Hacker News: hunterpayne

New comment by hunterpayne in "San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs"

hunterpayne — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 02:05:57 +0000

Please remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too. And a single fire's cost is about 3x the yearly budget of SF.

New comment by hunterpayne in "San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs"

hunterpayne — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 02:05:06 +0000

Some generation PG&E owns, some is in a shared vehicle split between PG&E and a group of private investors, some is owned by other utilities (Edison) and some is just privately owned. Remember that generation was built up over 70 years. Different plants at different times with different politics ends up with different ownership arrangements. They all bid into CAISO and independently choose to produce or not based upon prices. The generators sell futures contracts and PG&E (and Edison) buy them either in 1 day cycles or 15 minute cycles (almost always some of both).

New comment by hunterpayne in "San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs"

hunterpayne — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 02:01:49 +0000

So its completely changed since 2022 (last time I paid a PG&E bill). And the prices are multiple times more than in 2022 too. I didn't realize it had gotten so bad.

New comment by hunterpayne in "San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs"

hunterpayne — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:49:26 +0000

New comment by hunterpayne in "San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs"

hunterpayne — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:48:07 +0000

CA rates come in 4 tranches based on usage. Last I checked, its $0.10/kwh for the first tranch, 0.2 for the 2nd, 0.3 for the 3rd and 0.4 for the highest. I don't remember the cutoffs between the different levels. Its also possible those rates have changed in the last few years. But that's how CA does residential power bills. Most people never get into the 2nd tranche.

PS Where I live now, its $0.04/kwh and that's pretty normal in the rest of the US and in Latin America.

New comment by hunterpayne in "San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs"

hunterpayne — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:45:07 +0000

100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance. Also, in a low generation scenario, you are the first to be cut off to save the rest of the grid.

New comment by hunterpayne in "San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs"

hunterpayne — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:32:55 +0000

Your mistake is ignoring capacity factor. Most power generation has between 40% and 60% capacity factor. NPPs are 90+ and renewables are about 10. This is intentionally made confusing and you aren't helping because you don't understand this. I do get that this is a good faith error caused by the intention conflation of different units by PR statements.

New comment by hunterpayne in "San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs"

hunterpayne — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:30:06 +0000

The (nameplate) capacity is in watts. Its production is in watt hours. Some parties have intentionally confused these two concepts (capacity and production) to make certain power sources seem better than they are and other power sources worse than they are. The media consistently and clearly intentionally confuses these two concepts to prevent most people from learning how bad the numbers really are.

PS Capacity factor is the ratio between capacity and production. Its probably the single most important factor when comparing different generation types. Its intentionally made confusing because NPPs have 90+ cap factor and renewables have about 10ish cap factor. This makes renewables seem competitive when they are not. That's why this is always presented in a confusing manor. PPS Its also the main reason power is so expensive in CA.

New comment by hunterpayne in "San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs"

hunterpayne — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:25:05 +0000

I seriously doubt that any non-nuclear power generation in history has ever gotten to 90% capacity factor. Based on industry averages, HH is probably about 55-65% capacity. Things that effect this are: low demand periods (caused by lots of renewables), maintenance periods and low water levels at times (in winter) behind the dam.

Also, PG&E is HIGHLY regulated. Its prices, its generation and its executive compensation are all set by the state of CA. That SF wants to complain about those numbers is pretty amazing. Remember, they still don't have enough money in the tree trimming budget so that those same lines don't start fires in other parts of the state. Its the same wire that connects HH to SF. And somehow the city is going to manage that wire better?

PS The tree trimming budget is set by the state too. Why is it so low? Renewables cost money and that's one of the budgets they raided to get the funds.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Why I'm Forced to Say Farewell: Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass"

hunterpayne — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 02:30:44 +0000

Or it could be that they want to give people they don't know the benefit of the doubt. I don't really consider it a sign of good character to not do this and the vast majority of people would too. That you didn't even consider it...

New comment by hunterpayne in "Why I'm Forced to Say Farewell: Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass"

hunterpayne — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 02:28:10 +0000

Agreed, the Google the author described arriving at probably didn't exist in 2017 like stated. It probably was dead by then. But since the author agreed with the politics at the time, they ignored this. Now that things continued to degrade and political winds changed and they have to deal with the negative consequences of some of those decisions, they are taking their ball and going home.

Its really hard to take such articles seriously. Its borderline gaslighting and says a lot more about the author than Google or US politics. In fact, even though I have no idea who this person is, I don't have a good opinion of them after reading this. And that ironically was the exact opposite of the intended effect of writing this for the author.

New comment by hunterpayne in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

hunterpayne — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:06:13 +0000

They aren't really held accountable in any way for this type of stuff.

New comment by hunterpayne in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

hunterpayne — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 08:19:04 +0000

"A journalist could not make up a harmful statement about someone and get away by saying the readers should have all read the sources."

Journalists do that all the time. We even have a whole collection of words to describe it. Muckraking for instance is probably about 100 years old. Its even in the Google auto-complete in the browser I am posting from.

New comment by hunterpayne in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

hunterpayne — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 08:15:26 +0000

The other big point is that some people treat LLMs as if they are truth. We all know that they get a lot wrong, a lot of the time. Yesterday I watch both Elon post something somewhere between badly worded and wrong and another user used Grok to "prove him wrong", but this time being completely wrong in a different way. And this was a matter of law which can be looked up. Anything within throwing distance of politics won't be considered "correct" by everyone ever. Just defining "correct" is harder than it sounds and that probably isn't possible in reality.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?"

hunterpayne — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:22:16 +0000

Nope, not true at all. The average NFL CB makes the best athletes in soccer or rugby look like furniture movers, even in drills designed for soccer. Same for the majority NBA PGs. There is a lot of overlap in team sports for specific types of athleticism. The average pro you see on TV could usually beat the best player in your hometown at whatever sport they played. And not just beat, but beat badly. There are NFL DTs that can do 360 dunks and run a 40 in 4.6sec (at 300lbs) which is faster than your average pro striker in soccer.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?"

hunterpayne — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:14:01 +0000

Try joining a serious club between 12 to 14. Most soccer players that turn pro left school years ago. Sports and education aren't linked outside of the US.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?"

hunterpayne — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:10:36 +0000

The average NFL CB is the same size as a striker, but quicker and faster. And it isn't even all that close. Its the living and breathing soccer that matters. In those places, the best athletes play soccer. In the US, they play football or basketball. And if you think you can do anything at a pro level without extreme levels of athleticism, you are greatly deluded.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

hunterpayne — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 22:50:52 +0000

ML generated propaganda videos are not. An AI DC has already been destroyed by a military because it isn't harmless. And no, I'm not talking about Iran and AWS.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

hunterpayne — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 22:46:25 +0000

"If it was just a toy with no shot at making something real"

This just isn't true. It isn't about what the LLM can do, its about what the executives think the LLM can do that's the problem.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

hunterpayne — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 22:37:25 +0000

That isn't how we break up the field of AI. ML are the algorithms that are based on statistics and other numeric methods. The other algorithms are based on logic and perhaps some philosophical methodologies. We don't really have a name for that second group, its just part of AI. Then there is Reinforcement Learning which is a sub-field of ML and incorporates a Pavlovian methodology.

AI is the sum of all of these groups. Also, the "not real AI" thing is more about not real AGI. That's a very different target.