Hacker News: themartorana

New comment by themartorana in "Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence"

themartorana — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 21:59:41 +0000

Murder, torture, blanket domestic spying etc., are not (or have not recently been) considered crimes when the federal government is the actor. The line isn't so clear.

New comment by themartorana in "MoMA Will Make Thousands of Exhibition Images Available Online"

themartorana — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 04:06:37 +0000

This is the dream of the internet making culture available to the masses. I've loved Google Art Project for a while, and news of more art coming online is fantastic. My wife is an art teacher and this kind of news makes her giddy.

New comment by themartorana in "Washington Post Is First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source"

themartorana — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 18:54:29 +0000

I would definitely support someone outing and then fleeing Russia. In fact we do it all the time - it's called political asylum.

New comment by themartorana in "What I Learned from Executing Two Men"

themartorana — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 12:22:23 +0000

At least 160 children through 2011. It's been a lot more time since then.

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

New comment by themartorana in "Washington Post Is First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source"

themartorana — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 18:48:52 +0000

Your respect and admiration absolve him of his responsibilities.

This is something I'm seeing more and more - "Snowden is a hero, but should stand trial and face his responsibilities." It's an oxymoron as far as I can figure, and I'm deeply disturbed by it. Either we should know what was revealed, and our government needs checking, or not. But if so, outing that information is heroic and extralegal. If you truly want no one to ever take the same risk Snowden took for the citizens of the US, let the citizens be the ones to throw him to the dogs.

New comment by themartorana in "How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness (2015)"

themartorana — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 18:27:05 +0000

It will. My theory is that it comes from solar energy. As soon as electricity generation comes to a near-zero cost, and a huge part of manufacturing cost is energy, (and the other largest cost, humans, is also displaced) we start to rapidly move to a place where traditional economies as we know them start to crumble, and we are forced (perhaps kicking and screaming) to accept that we simply can't have Full Employment (maybe not even half). After that providing people with basic rights that include housing, healthcare, etc., becomes low-cost enough that not doing so is much more detrimental.

New comment by themartorana in "Amateur Radio Parity Act Passes in the US House of Representatives"

themartorana — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 18:15:31 +0000

I've always found those restrictions interesting. No satellite dishes, no antennas, etc. If these antennas get a pass, does the satellite TV industry immediately lobby for similar treatment?

New comment by themartorana in "HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers"

themartorana — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 17:54:45 +0000

It really does feel like at least half. I went to buy an iPhone 7 case and they all had 50+ 4.5 star reviews... before the iPhone 7 had shipped. I filtered one case with 40+ reviews to "Verified Purchases" only, and only a single review was left.

In some cases it feels like 90%.

New comment by themartorana in "The Zen of Passive Solar Heating Panel Design (2010)"

themartorana — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 17:51:57 +0000

So what's stopping a setup like this becoming standard? It's obviously generally superior, at least for new construction that's well-insulated. Right?

New comment by themartorana in "Where Death Lies"

themartorana — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 22:27:06 +0000

Yeah I feel like science and some test strips would do the job. But eating blowfish to begin with is ridiculous, and based solely on tradition. Testing for toxins could be seen as disrespecting the tradition.

New comment by themartorana in "The Thrill of Losing Money by Investing in a Manhattan Restaurant"

themartorana — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 17:33:15 +0000

Two posts down from a missing apostrophe as I write this. Am I being trolled?

New comment by themartorana in "Google HTML/CSS Style Guide – Omit Optional Tags"

themartorana — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 17:31:04 +0000

Grammar nerd, apologies, but "Google's" with an apostrophe (unless I'm totally missing something). There should maybe be a better way to report this kind of stuff without cluttering the comment stream.

New comment by themartorana in "Norway plans to cull more than two-thirds of its wolf population"

themartorana — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 13:58:29 +0000

A designated "wolf-free zone" is crazy, but the wolves should have read the signs.

New comment by themartorana in "Flooding of US Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Begun"

themartorana — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 12:28:45 +0000

Would you like to give some examples of the leadership in behavioral change you'd like to see? I personally doubt anything save huge taxes on gasoline are going to do anything to change behavior. You can decry driving by people still need to get to work.

Laws are the only drivers of change so massive. We're fighting over oil pipelines to pump more oil for use, not which green energy gets tax breaks. And even with outrageous prices caused by taxes meant to make dangerous activity prohibitive, people still smoke.

Cash-for-clunkers-for-EV? "Infrastructure spending" in EV charging nationwide? Federally supported replacement of coal fired power plants?

People aren't going to change behavior at all because of flooding except for maybe those people under water. But they'll just move.

New comment by themartorana in "Flooding of US Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Begun"

themartorana — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 12:22:26 +0000

Scary, using laws to prohibit people doing math. It's the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and humming loudly.

New comment by themartorana in "Vancouver Tax on Empty Homes to Target Near-Zero Rental Supply"

themartorana — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 01:03:22 +0000

I don't understand how my comment above got down-voted. In a pure economic sense, holding property creates scarcity, and prices rise. It's wildly unbalanced value, but its value nonetheless.

New comment by themartorana in "Municipal ISP forced to shut off fiber-to-the-home Internet after court ruling"

themartorana — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 00:55:20 +0000

How are government sponsored protectionist laws like this even legal? It's very frustrating.

Edit: For further context, both towns wanted the service, which makes it even more frustrating. If Wilson made its service private there'd be no issue.

Can a private enterprise be government owned? I guess not? How about a tiny startup with one person operating billing and they call it a "private-public partnership"?

I'm grasping at straws, I realize.

New comment by themartorana in "Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid"

themartorana — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 15:31:09 +0000

Since they're not technically a "plant" - just storage - is there any advantage to be had to build in many smaller (say per-neighborhood) battery plants? Seems like they could act not only as peak providers, but also battery backup in the case of storms and whatnot. Plus it reduces a single-point of failure.

I ask for I am uneducated in this area.

New comment by themartorana in "Ask HN: What are the hottest startups related to beer / brewing?"

themartorana — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 13:21:01 +0000

As an also-over-35, I don't think it's just the alcohol. (Feel free to slap me down with science.) A beer hangover is now more severe than an equivalent-amount-of-alcohol hangover from say, vodka.

New comment by themartorana in "Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)"

themartorana — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 13:17:20 +0000

Well, if you can afford that extra mortgage-sized payment while making minimum wage. We're not talking about studying online or at a community college or self-teaching, we're talking about a 4 year degree at a university.