Hacker News: sandworm101

New comment by sandworm101 in "Stolen Renoir paintings found hidden, and damaged, behind cinder block wall"

sandworm101 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 17:57:03 +0000

There is specific Italian law about return of art. This would normally apply to people who stole the art but a careful lawyer could use this law to negotiate a reduced punishment for organized crime charges. If the art theft is described as a part of a larger criminal enterprise, then the return of that art could trigger a 2/3 reduction in punishment. See below (translated by google).

https://documenti.camera.it/leg18/dossier/testi/gi0031b.htm

"is committed by the person who has collaborated in identifying the co-conspirators or has ensured evidence of the crime or has effectively worked to prevent the criminal activity from being carried to further consequences or has recovered or had recovered the cultural property subject to the crime (penalty reduced from one third to two thirds)."

New comment by sandworm101 in "Waymo in Toronto"

sandworm101 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 17:17:17 +0000

The most complicated scenario, imho, is getting on and off a car ferry. Dark. Wet. Pedestrians. Dogs. No sidewalks. Flashing lights and lots of signs, most of which have nothing to do with car traffic. Lines on the road which you ignore in favor of following hand gestures. Then dramatic up/down ramps followed by parking way too close to other cars. And it is all in a metal box where GPS fails and internal systems are thrown off by ship movements.

New comment by sandworm101 in "Hello Toronto – Waymo Is En Route"

sandworm101 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:35:43 +0000

Ya, all mountains get names. Passes only get names if the are legendary, usually for dramatic views or as highpoints between geographic areas. If a pass has a name, drivers should expect dramatic weather changes between one side and the other.

New comment by sandworm101 in "Hello Toronto – Waymo Is En Route"

sandworm101 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:26:22 +0000

It is more complex than that. Quebec (Montreal) has additional laws over and above the national laws, often requiring that French text be bigger/longer/more prominent than the English text.

There was also controversy over proper names v. descriptions. "Macdonalds" is a proper name but should "Burger King" be translated to "Burger Roi"?

New comment by sandworm101 in "Waymo in Toronto"

sandworm101 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:10:44 +0000

>> Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos.

Montreal is a vacation compared to the great plains/prairies: -40 with half the road coved by blown snow. Lets see how the navigation system reacts to a total absence of painted lines and visible curbs. Or go to the rocky mountains. I doubt Montreal streets contain any mountain passes worthy of naming.

New comment by sandworm101 in "Tesla's new Roadster makes a flying debut, hitting 60 MPH in under a second"

sandworm101 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:13:35 +0000

I doubt it is actual air. When compressing gas to 10,000+ psi and then running it through a rocket motor, clean/dry nitrogen is the way to go. Normal air has moisture, which can form ice, and oxygen which gets extremely reactive when heated.

And many a rocket scientist would be insulted by the comparison of a nozzled rocket motor to the simple pipe of an air rifle.

New comment by sandworm101 in "Tesla Roadster"

sandworm101 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 12:27:41 +0000

Cold gas or not, these are still rocket motors.

New comment by sandworm101 in "The First Social Network: In rural Argentina residents send messages w AM radio"

sandworm101 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:01:17 +0000

14 and 10 used to be the trucking standard. 14 on the road, 2 for eating and 8 for sleeping. Many people did that continuously for weeks. Doing it for a couple days isnt impossible.

New comment by sandworm101 in "The First Social Network: In rural Argentina residents send messages w AM radio"

sandworm101 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:32:03 +0000

Google maps says it is a 15-hour drive. That is a long day but still is just a day. It would be akin to Seattle to SF, or Vancouver to Calgary. Most people with cars on the west coast wouldn't really blink at such a drive. It is still in that range where one can debate flying v driving in terms of money/time/pollution.

New comment by sandworm101 in "Sticky alpine flower confirms Darwin's 150-year-old carnivorous plant prediction"

sandworm101 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 14:57:30 +0000

It depends on how much you look into the forest floor. Many trees in a mature forest actively poison the soil to reduce competition for nutrients. Look at a pacific coastal rain forest (or Star Wars' Endor) and you see big trees and an open forest floor. The big trees do not allow smaller/medium trees to get going.(Some of this is lack of sunlight, but also soil PH.) So a salmon-dependent tree could adapt to prevent other plants from getting ahold of salmon nutrients.

