Hacker News: megaman821

New comment by megaman821 in "At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025"

megaman821 — Sun, 17 May 2026 18:15:57 +0000

That's why planes should be flown using direct democracy. Passengers (correctly) feel like they have little power over the maneuvers planes make and affect them moment to moment.

Representational democracy is far superior. Decisions need to be weighed against both their popularity and their effect with input from experts and other affected parties.

New comment by megaman821 in "I've Covered Robots for Years. This One Is Different"

megaman821 — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:04:39 +0000

I wonder how accurate joint positions and muscle activations can be from just a POV camera. Maybe it’s not crazy to think someone could get tens of millions of hours of well-labeled training data.

New comment by megaman821 in "I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable"

megaman821 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:00:25 +0000

Well anything can sound dumb, when you simplify it to something dumb. We have multiple airbags, anti-lock braking, seatbelt pretensioner, collision avoidance, crumple zones, fuel pump automatic shut off, backup cameras, rollover testing, ... Vehicles do an amazing amount of things to keep their occupants alive in a crash.

New comment by megaman821 in "I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable"

megaman821 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:46:40 +0000

Almost nothing can make labor-dominated services drop though. I guess you could have guest worker visas that pay half the going wage, and there would be a lot of people that take that deal, but most Americans would hate that.

Grocery inflation is not nearly as bad as the food inflation overall, which is driven by food-away-from-home just absolutely skyrocketing.

Billions of words have been spilled about housing, so I will boil it down simply. It is a mixture of policy and preference. It doesn't have to be the way it is, we just need to collective will to change things.

New comment by megaman821 in "I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable"

megaman821 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:26:51 +0000

Americans just won't buy these "cheap" cars. Almost every American car-maker, and most foreign car importers too, have dropped passengers cars from their lineup year-after-year leaving only SUVs and trucks. Look at what Ford and GM offer in Latin America; small, affordable cars. Every now-and-then they try to bring something similar to the US and it's sales numbers are always dismal. The US is mostly rich (by world standards) and has premium preferences. The huge gulf is between what people say they want and what they actually end up buying.

New comment by megaman821 in "I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable"

megaman821 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:10:14 +0000

You're right, a 4 year loan in the 80's basically didn't exist.

New comment by megaman821 in "I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable"

megaman821 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:06:32 +0000

Some things yes and some things no. It is not and cut-and-dry as you think.

Look up the inflation adjust prices for a computer or a "big-screen" TV and realize almost no one pays anything near those prices for any consumer good. On the other hand there are a lot more people in the US and it is not like land is sprouting up from nowhere, so the price of land is a lot more.

Most things though fall into what people's personal preferences are. Cars have more luxury, house are bigger and have better finishes, movies are huge spectacles, one person can't watch 8 infants, you get more than an aspirin from formerly untreatable diseases; roll all this back and prices will drop.

New comment by megaman821 in "I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable"

megaman821 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:50:11 +0000

Even with these cherry-picked examples, plug in how things actually were. That $8,200 station wagon with at 48 month loan and the terrible 80's loan rates of 10-12% would be like $750/month now. Most of those cars wouldn't make it to 50k miles without a major repair. There were almost no safety features, seat belts weren't required to be worn and you could drink and drive. This weird fetishization of the past is a mental illness.

New comment by megaman821 in "New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production"

megaman821 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:17:20 +0000

Between the ethanol and the animal feed, we are encouraging growing way more corn than is needed for food security.

New comment by megaman821 in "Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident"

megaman821 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 23:55:36 +0000

Gross man, get help. Living with your family isn't using them as a sheild.

New comment by megaman821 in "Show HN: CSS Studio. Design by hand, code by agent"

megaman821 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:51:53 +0000

I was looking at this yesterday and wondering if it would play nice with design systems. AI loves making localized changes and when playing around with spacing I tend to just bump up and down values until they look close, so when this sends over the changeset, what are the chances the spacing token is going to be used rather than some exact pixel value?

New comment by megaman821 in "A new way to measure poverty shows the US falling behind Europe"

megaman821 — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:09:39 +0000

Thanks for the comment, I was trying to parse the meaning of "time needed to earn $1" for a bit. This just boils down to what countries have the highest floor for their poorest members.

New comment by megaman821 in "Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial"

megaman821 — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:37:57 +0000

Yes, ice cream palors are famous for only using shades of gray and never adorning their products with things like sprinkles.

New comment by megaman821 in "Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial"

megaman821 — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:35:05 +0000

So you would support banning any form of entertainment that people spend more time on than TikTok since it would be above the threshold of addiction?

New comment by megaman821 in "Rising Air-Conditioning Use Intensifies Global Warming"

megaman821 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 16:58:11 +0000

If you take out the abnormally perfect climates of Hawaii and California then lowest energy users for heating and cooling are Arizona, Florida, Louisiana and Texas.

New comment by megaman821 in "Rising Air-Conditioning Use Intensifies Global Warming"

megaman821 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:48:28 +0000

If you are doing it for the environment, you should forgo heat. 100F to 70F is only a 30 degree delta. If you have a heat pump, this is the same amount of energy heating your home to 70F from 40F. If you have natural gas heating, now we are talking about the same amount of energy when it is low 50's outside.

How many forests will you burn to not just wear two sweaters and blanket?

New comment by megaman821 in "Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music"

megaman821 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:00:24 +0000

What? You pay property tax because local services schools, streets, police and fire fighters need to be funded. Having a property in the area is a pretty great proxy for using some of these services, hence the property tax.

New comment by megaman821 in "Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11"

megaman821 — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 17:50:55 +0000

iPhone adoption in the enterprise wasn't because of IT. When consumer preference is strong things tend to happen.

New comment by megaman821 in "White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward"

megaman821 — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 21:43:50 +0000

The problem with that is those networks are pretty tiny if you don't count sports. Mr. Beast has more viewers the CNN's top show.

New comment by megaman821 in "Does that use a lot of energy?"

megaman821 — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 03:59:07 +0000

To get those types of numbers you would have to be charging from a grid that is nearly 100% coal. Real grids heavily favor EVs.