Hacker News Reader

MikeAmelungon Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

I was just helping everyone understand that your important clarification, was in fact, wrong.

Since I wasn't on the jury, I can't say whether or not I would have been ok with the death penalty in this case, although the murder was particularly heinous.

MikeAmelungon Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

"The next day, the police searched the Buick LeSabre and found the Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator belonging to Gayle. The police also recovered the laptop computer from Glenn Roberts. The laptop was identified as the one stolen from Gayle's residence."

https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2003/sc-...

MikeAmelungon Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

Cmd + spacebar opens the Spotlight Search

MikeAmelungon Purple Llama: Towards open trust and safety in generative AI

I was just pointing out that meme style predates April 2023... I would be curious to see if it can explain why Dat Boi is funny though.

MikeAmelungon Purple Llama: Towards open trust and safety in generative AI

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-spent-525600-minutes-this... was last updated December 1, 2022

and I'm in a bad mood now seeing how unfunny most of those are

MikeAmelungon [dead]

Who is the as-yet-undetermined party in the future? The "gift cards" are redeemable with Precision Track Day. A holder of the gift card can't just show up to a track and give them some gift card.

MikeAmelungon OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster

Not really, because you said they were on the East and you wanted to move them to the East. Correct answer would have been "Don't do anything". If this is how they're getting AI to "follow instructions", we're completely fucked.

MikeAmelungon Welding and the automation frontier

The tagline of the site is "Why buildings are built the way they are."

And the author completely fails to mention the welding that goes into buildings...

MikeAmelungon New England's Largest Battery Is Hidden Inside a Mass. Mountain (2016)

You used to be able to go up the "mountain" and stand on the wall and look out over the water. Unfortunately, when they rebuilt it, they put gates at the road right off the highway.

MikeAmelungon Pfizer and BioNTech launch trial of Omicron-targeted Covid vaccine

Close, you're only off by ~465,000

MikeAmelungon Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

It's 3 individual 6 gauge conductors in a single outer sheath.

MikeAmelungon Klein Vision’s AirCar, a Flying Car Prototype, Completes Maiden Flight

I've got some bad news:

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

It's been done. It's a stupid idea.

MikeAmelungon A 20kg hybrid drone that can fly at 50kmh for 4 hours

Methanol has half the energy density of gasoline.

MikeAmelungon Internet sleuths take down the SSC Tuatara's 316-MPH speed record

That's valid, there's certainly something going on with the video thing. I guess my current thinking is that trying to fake the video in the first place would be tremendously stupid. Then on top of that to do such a bad job. So maybe it was an accident in video editing. But yeah, it's possible they're completely full of shit.

MikeAmelungon Internet sleuths take down the SSC Tuatara's 316-MPH speed record

So what exactly makes you think it's not possible for this car to achieve that speed? Do you think all of the publicly released stats are a lie?

MikeAmelungon Internet sleuths take down the SSC Tuatara's 316-MPH speed record

So that leaves us with two possible reasons the car couldn't have achieved the speed they're claiming. One, it wasn't actually geared to go that fast. Or two, the driver lifted because the car was unstable or he was afraid the tires were gonna explode or something.

It seems unlikely that people capable of building a car like this would have released a claimed speed that their car was incapable of reaching due to gearing. Then again, I've seen a lot of stupid things in my time racing.

MikeAmelungon Internet sleuths take down the SSC Tuatara's 316-MPH speed record

I don't know what the gearing looks like on this car, and I honestly don't care enough to look it up, but why do you and the article seem to think a car with 1750 (claimed) horsepower might be slower than one with 1160 (claimed) horsepower?

MikeAmelungon New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

Can you explain a little more about the storage part of this? I see renewables and storage mentioned every time this topic comes up. It seems like we've got the solar panels and wind turbines figured out, but I'm skeptical on the storage part. I tried doing some research myself, but everything I find reads like a press release from a company that is attempting some kind of storage. As far as I can tell, there is no actual large-scale storage operating anywhere, other than pumped hydro, which we've known about for a long time, and can't be scaled unless we start building mountains.

I mentioned I'm skeptical, but I'm genuinely asking, because I've never seen anyone ask about it.

MikeAmelungon Maine Becomes First State to Use Ranked-Choice Voting in a Presidential Election

It is the way it is on purpose. The President of the United States is not meant to have so much power that everyone is all up in arms about it all the time. If anything needs to be evaluated, it's executive orders and whatever has happened to Congress.

MikeAmelungon US may not be back to normal until 2022, Fauci says

You're 100% right, "the fucking flu" still holds the record for people killed in a pandemic by a long shot.

MikeAmelungon Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

I don't know, I was just pointing out the fact that people in federal prison are not there for smoking weed on the porch. I don't have the numbers handy, but I would guess that a vast majority of the marijuana arrests in your article result in a fine or probation at the very most.

Which I happen to agree is a waste of resources and probably does more harm than good by getting people started "in the system".

MikeAmelungon Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

Don't even know why I'm going to bother, but most of those drug offenses are trafficking crack/cocaine and meth, a large percentage of them also involve weapons. It's not people who were smoking weed on the porch.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf

MikeAmelungon Practicing empathy can teach us the value of diversity and inclusion in tech

I hired a woman with just LaunchCode experience in web development, because I could tell she had the drive and aptitude after interviewing her. Ended up being awesome. 5 years is a long time in front-end land, I wish I could forget more than half the shit I've learned/put up with over the past 15+ years. Not saying you're doing it wrong, just an anecdote.

MikeAmelungon U.S. field hospitals stand down, most without treating any Covid-19 patients

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/25/us/who-immunity-antibodies-co...

I mean, I don't respect CNN, but I'm sure some people do.

MikeAmelungon YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

People are literally dying all the time, and still, every single day, twice as many people are born as have died from COVID-19 over its entire course, worldwide.

MikeAmelungon In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

How many of those overlap with the 3 million people that are going to die in the US this year anyway?

MikeAmelungon LabCorp’s at-home Covid-19 test kit is the first to be authorized by the FDA

Thanks for tracking it down. Doesn't seem to be any problem with accepting their results that it's almost as good as a nasopharyngeal swab, so you won't see me complaining about it again.

MikeAmelungon LabCorp’s at-home Covid-19 test kit is the first to be authorized by the FDA

Where is this evidence? How does this square with the evidence that RT-PCR tests are already coming back falsely negative, probably due to missing the virus while swabbing? Pardon me for being skeptical, but this is all from the same people who have bungled this every step of the way.

MikeAmelungon LabCorp’s at-home Covid-19 test kit is the first to be authorized by the FDA

As a childhood sufferer of semi-regular strep throat infections, I have a hard time believing people are going to willingly jam the swab back to where it needs to go. To me, it seems like this will just generate false negatives.

MikeAmelungon Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

Oh, this again. Most people that get on a ventilator don't make it off alive. So I think we can put this bullshit to bed.

https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/early-study-covid-19-patients-s...

That's the study with the BEST outcomes. Every other study shows an even higher mortality rate among those ventilated.