Hacker News: stephenhuey

New comment by stephenhuey in "Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit"

stephenhuey — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 03:11:27 +0000

Sorry man, your "just goes to show" ain't gonna cut it. Yes, I want better perks when the going gets rough, but it's not enough to blame only the c-suite and shareholders. This isn't software dev. Prior discussion on the article I shared in the other comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48025282

New comment by stephenhuey in "Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit"

stephenhuey — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 02:57:38 +0000

Wow! Simp?! What a word. A wrong word, though. So very, very wrong.

Would you prefer I spend some time telling my personal horror stories? Or should I point out that while a meaningful minority of those profits have recently been going to buybacks (a billion or less) which do benefit shareholders and executives to some degree (although a lot of executive compensation is already paid before we're looking at net profits), most of those are going to the needs of the airline which operates in a very capital-intensive industry. They have do do things like, y'know, BUY AIRPLANES. A bit pricier than those MacBooks a typical SaaS is purchasing. Apparently, after the industry was deregulated, it made it very difficult to keep some routes stable, and the article calls into question whether you can actually have a free market ever reach equilibrium or if the strange nature of this particular industry will always be pushing one of the players towards bankruptcy.

Of course, you only performed a cursory look. Perhaps if you had put in a little effort, you'd realize you didn't just singlehandedly fix the airline industry!

That link I shared was not some random, cursory look at the biz. I felt I learned a lot from it. I'm not able to verify whether the conclusions are accurate, but if they are, it sounds like the business has some pretty unusual problems, and where to go from here is not at all clear.

New comment by stephenhuey in "Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit"

stephenhuey — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:37:07 +0000

Airlines are quite a special case. Learned a lot from this a few months ago:

https://davidoks.blog/p/why-airlines-are-always-going-bankru...

I've had plenty of bad airline experiences and wished they gave me more for my trouble, but clearly they are unable to at current margins. If you want the market to provide a better service, it already does: you can pay tons more to fly private, either a charter or your own jet you purchased!

New comment by stephenhuey in "Controversial creators are benefiting from monetization programs run by Meta"

stephenhuey — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:11:29 +0000

As many have pointed out, a lot of daily community activities are conducted primarily through Meta-owned platforms. Quite annoying, but maybe there wasn't enough effort earlier to get all these schools and other community groups using other tools to get the word out?

However, companies could en masse decide to start filtering resumes containing Meta employment history. This already happens with some other questionable industries when reviewing applications. I know I'd be hard pressed to hire anyone with a Meta background.

New comment by stephenhuey in "Mars Bar from 1991 found – and it's 20g bigger than today's"

stephenhuey — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 19:29:23 +0000

Blue Bell is a real half gallon.

New comment by stephenhuey in "Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium"

stephenhuey — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 20:42:36 +0000

Probably so, since the article text does not even mention Switzerland at all! And from what I can find, Poland is ahead of Sweden but not Switzerland (currently neck and neck with Switzerland).

New comment by stephenhuey in "Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery"

stephenhuey — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 20:04:13 +0000

Non-paywall alternative:

https://www.engadget.com/2231100/meta-apps-displayed-ads-tha...

New comment by stephenhuey in "More German than many Germans"

stephenhuey — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 02:35:44 +0000

Are you Swiss? I'm no expert but from talking to Swiss people, their mortgage system is very different from the American one, and people are in no hurry to pay off their mortgages, and often they're never really paid off. Americans might find that appalling but the Swiss people I've spoken to find it normal. Tax incentives also help with this.

New comment by stephenhuey in "How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood"

stephenhuey — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:38:17 +0000

A few days ago I visited the little picturesque town of Hope, British Columbia. While driving down the Main Street, I saw a dozen chainsaw carvings of wildlife. I thought, why does that one look like Rambo? Found out the first movie was filmed there in 1982. The movie took place in the fictional town of Hope, Washington. When the movie begins, you see Sylvester Stallone walking into town under the real “Welcome to Hope” sign that was in the Canadian town at that time.

