Hacker News: pandaman

New comment by pandaman in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"

pandaman — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 01:24:03 +0000

Why would somebody transport a bike on car to London and ride on the streets crowded with pedestrians? And attach a massive bell to a carbon bike to facilitate that? The video shows that they have given these to delivery riders, which seems to be the target audience for a device like that. Seeing that this story is going viral everywhere it appears to be a quite a successful PR campaign. I doubt it's a real product though now I imagine similar devices will appear on Alibaba and Amazon.

New comment by pandaman in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"

pandaman — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 20:13:29 +0000

I don't quite follow, how slowing makes the problem of a runner jumping into the side of your bike go away? If anything it makes it more likely he or she will knock you off the bike since a slower moving bike is less stable and also increases the time you are in the danger zone next to a runner. And runners do jump between the lanes for no apparent reason.

New comment by pandaman in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"

pandaman — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:37:04 +0000

Cyclists can slow down when there is an obstacle in front of them. But they cannot teleport away when a pedestrian runs into the side of the bike.

New comment by pandaman in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"

pandaman — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:24:08 +0000

That's an issue on any bike path in the US, even if it's a fire road in the middle of nowhere. I bet there are people walking their dogs or checking Instagram on the single track course that is used for the Red Bull Rampage.

New comment by pandaman in "Common drug tests lead to tens of thousands wrongful arrests a year"

pandaman — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:18:46 +0000

I don't follow. The example in the wikipedia uses the opposite error rates to what you have given: it falsely flags a sober driver in 5% of cases. And it works because the stipulated rate of drunkenness is much lower than 5% (0.1%) so the false positives overwhelm the true positives. In your setup the positive detection should be accurate at 95%, the negative error (a drunk driver passed as sober) - would be around 0.005%, where did you get 1.96%?

Furthermore, as Wikipedia article noted, this assumes total testing. I highly doubt cops are walking around and drug test everyone they see.

New comment by pandaman in "Oracle files H-1B visa petitions amid mass layoffs"

pandaman — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 17:35:36 +0000

You asked and LLM but don't seem to be able to understand the reply. Again, you proclaimed that dual intent means something else initially.

>"H-1B is “coming temporarily,” while permanent residence is handled through the employment-based immigrant categories in §203(b) and adjustment under §245(a)"

Exactly! Do you even read what you pasted from the prompt?

New comment by pandaman in "Oracle files H-1B visa petitions amid mass layoffs"

pandaman — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 15:51:30 +0000

I am just factually dug on this. You are correct that H1B applicants can intend to immigrate. It's what "dual intent" means. It does not mean the H1B is an immigrant visa or a "path to a Green Card" like you claimed originally. The CATO is not a government and them saying it's a "bridge" is not different than redditors saying so. This is why I asked you for a government statement. There is not one, because it's illegal to immigrate without an immigrant visa, which H1B is not.

New comment by pandaman in "Oracle files H-1B visa petitions amid mass layoffs"

pandaman — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 15:11:31 +0000

> it's both a temporary working visa and a path to a Green Card.

It's not though. It's a DoS policy wrt of issuing non-immigrant visas.

>Yes, the government issues I-140s to H1-Bs

So? The government issues I-140s to non-H1Bs too. Not having any US visa and never having set foot in the US is "a path to Green Card" if H1B is one too.

>I think just Googling 'H1-B dual intent''

I was hoping you'd do that and find for yourself how wrong you are.

New comment by pandaman in "Oracle files H-1B visa petitions amid mass layoffs"

pandaman — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 13:21:00 +0000

Most, if not all, politicians have a higher education of some kind. Higher education institutions make big money from international students, who only go for their overpriced education because of the possibility to work in the US. And it's not because the US employees prefer American education but because of OPT program, which let's one work in the country for 1/3 years depending on the degree (and it's cheaper to hire an OPT worker who is exempt from FICA taxes, paid by the employer for citizens and other visa categories) and then H1B.

Schools are the main beneficiary of the program: there are 1M foreign students in the country, each paying full tuition and living expenses. Without H1B the number would have been orders of magnitude lower. For example, in China, where education is literally 10x cheaper, there are just 0.25M foreign students, because there is no immigration pathway for those. So any politician trying to clamp down on this program would have to explain to his or her alma mater why does he or she hate it so much.

