Hacker News: peterashford

New comment by peterashford in "'No way to prevent this,' says only package manager where this regularly happens"

peterashford — Sat, 16 May 2026 07:04:42 +0000

Its a reference to an Onion article about gun violence in the US

New comment by peterashford in "Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens"

peterashford — Thu, 07 May 2026 01:24:10 +0000

We've had deaths due to climate related storms in NZ now, and we haven't been hit anywhere near as hard as, say, Pakistan who had 1/3 of their country flooded in one go. And it's getting worse. That may not be human extinction but its definitely plausible that mass casualty events are possible

New comment by peterashford in "Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens"

peterashford — Wed, 06 May 2026 22:25:06 +0000

Climate change is the result of aggregate human actions. What we contribute per human is exactly the metric to use.

New comment by peterashford in "I completed 100 Days of Java over 5 years and mapped the journey as a graph"

peterashford — Wed, 06 May 2026 22:18:14 +0000

Java EE is pretty darn retro right now, and it was never core Java

New comment by peterashford in "After three months on Linux, I don't miss Windows at all"

peterashford — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:19:52 +0000

This is exactly me. Been switched for 6 months. Loving it. I find I'm enjoying my computer so much more now that I feel it belongs to me rather than being an advertising surface for MS and their partners

New comment by peterashford in "Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)"

peterashford — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 09:36:23 +0000

Hey! Thanks for responding to my comment. And welcome to HN!

New comment by peterashford in "DeepSeek v4"

peterashford — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:29:03 +0000

Even US Intelligence didn't believe they were close to getting a nuke. And given that they were in negotiations about controlling their nuclear program before the US attacked, it's hard to credit US foreign policy on this front

New comment by peterashford in "Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)"

peterashford — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:32:51 +0000

Thanks for the feedback about inverters - I was unaware.

New comment by peterashford in "Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)"

peterashford — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:31:27 +0000

I think that's the point about the lake Onslow project - its MASSIVE. So yes, expensive, but months of backup for the whole country would not be cheap even with batteries

New comment by peterashford in "Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)"

peterashford — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:29:24 +0000

I wasn't saying its fine, I was saying it was a tradeoff. And I wasn't making an argument about Nuclear, either.

New comment by peterashford in "The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers"

peterashford — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:26:47 +0000

Yup. What amuses me is that people think that decimate is to massively degrade something. I assume they're thinking "reduce to 1/10th" rather than "reduce to 9/10th". The effect is markedly different

New comment by peterashford in "The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers"

peterashford — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:37:37 +0000

The literal meaning was removing 1/10

New comment by peterashford in "Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)"

peterashford — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:48:48 +0000

And sun isn't uncommon. I was chatting with a person in Auckland, NZ. He said it was a cloudly day and he was producing much more solar power than he needed. His take: the panels are the cheapest part of the system so they just over-provisioned. We can all do that - it aint hard

New comment by peterashford in "Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)"

peterashford — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:46:36 +0000

Its local environmental damage versus global environmental gains

New comment by peterashford in "Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)"

peterashford — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:44:35 +0000

In NZ we're discussing pumped hydro in Lake Onslow which will provides months of backup for the country

New comment by peterashford in "Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)"

peterashford — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:38:20 +0000

Over-provisioning with renewables is cheaper

New comment by peterashford in "Trump fires Pam Bondi as attorney general"

peterashford — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:07:03 +0000

I vehemently disagree with this idea. I think you need to understand that all humans are fallible and you should have less vertical power structures and more horizontal structures. Putting all the power into one person's hands is asking for tyrants

New comment by peterashford in "Solar is winning the energy race"

peterashford — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 22:45:56 +0000

There's the theory and there's the real world

New comment by peterashford in "Health NZ staff told to stop using ChatGPT to write clinical notes"

peterashford — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 07:36:51 +0000

Enterprises do that if they choose. Patients can choose as well. And it's their choice, not anyone else's

New comment by peterashford in "Health NZ staff told to stop using ChatGPT to write clinical notes"

peterashford — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 07:31:29 +0000

The laws are, the policing is not. At least not in medical data