Hacker News: mc32

New comment by mc32 in "Celebrating the 100th birthday of the kidney donated to him as a teenager"

mc32 — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 22:28:15 +0000

These days City + Person means someone living in such city. They don’t say “from + place” because that implies origin which they try to avoid these days.

New comment by mc32 in "Returning from vacation? The government can search your phone without a warrant"

mc32 — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 21:09:36 +0000

Rioting is not terrorism. Terrorism usually involves conspiracy and planning they're typically not one-time, ad-hoc events. I know governments all over the world like to go overboard with that terms since Sep 11 because it's a get-them for free kind of card, but to me it means actual infliction of terror. A mock gallows is not. If it were, lots of protests with burning effigies, etc. could quite possibly be considered terroristic events.

New comment by mc32 in "Returning from vacation? The government can search your phone without a warrant"

mc32 — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:10:47 +0000

The brought a mock up of a gallows -the same kind other protesters bring to anti-Trump rallies. Should we punish people who went into the Congressional buildings? Yes! (Keep in mind we have hosted protests in Congress too) Do they need to subpoena ~400 lawmakers and $10 donors to the campaign? I think it’s obvious that that is overreach and intimidation.

New comment by mc32 in "Returning from vacation? The government can search your phone without a warrant"

mc32 — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 13:56:36 +0000

Right like the ~400 subpoenas on Republican lawmakers by Jack S with the tenuous linkage to the Jan riot. You might have reason to subpoena 10 or even 30 lawmakers who may have had some linkage but going after ~400 seems dubious.

New comment by mc32 in "Returning from vacation? The government can search your phone without a warrant"

mc32 — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 13:52:41 +0000

Also in Europe more cops have K-9s and aren’t afraid to sick them on suspects.

New comment by mc32 in "Returning from vacation? The government can search your phone without a warrant"

mc32 — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 13:38:42 +0000

Sure but that means November will have no impact on what CPB does. It’s always happened and will continue to happen just like stock trading with insider information by congress members will continue to happen regardless of November results. The vote came up and it was voted down and I don’t see that changing. I don’t see the spying on citizens changing. The NSA spied on Congress and they did nothing about it.

It’s disingenuous to imply that November will have an effect on either of those topics.

Senate Democrats block bill to limit lawmakers' stock trades, citing voter ID

mc32 — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:31:10 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senate-stock-trading-voter-id-bill-democrats-block/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49913958

Points: 8

# Comments: 10

New comment by mc32 in "Burning Man death rates – A short lesson in statistics"

mc32 — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 19:06:58 +0000

The above is only true if you reinterpret what the poster said.

New comment by mc32 in "The AI Race Just Got Awkward"

mc32 — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 17:00:35 +0000

All the text and so on had unrealized potential. Without Anthropic et al it would remain unrealized.

It’s like FTL. Until someone realizes it, it’s just talk.

New comment by mc32 in "How El Niño Made the Atlantic Hurricane Season Disappear"

mc32 — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:12:35 +0000

Yes, but that explains the resultant state, not how things got that way.

New comment by mc32 in "Stuck in the Suez Canal – the short version (2021)"

mc32 — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:09:36 +0000

At the height of the cold war, we had Russians in the US and it's not as though people went after them with pitchforks. We also had people like Bernie (not just him) visit the USSR and most weren't thrown in jail -some were, obviously, but the great majority were not. So I don't think that's exceptional because there is usually a defined context for hostile action to take place. Even when you have sworn enemies who have plotted against a nation (or similar entity), it's not like they immediately go on to execute their plan. They set a target and go after that --often times you get accounts of that person being at most detached but often "they seemed friendly, I never imagined..." Basically if you don't get in the way of their plans, there is no reason to have you as collateral as you are not significant to their goal.

New comment by mc32 in "How El Niño Made the Atlantic Hurricane Season Disappear"

mc32 — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:38:12 +0000

That dry corridor has suffered from lots of deforestation. Their pop grew by leaps and bounds since the green revolution and that led to lots of clearing of forest for farmlands which when managed poorly lead to soil erosion combined with fewer trees means more land cleared leading to "dry corridors." So, pop growth was/is a major input.

New comment by mc32 in "Delhi Cut Electricity Loss from 50 to 5 Percent"

mc32 — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 13:01:23 +0000

True it should never have gotten so bad, but when there is no incentive to invest, this is the result you can expect. This happened in Venezuela and South Africa too - though SA also suffers from massive corruption (officials pocketing moneys and diverting from investment in infra).

New comment by mc32 in "How Delhi cut electricity loss from 50 to 5 percent"

mc32 — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:55:16 +0000

That’s quite the achievement. Though a side note of comparison I can’t believe France and Belgium suffer power losses in the 5 to 6% range. Unless I’m misunderstanding what that means, it seems excessive for a modern economy.

New comment by mc32 in "California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops"

mc32 — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 01:20:28 +0000

That seems odd since the EU lowered tariffs on US ag products. They also took back some previous retaliatory tariffs that were in place.

New comment by mc32 in "California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops"

mc32 — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 01:17:29 +0000

Before it was legalized people went down to the 7-11 to buy beer/wine all legal, maybe a bum to steer around.

They didn't want to get to know scuzzy dudes selling pot or driving to areas of town where at night they have street takeovers to score some pot.

Now those scaredy cats have legal dispensaries from which to obtain their MJ legally. So they might opt for pot these days.

New comment by mc32 in "Meta Blocks President Lula's Facebook Page, Campaign Ads 2 Weeks from Election"

mc32 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 13:13:04 +0000

Ok, but here we have people not from Brazil claiming that a private company is guilty of censorship but also was not guilty of censorship when government "embeds[1]" in the US would flag what they labeled disinformation and blocked discussion on Covid, Covid origins, laptops with evidence, suspended political accounts in the US, etc. So, it seems people want to have it both ways -essentially they want to censor things they disagree with and also don't want censorship of things they agree with.

[1] Of course, that was plainly censorship with a veneer of plausible deniability (it assumed those embeds could only be truthful and unbiased and in no way politically motivated).

New comment by mc32 in "Meta Blocks President Lula's Facebook Page, Campaign Ads 2 Weeks from Election"

mc32 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 13:06:41 +0000

https://github.com/xai-org/x-algorithm/blob/main/home-mixer/...

New comment by mc32 in "Meta Blocks President Lula's Facebook Page, Campaign Ads 2 Weeks from Election"

mc32 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 10:52:48 +0000

Indeed it seems that they only have problems with censorship when their team gets censored but they secretly enjoy their opposition getting censored. As it is the Lula admin mandated that X suppress the speech of about 600 opposition candidates.

https://derechadiario.com.ar/us/argentina/x-revelo-source-co...

New comment by mc32 in "What is the size of Yemen? (2024)"

mc32 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 03:23:06 +0000

This happens more frequently then one imagines. Quite a few things fail to start from scratch and instead rely on compounded errors over time. Projections, budgets, etc., are sometimes based on stale information.