Similar to the nitrogen from salmon on the coasts, I have read about plants getting calcium from deer/elk/moose antlers. You would think it wasn't much but then you realize how depleted a forest can be of calcium. It can put a halt on plant growth. Migrating deer then become a significant source of calcium movement.

New comment by sandworm101 in "Submarine cable resilience"

sandworm101 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:04:11 +0000

Fry: "How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?" Professor: "Well, it's a spaceship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one." s02e12

New comment by sandworm101 in "Sticky alpine flower confirms Darwin's 150-year-old carnivorous plant prediction"

sandworm101 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:01:17 +0000

And there are carnivorous trees, even entire forests:

https://hakaimagazine.com/features/salmon-trees/

"up to 50 percent of the total nitrogen the trees use comes from salmon."

https://pacificwild.org/salmon-feed-forests/

"resident bears have been known to carry over 6,200 kg of salmon from the rivers to the woods, eating two thirds of the protein and leaving behind nearly 2,000 kg of salmon remains. Bears play a critical role in transporting nutrients from freshwater to the terrestrial environment, spreading the food source to other species and the forest floor. Decaying salmon carcasses are distributed everywhere post spawning, allowing nutrient rich soil to provide for the dense plant life of the rainforest"

New comment by sandworm101 in "Americans Trust in Federal Government Sinks to New Depths"

sandworm101 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:45:33 +0000

Both sides can be sound at the same time. If one side was unsound, it wouldnt have to go to the supremes.

New comment by sandworm101 in "ICE Planning $100M 'Nightmare' Domestic Spy Program"

sandworm101 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:42:37 +0000

Or, pointing out the idiocy of the statement "get rid of the DHS", a wide umbrella agency, by showing the speaker lacks any basic understanding of what that agency is or does.

New comment by sandworm101 in "Tesla's Robotaxis Blow Through School Zones, NHTSA Petition Alleges"

sandworm101 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:14:30 +0000

Or running an experiment to create new training data.

New comment by sandworm101 in "ICE Planning $100M 'Nightmare' Domestic Spy Program"

sandworm101 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:09:57 +0000

Coast Guard is DHS.

https://www.dhs.gov/operational-and-support-components

New comment by sandworm101 in "Tesla's Robotaxis Blow Through School Zones, NHTSA Petition Alleges"

sandworm101 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:06:27 +0000

And then read all the arbitrary historical minutia that have also influenced speed limits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law

"...the National Maximum Speed Limit (NMSL) was enacted in the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act that withheld Federal Highway funds from States that refused to comply with provisions of the law, including a maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour (89 km/h) for passenger vehicles, an increase Nixon approved in signing the final legislation."

New comment by sandworm101 in "ICE Planning $100M 'Nightmare' Domestic Spy Program"

sandworm101 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:53:03 +0000

>> Abolishing ICE and DHS

Ya, I am a fan of the coast guard... and I think we need the FAA/TSA to keep the planes running on time. And FEMA might be laughed at in some quarters but a federal disaster response is something we should have ahead of hurricane season.

New comment by sandworm101 in "Americans Trust in Federal Government Sinks to New Depths"

sandworm101 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 17:49:21 +0000

The decision was legally sound. Most every supreme court decision is, even those that have been overruled. People forget that for a case to reach the supremes there has to be sound legal argument on multiple sides. Their decisions are therefore rather arbitrary but that is OK. The legislature can bypass any scotus decision through new laws or even a constitutional amendment. Our present difficulty is that the legislative branch has all but abandoned that role.

New comment by sandworm101 in "Character.ai has initiated voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy"

sandworm101 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:43:05 +0000

Which is why at the top end we are supposed to have complementary laws. Bans on non-compete increase competition at the low end. Antitrust and government regulation/licensing at the high end prevent monopiles and thereby increase competition. The problem today is that we are dropping the ball on the high end, letting the Googles stamp down competition when, in decades past, they would have been broken up.