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kevinpet

3,576 karma · joined May 7, 2009

Engineer at Wealthfront. @kdpeterson http://kdpeterson.net/ kevin at my domain.
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kevinpet··on Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity
Editorials are a thing. This is not an editorial. It's structured as a news report.
kevinpet··on HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
I'm mostly a libertarian, but claiming "we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes" when you aren't should put you in jail for fraud.
kevinpet··on Sergey Brin Funds Misleading Ballot Measure to Negate Wealth Tax
This seems like a low effort opinion piece that is unlikely to generate useful discussion here.
kevinpet··on Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit (2023)
The article seems to be more of a review of the new book than any attempt to actually discuss the topic.
kevinpet··on Privilege is bad grammar
The title of the article cites bad grammar, but the example doesn't have any grammatical problems. It has clear typos and questionable abbreviations but it doesn't have any of the bad grammar signs that grate on me, like comprise vs. compose or over utilization of "utilize" where "use" would do just fine.

You might say that "let's circle back" is annoying business jargon, but it is a very common phrase and aside from the typos correctly applied in this example.

kevinpet··on A 26,000-year astronomical monument hidden in plain sight (2019)
Not even in the northern hemisphere. Celestial navigation is about shooting altitudes for known bright stars. At least three ideally five. This could include Polaris, but it doesn't need to. Source: watched some old training videos about celestial navigation after reading Fate is the Hunter a while back.
kevinpet··on Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales
It's a lot cheaper to rent a trailer.
kevinpet··on 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
That core idea is simple. But the details, such as credit and debit having the opposite meaning to casual bank account accounting, and the use of a variety of accounts makes things not intuitive.
kevinpet··on Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed
Reviews by independent experts about the quality of this guy's life? I think he can be considered an authority on that subject.
kevinpet··on Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge
That's not a philosophical argument at odds with our current understanding of copyright law. That's exactly what this judge found copyright law currently is and it's quoted in the article being discussed.
kevinpet··on Seine reopens to Paris swimmers after century-long ban
One could be carried there
kevinpet··on US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels
This seems a little weird to me, but direct commissions like this are pretty common for professionals like lawyers, clergy, and doctors.
kevinpet··on U.S. citizen in Arizona detained by immigration officials for 10 days
They never claimed to be the party of personal freedom. There's a libertarian contingent within the GOP that wishes they could persuade people to go that direction, but unsuccessfully for decades.

They have claimed to be the party of small government. And even someone who disagrees with them can recognize the "small government" within their idealized view means government that is only involved in the things that government should be involved in. It doesn't necessarily (or in practice ever) mean less spending.

kevinpet··on Demolishing the Fry's Electronics in Burbank
I was confused when I moved out to Phoenix especially because the logos are pretty similar. Turns out Fry's electronics was started by the sons of the founder of Fry's food.
kevinpet··on TSMC begins producing 4-nanometer chips in Arizona
There's no problem with residential water use in Phoenix. There are still farms that could be shut down if water is needed.

The biggest problem seems to be parochial NIMBYs. People don't like that TSMC needed to bring in Taiwanese workers to staff up the plant. They are currently posting AI generated renderings of factories with billowing smoke stacks when talking about the proposed Amkor semiconductor packaging plant in Peoria.

kevinpet··on Jaguar Cars rebranding without any cars
It was the other way around -- the Pepsi Challenge was what motivated New Coke.
kevinpet··on Costco’s butter recall, explained
By "anymore" do you mean for the past 600 years? Because almond milk goes back about as far as we have cookbooks that might mention it in english.
kevinpet··on National Park Service Will Cite AWD Drivers for Driving on 4WD-Only Trails
I'm pretty sure all recent Subaru's (other than BRZ, which is a totally different platform) have wheel spin control using the braking system.
kevinpet··on State Farm announces major change affecting tens of thousands households in CA
Brilliant, now it's not just people who live in cities subsidizing rich people who choose to live in high fire risk suburban borders but everyone who drives too.
kevinpet··on Two hunters from the same lodge afflicted with sporadic CJD: is CWD to blame?
I would agree, except that I just watched a How To Cook That episode featuring rat lung worms transmission from slugs.
kevinpet··on "Strong focus on aesthetics" contributed to collapse of Norway timber bridge
If you look at the picture while it's standing, the design has the diagonal braces all running the same way. Any homeowner who has knocked together a wooden gate could recognize that as abnormal. If the bridge were standing, I might think "huh, I guess the did the math and it works fine like this". But since it's scattered across the riverbed, I guess they didn't.
kevinpet··on Ask HN: Should Banks Phish Their Own Customers
It would be better if banks educated customers on best practices such as "don't trust anything on a different domain" and "only provide PII for verification if you are the one initiating the call". Of course, both of those would require that banks stopped engaging in those two practices which make legitimate interactions indistinguishable from phishing.
kevinpet··on The window for great-grandmothers is closing
Good on you for giving us the update that he does acknowledge it. I confess I stopped reading as soon as that stat was given.
kevinpet··on TSMC to build second Japan chip factory
One of them is about five miles from me in Phoenix and it's going poorly. My read is that there are some legitimate labor concerns, some mismanagement, but also a lot of special interest strong arming in things like not bringing in enough Taiwanese workers.
kevinpet··on Do It Yourself Blind Repair
I like to fix things rather than throwing them out and am glad I was able to restring a couple of blinds that didn't work in our new house. This site is where I buy.

If only there were similar sites for other home products. Currently on my list is the soap dispenser for the dishwasher which is nearly impossible to tell which part to order (and I don't want to replace a $500 appliance for what should be a $20 piece of plastic).

kevinpet··on Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022
You could say it doesn't matter and they need to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, and I would agree. However, it seems clear that the entire point of this particular trading bot and the project is in fact whether politicians did better than another investing approach.
kevinpet··on Ági Szabados Does Not Need to Apologize to Me
Science fiction is popular here, and in particular Scalzi is popular with the trekkie / comic con / geek identity crowd.
kevinpet··on Odd and unsafe baby car seats from the past
Did you read the same essay as me? https://thezvi.substack.com/p/on-car-seats-as-contraception
kevinpet··on Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
I looked into that when it came out.

1. the house uses novel construction techniques. it's more of a design exercise than a serious attempt at something people might build.

2. you can't use the plans without getting sign off from an architect or engineer. this defeats the whole purposes of "releasing" plans.

kevinpet··on Someone needs to save the Internet Archives from the lawyers and I have an idea
Politics is not decided by money. Money is a huge factor, and you can't do much without at least some money, but it's not the final word. Politics is determined in large part by how politicians read the mood of their voters, how they personally feel about an issue, and whether what the lobbyists are saying seems to make sense.
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