Hacker News: hunterpayne

New comment by hunterpayne in "Former German spy chief arrested for attempted treason"

hunterpayne — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 22:56:43 +0000

"they don't have free speech in the US, on Israel-related matters"

Is the sky in your world green?

New comment by hunterpayne in ""I'm Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry""

hunterpayne — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 20:04:49 +0000

It really is, but maybe not in the way you think. If you put the top Data Engineer who is an expert in making data processing large amounts of data really fast in charge of a UI, it will be terrible. But there are experts in how to design UIs. Ever met one in a PM role? Me neither.

New comment by hunterpayne in ""I'm Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry""

hunterpayne — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 19:53:17 +0000

Sounds like it worked by design to me. I feel certain that they didn't want you to be able to do that transition. Was that a well thought out decision, probably not. Think about the training most product managers have. My last product manager had a degree in Chem E. She wasn't dumb, but she didn't know the first thing about UI design or what influenced user response rates. She did know what her KPI was and number go up. Company now out of business. We are both out of a job :(

New comment by hunterpayne in ""I'm Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry""

hunterpayne — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 19:48:14 +0000

You do realize that's the case for anyone that makes almost anything right?

New comment by hunterpayne in "UK Government Body Kept Files on People Criticizing Prevent Program"

hunterpayne — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 02:13:43 +0000

That's weird, because the majority of the propaganda from the 2 right wing parties in the UK right now focuses almost exclusively on promising to stop mass-migration. Its been this way for several years.

New comment by hunterpayne in "So you think you could be an electrician?"

hunterpayne — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 09:01:59 +0000

Yea, but agreeable political opinions and being a good writer have little to nothing to do with making good predictions which is what we are weighing here.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Big Balls Now Exposed to Serious Criminal Charges in at Least Six States"

hunterpayne — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 05:50:56 +0000

Sure, but its a hit piece. Its not even hiding that its warping relevant details in a disingenuous way. For instance, they say he was "involved in a cyber-crime ring". What this means is that he had a CDN that a cyber crime ring used. Something the article explicitly states farther down. Then there is the "he was active on a discord where cybercriminals hang out". Sure, but he works in security and its common to be on such boards to understand the nature of security threats. Doesn't mean there aren't real things in the article. He did get fired (at 17) for messing up at his first job. But that's about it. That you took the summary at face value...that's on you. But I get it, you have no idea what someone in computer/ops security actually does in their job and he's on the other team so he is bad.

New comment by hunterpayne in "US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban"

hunterpayne — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 02:48:33 +0000

Your strategic insight is truly amazing. How are you not leading groups of people?

New comment by hunterpayne in "US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban"

hunterpayne — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 02:43:20 +0000

You should learn about the history of that era. Your narrative didn't in any way happen. For instance, the US signed the Paris accords which ended US involvement in January 1973. The fall of Saigon was in 1975. As for the claim, "it was destroying America"...this has no real basis in fact. It was politically convenient to leave Vietnam (much like Trump in Iraq or Biden in Afghanistan), not something forced by foreign policy or battlefield events. Its a myth perpetuated for ideological reasons. Its a bit like the myth that most young people were hippies in 1969 (they weren't) or that Woodstock was an important cultural event (it was made well known by a documentary after the fact).

The draft was very unpopular which is the one issue that the drove the support of the New Left. But after Nixon cancelled the draft, their support collapsed quickly. The war itself was never that unpopular and most of the reporting about it at the time wasn't very insightful (either way). That era is so propagandized because some people really need it to be. Otherwise, far left political movements would all be DOA because people would understand they only lead to losing elections.

And if you need more evidence, look at the results of the 1972 election. It was the 2nd most lopsided election in US history (just behind Reagan in 1984). If the myth were true, that election would have been somewhat close.

PS That era is by far the most propagandized part of US history. What is told to most people who weren't alive then about it has little to nothing to do with what actually happened. I'm not surprised someone would have your take, but its entirely false.

New comment by hunterpayne in "US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban"

hunterpayne — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 02:24:06 +0000

Its only high on the west coast. That's because of multiple complicated reasons. Basically the west coast is an independent energy zone from the rest of the US. And California (where most of the refineries are for historical reasons) hasn't made very informed choices with its energy policy. Also, the oil they use comes from abroad while the oil in the rest of the US comes from domestic sources and the rest is exported. Also, there isn't a lot of heavy sour crude in the world and that's the type of oil that yields the most diesel.

There is a lot more to it, but its too complicated to explain in a post.

New comment by hunterpayne in "US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban"

hunterpayne — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 02:08:42 +0000

Only 7% of the US economy is involved in international trade and most of that is with Canada and Mexico. The US is by far the country who is least reliant on the system of international trade. There are only 2 elements that the US doesn't have internal access to and that's it. Everything else is available internal to the US market. Basically, you need the US. The US doesn't need you and never has.

