Hacker News: vantassell

New comment by vantassell in "Why Japan has such good railways"

vantassell — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:38:57 +0000

> Japan is one of the only countries to have privatized parking. In Europe and North America, vast quantities of parking space is socialized: municipalities own the streets and allow people to park on them at low or zero cost. Initially with the intention of encouraging the provision of more parking spaces, Japan made it illegal to park on public roads or pavements without special permission. Before someone buys a car, they must prove that they have a reserved night-time space on private land, either owned or leased.

This is got to be a huge factor. Making everyone pay for "free parking" through inefficient use of space is such a waste. I strongly recommend everyone to read Donald Shoup's "The High Price of Free Parking".

New comment by vantassell in "Autism's confusing cousins"

vantassell — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 21:52:14 +0000

> For a while tourette syndrome was all the rage and the platform was filled with kids faking tics.

Kind of like all those kids in Le Roy, NY who began experiencing involuntary tics. IIRC, it was interesting that it was mostly girls who were affected by the "craze".

https://www.npr.org/2012/03/10/148372536/the-curious-case-of...

New comment by vantassell in "How AI is creating a rift at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG"

vantassell — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 20:43:47 +0000

https://archive.is/mJJOx

New comment by vantassell in "California went a record 98 days with 10 hours of electricity from renewables"

vantassell — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 20:36:45 +0000

Once MD has a few 100k+ acre wildfires that the power utility is liable for, I’m sure your rate will go up too.

New comment by vantassell in "California went a record 98 days with 10 hours of electricity from renewables"

vantassell — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 20:35:45 +0000

Rates are high because we’re paying for all the wildfires the electric utilities have started.

New comment by vantassell in "Is the world becoming uninsurable?"

vantassell — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 15:40:56 +0000

You’re a fire management expert? What did LA do wrong?

New comment by vantassell in "Is the world becoming uninsurable?"

vantassell — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 15:32:05 +0000

You’re comparing apples to oranges.

A Santa Ana wind is extremely dry and this one hit 100kmh (not 50). And it hasn’t really rained for 8 months (since May 2024). And we had a very wet winter last year, so there’s extra growth to fuel any fire. And finally, there’s 10 million people live in LA County, it’s a target rich space.

Please let me know where else is having the same sort of fire without destroying homes.

New comment by vantassell in "D&D is Anti-Medieval"

vantassell — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:31:36 +0000

If you like at the skills of each class then it's pretty obvious that wizards, rangers, halflings, elves, dwarves, and orcs are modeled after Gandalf, Aragorn, the hobbits, etc.

Gandalf calls Aragorn the world's best hunter, and Aragorn literally listens to the earth (in the pursuit of Merry and Pippin) like the Ranger class skill. If D&D isn't based on LOTR, weird that so many of the classes are 1:1.

Then look at the way Dragons in D&D affect their environment (e.g. the weather changes as you get near a dragon's den) and it's even more obvious that D&D is based off LOTR. Not to mention the assault on Minas Tirith beginning with a change in weather due to the power of Sauron (or the way Saruman changes the weather on Caradhras). Or look at the mechanics of being frightened, that's pretty much the core class trait of the Nazgul.

Reading LOTR after reading through the Player's Manual makes it extremely obvious where each of the class skills came from - the came from events in LOTR.

New comment by vantassell in "EUCLEAK Side-Channel Attack on the YubiKey 5 Series"

vantassell — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 22:47:15 +0000

What's the alternative? What do you use for your base "recovery account" email?

New comment by vantassell in "Use a work journal"

vantassell — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 02:22:17 +0000

Reminds me a lot of Cal Newport's ideas re: Slow Productivity. He talks a lot about how Context shifts are death for knowledge work and that a lot of offices operate via a "hyper active hive mind" that doesn't allow or value deep work.

New comment by vantassell in "Use a work journal"

vantassell — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 02:19:50 +0000

I'm getting the below instead of an image

![/img/2024/focus.png]

New comment by vantassell in "Your Driving App Is Leading You Astray"

vantassell — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 15:27:56 +0000

https://archive.ph/owhhT

New comment by vantassell in "Sound-suppressing silk can create quiet spaces"

vantassell — Sat, 11 May 2024 02:35:24 +0000

> I have to say that I can't see how that would work.

Isn't that exactly why this is a notable discovery?

New comment by vantassell in "Kobo announces color e-readers"

vantassell — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 18:46:03 +0000

There are e-ink license plates in California now.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/10/digital-license-plates-...

New comment by vantassell in "ASCII Theater"

vantassell — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 02:14:21 +0000

Reminds me of that old star wars ascii site.

https://www.asciimation.co.nz

New comment by vantassell in "Warner Bros. Keeps Cancelling Finished Movies"

vantassell — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 05:03:33 +0000

Sadly the article doesn't really answer the question as to why, but it's probably because they keep making bad movies that they don't think will perform well.

To be extra clear, IMO this is not the fault of the creatives -- but the fault of the execs who ordered things to production.

New comment by vantassell in "WeWork Goes Bankrupt"

vantassell — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 03:22:56 +0000

Regus has actually taken over a few WeWork leases in my town. Seems like they're picking up inventory for pennies on the dollar.

New comment by vantassell in "The worst programmer I know"

vantassell — Sun, 03 Sep 2023 00:19:43 +0000

Reminds me of the adage of “solving the problem is the hard part, the hard part is figuring out the right problem to solve”.

I always remember as “questions are harder than answers”.

New comment by vantassell in "The Wizard of Oz Approach (2016)"

vantassell — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 06:21:06 +0000

This is great advice for everyone but Theranos.