Hacker News: petrocrat

New comment by petrocrat in "Mondragon Corporation – a federation of co-operatives"

petrocrat — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:54:23 +0000

Worker cooperatives are fully compatible with capitalism. Only mentioning it because sometimes this idea gets unfairly maligned due to some mistaken association with socialism or even communism. There should be more of these sorts of entities in the USA and Europe, and frankly everywhere. It's an assured route towards better conditions for the working class, by making them owners and stakeholders in a more substantial way than merely holding some stock equity (which is kind of a superficial ownership that's sometimes presented as this same type of worker cooperative ownership).

New comment by petrocrat in "SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B"

petrocrat — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:00:51 +0000

to be fair, in the pharoahs quest for immortality after death, if they could have put their pyramid burial tombs in space to avoid decay/ruin for longer they would have. I wouldn't be shocked to see the oligarchs paying for their own space burials inside very lavish satellites whose orbit won't decay for thousands of years so they can "live forever".

New comment by petrocrat in "SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B"

petrocrat — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:10:46 +0000

It's not about the "Access to resources. A sense of adventure. Learning."

Since you are right. All of these things are available on Earth for far cheaper, with better ROI and with far less risk of dying or getting early cancer from cosmic rays.

The real benefit is a commanding lead over geopolitical rivals in the domain of satellites and satellite platforms for hosting devices in orbit, thus securing an insurmountable national security advantage.

New comment by petrocrat in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"

petrocrat — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 17:47:42 +0000

> By soul I mean "the part of you that is an observer"

This is a nice notion, but it's not how the existing literature (going back very long) generally uses the term "soul." Conventionally speaking the term soul is theological and has ties to modes of spiritual salvation as it is considered a substance that persists beyond human mortality. What you're describing seems more like the term "self" or "ego" or "conscious awareness" as those terms are used in philosophy. You're welcome to create your own definitions, but if they trample over the prior art of the terms in literature that is hundreds if not thousands of years old then that's going to almost certainly lead to the confusion you say you're noticing among people.

for what it's worth my drawing of "the part of me that is the observer" would look like some subset of the brain.

New comment by petrocrat in "The Great Gatsby is the most misunderstood novel (2021)"

petrocrat — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 10:58:45 +0000

Also that the "spiritual world" (i.e. religion) in America has been colonized by money, consumption and commodities as well, which has drained all the spirituality from it. Religion in America is as desolate of meaning and sustenance as the American Western Frontier. You have to be a heretic to find spirituality that's worth anything here.

New comment by petrocrat in "Tesla market share in US drops to lowest since 2017"

petrocrat — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 04:45:35 +0000

The Slate truck might be the only one to have less digital tracking just due to how they are skipping so many electronic bells and whistles to keep costs in the $20k range.

New comment by petrocrat in "Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat"

petrocrat — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 12:51:34 +0000

Though demand for heating should be falling simultaneously, no? I wonder what the net CO2 tradeoff is there. At least historically with burning fuels to create heat, that likely contributed more per unit of degree-change than AC, however with Heat pumps now that's probably either a wash or reversed, if I had to guess.

New comment by petrocrat in "The Erlang Ecosystem (2018) [video]"

petrocrat — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 14:22:34 +0000

WhatsApp, famously launched and served millions of users with a small team using Elixir. Seems to me that speaks to the language's production capability, or enterprise capability, if you will. Considering that, can you go more into detail about your assertion here?

> But for a long list of reasons, I wouldn't use it for anything other than prototyping/hobby projects.

New comment by petrocrat in "Training immune cells to remove ‘trash’ helps resolve lung inflammation"

petrocrat — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 07:23:33 +0000

The term for the parent comment's concept is anti-fragile

New comment by petrocrat in "Irrigating more U.S. crops by mid-century will be worth it, researchers say"

petrocrat — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 11:54:13 +0000

The over simplification here is that not all plants are equal and not all soils and/or climes can support all plants. So for soils or climes that can only really grow "weeds" that are inedible to humans, if you put them through an animal (specifically a ruminant), then it converts biomass that is inedible to edible for humans.

The effect of this on your diagrams is in diagram 2, with the intermediate farm animal, there are many situations in that scenario where the calories from those plants would be entirely lost, not simply rerouted losslessly to human consumption.

