Hacker News: silverquiet

New comment by silverquiet in "U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal"

silverquiet — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:07:10 +0000

As a young man, can I opt into Medicare since I'm opted in to paying for it?

New comment by silverquiet in "Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads"

silverquiet — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 21:05:29 +0000

I ran it by Gemini, and it says that the top 10% earn more than $78,800 annually.

I believe your experience is with the top end of the distribution.

New comment by silverquiet in "Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads"

silverquiet — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:38:58 +0000

How much do they make?

New comment by silverquiet in "Rent collections are down in New York"

silverquiet — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:27:13 +0000

This sounds like private equity, except they'd also demand that the goose increase egg production by 10% per quarter.

New comment by silverquiet in "Waymo Premier"

silverquiet — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:42:15 +0000

> Waymo is nicer

Just wait till Google spins it off to private equity; it'll be barley running bits of vehicles patched together by the cheapest mechanics they can find.

Enjoy it while you can; I'd love to give it a go myself, but even though I live in a city where they are supposedly in commercial operation, I can't get one to either of the two houses on either side of town that I currently split my time between. I have a buddy who lives a few blocks from one of their zones who walked over just so he could try it out. As of now, our sub-standard, minimally-invested-in-this-century bus system is actually much better suited to my needs.

New comment by silverquiet in "Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers"

silverquiet — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:27:00 +0000

> rural red states where they welcome the construction

The state legislatures might be all for it, but I can say as someone who lives in South Texas, the actual communities are up in arms against datacenters. Of course there's lots of irony in that one of the reasons the datacenters like the area is that there is a gas pipeline that the locals welcomed that can be used to run turbines.

New comment by silverquiet in "Drunk post: Things I've learned as a senior engineer (2021)"

silverquiet — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 14:16:01 +0000

How do you plan that? Particularly for an age 45 retirement?

New comment by silverquiet in "Drunk post: Things I've learned as a senior engineer (2021)"

silverquiet — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:51:04 +0000

> you can retire at 45

Kinda hard to do that when you've locked all your money up in a retirement vehicle that doesn't let you withdraw until age 59.5.

New comment by silverquiet in "Louisiana Advances One of the Country's 'Cruelest' Anti-Homeless Bills"

silverquiet — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 23:22:27 +0000

arbeit macht frei

New comment by silverquiet in "We automated everything except knowing what's going on"

silverquiet — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 13:54:50 +0000

Anything in production is legacy; I'm pretty sure it happens as soon as the code is shipped regardless of who wrote it.

New comment by silverquiet in "Google Public CA is down"

silverquiet — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 01:22:34 +0000

If multiple services are affected, it's probably some underlying infrastructure issue.

New comment by silverquiet in "New Athens: The first great American city for families"

silverquiet — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 15:36:58 +0000

I'm quite capable of snark and I wouldn't say that I was being particularly so, but maybe something adjacent to it. Mostly I think this is amusingly naive. America has a history of attempts to create utopian communities, but I'm unaware of any that have persisted for terribly long. I think the one I'm most fond of are the Shakers, whose biggest legacy is their carpentry skills which is a hobby of mine.

I didn't really get an explicit yes or no out of the above, but I take it to mean no? That's the interesting question to me - who would be allowed to join such a community, and if someone was discovered to be undesirable for one reason or another, what would be done with them?

New comment by silverquiet in "New Athens: The first great American city for families"

silverquiet — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:14:41 +0000

Will you allow illegal aliens in your new city?

New comment by silverquiet in "Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority""

silverquiet — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:39:11 +0000

Does it recommend taking a break? Mostly I've seen it ask if I'm still watching. I've always assumed this is not for user benefit, but in order to not spend bandwidth on a screen that is not being looked at.

The only site I'm familiar with that has somewhat decent self-limiting functions built in is HN's no procrastination settings. But that's of course because HN isn't run to make money, but as a hobby.

New comment by silverquiet in "Electric Macan outsold gas in 2025, but Porsche commits to gas for some reason"

silverquiet — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 16:10:20 +0000

> For the same reason I don't keep a giant gas tank in my garage

Do you keep a car in your garage?

New comment by silverquiet in "What twenty years of DevOps has failed to do"

silverquiet — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 03:15:44 +0000

I think my favorite interaction with a dev around this was when I was explaining how his java program looked like a big juicy target for the OOM killer and it had killed it in order to keep the system working. His response was, "I don't care about the system, I care about my program!" And he understood the irony of that, but it was a good reminder that we have somewhat different views and priorities.

New comment by silverquiet in "The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis"

silverquiet — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 16:42:08 +0000

> JP Doherty did not want to sign the email. But he knew he didn’t have a choice. His son, Rhys, was scheduled to have strabismus surgery in January, correcting an eye issue that made it difficult for him to walk on his own. The procedure cost $10,000 out of pocket. Doherty discussed the decision with his wife, and while she wanted him to be able to quit, they both knew the kids needed his health insurance. [0]

Regarding Musk's "hardcore" ultimatum at Twitter.

[0]https://www.vanityfair.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-ultimatum

New comment by silverquiet in "Pentagon moves to punish Democratic senator over 'seditious video'"

silverquiet — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:56:47 +0000

Aren't they required to obey chain-of-command? And doesn't their pay and their family's healthcare depend on them remaining employed?

New comment by silverquiet in "A middle-class family's only option: A $43,000 health insurance premium"

silverquiet — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:52:34 +0000

The hip seems like such a bad example to me. First of all, who do you think needs hip replacements? It's not young people; surgeons don't even like to do them on young people (and to a joint replacement surgeon, "young" is under 60) since there's a good chance they'll outlive the joint itself. And it's a one-time cost for a surgery that increases an old person's independence vs an ongoing cost of palliative care (whatever that means) and having to provide more care for someone who has a potentially treatable disability. Hip replacement is considered "the surgery of the century" - the 20th century that is, because it is one of the most successful in terms of function and satisfaction provided to patients.

New comment by silverquiet in "$27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?"

silverquiet — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 14:24:37 +0000

I gained insurance overnight because of the ACA after not being able to afford it.