Hacker News: michael1999

New comment by michael1999 in "Why the Ocean Cleanup hasn't solved the plastic pollution crisis"

michael1999 — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:53:16 +0000

This showed the same dynamics as most carbon-capture boondoggles. They can never work, and receive funding _because_ they distract from the core problems.

New comment by michael1999 in "Sun Clock"

michael1999 — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 21:43:41 +0000

A watch face would be fun.

New comment by michael1999 in "Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness"

michael1999 — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:34:39 +0000

I don't see how that is relevant. I am not aware of any outsourced job where the American alternative would cost anything near the minimum wage. The overhead of outsourcing and supervision would dwarf the raw basic labour cost of the $7.25 federal minimum.

I don't dispute that it would be easy to raise the minimum wage high enough to destroy jobs. But I do dispute that the current minimum wage is "often" high enough to do that.

https://www.indeed.com/career/call-center-representative/sal...

New comment by michael1999 in "Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness"

michael1999 — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 20:18:15 +0000

Your "often" is not borne out by actual econometric studies. The actual rate of minimum wage that produces dead-weight loss is much higher than most minimum wages in the USA.

In any market, there is wide range of possible clearing prices with cost of production as a floor, and marginal value as a ceiling. Which price the market settles on is often a function of bargaining power as much as productivity. Minimum wage regulation is a heavy-handed way to change that bargaining relationship.

New comment by michael1999 in "Waymos cause "way mo" injuries per mile driven than for-hire vehicles in NYC"

michael1999 — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:32:31 +0000

Upthread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49009120

New comment by michael1999 in "LEDs’ potential to save our night skies"

michael1999 — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:16:17 +0000

ctrl-F "standards" - zero results.

The fine article was more about the effects of bad lighting, and the motivation to change. It does not discuss the engineering and insurance standards that generate the bad choices. Perhaps you misread my comment. As long as the standards are left as-is, street engineers are going to keep doing as they are.

New comment by michael1999 in "LEDs’ potential to save our night skies"

michael1999 — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:39:45 +0000

We need much better engineering standards if we are going to fix night lighting. A simplistic lux-on-the-ground measure combined with cost minimization produces a few lights, with bare bulbs, up hight, with brutal intensity. These are all things that produce glare directly on the eyeball.

You need much less light on the ground if the eyeball itself has no direct line to the hottest part of the lights. Instead, the night-blindness caused by excessive bare lighting is "fixed" by adding more fill lights for the shadows caused by the first lights. Classic addictive behaviour.

New comment by michael1999 in "SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status"

michael1999 — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:01:33 +0000

What fraction of investors who chose Nasdaq100 over SPY wouldn't have also wanted SpaceX? The whole point is hot and tech-heavy speculation.

New comment by michael1999 in "My favorite keyboards"

michael1999 — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:36:49 +0000

Fun! Thank you. I wonder if I can find Mac keycaps and swap those in software. Their Mac versions are all full-size.

New comment by michael1999 in "My favorite keyboards"

michael1999 — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:03:04 +0000

I wish I could find a Model M Space Saver with modern OS keys. I love the springs.

New comment by michael1999 in "Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards"

michael1999 — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:32:04 +0000

It is not all obvious that consciousness precedes language. Hellen Keller provides a vivid description of her pre-verbal mental state as something less than reflective conscious.

> Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect.

https://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-he...

New comment by michael1999 in "The disappearance of Japan's animators"

michael1999 — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 15:12:28 +0000

Are there countries where trade unions are still active in training? Most places I see they are entirely focused on wage bargaining, and are happy to gut training for the young if they can maintain the generous pensions of the old.

New comment by michael1999 in "The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs"

michael1999 — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 21:42:23 +0000

You do need to justify it. There is a great moral hazard prioritizing the driver's safety over pedestrians, since the driver is most in control of the danger. There is very little a pedestrian can do to protect themselves from a driver on their phone who mounts the sidewalk.

New comment by michael1999 in "The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs"

michael1999 — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 21:38:54 +0000

Hard to get a plate if there's no VIN.

New comment by michael1999 in "What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance"

michael1999 — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:56:11 +0000

Info-minimized oidc handshakes with certified identity providers could verify age-category of a user with no other information shared.

Consider "log in with apple" as it is today. Depending on what you share, a relying website might not even get your name or email.

New comment by michael1999 in "Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time"

michael1999 — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:44:59 +0000

Landmines are not illegal, except for signatories of the Ottawa Treaty.

New comment by michael1999 in "iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet"

michael1999 — Tue, 05 May 2026 21:36:52 +0000

Yeah. iPhone and iPad have gone backwards for my mother every year. Losing the home button was a disaster. Every edge swipe, or double-click is more trouble. The new stuff is great for me, but the original skeuomorphic designs were so much better for my mom.

New comment by michael1999 in "John Ternus to become Apple CEO"

michael1999 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 21:59:18 +0000

They re-write many apps every few years as part of their major design changes. These re-writes inevitably introduce lots of little bugs in uncommon workflows, and they often jettison whole features like AppleScript integration that cause real problems with users. They then spend a couple of years fixing the worst of these bugs, and things die down. Until the next UI-driven re-write.

New comment by michael1999 in "KLM cancels 160 flights due to fuel shortage"

michael1999 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 19:27:12 +0000

You can't really hedge a true shortage. You'll get some money, but you can't pump money into a fuel tank.

New comment by michael1999 in "DIY Soft Drinks"

michael1999 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:10:51 +0000

Bummer. I loved the glass bottles in the penguin, but I got tired fighting the durability problems. I got as far as researching custom gaskets and shims, and gave up.