Hacker News: mcguirep

New comment by mcguirep in "FDA clears blood test to aid evaluation for Alzheimer's disease"

mcguirep — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:11:20 +0000

What drug is your family member taking? I have a family member that just received this diagnosis and I'm curious on their behalf what worked well in your experience.

New comment by mcguirep in "RoboCrop: Teaching robots how to pick tomatoes"

mcguirep — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 20:47:40 +0000

> I'm thinking of "machine-pickable" as the natural next step for growers to aim for.

> Is this already being done?

This is, indeed, already something that is done. As I understand it, for tomatoes it's typically for canning varieties, but they're called determinate cultivars[1]. Even with those, I know in processing you still have to discard the occasional fruit that isn't ripe.

I imagine this kind of technological solution would also be more useful when picking tomatoes for use as the fresh fruit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinate_cultivar

New comment by mcguirep in "X's algorithm was changed in mid-July 2024 to boost right-leaning accounts"

mcguirep — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:24:22 +0000

Indeed. As others have noted, that would be when the attempted assassination of Trump was, shortly followed by Elon endorsing him and then forming his PAC [1]. I'd expect such activities to raise interest in his activities and statements, so this entire thing seems to be a staggering miss at asking very basic questions before leaping to conclusions.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_PAC

New comment by mcguirep in "X's algorithm was changed in mid-July 2024 to boost right-leaning accounts"

mcguirep — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:13:11 +0000

I doubt anyone is alleging Elon Musk has control over Google's search. Google Trends suggests the same kind of interest change at exactly the same point in mid-July: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2024-01-01%202...

New comment by mcguirep in "Who died and left the US $7B?"

mcguirep — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 16:45:16 +0000

If one believes it’s a big problem, it seems to me there’s an easy solution that doesn’t disrupt anything else. If you use a stock as collateral like that, it’s a taxable event that steps the basis of the stock by the amount of the loan. No unnecessary taxation of assets at rest, no double taxation later because of the step up in basis, and you close the loophole if you view it as such.

New comment by mcguirep in "Anatomy of a credit card rewards program"

mcguirep — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 15:50:05 +0000

Yeah, that is what I was trying to convey with regards to the interest deduction being capped, not that the deduction just stopped. I think I was a bit muddled with my second point as I was trying to suggest by the time you are at a very high income level, your deductions are primarily made of other things, because the mortgage interest deductions can only be so large. That's indeed what the underlying data from the IRS shows as you go up in income past $500k a year comparing column 91 (total home mortgage interest deducted by itemized filers) to column 61 (total itemized deductions) in the ridiculously massive table that the the Tax Policy Center summarizes from that starts on page 137: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf

New comment by mcguirep in "Anatomy of a credit card rewards program"

mcguirep — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 16:02:30 +0000

You can’t deduct interest on personal income tax for mortgages over $750,000, so it seems somewhat unlikely that such deductions make up any significant amount of the deductions: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p936#en_US_2023_publink1000...

New comment by mcguirep in "25% of US/Canada trade depends on a single privately owned bridge"

mcguirep — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 15:32:49 +0000

The Canadian government is paying for it in the sense that they're advancing the US federal government and Michigan the money that will be collected from tolls for using the new bridge. Canada will be paid back, as everyone agreed in the first place. Whatever I think of Moroun, he had very little to do with the necessity of doing that when this bridge was being proposed and planned in the mid 2010s, as Michigan had serious budget problems from the 2008 Great Recession.

New comment by mcguirep in "Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair"

mcguirep — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 17:17:28 +0000

This doesn't make any sense to me, considering it's being commented upon literally as you wrote that comment within days of the phones release.

New comment by mcguirep in "FTC proposes rule to ban junk fees, bait-and-switch tactics plaguing car buyers"

mcguirep — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 17:07:54 +0000

I've done the same in the past certainly. With the relative paucity of new cars available on the market due to supply chain issues, getting an actual out the door quote with real numbers without being in the dealership has been a lot harder for the past year. It's easing up a little bit as demand softens and more supply becomes available.