Hacker News: ryantgtg

New comment by ryantgtg in "The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck"

ryantgtg — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:35:41 +0000

Replying to myself. I just read the article. The gray/blue/green H2 fuel costs in the article do not reflect current U.S. fuel costs.

Gray is $8-10 for liquid delivery. This equates to a little over $1 per mile, which - compared to a CNG bus - is double the operating cost (and about 4x more than a battery electric bus per mile... just for fuel/electricity). And yeah, as I mentioned previously, capital costs will be like 1.3x of battery electric.

That said, there are lots of novel ideas out there for creating H2 fuel! Forest waste (with supposedly all carbon captured), methane pyrolysis (with carbon bricks as an output). The promises never end.

New comment by ryantgtg in "EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear"

ryantgtg — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 04:23:03 +0000

Read their comment and yours? What great advice. I would suggest you do the same, but I think you'll continue to misread it.

> No one is going to pay you to take your waste away and dispose of it. You would have to pay them.

> lol, paying someone to "take your waste away and dispose of it" has been a stable of the "recycle" industry in western countries for 3 decades now.

They are saying that paying to dispose of the clothes/waste is how it's done. And then... you said the same thing. Perhaps you're assuming they're just taking a guess, rather than coming at it with understanding that this is how it has been done for a while.

New comment by ryantgtg in "The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck"

ryantgtg — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 04:13:30 +0000

Yeah. Vehicle costs are pretty much the same (for battery electric and fuel cell electric buses, at least) and are about 2-3x more than ICE. On-site hydrogen infra for fueling/storage is substantially more than charging equipment. H2 fuel is currently $10-20 per kg (the higher end accounts for vapor losses), which is, again, much greater than either diesel or electricity.

New comment by ryantgtg in "EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear"

ryantgtg — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:55:14 +0000

You appear to be agreeing with the person you’re replying to.

New comment by ryantgtg in "An Update on Heroku"

ryantgtg — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 03:33:02 +0000

This is my experience, too. Heroku didn’t stay competitive price-wise with alternatives. And scaling even slightly from the basic dynos quadrupled (or whatever) the price.

Feature and experience-wise, we were always really happy with heroku.

I don’t know if this fits with the “salesforce purchased and let stagnate” narrative that nearly everyone here is pushing.

New comment by ryantgtg in "We can't have nice things because of AI scrapers"

ryantgtg — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 01:56:42 +0000

It doesn’t need to be said.

New comment by ryantgtg in "John Varley has died"

ryantgtg — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 20:26:54 +0000

I had a city college teacher who knew I liked sci-fi, so she printed me out the short story Equinoctial. Great little story, and from there I devoured everything by him.

The relatively recent Irontown Blues reminded me how great the Eight Worlds is, and how entertaining he is.

New comment by ryantgtg in "Messing with scraper bots"

ryantgtg — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 05:25:56 +0000

I think the counterargument is that a while ago ads became super annoying. They move, they grow in size, they feature nsfw things, they have weird js that annoys you when you try to leave. Perhaps some of this has toned down in recent years, but the damage is done. The ads are not good actors. It’s not as black and white as subverting or not subverting the will of the site owner.

New comment by ryantgtg in "Ban me at the IP level if you don't like me"

ryantgtg — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 19:16:06 +0000

Sure, but the article is about a bot that expressly identifies itself in the user agent and its user agent name contains a sentence suggesting you block its ip if you don’t like it. Since it uses at least 74 ips, blocking its user agent seems like a fine idea.

New comment by ryantgtg in "Ban me at the IP level if you don't like me"

ryantgtg — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 18:39:24 +0000

This one was funny because I checked a day’s log and it was using at least 15 different IPs. Much easier to just ban or rate limit “Thinkbot”

New comment by ryantgtg in "What does Palantir actually do?"

ryantgtg — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 04:07:53 +0000

Related to the supposed inevitability of war AND nazi Germany, I recommend Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke. It’s a good catalog of the choices, both economic and philosophical, on all sides, leading up to it (and contrasted with pacifists).

New comment by ryantgtg in "Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death"

ryantgtg — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 14:46:46 +0000

I did this last year and checked on it after the first day to find a drowned baby opossum.

New comment by ryantgtg in "AI cameras change driver behavior at intersections"

ryantgtg — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 03:12:41 +0000

In many cases the people responsible are not in fact punished. This is about enforcing laws that are intended for save lives in the face of the breakdown of the social contract. I would expect these Higher IQ/cognitive speed people you speak of to be excellent drivers, and to have the wherewithal to look toward Europe, which has had ATE cameras in place for a while.

New comment by ryantgtg in "AI cameras change driver behavior at intersections"

ryantgtg — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 02:53:24 +0000

People in the US drive with their phones in their faces. Is that an issue in Portugal?

New comment by ryantgtg in "U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites"

ryantgtg — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 17:32:28 +0000

Maybe! We mostly just discuss things like, “Do you want more food? Take more food!”

New comment by ryantgtg in "U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites"

ryantgtg — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 15:47:27 +0000

Not arguing your point. Just thought I’d share that of the emigres I know (big families that left starting in the late 60s) all are either Christian or Zoorastrian (to some degree). To them the Islamic conquest of Persia is not old news!

New comment by ryantgtg in "Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week"

ryantgtg — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 20:10:37 +0000

I, like Houston Wade, have for years been like, "why don't I see any ships or activity" each time I pass by the ports of LA/LB. But I, unlike Houston Wade, wouldn't be so arrogant to conclude from my observation that shipping has stopped.

New comment by ryantgtg in "Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?"

ryantgtg — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:36:42 +0000

Hydrogen fuel (gray) is often about $8-10/kg, which is about an 80% increase in costs per mile over diesel. Green hydrogen is like $14/kg.

Additionally, agencies are experiencing vapor losses of fuel, which results in an overall increase in fuel costs. These losses can occur in different circumstances, but often occur after fueling when the gaseous fuel left in the hose (that cannot be returned to the liquid tank) evaporates. One agency reported double the cost of fuel due to these losses.

Anyway, yeah I think the argument in the article was that this waste heat isn't "free" because you're paying such a premium for it via the fuel costs.

New comment by ryantgtg in "Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?"

ryantgtg — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:28:44 +0000

They kind of do, though. Most transit agencies hire consultants to plan out these transitions, and the consultants have expertise in the different technologies and can present the pros and cons. However, the decisions stemming from this information can often be dictated by the transit agency's governing board, which cares less about this fat report that they just paid for and cares more for the hydrogen interests whispering in their ears.

New comment by ryantgtg in "Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?"

ryantgtg — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:25:20 +0000

Thanks for your insight. The amount of damage that Proterra did to the overall BEB adoption rates should not be underestimated. I work with many agencies and so many of them are running from BEBs toward FCEBs in large part because of their, or sister agency, experience with Proterra buses.