Hacker News: laughing_man

New comment by laughing_man in "Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake"

laughing_man — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:04:42 +0000

Or not.

New comment by laughing_man in "Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake"

laughing_man — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 21:30:14 +0000

Well, okay, he can do lots of illegal stuff that's going to get punished in the courts. There's no way something like that would survive SEC scrutiny, I don't care what state you're in.

New comment by laughing_man in "Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake"

laughing_man — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 21:21:50 +0000

I wouldn't say Shotwell is "undervalued, weirdly or not. She's a household name among space enthusiasts.

Without looking, can you tell me who the COO of ULA is?

New comment by laughing_man in "Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake"

laughing_man — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 21:17:12 +0000

Not at all. Ownership and voting rights are two different things. Musk can't, for example, declare a dividend that pays his shares out more than the common shares.

New comment by laughing_man in "Did they ghost you?"

laughing_man — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 06:24:58 +0000

Companies at which I worked sometimes went silent because there was no decision. It's hard to send an email that says something like "Hey, I know it's been three months, but I can't get my boss off the stick to make a decision here."

I don't know how many times I had this conversation:

Me: Hey boss, you know how Matt quit last week and we're down a guy? We really need someone in that role. The project is going to slip if we don't replace him.

Boss: The project can't slip. My bonu... I mean, it will make the whole team look bad if it slips.

Me: Great. When are you scheduling technical interviews?

Boss: There's a company wide hiring freeze. We can't replace anyone.

Me: So... the project is going to slip then.

Boss: No, the project can't slip.

New comment by laughing_man in "Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota"

laughing_man — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 03:53:29 +0000

The press release says they use the wind energy to produce hydrogen. Seems like you could store the hydrogen and always have the plant running at capacity as long as the average power produced by the wind turbine(s) was enough.

New comment by laughing_man in "LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps"

laughing_man — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 01:21:55 +0000

I've never had a website do more than the equivalent of "Try again, smart guy" when I put in a ridiculous age.

New comment by laughing_man in "Taylor Farms Called White House to Try to Delay Cyclospora Recall"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 11:59:01 +0000

But also arguably... no. They called the White House, but as I read the story they didn't get anything they wanted.

New comment by laughing_man in "Taylor Farms Called White House to Try to Delay Cyclospora Recall"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:32:26 +0000

Is that what happened, though?

New comment by laughing_man in "Taylor Farms Called White House to Try to Delay Cyclospora Recall"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:30:05 +0000

And yet Americans are the victim of food-borne illnesses at no greater rate than Europeans. I wonder how much of that is farm lobbies trying to keep out imports. US growers do the same thing when the don't want to compete with South American imports.

New comment by laughing_man in "Taylor Farms Called White House to Try to Delay Cyclospora Recall"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:27:58 +0000

That was a long time ago. Seems like if you were going to get it, you would have gotten it already. Besides, even in the UK the numbers aren't that high.

New comment by laughing_man in "Chrome's Breaking and Entering"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:22:38 +0000

Me too. I've been really happy with Brave.

New comment by laughing_man in "IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 06:03:05 +0000

A more likely reason for the lack of widespread death in Israel is the Iranians don't have the capability to cause it. The Israelis have air raid shelters, plus early warning radars that give them time to get to those shelters. And they have anti-missile systems to take out the most dangerous incoming ordinance.

New comment by laughing_man in "India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 05:48:02 +0000

To be fair, while these missiles are still in service they're obsolete and are slated for retirement the coming decade.

New comment by laughing_man in "India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 05:41:42 +0000

It's funny, people here said the same thing about Starlink. "Sure, it's technically possible, but you could only lose money by doing something like that. There's just no market for it."

New comment by laughing_man in "India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 05:39:59 +0000

The Russians put the first ASats up in the '70s. Their existence doesn't require use.

New comment by laughing_man in "India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 05:37:47 +0000

Everybody keeps talking about cheap, clean power. But where I live the price of power has gone up dramatically in recent years. Free power (well, marginally free, anyway) is a major plus.

New comment by laughing_man in "India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on debut launch"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 05:34:35 +0000

>Also, how do you deal with the added cost and complexity for the solar tracking mechanisms for the "edge-on-to-the-Sun" radiator?

Almost every satellite needs attitude control, so this isn't something out of the ordinary. I'm not sure solar tracking mechanisms really fall into the "expensive" or "complex" categories in 2026.

New comment by laughing_man in "I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 04:30:28 +0000

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. If you need null termination you're going to be a lot better off adding it at the source (say, with sed) than trying to make a while loop work in a shell script. If you don't need null termination, then... don't use it.

New comment by laughing_man in "Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding"

laughing_man — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 04:19:43 +0000

But that defeats the purpose of depositor's insurance. The purpose isn't to make sure people get their money back; that's only a side effect. The point of depositors insurance is to avoid bank runs, which can be contagious.

The cause of the run isn't that important, and if you banking system collapses because companies pull out all their money you're not in a better position than if individuals do.