Hacker News: terminous

New comment by terminous in "United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections"

terminous — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 21:51:40 +0000

Get this generationalist BS out of here. It isn't supported by the facts. Airline safety has improved with each generation. There were many more plane crashes in the 1970s-1980s when boomers were in their prime. Five times as many!

New comment by terminous in "IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system"

terminous — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 21:32:47 +0000

Flagged as irrelevant to topic of discussion.

New comment by terminous in "Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid-air window blowout"

terminous — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 20:50:11 +0000

It's a deep cultural rot that has apparently taken over in the 2010s, not a physical rot with older variants. There is no more of the classic Boeing engineering culture.

Read these emails and chats from Boeing employees in charge of safety and compliance, who brag to each other about pulling a "Jedi mind trick" on the regulators and how they deserve to get paid more for all the money they're saving the company.

https://fortune.com/2020/01/10/designed-clowns-supervised-mo...

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4316117-are-disturbing-inte...

New comment by terminous in "Live Map of Swiss Trains"

terminous — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 16:45:41 +0000

> you can basically take whatever train you want that you believe goes towards your goal.

That's a big difference between Germany and Switzerland. Full fare tickets let you take any route, but reasonably priced tickets are specific to a schedule of trains. If there is a delay causing a misconnect, you have to queue at the ticket window to get it endorsed for a later specific train. And my ticket inspectors on the train seriously inspected the endorsement each time.

New comment by terminous in "Live Map of Swiss Trains"

terminous — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 15:14:54 +0000

To counterpoint: in the height of summer tourist season 2023, I spent a week in Switzerland taking trains and booked several supersaver tickets in advance with 15-30 minute connections. I was told stories of the efficiency of Swiss trains, and that I could book 5-10 min connections with no problems, but chose to be safe and do 15-30 mins. Well, I missed 3 of these connections due to delays on the incoming train. I had to queue at the ticket booth to get it endorsed for the next train.

New comment by terminous in "Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid-air window blowout"

terminous — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 14:45:19 +0000

Because Boeing is 'too big to fail', proven in the last 737 Max case with MCAS. If there were no leadership prosecuted for that travesty and tragedy, none will ever be for this one. Proper accountability would cripple both the civilian and military sides of the US aerospace sector, which is dominated by Boeing.

So Southwest is all-in on not just Boeing, but 737s. That's their entire fleet. It makes a lot of things simpler. Could they boycott and switch to Airbus? Possibly, but at massive cost and logistics nightmares. Given their logistics failures elsewhere, they'd be fools to try to exit Boeing over this.

New comment by terminous in "Zeiss's "Holocam" turns glass windows into cameras"

terminous — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 02:07:41 +0000

Don't think of it like a transparent camera. Think of the window as a giant external periscope lens, connected to the rest of the camera with such thin fiber optics that you can't notice.

New comment by terminous in "Asian Arowana: The most expensive pet fish"

terminous — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 02:04:15 +0000

I'll give your non-contribution to this discussion a quote in turn:

"Libertarians are like house cats: completely dependent on a system they neither understand nor appreciate, but nevertheless fiercely confident of their own independence."

New comment by terminous in "Is the ChatGPT API Refusing to Summarize Academic Papers?"

terminous — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 21:50:35 +0000

That line also begins with "Now, take a deep breath" which an LLM cannot do.

New comment by terminous in "With revenue declining, Mozilla CEO gets a 20% raise"

terminous — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 03:11:19 +0000

For all the valid criticism of the Wikipedia Foundation, their combined salaries of all "officers, directors, trustees, and key employees" (aka board and C suite) was $4.2 million in 2021

Page 12 of https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/14/Wikim...

New comment by terminous in "With revenue declining, Mozilla CEO gets a 20% raise"

terminous — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 03:10:49 +0000

For all the valid criticism of the Wikipedia Foundation, their combined salaries of all "officers, directors, trustees, and key employees" (aka board and C suite) was $4.2 million in 2021

Page 12 of https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/14/Wikim...

New comment by terminous in "In L.A., a new vision of incarceration proves rehabilitation works"

terminous — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 19:26:55 +0000

Stop with this strawman argument. They're not saying criminals should just be released immediately and forgotten about until they commit their next crime. If you sincerely believe that this is the position of criminal justice reform advocates, you have been misled.

They're talking about criminals being housed in something other than a tiny cage with other criminals 23/7, who are all treated like they are irredeemable criminals who should never be allowed to re-enter society, even though most of them don't have life sentences. Turns out if you do that, the micro-society that results among prisoners is a warped society where criminality is rampant and normal. The strategies you learn to live in the prison society will cause you to become more of a criminal once you are released into the larger society, not less of one. In other words, prisons as they are currently run in the US are effectively a crime training program.

In what world is that logical? In what world would we not ask ourselves, "Is this really working? Should we at least try something else?"

New comment by terminous in "Reductive thinking and the unfairness of Spotify payments"

terminous — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 15:48:16 +0000

Yeah pretty much no normal consumer wants to pay per stream.

New comment by terminous in "How do we stop Meta in 2024? We fix the information loop"

terminous — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 15:45:33 +0000

Right, the classic phrase is "markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"

New comment by terminous in "Ant Completes Process of Removing Jack Ma's Control"

terminous — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:47:50 +0000

> Welcome to HN

We don't allow ad hominem attacks here, Andrew. You made uncited assertions, got an uncited assertion in response, and then made this wonderful contribution to the discussion.

New comment by terminous in "Using a Markov chain to generate readable nonsense with 20 lines of Python"

terminous — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 14:41:54 +0000

Yeah, that's just attention with extra steps

New comment by terminous in "Ambient Co-Presence"

terminous — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 02:44:56 +0000

Oh my God, they were called newspapers and magazines, and this industry killed them.

New comment by terminous in "Ambient Co-Presence"

terminous — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 02:43:28 +0000

This is the magic of broadcast media oligopolies.

There was a co-presence signal, but it had a 12-24 hour delay. It was called "the water cooler." You quickly learned what everyone else was watching and if you had picked the wrong network for that timeslots.

New comment by terminous in "'Suicide pod' is completely legal and approved for use in Switzerland"

terminous — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 19:48:05 +0000

Sure, buddy.

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

New comment by terminous in "Every major pharmacy chain giving government warrantless medical record access"

terminous — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 12:44:03 +0000

In the US, driving checkpoints are only allowed to check for compliance with driving laws only for the driver: drivers license, car registration and insurance, and sobriety of the driver. It is part of what you give up to drive in public roads. But checkpoints can't search passengers or the car, unless something else that is illegal is in plain view.