News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

histriosum

> Its only high on the west coast. That's because of multiple complicated reasons.

This takes any weight out of your argument, because it’s demonstrably false. I live in Michigan, and diesel was between 6.50 and 6.99 a gallon a couple days ago, which is a bit lower than it had been the week before.

A zillion gas price sites would also show that this statement is false. It is not just “the west coast”.

Re:Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick on Thursday July 30, 2026 @11:12PM (#49118576)
Finally, a legitimate use case for HTTP 418…
All airlines do this. It’s frustrating, and it has to do with playing the game with the DOT. They are punished for cancelling flights, but not delaying them, so the game is to delay rather than cancel until there is truly no option but to cancel. It’s an area of regulation that needs more work.

I am a current airline pilot, and I end up flying on all of them in order to get to and from work. Trust me, they all do this. The impact to you may be less if it’s an airline with more flights, because that airline has more options to recover and fix your experience, but they all do it.

Re:Google will pay SpaceX $920M per month for compute on Saturday June 06, 2026 @07:49PM (#48430309)
Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper simply to focus building your data centers in other poorer countries where your permits won’t be blocked? Why would the next most logical choice be “let’s put it in orbit”?
Re:F-35 is a masterpiece built for the wrong war on Tuesday April 21, 2026 @11:41AM (#47850387)
Ukraine would love the F35. We won’t sell it to them at any price, though, because of the escalatory concern with Russia. We only just barely decided to allow them to have F16.
Re:Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries on Tuesday January 20, 2026 @02:17PM (#46696499)
The Gestapo had the backing of the courts and the laws as well. Your argument is not as strong as you seem to think.

Also -- it's fairly well documented at this point that ICE is often without a warrant, and is detaining and in some instances deporting US citizens. These aren't one offs, and looking at what's going on in MN makes that pretty clear.

Re:Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries on Tuesday January 20, 2026 @11:58AM (#46694298)
You clearly DON’T “get it”.. obviously Trump is different than Hitler, but to say he’s nothing remotely close is some serious handwaving.

ICE is acting a LOT like the Gestapo.

Trump is telling obvious lies and his supporters simply parrot it as fact. That was a big part of Hitlers power, the propaganda machine that made it acceptable for otherwise intelligent people to pretend to believe the obvious lies.

Trump is aggressively threatening to expand the empire, under similar dubious security reasons.

How much does history need to rhyme before you actually notice?

Re:Ground stop at JFK due to staffing on Friday October 31, 2025 @02:30PM (#45775155)
On the other hand, if privatizing ATC is one of your goals, this is probably an effective way to force the issue.

(Current Airline Pilot here, definitely NOT in favor of privatizing ATC, but historically breaking things on purpose is the usual path politicians take to privatize)

Re:Preliminary report into Air India crash released on Saturday July 12, 2025 @10:19PM (#44546955)
The report can be found here: https://aaib.gov.in/What's%20New%20Assets/Preliminary%20Repo...

> did the report say a one second delay or that the two switches were turned off at consecutive seconds?

The report states, on page 14: The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec.

"with a time gap of 01 sec" seems fairly clear. The final report will have more granularity, but I don't think that's very ambiguous.

Re:Preliminary report into Air India crash released on Saturday July 12, 2025 @03:27PM (#44544439)
Runway four is never runway zero four because of radios or anything else. It's labeled 4 on the pavement, and that's what it should be called on the radio. You will find pilots who say zero, and eventually hopefully someone will break them of that habit. Approach plates, etc, will all call it runway 4, not zero 4. Saying the keyword "Runway" in front of the number is much better than erroneously using a leading zero.

At least that's this pilots opinion and position :-)

Re:Preliminary report into Air India crash released on Saturday July 12, 2025 @02:54PM (#44544164)
> The report is actually a little cagey about whether the locks were properly installed on these switches. Said locks are supposedly optional.

The locks/gates on the switches are definitely NOT optional. There was an SAIB about some switches that may have been installed improperly. It didn't result in an AD, which likely means the extent was limited or potentially even nil.

