HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

AshleyGrant

656 karma · joined April 5, 2016

submissionscomments
AshleyGrant··on Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash
Yep. I have to maintain a separate consumer gmail/google account for this exact reason. I end up paying for some things twice, such as Google Photos since I want those photos synced to my "enterprise" account. I've had this thing, like you, since it was free and somehow I'm now paying nearly $30/month for two people to have Email and storage for that email.
AshleyGrant··on Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production
We'll have to wait and see. I honestly kind of doubt that will be true. There's all kinds of Tesla hacking that's been going on for years. It's possible to get a Tesla motor running without any external Tesla electronics through aftermarket solutions that carry support from the vendors.
AshleyGrant··on Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production
Look, there is "trying to push things outside of the normal" and then there is "completely misunderstanding the purpose of a half-ton truck." I say this despite that fact that the Cybertruck, from a size perspective, it straddles the line between half-ton and 3/4-ton, and it is a complete utter non-starter as a 3/4 ton for several reasons.

If the CyberTruck were the size of a Honda Ridgeline or Ford Maverick, I think truck folks (who skew conservative) would look at it a lot less derisively. There are entire swathes of the half-ton truck market that the Cybertruck simply cannot compete in due to a seeming fundamental misunderstanding by the design team of what the vehicle needs to be capable of and amenable to. This is especially evident in the fleet/work truck market where the unibody design immediately shuts out folks who need to put an aftermarket bed replacement (think plumbers, welders, and other trades).

It straddles the 1/2 to 3/4 ton segment in terms of specs, but it is fundamentally impossible to tow a 5th wheel or gooseneck trailer with a Cybertruck.

Again, there is "think different" and there is "misunderstand the market."

AshleyGrant··on Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production
There are plenty of objective measures of what makes a good truck. Payload capacity. Towing capacity. Towing range. Stopping distance when at GVWR. Stopping distance when towing at or Max Towing Capacity. Does standard lumber fit in the bed with or without the tailgate open. If it requires the tailgate to be open, does it provide factory installed tiedowns to be able to safely carry cargo with the tailgate open.

There are, of course, plenty of subjective measures such as NVH, amenability to modification through the aftermarket, total cost of ownership, offroad capabilities, etc.

From everything I've seen, some of which OP mentioned in an edit, points to the Cybertruck being a terrible truck seemingly designed by folks who have never owned/used a truck. And again, that is ignoring Elon's politics.

AshleyGrant··on Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production
> Of course it might be harder to keep a Cybertruck running for 50 years due to all the computerized components. Restorers will probably be relegated to rebuilding Cybertruck bodies with new components.

Really no different than any classic car, really. GM isn't selling OEM parts for a '57 Chevy, for example. If you need replacement parts on those, nowadays, you're likely going to specialty manufacturers given there really aren't any "parts cars" around anymore.

AshleyGrant··on Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production
I think a lot of the F-150s failure comes down to dealers. You can read myriad stories in the EV subreddits of dealers putting "market adjustments" on the Lightning and Mach-E of tens of thousands of dollars. It was if they didn't want them to sell, and I think we all know why (lower revenue from regular maintenance like oil changes and other fluids).
AshleyGrant··on Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production
A diesel generator would definitely be better on paper, but the costs involved are much higher as those are generally a permanent install. A gasoline generator requires much more maintenance around fuel and the carburetor as gasoline goes bad over time and modern gas/petrol with ethanol in it sucks up water from the air. A propane generator, while it is a bit more annoying to refuel, especially if you upgrade to larger tanks, is perfectly happy to sit for 6-12 months unused and then start right up on the tank of fuel that's been sitting next to it for that time period.

A propane generator is a temporary solution but likely is good enough for most folks who just need to keep the fridge cold and maybe charge cell phones. It's not going to be able to run your house AC or anything, though.

AshleyGrant··on US boy names that became girl names and vice versa
And I'm a guy named Ashley who hates being called Ash. Takes all kinds.
AshleyGrant··on Disney Raising Prices Days After Confirming Ads Will Now Show Up on Every Tier
Honestly, even if your brother is right, who cares? I find it quite enjoyable to watch other folks play sports. So I'm going to continue to watch live sports.

Which sports I watch may change over time, as companies like Disney (ESPN) ruin one sport after another with too many ads and especially too much in-game gambling content, but I'll likely keep watching sports.

AshleyGrant··on ICE Planning $100M 'Nightmare' Domestic Spy Program
> i (sic) assume that your real goal is to end all immigration enforcement.

You can make that assumption. You would be wrong. But you are free to make that assumption.

> My question is: suppose they have such suspicion.

Then take it to a court and convince a judge to sign a warrant (it's not like it's that difficult). No different from other criminal investigations.

AshleyGrant··on The No Kings Takedown Is Why You Shouldn't Rent Your Megaphone from Zuck
Standing US law disagrees with you.
AshleyGrant··on Delays for Pull Requests and Webhook deliveries
This explains why it took GitHub 5+ minutes to acknowledge a push to a PR branch.
AshleyGrant··on The No Kings Takedown Is Why You Shouldn't Rent Your Megaphone from Zuck
No. "They" cheered when it was used to deplatform hate speech.

Deplatforming people organizing a peaceful protest is very different. If you cannot understand how that is different, then I worry about your critical thinking skills.

AshleyGrant··on The No Kings Takedown Is Why You Shouldn't Rent Your Megaphone from Zuck
Conflating deplatforming hate speech and deplatforming people organizing a peaceful protest is certainly a choice.
AshleyGrant··on ICE Planning $100M 'Nightmare' Domestic Spy Program
> supposing a person is likely to be present without authorisation in the country, and is unable to offer any evidence of citizenship, then what?

