Hacker News: mbg721

New comment by mbg721 in "Move Detroit"

mbg721 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 23:20:24 +0000

I would want to know exactly where I was, but downtown Detroit is like other big city places.

New comment by mbg721 in "A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off"

mbg721 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 23:15:48 +0000

Maybe this is a US perspective, but those are attractive properties.

New comment by mbg721 in "A Fire Sale Has U.S. Office Buildings Going for 90% Off"

mbg721 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:27:16 +0000

The lower-friction result is that the offices become huge apartment buildings with reverse-commutes to the suburbs, hoping the "stuff to walk to" survives. There are issues with that too, like plumbing and windows.

New comment by mbg721 in "4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches"

mbg721 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 04:01:22 +0000

New Orleans in particular is highly variable in what you see, depending where you visit.

New comment by mbg721 in "Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:57:29 +0000

Mainly because of 2-factor authentication. If my phone breaks, I can't work.

New comment by mbg721 in "Using secondary school maths to demystify AI"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:40:32 +0000

We really don't know how consciousness works. The popular theories that it's emergent might be proven correct, or might be proven to be like the idea that phlogiston built up in a vacuum, putting out flames.

New comment by mbg721 in "Berlin Approves New Expansion of Police Surveillance Powers"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:34:19 +0000

While that's true, if the cops are too egregious too often, the judge starts to doubt their stories.

New comment by mbg721 in "America's betting craze has spread to its news networks"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:28:27 +0000

My theory is that it will turn pro sports, baseball especially, into something like boxing was decades ago, where "Johnny got paid to take a dive" was a common meme.

New comment by mbg721 in "Why isn't online age verification just like showing your ID in person?"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:21:23 +0000

As a parent, I was shocked how little that's actually true, at least in some US states. Home-schooling can mean sending a copy of your curriculum to your school district and you're good to go.

New comment by mbg721 in "Benn Jordan’s flock camera jammer will send you to jail in Florida now [video]"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:17:46 +0000

Texas can be pricey, but it has huge and diverse growing urban areas with a lot of job opportunities, where someplace like Miami is really cutthroat and very expensive.

Or you'd move if you like Mexican food more than Cuban and South American food.

New comment by mbg721 in "Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:13:19 +0000

I generally agree with this take. Some specific unions, especially in the US, seem unnecessarily adversarial to employers, but others are known primarily for upholding professional and safety standards (I'm thinking of electricians we contracted with at a previous job).

New comment by mbg721 in "Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:07:58 +0000

I bought a console as a gaming device, but now my family mostly use it for YouTube and other streaming video. Similarly, relatively little of my phone time is used on phone calls. I think the distinction is mostly just locked in by history.

New comment by mbg721 in "FedRAMP Fraud: DOJ Indictment Against Former GovCon Mgr"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:00:00 +0000

Fine, "Northern-Virginia-based".

New comment by mbg721 in "Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 03:25:41 +0000

I thought it was safety and environmental regulations, primarily. You have to have airbags, and now antilock brakes, and now rearview cameras, etc. If you were allowed to buy a new car built to the standard of the 1970s, it would be cheap.

New comment by mbg721 in "How the Brain Parses Language"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 03:22:44 +0000

This is why learning Latin the way I did (very methodically and technically, with no real speaking/responding) makes you good at parsing it, but not at speaking it. There are schools today where it's taught as if it were a spoken language.

New comment by mbg721 in "French supermarket's Christmas advert is worldwide hit (without AI) [video]"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 02:20:49 +0000

You don't have to eat fish, you just have to avoid poultry and red meat. The intent was sacrifice as penance for sins. And in the US and some other countries, it's really only mentioned during Lent (Ash Wednesday to the day before Easter); the rest of the year, it's encouraged to do that or some other form of penance, but everyone ignores it.

New comment by mbg721 in "Ask HN: What are you buying your kids for Christmas?"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 02:04:12 +0000

My 5-year-old loves the British series Numberblocks, and they have lots of licensed toys.

New comment by mbg721 in "What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 02:01:00 +0000

Wow, "Dear Penthouse,"

New comment by mbg721 in "The architecture of “not bad”: Decoding the Chinese source code of the void"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 01:30:57 +0000

The verbal construction words you learn in Classics are excellent. Litotes, chiasmus, synecdoche...

New comment by mbg721 in "Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools"

mbg721 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 01:27:54 +0000

How do conference-room names fare in this view? My current company names them after football teams or local landmarks. But I heard about someone who used to work somewhere that named theirs after WWII battles, which was awkward for the Japanese guy they interviewed in one of them.