The switches were moved to cutoff with a one second delay between the first and second switch. That's pretty suggestive of deliberate movement. I've flown a Max9 simulator, which has the same switches. Moving one of them by accident would be impossible, let alone two of them.

I agree with not jumping to conclusions about the pilots and possible motives or circumstances, but I will bet a lot of money that the switches were just fine.

The CVR will likely have audio of the switch movement to confirm as well.

Genuine question not from a judgy space but from an interested one.. what motivates you to do this? I feel like I would find the pat down far more invasive than someone seeing a sort of nude picture of my body.. again, I’m asking because I would like to understand, not because I’m judging the choice. Appreciate your insight!
Re:Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech? on Thursday June 26, 2025 @03:06PM (#44390337)
I did a chunk of my primary training back when I was 21, but as often happens, I got to around the cross country solo portion and ran out of money and life priorities changed.. unfortunately, I then set it down for a really long time; sort of forgot that I actually really loved it, I guess.

Came back to flying in 2019 and finished up my private certificate, with no particular intention other than I wanted to fly because I enjoyed it, and perhaps instruct because I do enjoy teaching. Went on to get my instrument and commercial, and around the time I got my commercial certificate, I started toying with the idea of pursuing it as a possible career change. Went on to get my multi-engine add on, which kind of cemented the idea of trying it for a living. CFI and CFII after that, and between doing some instructing and flying a lot just because I liked flying, I started applying at airlines around December of last year and I crossed the 1500hr mark in March of this year. Interviewed at my first choice regional in May, they gave me a CJO, and training class date in mid July.

Pilot hiring right now is pretty tight, so I've been pretty fortunate to get the regional I wanted right out of the gate, and to not have a long delay for a class date. As with anything involving timing in life, I definitely timed it wrong -- my earning potential and qualify of life outlook would've been vastly improved if I'd been ready to make this jump 2 to 3 years ago, but what can you do :-D

Re:Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech? on Thursday June 26, 2025 @02:24PM (#44389945)
I've been without an IT gig for the last year, though it had nothing to do with the overall tech market tightening.

Prior to my gig ending, I'd already made the decision to change careers (at least for a while), so I haven't really looked for anything new, I've been focusing on the career change. At 46, I just wasn't really looking forward to starting to experience the tech ageism; and, the AI craziness is really grating to me. It's feels like the seagulls from Finding Nemo except instead of "Mine Mine Mine" it's "AI AI AI". :-D

I'm about two weeks away from leaving for pilot training at a regional airline, so hopefully in a few months I'll be just another cog in a machine for a while, flying people around on jet powered busses. If the airline life turns out to be my speed for the long haul, then the goal would be to get over to a mainline carrier ASAP; if not, I can always fall back to tech later, and for now I'll enjoy the office view from 34k ft.

I'm aware that I've traded upcoming implicit ageism for explicitly regulated ageism, but if I am lucky enough to stay healthy I don't have to worry about that kicking in until I'm 65.

I'm not sure why you find it distracting, it's an on point extension of the scenario. There are rules by which companies are supposed to operate, and evaluations (audits, for example) intended to ensure compliance with those rules. That an LLM may react differently when being evaluated (audited) than when in normal operation means that it may be quite happy to lie to auditors while making money illegally.

Seemed a clear extension what-if to me.

I'm just about to start my new job as an airline pilot at 46. I didn't primarily decide to career shift away from IT because of AI, but it was definitely a consideration.
> So I screenshotted the horrible one-way price to go in my expense report, and then booked the round trip ticket.

So… you committed fraud? Cool?

I’m all for sticking it to the corporate overlords, but careful how far out you stick your neck.

And I think that you may mean volume.. :-)
> Are you asking why a single point of failure is a bad thing? >To restate what you asked: “if the USA weapons manufacturing capability is compromised and cannot sell weapons to approved parties, and said parties also cannot manufacture their own weapons, how is this in the interest of the US?”

You can't equate weapons manufacturing to server uptime or data center diversity -- it's fundamentally different.