Then don't arrest them and send them to a concentration camp would be a great start. The onus should be on the arresting officer to have a reasonable suspicion that the person in question is in the US without proper authorization (with reasonable suspicion being a pretty high bar, much higher than it currently is).

We have a court system. ICE even has their own special extra-judicial court system. There is absolutely zero need to proactively be disappearing people just because some guy who's only training is that Family Guy meme decided that this particular brown person needs to have their life destroyed.

Also, these detention centers are horrific and something history will not judge kindly, especially given that "the cruelty is the point" seems to be the guiding light for the folks building them.

36 US citizens being incorrectly and illegally arrested is 36 too many. Period. End of story.

Demand better of our government, not "eh, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet."

AshleyGrant··on Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in sale of groceries
And businesses that are offered the option of paying "protection money" can simply go out of business, right?

Acting like YouTube is a service that is not functionally required to use in the modern world is a disingenuous argument at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.

There is so much content that folks end up needing to access for so many valid reasons that is only available on YouTube. Plenty of companies only post troubleshooting explainers on YouTube, as one example. I am not "choosing to visit" YouTube in those cases, I am forced by a third party. And I'm being forced because YouTube has functionally built a monopoly on this type of content.

You might as well be telling someone to "Just buy a helicopter and fly yourself" because they are unhappy with the quality of roads in their city.

AshleyGrant··on Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in sale of groceries
This is like saying "You can just sail to Europe for your week of meetings." While it may be pedantically true, it's absolutely false from a functional standpoint for most people.

YouTube holds an absolutely dominant position in user created content. I have purchased products from many companies who post their troubleshooting video content on YouTube and only on YouTube. In many cases, those videos are literally the only content they provide. They do not provide any textual troubleshooting content.

Telling people "Just don't use YouTube" is a functionally useless piece of advice as they cannot "just not go there."

Also, I'm a paying customer of YouTube, why would I "have not right to set the terms they offer their services by?" Why is it that Google gets dictator-level control over the relationship, especially when they are operating as a monopoly?

We the People absolutely have the power to dictate terms to Google or any other company.

AshleyGrant··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
Edit to my comment, I meant "Despite them being common," not "Despite them being complex."
AshleyGrant··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
The Raptor v3 had a 7% (3/39) failure rate on yesterday's Starship Flight 14. As others have mentioned, Falcon 9 uses the Merlin engine, which is a completely different, much lower complexity engine.
AshleyGrant··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
Despite them being complex, high-bypass turbofan engines ARE exotic technology. There are vanishingly few countries/companies that have the expertise necessary to produce the single crystal fan blades used in the engines of these aircraft.

As far as the SR-71, its engines were turbojets that transitioned to ramjets above Mach 2ish. They required a special grade of jet fuel and a dedicated fleet of refueling aircraft.

I rather doubt an SR-71 successor would use a turbofan. The mission profile really doesn't require it. I would expect it to be a turbojet that transitions (as you said) to a ramjet and eventually a scramjet.

I would love to see the SR-71 fly again, if only from a nostalgia standpoint, but I really doubt this effort will be successful. I doubt even more that much of value can be accomplished by getting one to be flyable again that couldn't be achieved in a much more cost-effective manner via unmanned aircraft.

AshleyGrant··on Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in sale of groceries
Because in OP's hypothetical, it is the equivalent of a gangster saying "I can shoot you in the face or punch you in the face, which do you prefer?"

They present a false choice where Google is saying "We can do this the easy way or the hard way" and we are forced to choose between bad and worse. There is no reason we should not have a less bad choice: the same amount of ads but non-targeted. We, as customers, should not be held hostage by the massive corporations.

AshleyGrant··on F-Droid 2.0
^ 2026 in a nutshell
AshleyGrant··on Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in sale of groceries
There is no reason we have to make the false choice you present. That is simply Google holding a gun to our heads to encourage us to choose something that is in Google's best interests rather than our own.

The choice should be between X targeted ads or X non-targeted ads. They can still target ads based on the content of the page, no different from how television and print ads worked prior to all of this data collection.

AshleyGrant··on Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in sale of groceries
That the company can use the fact that a customer purchased something is completely separate from tying that information to me.

And they should not be able to sell that data to data brokers, whether is anonymized or tied to individual customers.

AshleyGrant··on Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in sale of groceries
And we even have an explicit example of this in the 21st Amendment repealing the 18th Amendment.
AshleyGrant··on Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived
The father of a girl I dated in college (circa 2000s) built an entire student tracking system using FileMaker to use at the High School he was the Principal of.

We didn't date for long, but I'd be curious to know how long that system ran.

AshleyGrant··on The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities
I saw rusted out cars and trucks all over the place when I visited northern Minnesota and the UP of Michigan last year. Even late-model cars that couldn't have been more than 5-10 years old had rusted out rocker panels.
AshleyGrant··on Show HN: I made a flight simulator, except you're just a passenger
Please add the ability to sit in a window seat. It'd be awesome to also be able to pick a seat.

Also, the login UI is annoying, it'd be nice if it was hidden by default.

Another thing that might be fun to add is to see if you can get a data feed of filed routes used by airliners for the chosen route and fly that route instead of simply flying direct.

AshleyGrant··on Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude
GitHub Copilot in VS Code has a similar feature to "Fork" a conversation at any point in its history.
AshleyGrant··on Diesel prices in U.S. top $6 a gallon for first time
You can't trade in for a used EV that likely wouldn't cost you anything and would save you money?
Page 1 of 8Next →