Hacker News: klaff

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

klaff — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 05:52:24 +0000

I've seen pull through charger spots at the Rivian stations where I charged my VW.

New comment by klaff in "Why Is Tech Billionaire Marc Andreessen So Mad?"

klaff — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 19:55:51 +0000

"Tactical fabulism" is an interesting descriptor.

New comment by klaff in "BYD sold more EVs last month than the US did all quarter"

klaff — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 23:50:32 +0000

Every EV I've seen drawings or teardowns for are built this way.

New comment by klaff in "‘You Are Done’: The letter sent to King by the F.B.I (2014)"

klaff — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 05:11:02 +0000

I would have thought American liberals (like me) would mostly view race as a social construct and therefore not immutable. However I am not an expert in sociology and my experience must be shaped by not being part of any visible minority.

New comment by klaff in "‘You Are Done’: The letter sent to King by the F.B.I (2014)"

klaff — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 18:42:39 +0000

Thanks for the link. I'm a white American who has been lucky enough to visit Sri Lanka! I don't agree with your conclusion that American racism is inescapable, or uniquely so. I believe we can make progress on bigotries - in particular, despite the current and despicable wave against people who are transgender, non-binary, or otherwise queer, I believe we have made significant progress in reducing homophobia over the last 5 decades (the ones I can remember!). On the negative side, I did reach the conclusion (due to what I've seen during the Trump era) that much of what I thought was progress on racism was simply racists learning to code-switch. That part's depressing.

New comment by klaff in "The Grid, a factory-scale robot in Massachusetts that builds PCBs on demand"

klaff — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 16:12:38 +0000

Digikey ships from Minnesota and Mouser ships from Texas. If you drove between them you'd go through eastern Kansas.

New comment by klaff in "‘You Are Done’: The letter sent to King by the F.B.I (2014)"

klaff — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 15:44:57 +0000

St. Louis has the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delmar_Divide.

The Warmth of Other Suns is a very good book for filling some of that hole in your education. I am not sure if I wasn't taught about the Great Migration at all or was taught about it for 10 minutes but definitely did not get out of school with much understanding of this aspect of American history.

New comment by klaff in "Tesla Semi catches fire on I-880"

klaff — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 01:26:43 +0000

I wasn't clear, sorry, and you understood the point from the article. I thought you might have been assuming that a 100 kWh battery would produce 100 kWh of energy when burned, and I was trying to point out that when the battery is burned, you can get a much larger amount of energy. My apologies for wasting your time.

New comment by klaff in "Tesla Semi catches fire on I-880"

klaff — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:59:32 +0000

The energy released during a fire is higher than what is accessible by discharging the battery. Here's one paper describing ratios from 1.25 to 5 depending on access to oxygen during the combustion.

https://cea.hal.science/cea-05234204v1/document

New comment by klaff in "Two high-speed trains collide near Toledo, Spain"

klaff — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:33:27 +0000

But that reason wasn't good.

New comment by klaff in "Europe EV sales rose 70.3% in September, 32.6% of market share"

klaff — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:44:07 +0000

Only if they change the rules to allow it posthumously.

New comment by klaff in "What Is Gridifcation"

klaff — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 22:02:01 +0000

I do not know.

New comment by klaff in "US Government is hiding a secret court ruling about how it spies on Americans"

klaff — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 21:55:04 +0000

I think you hit the nail on the head. It IS important to know how much each one screwed you. A quick search shows various outlets saying Trump has enriched himself to the tune of between $1.6B and $4B during his presidencies. Doing the same search on Biden gets estimates of $15M from books and speaking, and a Republican-led House influence peddling page alleges as much as $20M having been received by "the Bidens and their associates".

Using that scale as a proxy Trump is two orders of magnitude more corrupt than Biden.

New comment by klaff in "Python's experimental JIT to be removed"

klaff — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 20:03:54 +0000

I don't recall being able to inspect compiled machine code in basic like I can in Julia.

[EDIT - I assume you are commenting on Dartmouth BASIC.]

New comment by klaff in "US Government is hiding a secret court ruling about how it spies on Americans"

klaff — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 17:34:06 +0000

> I know some people who hoped that Trump would be that in 2016 but he is just more of the same.

Trump's corruption is on such a different scale that calling him "more of the same" reads as a both sides argument.

New comment by klaff in "Google cleared 300 hectares of Finnish forest"

klaff — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 19:48:45 +0000

The answer to that should be "put the trees back and we'll start over on the conversation".

New comment by klaff in "What Is Gridifcation"

klaff — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:52:02 +0000

I'm kinda hoping we get a revival of playing music (e.g. at the piano, on the guitar) at home. As Gillian Welch said "If there's something that you want to hear | You can sing it yourself".

New comment by klaff in "Texas Continued Data Center Permitting After the Governor's Pause"

klaff — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 01:35:07 +0000

Alternative headline: Governor Abbott pretended to pause datacenter permitting while actually fast-tracking the process.

New comment by klaff in "Tesla Roadster"

klaff — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:18:18 +0000

Even longer, Thunderball (Bond film featuring the Bell Rocket Belt) was released in 1965.

New comment by klaff in "Banks are now trying to offload the AI data center debt they just underwrote"

klaff — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:53:14 +0000

These people never seem to realize that time with the grandkids really is priceless.