Hacker News: paleotrope

New comment by paleotrope in "The American Age Is Over"

paleotrope — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:39:04 +0000

"The solution was what we now call the rules-based order, and means that European-style legal systems control business across borders, so armed force need not be used to enforce contracts."

I wonder how Europe got there? Maybe they all decided to talk through their problems.

New comment by paleotrope in "Most people prefer traditional architecture"

paleotrope — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 19:14:53 +0000

So rich but nobody has any money anymore.

New comment by paleotrope in "US refuses payout for soldiers who died in Iran 'because it isn't a war'"

paleotrope — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 01:01:50 +0000

"US officials also acknowledged that they had initially provided inaccurate information, and that her husband's last pay cheque had included – but incorrectly itemised – "combat pay", which amounts to $225 a month, and was not conditioned on a formal war declaration"

New comment by paleotrope in "Mother convicted of: her 5 yo walks short way to pond alone in Virginia"

paleotrope — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 04:59:51 +0000

What's ridiculous is Canada Goose being in that category.

New comment by paleotrope in "Space industry lacks workers needed to rebuild satellites lost in war: report"

paleotrope — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 20:45:20 +0000

All the stated problems are just problems in peacetime; Pay and bureaucratic red tape.

New comment by paleotrope in "The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified"

paleotrope — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 01:13:26 +0000

But which party (or faction of it) is at least talking about it? You can find corporate rent seekers in both parties sure.

New comment by paleotrope in "Should We Have Kept the American Empire?"

paleotrope — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:24:40 +0000

It's easier to understand when you know that the decisions that Americans and others have made over time were never designed to be covered and taught in a Capitalized Theory of A Particular Time Period academic subject.

Historians likes overarching themes and stories that make everything easier to understand, it does not like "History is just one damned thing after another."

New comment by paleotrope in "Y Combinator's Ankit Gupta faces backlash over H-1B comments"

paleotrope — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:23:21 +0000

We are on the tail end of a 75 year old experiment in the West of divorcing where you live or were born from any sort of responsibility for anything in either direction, except for paying taxes to government and fees to your patron.

New comment by paleotrope in "Death to the Self-Playing Game"

paleotrope — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 20:21:02 +0000

Well that's an opinion.

New comment by paleotrope in "Japan's Gen X workers are struggling"

paleotrope — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:07:06 +0000

This is what happens when you sacrifice a generation of people to make a "soft" landing for the rest.

New comment by paleotrope in "One Oakland police officer made $490k in overtime"

paleotrope — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:50:20 +0000

Police overtime is quite complicated. Assuming 23 hours of work represent actually 23 hours of work will lead to confusion. Alot of these overtime jobs are where the government mandates that a police officer simply be on site. Regardless if they are sleeping or actually doing any police work.

New comment by paleotrope in "How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story"

paleotrope — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 23:13:30 +0000

That's interesting because it's way more complicated than that. Boston had the 128 loop and Digital. TI in dallas. Simi valley. I think it's more like the end of defense spending in the late 80s early 90s winnowed down the several "SV"s into only one.

New comment by paleotrope in "Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy"

paleotrope — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 17:26:41 +0000

Americans needing fresh bananas did it.

New comment by paleotrope in "How A Gang of Thieves Pulled Off a Multimillion-Dollar Data Center Heist"

paleotrope — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:39:06 +0000

Nope. THe story doesn't make any sense at all.

They stole about 5 milion dollars worth of computer equipment, which depending on how it's purchased is either a single cabinet of storage or a few cabinets of compute, which is largely worthless on the resale market, or if you believe the criminals, they were stealing evidence of illegal activities of the "bankers".

The story is way too sexed up and hollywood'd

New comment by paleotrope in "The Glass Famine"

paleotrope — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:24:05 +0000

It's probably obvious to say, but I think a nation's most important resource is people. And if you can just order them around and kill the dissenters and not care about what individuals want, then you can achieve quite a bit, be it industrialization or war or agricultural surplus.

New comment by paleotrope in "The Rise of Grocery Tourism"

paleotrope — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:41:23 +0000

"Grocery store tourism is the practice of visiting local grocery stores while traveling as a way to experience a destination's everyday culture rather than just its tourist attractions."

New comment by paleotrope in "The US grocery slowdown is real"

paleotrope — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 02:30:10 +0000

I got it from this RAND survey. https://glp1newsnow.substack.com/p/how-many-americans-are-ac...

New comment by paleotrope in "The US grocery slowdown is real"

paleotrope — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 22:42:49 +0000

12% of the adult population. I think it's a good theory.

New comment by paleotrope in "Purging George Orwell's books misses what drives the political right"

paleotrope — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:50:48 +0000

That review is hilarious.

"To summarise, then: George Orwell in 1984 was, in my opinion, engaging in a private feud with Stalinism, rather that attempting to forecast the future."

He really got it!

And shows how fundamentally Asimov misunderstands how totalitarian societies work. "Furthermore, he has a system of volunteer spies in which children report on their parents, and neighbours on each other. This cannot possibly work well since eventually everyone reports everyone else and it all has to be abandoned"

New comment by paleotrope in "The Chud Vision of Roman History"

paleotrope — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 23:18:17 +0000

Haha you can tell I listen to a lot history podcasts. I won't fix it.