Hacker News: maxerickson

New comment by maxerickson in "Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war"

maxerickson — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 16:11:27 +0000

Is there an infinite supply of fools money? There sort of has to be if it's clear that the outcomes are being manipulated by participants in the bets.

I guess people do walk into casinos and play games that are legally controlled to have outcomes favoring the casino.

New comment by maxerickson in "Bitcoin miners are losing on every coin produced as difficulty drops"

maxerickson — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:30:45 +0000

The mining reward isn't a direct transaction that has a price.

Competing for it is more of a game that has a cost to participate in.

New comment by maxerickson in "Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service"

maxerickson — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:43:12 +0000

A lot of national forest land was formed from land that was more or less abandoned after the initial logging. Especially as you go east.

Which doesn't mean I want dramatic management changes, but they are hardly pristine.

Probably be healthy for encouraging development in the right places for people to realize that much of what we consider "natural" was dramatically altered fairly recently. They built the park where I live out of sand in like the last 100 years and no doubt more than a few people would object to improving it because it's natural.

New comment by maxerickson in "John Deere to pay $99M in right-to-repair settlement"

maxerickson — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:28:59 +0000

Oh, I suppose it is using the battery to write after shutdown. Bleh.

New comment by maxerickson in "John Deere to pay $99M in right-to-repair settlement"

maxerickson — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:45:35 +0000

I wonder if the gauge is just a horrible design that uses the battery to keep some memory alive.

Microcontrollers with persistent memory are not expensive, so something like that would just be horrible design, not something you could even try to justify as a cost reduction.

New comment by maxerickson in "John Deere to pay $99M in right-to-repair settlement"

maxerickson — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:58:14 +0000

Is there a bright line between cost reduction and planned obsolescence?

Obviously a small unreplaceable battery is not a good example for that discussion.

New comment by maxerickson in "Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026"

maxerickson — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:38:34 +0000

Why do you see it that way?

The idea behind the regulation is that it's providing the maximum incentive to bring cheaper electricity to market.

If you try to mandate that high cost producers charge less, they will do what makes sense to control costs and then quit altogether once they are losing money.

New comment by maxerickson in "Costco sued for seeking refunds on tariffs customers paid"

maxerickson — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:41:14 +0000

For this situation, Costco is in the unfortunate position of knowing what was purchased under each membership.

Still, seems kind of hard to argue that retail sales are not an offer and direct acceptance of that offer.

New comment by maxerickson in "Solar and batteries can power the world"

maxerickson — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:10:02 +0000

Look at it this way: Benefiting everyone is a side effect of benefiting American taxpayers.

Or do you think that US federal investment in solar and battery technology would be bad for the American taxpayer?

New comment by maxerickson in "Solar and batteries can power the world"

maxerickson — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:12:09 +0000

I live in a moderately cold area and pay less than $2000 a year to heat a ~2000 square foot home. So something that improves the efficiency of the building would have to have a pretty low cost to even pay back at all.

There's probably a few lower cost things that I am overlooking, to the tune of netting out a few hundred dollars of savings after however many years they took to pay back.

New comment by maxerickson in "Solar and batteries can power the world"

maxerickson — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:55:11 +0000

A wall is not a wall is not a wall.

A well built home with more insulation will, according to physics, lose less heat in any given scenario. So policies that push for things that improve buildings can reduce energy use.

Do you think we have reached peak building efficiency or something?

New comment by maxerickson in "Solar and batteries can power the world"

maxerickson — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:18:17 +0000

Hydroelectric capacity is largely built out, so you can look at current generation mix to see how much it is likely to contribute.

In the US capacity is likely to go down (dams are expensive and many time old dams are removed instead of being rebuilt).

New comment by maxerickson in "US Army chief of staff fired by Hegseth"

maxerickson — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:17:00 +0000

Really pushing the definition of elected there.

New comment by maxerickson in "Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why"

maxerickson — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 20:39:23 +0000

Yeah I get the point, I'm saying it's not really a good point, running Windows and Outlook on a secondary system is fine. Forcing the astronauts to learn to use some other system would be a waste of time and probably worse than whatever it is you see as the problem.

New comment by maxerickson in "Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why"

maxerickson — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:44:09 +0000

Are you running that on a flight system or on an additional computer where it would be fine to run Windows?

New comment by maxerickson in "Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why"

maxerickson — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:43:07 +0000

Why the poverty mindset? If we are gonna joy ride around the moon we should at least do it in style.

New comment by maxerickson in "A forecast of the fair market value of SpaceX's businesses"

maxerickson — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:41:58 +0000

How are they doing with their mass to orbit projections?

New comment by maxerickson in "Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why"

maxerickson — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:07:11 +0000

What should they use for email?

New comment by maxerickson in "No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations"

maxerickson — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 16:01:56 +0000

Lots of research has technicians doing the actual experimental tasks, your argument would benefit from even a short list of experiments that have not been done because astronauts couldn't be expected to handle it.

New comment by maxerickson in "No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations"

maxerickson — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 15:59:05 +0000

It's cheaper to launch replacements than it is to do maintenance (at least, if you plan it that way).

There are not classified shuttle equivalents launching, not sure what you are talking about there. The X37 has the capability to land, but it is not manned and is tiny compared to the shuttle.