera on" portion that exhausts me. I do frequent Teams audio calls throughout the day as my team is across a very large area. When I interview candidates, it's generally camera on and I can only do 1-2 day.

New comment by giarc in "OpenRouter is joining Stripe"

giarc — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 21:45:12 +0000

That's either sarcasm as you are not a fan of Stripe, or actual joy if you are an employee of Stripe holding stock.

New comment by giarc in "Choosing an AI model: one prompt, 11 models, different results"

giarc — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:45:25 +0000

I was thinking the same thing, but I suspect there was something more to it. Check out this sentence from the page.

>Our default skills also include some UI design guidance, mainly to avoid known gotchas (e.g., the now-dreaded purple AI slop) and get the model to reason about the visual identity appropriate for the user’s ask. But beyond that, each model is free to go build what it thinks we’ll want.

New comment by giarc in "Gemini 3.7 Flash"

giarc — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:36:16 +0000

Can you share what your prompt was for that?

New comment by giarc in "Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network"

giarc — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:19:58 +0000

How? Knowing the location of trains is pretty important.

New comment by giarc in "Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries"

giarc — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:23:35 +0000

I think blankets are harder simply because of their size. I often have to "whip" the blanket to get the other end to properly fold on itself. I also use a much large space because of the size (often the floor). Could a robot fold a big blanket? Probably? But what is the success rate going to be? If I just have to refold it 50% of the time, is that actually worth it?

New comment by giarc in "German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells"

giarc — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:20:24 +0000

As noted in the article, plastic buttons displaced buttons made from clamshells long ago. I doubt a market for zebra mussel buttons could make any dent on the population.

New comment by giarc in "Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries"

giarc — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:03:37 +0000

What if it breaks something and you still need to clean your house? This thing does not look like it's going to much of anything successfully.

New comment by giarc in "Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries"

giarc — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:02:11 +0000

I watched the promo video somewhere and when folding the blanket, the video cuts and edits were very suspicious. I doubt it can fold a blanket at all.

New comment by giarc in "Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market"

giarc — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 20:25:39 +0000

I think that is key. I used to browse Best Buy's website for various electronics and it was typically pretty good. I knew that somewhere, a Best Buy product buyer was evaluating the products with at least a minimum set of expectations. Then they opened their marketplace to 3rd party sellers and it's the same low cost, low quality crap on every other site.

New comment by giarc in "The "Bizarre Headgear" exhibit at the Sam Noble museum"

giarc — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 20:59:07 +0000

When I read the title, I thought this was "headgear" as in dental appliances and tools. And to be honest, that would also be a cool exhibit.

New comment by giarc in "BYD is bringing its 5-min 'Flash' electric car charging to Canada"

giarc — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:32:06 +0000

https://driving.ca/auto-news/driver-info/proposed-us-bill-ta...

New comment by giarc in "BYD is bringing its 5-min 'Flash' electric car charging to Canada"

giarc — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:29:12 +0000

Canadians also hate seagulls, so I wonder if they will do the same (although I'm not sure the Seagull was intended to come to Canada).

New comment by giarc in "Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism"

giarc — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:45:50 +0000

I agree that the most obvious answer is probably correct, and I think that it was a poorly worded statement, however, I haven't seen them correct it yet (doesn't mean they haven't.... just that I haven't seen it).

New comment by giarc in "Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism"

giarc — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 13:04:58 +0000

Fellow AB resident here.... then what do you make of their claim that 99.2% (or whatever the number was) of residents in Sylvan Lake, Drumheller etc signed the petition? Has to be completely fabricated right?

New comment by giarc in "Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism"

giarc — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 13:03:49 +0000

She lives in a different country, Canadian laws can't do anything about it. I'm not sure what the answer is to this, but it's a real problem.