Hacker News: gnicholas

The Autopilot Data That Reveals Why Teslas Crash

gnicholas — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 06:18:17 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/tesla-autopilot/the-hidden-autopilot-data-that-reveals-why-teslas-crash/68D26569-0251-4637-A035-A5131D8883B8

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41116786

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by gnicholas in "I've Been Driving an EV for a Year. I Have Only One Regret"

gnicholas — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 05:42:01 +0000

How does your car insurance treat the vehicle in terms of replacement cost? Does the low FMV predominate, or the high sticker price and high cost of repairs?

We've looked at doing this as well. Our commutes are so short that a vehicle with only 50 miles of range would work for 90% of our trips. Such a vehicle is nigh-useless to many people, but for us it's a great complement to an ICE or PHEV. It helps that we live in temperate climate, so we never really have to deal with the freezing temperatures that would knock off 20 or 30% of the range.

New comment by gnicholas in "I've Been Driving an EV for a Year. I Have Only One Regret"

gnicholas — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 03:56:50 +0000

> Leasing my Mach-E was the right thing, and more are doing it. Leasing made up over 35% of new EV financing in the first quarter of 2024, up significantly from 12% in 2023, according to global data company Experian. It makes sense for such fast-moving tech. When my lease expires in two years, I expect better batteries, chips and more.

Part of the reason leasing is popular is that the current batch of incentives offers some rebates only if you lease. Some vehicles qualify either way, but a decent chunk of them it's only if you lease. I would have liked to have seen numbers here that show it's actually better to lease. If you only have a vehicle for two years, the bit about low-maintenance is mooted, since most vehicles have little maintenance in the first couple years anyway.

I've Been Driving an EV for a Year. I Have Only One Regret

gnicholas — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 03:54:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/driving-ev-no-regrets-1833b882

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41116291

Points: 2

# Comments: 4

New comment by gnicholas in "Apple releases first preview of its long-awaited iPhone AI"

gnicholas — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:44:40 +0000

I've had Siri call people randomly when I didn't even say hey Siri. It called someone I hadn't talked to in years.

New comment by gnicholas in "Apple releases first preview of its long-awaited iPhone AI"

gnicholas — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 22:36:27 +0000

This can't come soon enough. Apple has made Siri dumber over the years. I used to be able to say "Hey Siri, play Overcast" and it would play my podcasts. Now it says "I don't see any music by Overcast in Apple Music". When I say "Hey Siri, tell the Overcast app to play" it replies "the Overcast app doesn't have any unplayed content" — even when I'm in the middle of an episode, and I have many unplayed episodes. It is dumb as rocks.

New comment by gnicholas in "The Dirty Secret of Olympic Swimming: Everyone Pees in the Pool"

gnicholas — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 22:47:14 +0000

But how can you tell that the chlorine has been depleted by doing its job?

New comment by gnicholas in "The Dirty Secret of Olympic Swimming: Everyone Pees in the Pool"

gnicholas — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 17:32:35 +0000

> According to Brian Spear, whose company handled the chemical filtration of the pools used for U.S. Olympic Swim Trials, the potent smell associated with swimming pools is the byproduct of odorless chlorine reacting with organic compounds in the water, like hair or dead skin. Or urine.

Interesting...so if a pool "smells like chlorine," that means it's very dirty?

The Dirty Secret of Olympic Swimming: Everyone Pees in the Pool

gnicholas — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 17:31:35 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/sports/olympics/swimming-paris-games-pool-780dd98f

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41088067

Points: 3

# Comments: 3

New comment by gnicholas in "Mapping Hacker News to find who knows what in the HN community"

gnicholas — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 22:51:33 +0000

Interesting. I have noticed that my most-upvoted comments relate to legal questions, which I have relatively more expertise than most HNers (I used to be a lawyer). Although I'm not among the top commenters for law/legal/lawyer according to this tool, I definitely recognize some of the top names and can recall seeing their comments in legal threads. Pretty cool tool!

