Hacker News: proggy

New comment by proggy in "Another Day Has Come"

proggy — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:32:06 +0000

> versus going into producing TV shows and movies because Hollywood people are fun to hang out with

I disagree with this take quite a bit. Yes, software could be better, but Apple TV+ has given dozens of shows the budget and freedom to produce some truly generation-defining art. Ted Lasso, Severance, and For All Mankind are huge stand-outs in their scope, depth, and ambition. For instance, the latter is produced by Sony, yet you see nearly zero product placement, which has been a hallmark of the studio for over a decade now. Putting gobs of money into storytelling yields purer, and therefore more compelling, narratives that will hold up well over time and represent the best of what we are capable of. At the same time, Apple TV+ as a subscription service is also a very convenient way for Apple to weather any ups and downs in the physical product categories.

New comment by proggy in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

proggy — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:15:50 +0000

I don’t understand your point. You’re saying that online predictive markets are bad, but perverse incentives are bad in general, so there must be worse things out there. While that may be true, the scale and reach of these betting sites is massive, on the scale of hundreds of thousands of daily users with tens of millions of dollars on the line daily. The fact that a small number of people cheer for bad things to happen is no excuse for a betting apparatus that has captured a significant chunk of the global population.

New comment by proggy in "Data centers in space makes no sense"

proggy — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 22:45:01 +0000

Satellites. Are. Fragile. People really don’t seem to intuitively understand this. Earth based assets are orders of magnitude more difficult to attack simply by virtue of being able to be placed inside of fortified structures anchored to, or inside of, the ground. The cost to deploy hardened buildings at scale is peanuts compared to orbiting constellations.

New comment by proggy in "Data centers in space makes no sense"

proggy — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 22:28:12 +0000

Has it occurred to anyone that you can put computers underground? In this apocalyptic scenario you are describing, how do you expect the ground based command and control infrastructure to survive? Satellites are 100% reliant on ground based operations. That is a hard requirement. And if you put the command and control underground, might as well just skip the whole space based plan and just put the data underground.

New comment by proggy in "US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees"

proggy — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:18:47 +0000

This rule only applies to a single adult + child pair, and not the entire traveling party. For instance, if you have a party of 1 child and 2 adults, the airline is well within its rights to charge seat selection fees to the second adult. It’s incredibly frustrating that I have to pay an extra $40-$50, per journey, to United to sit next to my wife and child. And that’s with the current “consumer friendly” rules in place.

New comment by proggy in "Memory is slow, Disk is fast – Part 1"

proggy — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 15:23:39 +0000

I feel like our planet’s long-term academic health would dramatically improve if something resembling the following statement was posted on the wall of every K-12 and college classroom:

ChatGPT is not a primary source. Wikipedia is not a primary source. Google Search is not a primary source. Microsoft Encarta is not a primary source. The Encyclopedia Brittanica is not a primary source.

Information aggregators are not primary sources. Identifiable people are primary sources.

New comment by proggy in "Japan's Creepiest Station"

proggy — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 14:35:00 +0000

Creepy is subjective of course, but it’s pretty high on the list for the most isolated and/or inconveniently-located platform in the country. The only access is via a narrow footbridge leading to a 486-step staircase that goes 70m underground (230ft). Unlike most other 50+ meter deep train stations, there are no elevators and no escalators. The only way in or out of the station is via those stairs, which makes platform-to-street time a non-trivial part of the overall journey.

New comment by proggy in "The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong"

proggy — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 01:53:43 +0000

This is the real answer, not the pat “no one builds new used cars” nonsense. It is entirely possible to build new, no-frills apartments that are 100% habitable and to code. But because of all the regulatory boxes one needs to check — namely all the fees spent, and time spent waiting for seemingly endless approvals — it is simply not possible to rent out bottom-dollar builds at a low market rate. The same logic applies for single family homes sold for purchase. The startup costs are just too damn high.

New comment by proggy in "A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen"

proggy — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 04:51:16 +0000

They’re horrible in crashes in the North American region. That’s because the average vehicle size in North America is much, much bigger than the vehicles in the Kei trucks’ region of origin. And streets in North America are, on average, much, much wider and permit higher speed traffic than those in Japan. The cars themselves aren’t inherently unsafe; if you keep them mostly on private property and only take them out on low-speed public roads with light duty vehicles, they’re still operating in an appropriate context. Also pretty appropriate in historic city centers where the roads aren’t too fast and the trucks and full size SUVs aren’t too numerous. But yeah, take one out on the interstate boxed between two semi trucks, an F-350, and a Suburban and you’re going to be in real danger.

