Hacker News: kevinpet

New comment by kevinpet in "HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)"

kevinpet — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 16:16:21 +0000

I'm mostly a libertarian, but claiming "we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes" when you aren't should put you in jail for fraud.

New comment by kevinpet in "Sergey Brin Funds Misleading Ballot Measure to Negate Wealth Tax"

kevinpet — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 04:33:02 +0000

This seems like a low effort opinion piece that is unlikely to generate useful discussion here.

New comment by kevinpet in "Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit (2023)"

kevinpet — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:31:08 +0000

The article seems to be more of a review of the new book than any attempt to actually discuss the topic.

New comment by kevinpet in "Privilege is bad grammar"

kevinpet — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 05:25:42 +0000

The title of the article cites bad grammar, but the example doesn't have any grammatical problems. It has clear typos and questionable abbreviations but it doesn't have any of the bad grammar signs that grate on me, like comprise vs. compose or over utilization of "utilize" where "use" would do just fine.

You might say that "let's circle back" is annoying business jargon, but it is a very common phrase and aside from the typos correctly applied in this example.

New comment by kevinpet in "A 26,000-year astronomical monument hidden in plain sight (2019)"

kevinpet — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:13:44 +0000

Not even in the northern hemisphere. Celestial navigation is about shooting altitudes for known bright stars. At least three ideally five. This could include Polaris, but it doesn't need to. Source: watched some old training videos about celestial navigation after reading Fate is the Hunter a while back.

New comment by kevinpet in "Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales"

kevinpet — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 20:05:33 +0000

It's a lot cheaper to rent a trailer.

New comment by kevinpet in "10 years of personal finances in plain text files"

kevinpet — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 22:14:36 +0000

That core idea is simple. But the details, such as credit and debit having the opposite meaning to casual bank account accounting, and the use of a variety of accounts makes things not intuitive.

New comment by kevinpet in "Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed"

kevinpet — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 17:33:43 +0000

Reviews by independent experts about the quality of this guy's life? I think he can be considered an authority on that subject.

New comment by kevinpet in "Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge"

kevinpet — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 16:40:59 +0000

That's not a philosophical argument at odds with our current understanding of copyright law. That's exactly what this judge found copyright law currently is and it's quoted in the article being discussed.

New comment by kevinpet in "Seine reopens to Paris swimmers after century-long ban"

kevinpet — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 21:57:19 +0000

One could be carried there

New comment by kevinpet in "US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels"

kevinpet — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 18:38:55 +0000

This seems a little weird to me, but direct commissions like this are pretty common for professionals like lawyers, clergy, and doctors.

New comment by kevinpet in "U.S. citizen in Arizona detained by immigration officials for 10 days"

kevinpet — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 19:30:04 +0000

They never claimed to be the party of personal freedom. There's a libertarian contingent within the GOP that wishes they could persuade people to go that direction, but unsuccessfully for decades.

They have claimed to be the party of small government. And even someone who disagrees with them can recognize the "small government" within their idealized view means government that is only involved in the things that government should be involved in. It doesn't necessarily (or in practice ever) mean less spending.

New comment by kevinpet in "Demolishing the Fry's Electronics in Burbank"

kevinpet — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 04:37:31 +0000

I was confused when I moved out to Phoenix especially because the logos are pretty similar. Turns out Fry's electronics was started by the sons of the founder of Fry's food.

New comment by kevinpet in "TSMC begins producing 4-nanometer chips in Arizona"

kevinpet — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 17:07:41 +0000

There's no problem with residential water use in Phoenix. There are still farms that could be shut down if water is needed.

The biggest problem seems to be parochial NIMBYs. People don't like that TSMC needed to bring in Taiwanese workers to staff up the plant. They are currently posting AI generated renderings of factories with billowing smoke stacks when talking about the proposed Amkor semiconductor packaging plant in Peoria.

New comment by kevinpet in "Jaguar Cars rebranding without any cars"

kevinpet — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 07:46:00 +0000

It was the other way around -- the Pepsi Challenge was what motivated New Coke.

New comment by kevinpet in "Costco’s butter recall, explained"

kevinpet — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 01:18:34 +0000

By "anymore" do you mean for the past 600 years? Because almond milk goes back about as far as we have cookbooks that might mention it in english.

New comment by kevinpet in "National Park Service Will Cite AWD Drivers for Driving on 4WD-Only Trails"

kevinpet — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 08:00:49 +0000

I'm pretty sure all recent Subaru's (other than BRZ, which is a totally different platform) have wheel spin control using the braking system.

New comment by kevinpet in "State Farm announces major change affecting tens of thousands households in CA"

kevinpet — Sat, 04 May 2024 21:10:49 +0000

Brilliant, now it's not just people who live in cities subsidizing rich people who choose to live in high fire risk suburban borders but everyone who drives too.

New comment by kevinpet in "Two hunters from the same lodge afflicted with sporadic CJD: is CWD to blame?"

kevinpet — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 04:05:22 +0000

I would agree, except that I just watched a How To Cook That episode featuring rat lung worms transmission from slugs.

New comment by kevinpet in ""Strong focus on aesthetics" contributed to collapse of Norway timber bridge"

kevinpet — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 00:09:47 +0000

If you look at the picture while it's standing, the design has the diagonal braces all running the same way. Any homeowner who has knocked together a wooden gate could recognize that as abnormal. If the bridge were standing, I might think "huh, I guess the did the math and it works fine like this". But since it's scattered across the riverbed, I guess they didn't.