Hacker News: wagwang

New comment by wagwang in "Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise"

wagwang — Tue, 12 May 2026 22:13:17 +0000

Depends on the product, but in many cases you cant actually decouple the complexity because the complexity is the product. There are times where the archaic flow needs to work for some stupid compliance reason.

New comment by wagwang in "The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)"

wagwang — Mon, 11 May 2026 03:56:00 +0000

The last line of the video was talking about nuking others...

New comment by wagwang in "American aviation is near collapse?"

wagwang — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 23:36:47 +0000

There's no evidence that tight labor markets lead to a inflation death spiral, food in america is supposed to be expensive because America is a wealthy nation. The elites like to dress this up as something that is bad for the lower class but it's quite the opposite, the lower class in wealthy high cost of living, low immigration countries do very well, not that there are many of these countries left.

New comment by wagwang in "American aviation is near collapse?"

wagwang — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 21:00:15 +0000

It's inherently unfair because its used to drive down wages of the lower classes. Outside of highly skilled work that cannot be sourced from within the country that is critical for nation security, the moral response is to just pay the workers more.

New comment by wagwang in "American aviation is near collapse?"

wagwang — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:47:43 +0000

Yes, that's how I would describe using immigration to address labor shortages

New comment by wagwang in "A Japanese glossary of chopsticks faux pas (2022)"

wagwang — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:35:01 +0000

Always interesting to see the analogs of island vs continental culture when comparing UK <-> America and Japan <-> China. Seems like islanders, due to their reliance on trade, naturally get specialized and autistic about their craft so they can have a comparative advantage, and their obsessions carry over into stuffy traditional practices.

New comment by wagwang in "US national debt surges past $39 Trillion"

wagwang — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 18:03:00 +0000

you think we can print 40t without going into hyperinflation? Lol... Why would other countries hold usd if we print 40t

New comment by wagwang in "US national debt surges past $39 Trillion"

wagwang — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:27:23 +0000

Ah yes, the "we can cure debt by going into hyperinflation" argument

New comment by wagwang in "AI coding is gambling"

wagwang — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:24:25 +0000

> I divide my tasks into good for the soul and bad for it. Coding generally goes into good for the soul, even when I do it poorly.

Lmk how you feel when you're constantly build integrations with legacy software by hand.

New comment by wagwang in "Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies"

wagwang — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:28:13 +0000

Executive power over the civil service is an ant driving an elephant. You can say it's a good thing and it's intentional, but the fact of the matter is that the executive appoint a fraction of a percent of the positions and those positions have nominal personnel powers that they can't really use without fear of getting sued.

New comment by wagwang in "Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies"

wagwang — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:17:21 +0000

The US elected government has no control over the unelected civil servants as congress over the past 150 years did everything they could to prevent the spoils system.

New comment by wagwang in "ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did"

wagwang — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:06:46 +0000

> because productivity gains must benefit the lower classes to see a multiplier in the economy

by this logic, the invention of mechanized farm equipment, which displaced farm labor, didnt increase productivity

New comment by wagwang in "Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over"

wagwang — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 19:24:37 +0000

in an age of generated tests, a mandate on no tests is just dumb

New comment by wagwang in "Payment fees matter more than you think"

wagwang — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 23:41:07 +0000

That's cc propaganda; merchant fraud is a tiny portion of the overall transactions so you'd save more overall if the cc fee wasnt passed onto the consumer. The counter argument is that the aggregate data allows payment processors to ban merchants if they are bad actors. But the counter to the counter is that the level 2 payments work very well in other countries (some with a lot more fraud) and data aggregation/centralized ban power is bad.

New comment by wagwang in "Payment fees matter more than you think"

wagwang — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 21:26:30 +0000

Let's just call it for what it is.

Visa and mastercard innovated in an era where payment settlement was notoriously difficult and expensive but they've used their monopolies to entrench themselves in (by negotiating deals with merchants and bribing consumers with points) while the rest of the world moves on towards "layer 2" payment systems that are much cheaper and efficient.

New comment by wagwang in "Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics"

wagwang — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:58:41 +0000

Most of what you said has nothing to do with lidar vs camera

New comment by wagwang in "California's new bill requires DOJ-approved 3D printers that report themselves"

wagwang — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:01:06 +0000

Garbage methodology, state by state policies need to use something like a difference in difference study measure actual effect sizing

New comment by wagwang in "AI makes you boring"

wagwang — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 18:25:21 +0000

Highly doubt that since its the complete opposite for coding. Whats missing for people of all skill levels is that writing helps you organize your thoughts, but that can happen at prompt time?

New comment by wagwang in "AI makes you boring"

wagwang — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 18:21:41 +0000

Isnt this just flat out untrue since bots can pass turing tests

New comment by wagwang in "Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores"

wagwang — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:45:09 +0000

If we lived in a high trust society, you could just trust people to scan their own items and walk out.