New comment by gnicholas in "Apple Maps on the web launches in beta"

gnicholas — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 07:33:24 +0000

I guess it gives them leverage vis a vis Google?

I like that it tells me what lane to be in, so it's my main mapping app. Also presumably better privacy than Google Maps.

EVs Are Cheaper Than Ever. Can Car Buyers Be Won Over?

gnicholas — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 06:29:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-prices-falling-weaker-demand-4be05af6

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41043117

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by gnicholas in "Lessons from a Private Equity Earn Out: How I Lost £550K Due to a Lowercase 'C'"

gnicholas — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 23:59:00 +0000

Yes, earnouts can help bridge a valuation gap — and if the buyer is reasonable/kind, then they can create a win-win scenario. The question is whether a seller can accurately identify whether their counterparty is reasonable/kind. This is the sort of thing that lawyers should be able to help with, since they're involved in many deals. But as mentioned above, they may have misaligned interests that cloud their judgment.

New comment by gnicholas in "Lessons from a Private Equity Earn Out: How I Lost £550K Due to a Lowercase 'C'"

gnicholas — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 23:05:19 +0000

I used to be a lawyer in SV, and whenever my lawyer friends talk about earnouts, it's always in the context of what a bad deal they are for founders.

Basically, they take a lot of lawyer time to negotiate, in order to make them as close to airtight as possible. And if anything goes wrong, it takes a lot of lawyer time to resolve them. And lawyer time equals money (as much as $2k/hr, billed in 6 minute-increments). So you could pay six figures negotiating an earnout, and another six figures when things don't go as planned. That doesn't mean they're always a bad idea — just the vast majority of the time.

A candid lawyer will counsel you away from an earnout, and if a lawyer doesn't mention the potential downsides of earnouts, I'd consider that a big red flag.

New comment by gnicholas in "Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate"

gnicholas — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 03:29:44 +0000

Put simply: it would require a constitutional amendment, and those are hard to come by. The Constitution only sets a minimum age for offices — no maximum ages.

New comment by gnicholas in "Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate"

gnicholas — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 03:27:52 +0000

True, but the landed gentry (who were the only people that might end up as President) lived to be considerably older.

New comment by gnicholas in "People are shooting down Walmart delivery drones"

gnicholas — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 18:45:31 +0000

That would presumably already be against the law in many jurisdictions (cities, suburbs), so there wouldn't need to be an additional law to cover the situation where you're shooting at a drone versus a squirrel.

New comment by gnicholas in "People are shooting down Walmart delivery drones"

gnicholas — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 18:20:13 +0000

There has to be a recognition of:

• size of target

• souls on board

• possibility of intrusion/spying

• type of projectile used

A 747 is huge, filled with people, and is not spying on you. To take it down, you would need serious artillery. At the far other end of the spectrum, if some drone is zipping around your house and videoing in your windows, are you allowed to do anything to take it down? Could you throw a baseball at it? Whack it with a pool skimmer?

There needs to be some nuance to recognize the massive differences between a SAM fired at a passenger jet and a pellet gun fired at a small unmanned drone snooping around your house.

New comment by gnicholas in "People are shooting down Walmart delivery drones"

gnicholas — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 16:12:44 +0000

> The Federal Aviation Administration punishes any shots fired at drones with the same weight as if you’d opened fire on a Boeing full of passengers. Shooting at any aircraft is charged as a felony with up to 20 years in prison as the recommended penalty.

Whoa, crazy. I wonder when/how this will be updated?

New comment by gnicholas in "A Man in Silicon Valley Who's Obsessed with Failure"

gnicholas — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 06:44:08 +0000

> “I’ve actually run out of space,” Jacobsohn says. “I have 30 boxes in the attic. My wife wants to build an extra room on the house.”

My guess is she'd actually like for him to stop collecting this stuff.