In terms of what is in the best interests of the United States -- yes, having a single point of weapons manufacture and having that be the United States would very much be in the US interests. It would allow the US to dictate, even more than we do today, how the rest of the world operates. Although we have not been a single source for weapons (Europe does make their own), our role as primary supplier would be (and has been) very profitable.

How is it that we can afford to create the advanced weapons that we do? F-35, Patriot, etc? It's because we can spread that research and development cost across other (allied) countries, because they buy our gear instead of developing their own. Reduce the market for our weapons, and you're going to reduce the quality of our weapons and increase their per-unit cost -- both things that are very much not in the interests of the United States.

This was sparked by the remark that this was all part of the "intention" of the policy. Since that intention would by definition be very contrary to US interests, both financial and strategic, it seems dubious that this was the intention.

Let me get this straight…

> That’s part of the intention. Europe specifically is underproductive and the hope is that these tariffs and the change of tone for defense agreements will bolster Europes domestic industrial and defensive capabilities

So, rather than sell Europe weapons that we create in the United States, part of the “intention” of this policy is to cut off the European demand for our weapons systems and cause them to manufacture their own? How is that helpful to the United States and our bottom line? How is that at all in the US interests?

I agree that’s what is going to happen, but I see no evidence that it was part of the intention.

Your personal choice is fine for you. My personal choice is to enjoy a cup or two of coffee per day, because I love the way it tastes, not because I want or need the caffeine. I currently don't have regular employment, as I am attempting a career change, but my coffee consumption doesn't change when I'm on a job.

With respect, I think your worldview needs to widen out a bit. Just because there are lots of worker exploitation issues going on the world doesn't mean that everything fits in that lens. Some of us like coffee, and that doesn't mean it's because we like or accept a "whip at the back".

I personally love the taste of coffee. If decaffeinated were able to achieve the same flavors, I'd be quite happy with it. Unfortunately, it doesn't taste at all the same.
Re:America desperately needs more air traffic controllers on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @01:45AM (#42944781)
The use of "bifocal contact lenses" is not allowed. Bifocal glasses are fine.
Re:Inside the university AI cheating crisis on Tuesday December 17, 2024 @05:24PM (#42446054)
> In my program, grades don’t matter (so employers can’t stack rank us).

Can you expand a bit on how that works? I have limited academic experience, so I’m fascinated. Does everyone end up with a 4.0 if they pass, or..?

Re:Starship Flight 5 [video] on Sunday October 13, 2024 @06:05PM (#41832101)
More than half? Source?

Trump may well win this election. But there’s no scenario under which he’s going to also win the popular vote while doing it, at least none that I’ve heard of. If you have credible information that says otherwise I would be interested in reading it.

Re:"Frost Crack" Sounds May Come from Sky, Not Trees on Saturday August 17, 2024 @01:52AM (#41272363)
You aren't quite right here. Temperature inversions are when the atmosphere warms as you go up instead of cools. The atmosphere usually cools at a fairly constant rate as you go up, at least in the troposphere. This layer of warmer air aloft acts as a cap, limiting vertical motion from rising air parcels from below (which are cooler than the air aloft and thus cannot rise through the inversion).
I would agree with the statement that money can't buy time that has already passed, because nothing can do that. Money can definitely buy time in the present moment, though.
Except that money DOES buy time. When I have money, I can convert it to time to do things I enjoy. When I don't have money, I need to spend my time to get money in order to survive. I find the statement that "money can't buy time" something that only a fairly wealthy person would believe, and not at all accurate in practice.
This is a pretty biased take in my opinion. I personally know at least one person who has lost more than 80lbs on Wegovy, after not being able to lose weight for years. It's been a literal sea change for her life, at least.
> A modern harbor tugboat can go perhaps 15 knots. In 4 minutes this means it would travel 4 nautical miles, at the very best (running start in correct direction).

It's probably pedantic, but I don't understand your math. Knots are nautical miles per hour. To travel 4nm in 4 minutes would imply a speed of 60 knots. At 15 knots, you would travel 1 nautical mile in 4 minutes. (15kn/60min * 4min = 1)

Or it's possible I haven't had enough coffee.

Older »