New comment by stephenhuey in "Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages"

stephenhuey — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 18:05:56 +0000

If we got down to only one language, that natural human tendency would be for new languages to grow out of that. They naturally change all the time, and suppressing that is a loss, not a gain.

New comment by stephenhuey in "Did They Ghost You?"

stephenhuey — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 03:47:01 +0000

Did you get an offer????

New comment by stephenhuey in "First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star"

stephenhuey — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 05:33:21 +0000

The most powerful observational tool in the universe would not show 35 anywhere near Houston.

New comment by stephenhuey in "Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)"

stephenhuey — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:51:12 +0000

Many years ago, there was a trend to show a different website, sometimes on a different domain and often with more differences than just a mobile version of the stylesheet. Sometimes the mobile version was not updated enough, or there was a reduction in functionality, hence the paranoia.

New comment by stephenhuey in "Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode"

stephenhuey — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:36:36 +0000

Per year, but still amazing. I'd like to think of myself who knows what he is doing, but I just launched a Rails-based platform for a client on web, iOS and Android, and had to spend an annoying amount of time in Google Play and App Store Connect. $299 would be a tiny fraction of the billable hours I'd have to spend messing around in there, and that's not counting mobile app dev time at all, so I'm on the lookout for a good candidate project to try Ruby Native on!

New comment by stephenhuey in "Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode"

stephenhuey — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 19:31:39 +0000

Thought this was going to be about the new Ruby Native!

https://rubynative.com

“From bundle install to your phone in minutes. To the App Store and Google Play without a line of native code.“

New comment by stephenhuey in "The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level"

stephenhuey — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:44:22 +0000

I'm hoping it's likely the powerful cannot monopolize agents. If open models are easy to obtain, and every homestead has solar and large batteries, everyone can routinely charge their robots like Seven of Nine plugging into her Borg alcove. As long as they have the right to repair them, and a monopoly can't fleece you with robot maintenance!

New comment by stephenhuey in "Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?"

stephenhuey — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:53:12 +0000

Yellowstone park rangers killed the last wolves there in 1926, and by the middle of the 20th century, the total population in the Lower 48 had been reduced to a few hundred in Minnesota and Michigan.

https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/historyculture/wolf-managemen...

This map shows how now there are nearly 7,000 in the contiguous states of the USA:

https://nywolf.org/learn/u-s-wolf-populations/

New comment by stephenhuey in "Doorbell cam filmed Tesla Autopilot crash that killed woman in her home"

stephenhuey — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 03:28:05 +0000

Half an hour west of me. Here's a gift link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/21/us/tesla-autopilot-crash-...

If you look at that doorbell cam footage, you'll see it's racing fast on a neighborhood street, fails to turn, and plows into the house. Here's an article published yesterday with multiple vantage points:

https://abc13.com/post/katy-family-mourning-grandmother-kill...

And this one from today has Tesla's VP of Auto-Pilot saying the driver manually overrode self-driving mode:

https://abc13.com/post/katy-family-mourning-grandmother-kill...

New comment by stephenhuey in "Never Give Them Your Face"

stephenhuey — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 16:05:09 +0000

I was one of the earliest on FB. It's mostly an address book for me now. I'm sad sooooo many acquaintances and relatives are there, and yes, it would be a lot of effort to get their contact info or get them to use other messaging platform (but I've started doing that).

For 15+ years, I've thought long and hard countless times about what could sustainably replace social media platforms that do not serve us well. I know a paid app is not super likely to succeed, although WhatsApp did use to cost a dollar! It seems like a nonprofit wouldn't be that great, and so I wonder about a mission-driven public benefit corporation (not to be confused with a B corp, though it could be one of those too). Of course it has to be cool or no one would use it. Not a fuddy duddy wannabe social network. Anyway, to sustain itself, would ads or paid offerings (that don't harvest personal data) be successful?

Happy to discuss with anyone interested!

New comment by stephenhuey in "I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle"

stephenhuey — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:38:57 +0000

Good point. If only the evil we must fight was as simple as Skynet. Reality is much sadder since people are hurting people.