New comment by hunterpayne in "US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban"

hunterpayne — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 02:02:54 +0000

Hate to break it to you, but the science says that's not true. The rate of time enrichment takes is a negative logarithm. That's a fancy way of saying that it takes far more time to enrich 2% to 5% than it does from 40% to 90%. They were at 40% (I think). The rest of the work is actually not so hard to do and doesn't take that long. Also, the JCPA would have allowed Iran to have a nuclear weapon in about 5 years from now (sometime in the 2030s, I don't remember exactly when) if it was followed all the way through.

So Iran probably was a relatively short amount of time away from having a bomb. They probably just feared what would happen if they tested it.

Another important detail, there are basically 2 different ways to make a bomb...the U-235 way and the Pu-239 way. The first takes lots and lots of time but a bit less technical skill. The second takes far less time but a bit more skill. Its likely the Iranians had the skill to do either.

There are probably 2 dozen countries that were 30 years ago, today and will be in the future about 6 months from having a bomb. They have all the pieces but won't do the final assembly unless they fear a nuclear exchange involving them. They don't do those final steps because of the negative consequences to doing them.

PS Remember, we built two different types of bombs with less computing power than a pocket calculator.

PPS Your understanding of these issues is completely wrong. The JCPA was more of a stop gap than anything. Saying Trump is handling everything correctly is wrong but so is saying that leaving the JCPA in place was a good idea. It was just the best Obama could negotiate because nobody thought he had the guts to invade Iran.

New comment by hunterpayne in "US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban"

hunterpayne — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:43:15 +0000

Fun fact...if your GDP growth is less than your rate of inflation (currently 3.8%), then your economy is shrinking and you are getting poorer. This also means your standard of living is decreasing.

New comment by hunterpayne in "US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban"

hunterpayne — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:37:37 +0000

None of this is historically true at all. We learn history so we can have informed opinions about trends like this. Nixon was called the "imperial president" because he had more power than any US president since. After that, executive power was reduced significantly until Obama (who expanded it more than any president in US history). Yes, we can talk about why that was and there are reasons Obama did that, but he still did it. Trump just increased at bit over that.

PS They are called "Executive Orders". Decrees are things monarchs give so I expect you aren't an American which explains your lack of understanding of US politics.

New comment by hunterpayne in "US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban"

hunterpayne — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:25:40 +0000

Maybe you will learn to look at things from other people's point of view someday. To an American, you are in the..."with friends like these, who needs enemies" category. You are literally impossible to please, an endless source of complains and slights and seem intent on destroying your own economies. If the US decides someday to not defend you, the only people to blame are yourselves. You have done everything in your power at every step to alienate Americans, over and over again for many decades. Seriously...not satire and I am not kidding at all.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Sustainable energy without the hot air (2008)"

hunterpayne — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 06:43:02 +0000

He did get it exactly right. 1500 pages of detailed analysis and you have people here making up nonsense to claim it isn't accurate. The posts on this article make me lose my faith in humanity...or at least HN...total clown show here tonight.

New comment by hunterpayne in "US sanctions force The Netherlands off Microsoft and toward alternative NixOS"

hunterpayne — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 04:21:14 +0000

The Judiciary is one of the 3 branches of the US government. Perhaps English isn't your 1st language, but the courts are always part of the government and the word government would include the courts in English. No, there is no other interpretation of the word government in English.

New comment by hunterpayne in "500k facial scans at UK stations yield no arrests, 1 false positive"

hunterpayne — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:36:10 +0000

We were. Until about somewhere between 2016 and 2018 at which time crime rates went up significantly. Between the 1970s and the mid 2010s crime consistently went down, year over year across almost every big city. In the last decade however, almost 30 years of crime reduction got reversed in some places. Its inconsistent as some areas show this pattern, others don't. And the main differentiating factor is mostly tactical and on the ground. Meaning it is directly about changes to policing policy. Trying to ignore that this is happening is just gaslighting and it is a major reason that drove voting patterns in the last election.

PS Tracking crime stats is tough as property crime is inconsistently reported. This is why you often see criminologists take murder stats and only murder stats in their analysis and then estimate other crime stats back from that. Basically, once people realize the police won't investigate property crime, they stop reporting things that aren't insured.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Nicholas Polson has authored 258 academic papers in 2026 so far"

hunterpayne — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 21:24:20 +0000

Because the exact opposite will happen. The idea that allowing AI reviewers will increase accuracy is probably foolhardy. People being people will get lazy and review less by hand if at all. And the LLMs will miss plenty of things. Then those papers will get into the training sets for the next LLMs. I think you can see where this goes overtime.

New comment by hunterpayne in "Nicholas Polson has authored 258 academic papers in 2026 so far"

hunterpayne — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 21:11:47 +0000

Because they won't. The various algorithms that create the "publish or perish" incentives actually reward this. Academic reputation isn't a term in those algorithms, so it isn't rewarded. Same for verifying other's papers and other parts of science and research that aren't actually publishing papers. This is the cause of the reproducibility crisis in academic.

"Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome"