Hacker News: olivermarks

New comment by olivermarks in "Waymo has received our pilot permit allowing for commercial operations at SFO"

olivermarks — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 20:40:30 +0000

@harmmonica I do. we prefer to use Waymos in SF but Uber has been a lot cheaper in the last six months or so regardless of time of day... Also saw some Zoox self driving boxes on the las vegas strip last week but no one seemed to be using them.

New comment by olivermarks in "Waymo has received our pilot permit allowing for commercial operations at SFO"

olivermarks — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 17:36:15 +0000

Waymo ride costs are getting really expensive in SF.

New comment by olivermarks in "A Look Back at Recent Car Carrier Fires"

olivermarks — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 04:40:25 +0000

LI batteries would burn regardless

Revolut urges Meta to share cost of reimbursing fraud victims

olivermarks — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 16:27:01 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ft.com/content/409d08c7-24e2-41ec-a758-44c6d68cddbb

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41732220

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by olivermarks in "Zeiss's "Holocam" turns glass windows into cameras"

olivermarks — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 22:42:37 +0000

Would be good to have a formal notification on glass stating 'this window/screen/etc contains a camera that may broadcast your image'

New comment by olivermarks in "Tesla urges US to adopt much tougher fuel efficiency rules"

olivermarks — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 20:10:31 +0000

I think anyone with an ounce of common sense is aware that EVs are analogous to the steam era with similar dangers. Coal power is used to create and force tremendous amounts of trapped energy into batteries, which like a steam boiler is highly stressed with the added danger of explosion, thermal runaway and toxic chemical fire that can't be extinguished.

Where EVs - heavy, tire and road shredding devices requiring enormous amounts of largely unrecyclable materials in their batteries etc - have virtually no regulatory burden (why is there not legislation requiring mechanical door locks for example?) ICE vehicles, which are now highly sophisticated and efficient, are subject to endless meddling and restrictions.

An entire airport car park burnt down last week, which is an unprecedented event masked by a compliant media who are obsessed with selling the concept that EVs are our future - all just because a bunch of bungling politicians have tried to legislate change.

It's all a terrible mess compounded by encouraging people to abandon common sense and buy into the hallucinatory idea grids and the planet can support EVs within a few short years

New comment by olivermarks in "Tesla urges US to adopt much tougher fuel efficiency rules"

olivermarks — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 18:14:30 +0000

Automakers blast US plan to hike fuel efficiency rules

The US is on track to completely destroy the western world's automotive industries, with a huge knock on effect in Europe. Millions of jobs will be gone forever and in the near future we will be completely reliant on areas of the world that don't care about pollution control for (probably mediocre quality) vehicles.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/automa...

New comment by olivermarks in "When Trucks Fly"

olivermarks — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 22:06:51 +0000

I gave up my subscription to the New Yorker years ago due in large part to this 'sophisticates' problem

Chinese Battery Powered Ship Container Sized Replaceable Batteries [video]

olivermarks — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 16:16:47 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ_YVNqEQYE

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37036468

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by olivermarks in "Q&A: Fire on board the Fremantle Highway ship"

olivermarks — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 22:55:12 +0000

There is actually no way to 'put out' thermal runaway Li-ion batteries chemical fires. They have to be left to burn out which can take days and produces immense heat and toxic chemicals.

There is speculation that batteries undersides were scraped as the EVs were loaded onto the boat, damaging a battery underside.

A useful youtube shipping channel and discussion of this latest incident:

https://youtu.be/lEsO--Z2d2E

Q&A: Fire on board the Fremantle Highway ship

olivermarks — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 16:46:47 +0000

Article URL: https://www.dw.com/en/qa-fire-on-board-the-fremantle-highway/a-66385434

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36933112

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

New comment by olivermarks in "Sam Bankman-Fried once wanted to buy the island nation of Nauru"

olivermarks — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 17:28:50 +0000

Reminds me of the Theranos scam crash - discredit the figure heads when it all goes wrong with increasingly bizarre 'they were nuts' stories. Meanwhile the board members and backers are subjected to zero scrutiny.

New comment by olivermarks in "Ford to lay off workers as it focuses on electric vehicles"

olivermarks — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 23:59:42 +0000

https://mishtalk.com/economics/ford-to-layoff-at-least-1000-...

New comment by olivermarks in "Ford to lay off workers as it focuses on electric vehicles"

olivermarks — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 21:43:17 +0000

Ford is bleeding to death on purpose so they can get more tax payer EV subsidies

https://youtu.be/5MZeTeqdsTw

Billions are being spent to turn the tide on the US West's wildfires

olivermarks — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 21:40:49 +0000

Article URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2023/06/27/wildfires-forest-thinning-community-risk-biden/fdaac8be-14f3-11ee-9de3-ba1fa29e9bec_story.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36499047

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by olivermarks in "Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes"

olivermarks — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 17:24:19 +0000

>Catastrophe as in many possible earthquakes, if the hypothesis is correct?

No, wiping out the entire electrical grid and all electronics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

New comment by olivermarks in "Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes"

olivermarks — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 16:35:41 +0000

Why is 'sunspot activity driving changes in the Earth's dynamo that then kick off earthquakes' a loopy idea?

We are hours away from coronal mass ejection catastrophe right now as solar cycle 20 builds in intensity. It seems reasonable to me that the complex relationship between the moon's gravitational pull and massive sun activity could affect our tiny little planet

New comment by olivermarks in "France’s Mistral AI raises a $113M seed round to take on OpenAI"

olivermarks — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 02:30:39 +0000

@hef19898 Not 'better' just different culturally. The US installs ivy league types at well funded startups just as the french install their ENA/Ecole Polytechnique elites in their state funded 'startups' but somehow the French dynamic doesn't work nearly as well as the US one.

New comment by olivermarks in "France’s Mistral AI raises a $113M seed round to take on OpenAI"

olivermarks — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:25:19 +0000

I think my point is that ENA / Ecole Polytechnique people are arguably harming French innovative abilities. Many US entrepreneurs are grass roots college dropout types...

New comment by olivermarks in "France’s Mistral AI raises a $113M seed round to take on OpenAI"

olivermarks — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 17:48:23 +0000

French innovation is quirky but brilliant IMO - minitel was years ahead pre internet.

For some reason French innovation doesn't spread much beyond France. Concorde (I love that plane so much) was an Anglo French project. A lot of my friends parents in the UK midlands were involved with at massive project, but it never scaled to fleets and eventually withered away after an astonishing amount was spent developing it in the '60s ($2.8 billion in that era's valuations).

Not denegrating French innovation here at all, I just don't think the rigid ENA/Ecole Polytechnique elites are practical or competent in understanding how to exploit and build on great ideas by their countrymen.