New comment by petrocrat in "A 100GW phased laser array for interstellar lightsail propulsion (2021)"

petrocrat — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 11:46:15 +0000

Interesting, I was thinking of them for another use as well: dumping surplus photovoltaic/wind collected energy into space as a thermostat of sorts to help control global average temperatures and buy more time to handle CO2 emissions. Not sure but maybe its cheaper than using batteries for time-shifting that energy to reduce fossil fuels during the transitionary period.

New comment by petrocrat in "A 100GW phased laser array for interstellar lightsail propulsion (2021)"

petrocrat — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 11:38:59 +0000

If it's meant to transfer momentum to a lightsail, then there is no requirement that the power must be delivered to a single point on the electrical grid. Several of these lasers in a smaller form factor dispersed over a rather large geographic region can all focus on a point in orbit and transfer nearly the same momentum as a single laser focused on that point would.

New comment by petrocrat in "Recreate the cavity-preventing GMO bacteria BCS3-L1 from precursor"

petrocrat — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 02:41:50 +0000

It's not the fact that there is food stuck in your teeth that causes cavities, it's what pH results from the bacteria metabolizing that food. Bacteria breaking down carbs produces acidic conditions, but when they break down protein or fat the reaction products from that are much closer to neutral pH.

New comment by petrocrat in "Migrating from Supabase"

petrocrat — Mon, 22 May 2023 19:14:29 +0000

Echoing most of the comments here: Love your product! This feedback in the article isn't even a setback, just a learning opportunity that Supabase users know will only make it better. You guys/gals at Supabase are crushing it!

New comment by petrocrat in "The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)"

petrocrat — Wed, 10 May 2023 17:42:42 +0000

The term ballooning is so qualitative and subjective that it is essentially a Barnum statement. How would you determine if the number for the debt is too high? And why?

And how would you determine if it is too low?

For example would the calculation consider the current population? the current factory capacity? Agricultural capacity? the year? Interest Rates? Tax Revenue? The populations desired rate of saving? The current desires and goals of the nation and its citizens? If there is no exact formula, then would a representative body that debates and agrees on a best estimate number be a reasonable way to decide that? If so isn't that what congress does already?

New comment by petrocrat in "There's something off about LED bulbs"

petrocrat — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 22:27:14 +0000

Probably going to sound crazy, but we could start running water pipes in front of the walls and under the ceilings and mounting the LED's directly on the pipes for cooling. Creativity, thinking wholistically... the entire contemporary western house design needs a rethink frankly, from DC circuits to electrification to modular, mass-produceable utility drop-in pods, all with an eye towards integrated systems design paired with scalable modularity.

New comment by petrocrat in "America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars"

petrocrat — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 08:25:18 +0000

> Does the government require banks to buy long-term treasuries?

Yes, there are a number of banks that have "Primary Dealer" [1] status which confers to them some benefits, but also makes them legally obligated to make some minimum number of winning bids on government treasury auctions. See the section under "Expectations & Requirements" in the link. Probably the most quantifiable requirement is they have to maintain a minimum of 0.25% market share in winning Treasury bids: "Maintain a share of Treasury market making activity of at least 0.25 percent."

[1]: https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/primarydealers

New comment by petrocrat in "Children of the Ice Age"

petrocrat — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 13:48:46 +0000

At large timescales, the migrations most likely occurred in a way that followed Fick's diffusion patterns [1]. Some human groups inevitably even migrated backwards into Russia at times. And the partial pressure of humans in the Americas probably slowed further diffusion of humans into that area to a small degree as unfamiliar tribes collided together and repelled each other, either back to where they came or into a retreat further into unknown territory for respite.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fick%27s_laws_of_diffusion

New comment by petrocrat in "Man beats machine at Go in human victory over AI"

petrocrat — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 11:30:05 +0000

Funny, seeing with two eyes is needed for depth perception. Pretty sure that was a really subtle joke from the user above you :)

New comment by petrocrat in "Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you"

petrocrat — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 03:36:26 +0000

Why is nobody questioning the analysts methods and models? Are they using DSGE economics models? I'm sure there's plenty of angles of criticism for their tools if one digs a bit.