Hacker News: hamdingers

New comment by hamdingers in "Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production"

hamdingers — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 17:52:52 +0000

For comparison my cargo ebike, which is not particularly efficient, consumes about 30 Wh/mi (0.03kWh/mi) in medium assist while transporting an adult and two kids.

New comment by hamdingers in "Guerrilla bike lanes: San Francisco makes illicit infrastructure permanent (2016)"

hamdingers — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 03:44:17 +0000

He wrote the CalTrans Bicycle Guide which later became the national AASHTO Bike Guide. These guides prohibited protected bike lanes and discouraged dedicated bike infrastructure until 2012.

It is not an exaggeration, he set national cycling infrastructure policy in the US that stood for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forester_(cyclist)#1978_C...

New comment by hamdingers in "Guerrilla bike lanes: San Francisco makes illicit infrastructure permanent (2016)"

hamdingers — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 23:21:45 +0000

Modern on-street painted bike lanes were less than 10 years old in the US when Effective Cycling was published, only a handful of California cities had a few miles of them. The average US cyclist had never even seen one.

So the options at the time were riding on the sidewalk or in the street, and Effective Cycling became popular because it contained some genuinely good advice for cycling on a street with no infrastructure. Unfortunately Forester felt that this was the best and only way to safely cycle, which is why he immediately became popular with state and local DOTs who did not want to build bike lanes.

New comment by hamdingers in "Guerrilla bike lanes: San Francisco makes illicit infrastructure permanent (2016)"

hamdingers — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 20:34:47 +0000

I tried giving you the benefit of the doubt, but your word choices make it clear you're not approaching this topic in good faith. This means your anecdotes are even more worthless than normal.

Get your attempted study published and reviewed, then I'll take your observations seriously.

New comment by hamdingers in "Guerrilla bike lanes: San Francisco makes illicit infrastructure permanent (2016)"

hamdingers — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 19:48:34 +0000

Did they observe more crashes on roads that received upgrades? Doesn't sound like it, these are overall numbers. Maybe more people are walking/biking now, maybe just noise (10 and 18 ped deaths is really good for a major city already, in LA it's 160+).

Your personal theory is refuted by studies in the US, here's the classic lit review on this subject if you're interested: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2776010/

New comment by hamdingers in "Guerrilla bike lanes: San Francisco makes illicit infrastructure permanent (2016)"

hamdingers — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 18:22:19 +0000

John Forester is globally recognized as a clown who's conclusions have never been supported by real world evidence. He was employed by DOTs to tell them what they wanted to hear ("don't build infrastructure for bikes") and in doing so set US infrastructure back decades.

Vehicular cycling techniques can help in situations where there is no bicycle infrastructure, but they are not safer than good bicycle infrastructure.

New comment by hamdingers in "Google will turn off search for schools that reject AI"

hamdingers — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 17:23:47 +0000

Why would a summary of unreliable blogspam results be more reliable than the blogspam results themselves?

I find it easier to recognize bullshit from its source vs an LLM's confident and well written regurgitation of it.

New comment by hamdingers in "I went to Mexico to test-drive the cars Americans can’t buy"

hamdingers — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 17:06:36 +0000

Could probably do the same with a Nissan Leaf, would be cheaper too.

New comment by hamdingers in "Evidence of a spying operation by ICE against left-wing social movements"

hamdingers — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:59:54 +0000

Common misunderstanding. The reason is to protect themselves from government overreach (and other threats), not you or anyone else. You were supposed to get your own gun to protect yourself, that's why the right needs to extend to everyone.

(disclaimer: this is not my opinion I'm just explaining their logic)

New comment by hamdingers in "New iMac with M6"

hamdingers — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 16:49:48 +0000

The Magic Trackpad is a far better pointing device (partly because the OS is so trackpad-focused, partly due to the Mouse's poor/outdated hardware). I'm surprised Apple still isn't pushing it as the "standard."

New comment by hamdingers in "Show HN: SimCity, but with Permits"

hamdingers — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 20:07:24 +0000

The irony is our reaction to the Urban Renewal era was to introduce so many veto points and red tape to projects (both public infrastructure and private property) that we are nearly incapable of fixing the problems that era introduced.

When the NIMBYs of today work to protect and even double down on the bad decisions of that era it makes you wonder whether we've really moved on from it.

New comment by hamdingers in "DeepSeek just open-sourced its inference engine"

hamdingers — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:57:18 +0000

Does that mean US labs are banned from using or even learning from this? Assuming they still want to be used by the government.

New comment by hamdingers in "DeepSeek just open-sourced its inference engine"

hamdingers — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:53:54 +0000

Because the datacenter setups serve multiple users concurrently while your mac mini only serves one. You would also lose money hand over fist renting/buying 4xH200s just to serve deepseek flash to yourself.

New comment by hamdingers in "Tesla Roadster"

hamdingers — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 19:08:35 +0000

It's a shame the infrastructure is so poor in most of the US that a high end electric cargo bike isn't an option most people will consider. I love mine for exactly those use cases.

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

hamdingers — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:06:41 +0000

Covered by AI benchmarks. Nobody has yet made a benchmark for how good LLMs are at taking drive-thru orders, even though there are LLMs doing that.

New comment by hamdingers in "Now that information is free, what's a college campus for?"

hamdingers — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:39:13 +0000

This comment has me confused. The first sentence reinforces my point, the second one contradicts it (and isn't true in my experience, many companies want a degree, any degree). Say more?

New comment by hamdingers in "Now that information is free, what's a college campus for?"

hamdingers — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:03:16 +0000

The credential itself is usually irrelevant, most jobs that require a degree will accept any degree. In those cases it's being used as a class filter more than an indication of merit or training.

New comment by hamdingers in "Why aren't AI companies being charged for hacking?"

hamdingers — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:08:54 +0000

If you write a program that can do something illegal and it does something illegal that's on you, regardless of how sophisticated the program is.

New comment by hamdingers in "Mallet Head Angle"

hamdingers — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:20:43 +0000

In practice, like many things, it's a matter of preference. I'm firmly a novice, but find I prefer an angle while chiseling but can't tolerate it for any other use of a hammer.

Do you use your lump hammer (aka mini-sledge as I know them) for chiseling much? I know masons like them but they use steel chisels, I've been taught to avoid using metal hammers on wood chisels.

New comment by hamdingers in "Utah to let AI examine patients and prescribe medication without human oversight"

hamdingers — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:13:42 +0000

Specifically for acne treatments, seems fine.

If a 20 minute telehealth visit with a PA is a sufficient level of screening for a medication, it's hard to imagine a compelling reason why an AI system would not be.