Hacker News: mentalpiracy

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Google is killing first and second gen Nest Thermostats"

mentalpiracy — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 05:48:54 +0000

Telling me that you’ve unilaterally decided to lobotomize a product I already paid you for, and then thinking that I’d like the privilege of purchasing additional goods from you - even at a discount - is certainly something.

Gotta juice those numbers before moving on to the next role.

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people"

mentalpiracy — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 23:56:29 +0000

A good example of this is their meat department, specifically beef as an example. You will generally find that Costco is not any cheaper than your regular supermarket, but the product you’re getting is graded USDA Prime or better.

There was a great comment on Reddit from someone who worked in the meat department that highlighted this comparison with specific examples but alas I am unable to find it.

New comment by mentalpiracy in "What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?"

mentalpiracy — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 09:48:09 +0000

This honestly sounds like the electricity service line into your place is fucked slightly and it is gradually destroying your electronics.

New comment by mentalpiracy in "ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action"

mentalpiracy — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 23:23:20 +0000

> "I think it got 98% of the information correct... I just needed to copy / paste a few things. If it can do 90 - 95% of the time consuming work, that will save you a ton of time"

"Hello, yes, I would like to pollute my entire data store" is an insane a sales pitch. Start backing up your data lakes on physical media, there is going to be an outrageous market for low-background data in the future.

semi-related: How many people are going to get killed because of this?

New comment by mentalpiracy in "The Death of the Middle-Class Musician"

mentalpiracy — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 10:33:09 +0000

a definitive assertion offered without elaboration

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Falsehoods programmers believe about aviation"

mentalpiracy — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 12:22:41 +0000

ships use ports, boats use docks.

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Uber's new shuttles look suspiciously familiar to anyone who's taken a bus"

mentalpiracy — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 19:46:59 +0000

that’s very true, good point

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Uber's new shuttles look suspiciously familiar to anyone who's taken a bus"

mentalpiracy — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 18:46:41 +0000

If that is the only reliable signal in this context - what signals of measuring value are available in this context that you feel are unreliable?

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Uber's new shuttles look suspiciously familiar to anyone who's taken a bus"

mentalpiracy — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 18:34:31 +0000

public transit benefits the community/region more so than any individual benefit, so I don't think cost per passenger is appropriate either.

Sometimes basic science research funding is framed in terms of "this program generated $10 of economic activity for every dollar spent." Social programs sometimes measured this way too. The term for this escapes me at the moment, but I think it would be more useful?

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Uber's new shuttles look suspiciously familiar to anyone who's taken a bus"

mentalpiracy — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 16:48:01 +0000

Dynamic routing destroys the value proposition of a bus route entirely. The whole point of a system of bus routes is that you are providing a _reliable_ system of stop locations and times for passengers to use as individually necessary. How do you use a bus system when you aren't sure if the bus will ever show up?

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Uber's new shuttles look suspiciously familiar to anyone who's taken a bus"

mentalpiracy — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 16:37:23 +0000

Public transportation does not need to be run at a profit - it is a public utility, just like mail service. What better metric could we use to compare private driver services to public transit?

We can roughly assess the economic value added to the community per dollar of transit spend. I am not sure that metric is possible to measure for Uber?

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Uber's new shuttles look suspiciously familiar to anyone who's taken a bus"

mentalpiracy — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 16:30:01 +0000

public transportation is a service, a public utility, not a business. it should not need to be profitable, and framing it terms of profit at all is wrong imo.

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Cinematography of "Andor""

mentalpiracy — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 14:38:45 +0000

>>> This is not quite the same situation as the end of Rogue One and A New Hope, where some people make the argument that Rogue One ends just a few minutes before ANH begins; I am not convinced by that argument, although the cinematography certain seems to be leading us there.

The ending scene of RO is the data handoff and narrow escape of the Tantive IV with Leia, R2-D2, and C-3PO on it.

How is that not a direct continuity into the opening scene of A New Hope?

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Curl: We still have not seen a valid security report done with AI help"

mentalpiracy — Tue, 06 May 2025 19:10:07 +0000

It is not about stating a source, the bad thing is treating chatGPT as an authoritative source like it is a subject matter expert.

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Ask HN: Is anyone still using Dreamweaver?"

mentalpiracy — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 21:31:34 +0000

I remember feeling like a power user upgrading from Frontpage 98 to Dreamweaver and being able to hot swap between code and the live view. Dreamweaver rolled a ton of then-groundbreaking features into a great interface.

New comment by mentalpiracy in "The government information crisis is bigger than you think it is"

mentalpiracy — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 06:57:11 +0000

> The hyperbole is a bit much for me. It shouldn't amaze me, but here we are. Partisans are able to construe spending cuts and shrinking the purview of the state, with authoritarianism.

It is easy to construe blatantly illegal and facially unconstitutional acts as authoritarian, actually.

New comment by mentalpiracy in "OnlyFans models are using AI impersonators to keep up with their DMs"

mentalpiracy — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 08:13:37 +0000

incredible cyberpunk concept

New comment by mentalpiracy in "Oxygen discovery defies knowledge of the deep ocean"

mentalpiracy — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 17:37:42 +0000

drop a few of these into your nearest water-world, wait a few years, et voila: your very own sea monkeys.

New comment by mentalpiracy in "2023 planetary heat uptake from termination shock of inadvertent geoengineering?"

mentalpiracy — Thu, 30 May 2024 21:47:38 +0000

Your failure to understand that the knife remaining in your body is, in fact, going to keep you alive longer than if you pulled it out is exactly the problem.

Leaving the knife in hurts like hell, but maybe it’ll kill you slow enough that you’ll be able to find help before you die.

Pulling out the knife seems right but just means you bleed out quickly.

New comment by mentalpiracy in "2023 planetary heat uptake from termination shock of inadvertent geoengineering?"

mentalpiracy — Thu, 30 May 2024 20:49:08 +0000

There are less harmful ways to accomplish it theoretically, but exactly zero of those methods are as industrialized - or as regulated - on the same scale as the international maritime shipping industry that already exists.

Put the sulfur back in now so we have a few additional years to mobilize a safer replacement.