New comment by pandaman in "Oracle files H-1B visa petitions amid mass layoffs"

pandaman — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:26:57 +0000

What doe "dual intent" mean and can you show me any government statement confirming that it's a path to a Green Card?

New comment by pandaman in "America Is Now a Rogue Superpower"

pandaman — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:02:56 +0000

I feel you want to talk about ICE and DHS instead of the topic at hand, the Deep State/"civil service". I feel the government contracting private companies is fine, the government is accountable so are the private companies. I don't support banning government agencies from hiring private companies because I don't see how the country would benefit from have government making everything it uses in the course of executing its duties.

New comment by pandaman in "America Is Now a Rogue Superpower"

pandaman — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:24:05 +0000

There are many things that are not in the Constitution: the USAF, computers, antibiotics, sea cruises, cars, steak, etc. Not being in the Constitution does not make them unconstitutional. Hope this helps.

As for dissolution of those agencies, my answer is: no. You have to ask a question before demanding an answer.

New comment by pandaman in "America Is Now a Rogue Superpower"

pandaman — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:17:33 +0000

That means the whole Executive branch is the president and if he can delegate his power to some other people he also should be able to revoke the delegation and fire those people, which is not the case now. The president is semi-successful in firing these "servants" and some judges insist that it's illegal.

New comment by pandaman in "America Is Now a Rogue Superpower"

pandaman — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 02:22:20 +0000

The Constitution defines just three branches of power, if the "civil service system" has a power and is not one of the branches then it unconstitutional by common sense and elementary logic. And this "civil servant system" evidentially has power and is not a part of either of the three branches (which are all enumerated in the Constitution) ergo it's an unconstitutional junta.

>We are not going to either amend the Constitution nor abolish the civil service just because some pseudonymous online account says we should.

Did not you participate in the mass crying out on this very site when DOGE had been firing the "civil servants"?

New comment by pandaman in "America Is Now a Rogue Superpower"

pandaman — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:18:34 +0000

Then back to the system defined in the Constitution, it gives enough guidance. If you think the President is not enough for the Executive - amend the Constitution, used to be enough for ~200 years though.

New comment by pandaman in "America Is Now a Rogue Superpower"

pandaman — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 23:53:09 +0000

Calling it "civil service" instead of "deep state" does not make it any better. We don't have either in the Constitution so whatever you call it, it has to be removed from power.

New comment by pandaman in "Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars"

pandaman — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 20:26:16 +0000

You have not heard people complaining about cities impeding traffic, likely, because of the bubble you live in. That is the thing that makes regular people to run for the city offices. A whole lot of recent "urbanization" is not going to survive for long because of this IMHO.

New comment by pandaman in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

pandaman — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 18:50:33 +0000

Many people are not driven entirely by their economic interests, thus you can see people wearing clothes not from the Walmart bargain bin, driving cars with electric windows, and eating out instead of cooking rice and beans at home. Renters, just like home owners, want to live in the most comfortable home they can afford in general.

People who lament the lack of rentable pods and don't understand why anyone would pay more for a bigger house in a quitter neighborhood or just for a nice view exist, but you are in the minority. Thus renters are not going to vote to live in a ghetto so they could save a few hundred on rent.

New comment by pandaman in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

pandaman — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 03:05:20 +0000

There is a difference but not in the way you think. Producing an asset is just buying other assets and labor. The difference with buying an asset is that a part of the assets you bought for production is illiquid for a term of the production. Generally you can only sell unfinished construction at a huge discount during most of the stages. So producing an asset is as same as buying an asset but with a lockout period, when you cannot sell.

New comment by pandaman in "Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back"

pandaman — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:22:17 +0000

Nailguns are not as complicated as you think, anybody with IQ over 80 can be trained to the top proficiency in 30 mins. Same goes for other power tools, they are generally much easier to use and more productive than their human-powered equivalent. The effect of the construction industry adoption of those is in smaller crew sizes, which is also being observed in SW industry.