New comment by proggy in "Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs"

proggy — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 21:49:36 +0000

What’s interesting to me is that in this horribly corrupt state of affairs we find ourselves in, there are thousands upon thousands of smaller businesses that are not able to seek redress the way a megacorp like Apple or Nvidia can. Your run-of-the-mill office furniture importer doesn’t have the same ability to book up a dinner and pay the requisite multi-million dollar lobbying fee as a Silicon Valley magnate. In the before times, these folks would form interest groups and lobby Congress as a unified front, but at the moment it seems as though that doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t take imagination to see a highly noncompetitive, post-capitalist future where only the goods from megacorps are exempted, and the goods from medium sized businesses are taxed to oblivion, destroying any semblance of free markets.

New comment by proggy in "AI will change the world but not in the way you think"

proggy — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 16:05:58 +0000

In my view the author is putting the cart before the horse here. His primary argument seems to be that people already think in bullet points, so the fluff around them is unnecessary and can be excised without destroying the original message. But that fluff is there for many reasons. It adds context, it allows us to commingle our meaningful and valid emotions alongside our facts, and ultimately, it lets us tell a human story.

The way in which we create and consume information has a direct effect on our experience of the world, and I think there is a deeper point to be made here about how the way we use communication technology. The endless firehose of information is drowning our brains to the point that we are compelled to find a way to cope. But I would argue that the way to do that is to rate limit receipt of messages so that only the quality stuff gets through, rather than letting everything through and destroy every human aspect of them in the process. It’s Twitter’s 140 character limit argument from last decade all over again; the medium becomes the message, so we must be careful what mediums we use.

New comment by proggy in ""Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order"

proggy — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 04:53:38 +0000

I’m gonna be straight with you. I used to think this way — that living small was a form of protest against the ills of society. But life is too short. For many of us, that cardiac arrest, car accident, or pandemic-related terminal illness is right around the corner. Don’t say no to things that bring meaning, joy, purpose, and expansion to your life. You only have one life to live.

New comment by proggy in "[dead]"

proggy — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 20:24:25 +0000

Circumstantial evidence is still evidence.

New comment by proggy in "[dead]"

proggy — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 20:23:31 +0000

The coup started well before January 20th. And likely with the blessing of VC funds like Y Combinator…watch this post, it’s a proverbial canary in the coal mine.

New comment by proggy in "DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack"

proggy — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 21:44:48 +0000

Zero power? Explain that to USAID, Treasury, OPM, and GSA. Actors working on behalf of digital services (i.e. DOGE) are commandeering IT systems and sending out ultimatums to the workforce about complying with their orders at risk of being punished with administrative leave for insubordination. It is a highly unlawful operation that goes far beyond the consult and advise mission you’re alluding to.

New comment by proggy in "The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE"

proggy — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 21:36:40 +0000

Giving up the power to do the one thing you are constitutionally permitted to do, just because it doesn’t work for one particularly teflon-coated individual, is incredibly short-sighted.

Yes the reality of the situation is bleak. But to give up on impeachment would cede even more power to the executive branch.

New comment by proggy in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

proggy — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 15:13:03 +0000

The reason why our courts, which are historically apolitical, tried to convict him is because he committed a nearly uncountable number of crimes. And he broke even more norms.

Our biggest failure as a nation was not convicting him sooner and more decisively.

New comment by proggy in "Why is it so hard to build an airport?"

proggy — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 16:04:25 +0000

Eh, I get all that, but Narita is still quite useful as a transfer hub for passengers traveling between North America and East Asia. Haneda’s gate capacity is also a limiting factor, Narita is a necessary companion airport to soak up excess passenger demand.

New comment by proggy in "The thrill of the bargain hunt at unclaimed baggage"

proggy — Sun, 12 Nov 2023 04:19:33 +0000

It’s an interesting business model to be sure. They source from pretty much anywhere people tend to lose things. Theme park with more items lost than found? Theater with a bin full of abandoned gloves and coats? Unclaimed Baggage will pay you for it.

New comment by proggy in "Make Your Car Electric for 5K in Less Than a Day"

proggy — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 21:51:46 +0000

I would imagine a battery replacement would be more cost effective than swapping to a brand new drive system. The $5k estimate appears to be completely hypothetical, presumably based on bill of materials alone.