harperawl (u/harperawl)

harperawl commented on Multiple Russia-aligned threat actors actively targeting Signal Messenger cloud.google.com/blog/top... · Posted by u/karel-3d

harperawl · a year ago

I strongly agree - HN has become increasingly Redditified in the political discussion sense. I think this website has the potential to have (and often already has) some of the best serious discussion on the internet, so it really nags at me that people have eroded this standard a lot recently IMO.

harperawl commented on Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more blog.plover.com/lang/etym... · Posted by u/JNRowe

mturmon · a year ago

If you want to go looking,

  grep '[^s]kin$' /usr/share/dict/words

turns up a lot. You have to guess at the candidates, like:

  pipkin -- a little earthenware pot
  firkin -- a small cask
  dodkin -- a coin of little value
  ciderkin -- watered-down cider

harperawl · a year ago

Another one of my favorites, grimalkin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimalkin):

grey + Maude + kin = grimalkin.

harperawl commented on Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI reuters.com/markets/deals... · Posted by u/jdoliner

lend000 · a year ago

Genuine question: are people genuinely against the work being done by DOGE? I am frequenting both X and HN + other liberal leaning news sources, and it's like the people in the comments are living in different solar systems.

I see a post on X with receipts showing millions of dollars of pretty obvious waste and/or corruption, many involving news outlet grants and subscriptions, including names, amounts, etc. Then I see some tearjerker story about families of USAID workers on one of the beneficiary news outlets. And in the comments, people lamenting that Elon Musk's success is only due to luck and his estranged father's defunct gem mine. Or worrying Elon will use their SSN (which is already available on the dark web) to open a credit card.

You're pretty smart people. Do we really think auditing government spending by a super-competent outsider is a bad thing? The last time it was done was by Clinton, btw, who managed to create a surplus (granted, the debt situation was nothing compared to today). And before that, Truman, back before hyper-partisan politics. I can't imagine the level of grift back then was anywhere close to today in our bloated budget. I'm optimistic, and I think y'all need to relax.

harperawl · a year ago

> auditing government spending

Pretending like anything Elon Musk is doing is legitimate auditing is absurd. Do you recall when he/DOGE gutted NIH and research funding on a whim, and he didn't even know? (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888575713629925769)

> super-competent outsider

I'd disagree about him being particularly competent at anything other than venture capital, and auditing ≠ venture capital. Regardless, why would I trust the richest man in the world to decide what the citizens of the country need and/or want from the government?

Honestly, I can keep going if you'd like, but I think this is enough to demonstrate that Elon Musk should not have illegal access to the government through his immense wealth and power (if that was not already self-evident.)

harperawl commented on Telegraph Talk and Talkers (1902) books.google.com/books?id... · Posted by u/harperawl

harperawl · a year ago

I think the anchors got trimmed off the URL, so this URL doesn't point to the correct page anymore. Page 227