Hacker News: AdamN

New comment by AdamN in "Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made"

AdamN — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 07:47:24 +0000

Paid journalism is still often good (Bloomberg, FT). But yeah if you're just going to free sites it's the same as the free newspapers they used to give out for free in the subway - a few salacious articles, one or two ostensibly 'real news' pieces, and a bunch of ads.

New comment by AdamN in "Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip"

AdamN — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 13:57:27 +0000

It's sort of a cool idea. "Pre-RAM" without the tracking/AI integration so it can be used for clandestine activities in a dystopian future.

New comment by AdamN in "Grok 4.5"

AdamN — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 09:21:50 +0000

Politics and tech have gone hand in hand for generations. Just think about Stallman and free (as in beer) software or encryption export controls or much of the history of computing. There is no advanced tech that doesn't touch upon the political because politics is focused on what's important and advanced technology is very important.

New comment by AdamN in "Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips"

AdamN — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:33:26 +0000

Like 20 years ago

New comment by AdamN in "Canada's only watchmaking school still ticking after 80 years"

AdamN — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 07:50:16 +0000

Probably going to the school above is a good start.

New comment by AdamN in "Canada's only watchmaking school still ticking after 80 years"

AdamN — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 07:48:22 +0000

> all high end watches are mechanical.

No, most high end male jewelry are mechanical watches (and much of women-oriented jewelry as well).

High end watches are such a solved problem we don't even talk about them anymore. Either the G-shock, the Garmin watches, or the Apple Watch run circles around mechanical watches in terms of functionality with each satisfying a different niche (100% self-contained, long lived smart functionality, glance-oriented integration with full-stack personal tech ecosystem).

New comment by AdamN in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

AdamN — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:35:13 +0000

German culture is thorough, not efficient.

New comment by AdamN in "The revenge of the philosophy majors"

AdamN — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:58:26 +0000

I did Philosophy and Physics - each of which I have fond memories of.

New comment by AdamN in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

AdamN — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:07:18 +0000

The standardization process should weed out 'footguns' that are prone to accidentally (or maliciously) lowering the security bar.

New comment by AdamN in "Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected"

AdamN — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 10:58:36 +0000

Yeah they're a media conglomerate and their customers are advertisers. They have unstoppable traction with Instagram and Whatsapp and a legacy model with Facebook. There really isn't much more to it except that they need to keep trying new things in case those properties get taken down by a competitor.

New comment by AdamN in "GPT-5.5 Codex reasoning-token clustering may be leading to degraded performance"

AdamN — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 10:04:21 +0000

If pricing is per-token then in theory the vendor can offer you modes that optimize token usage or quality whereas all-you-can eat encourages vendors to satisfy you just enough to keep paying but the trend is towards lower quality responses.

New comment by AdamN in "Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine"

AdamN — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:54:40 +0000

This is really important. Unless it's straight up fraud or a safety issue, most market participants are totally allowed to ship garbage (who are we to judge?).

At some point when monopoly power tests start turning true then the bar is raised (as it should be).

New comment by AdamN in "BMW iX5 Blows Away the Competition with 460-KW Charging, 435-Mile Range"

AdamN — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:13:34 +0000

First off range should be based off of 70mph/110kph since that's what actually matters when people talk about range (how far away from home can I get on a full tank?).

And 250 miles just isn't far enough to fully mitigate range anxiety. I would say about 300-350+ miles is the sweet spot that higher end makers should target.

New comment by AdamN in "TOP500 at ISC’26: We have a New Number 1 Supercomputer"

AdamN — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:36:41 +0000

Might also be smart to make the adversary think you are overselling when you actually have the capability.

New comment by AdamN in "TOP500 at ISC’26: We have a New Number 1 Supercomputer"

AdamN — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:35:05 +0000

It's also good for recruiting. They're building a new supercomputer in Edinburgh and I'd imagine it's a pull for certain researchers.

New comment by AdamN in "A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading"

AdamN — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 09:21:45 +0000

They recommend treatment because the mandate is to keep the animals alive, not whether or not it's good long term for humans. Many doctors and vets though are against the mass use of antibiotics in industrial farming (literally as a prophylactic so they get the antibiotics just in case) but it's not having much of an impact it seems.

New comment by AdamN in "An oral history of Bank Python (2021)"

AdamN — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 09:19:15 +0000

The penny doesn't matter but being off by a cent can mean there are serious problems in the workflow.

New comment by AdamN in "Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads"

AdamN — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 07:50:16 +0000

Yeah this could end up being a good thing. We need more diversity in the computing space and this might make some space for that.

New comment by AdamN in "A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading"

AdamN — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:01:41 +0000

I may be crazy but I feel like we shouldn't be giving medicine to animals with communicable diseases (unless the medicine reduces the chances of animal->human transmission). We're just reducing the effectiveness of these medicines over time.

New comment by AdamN in "Who Does What? Team Topologies for the Agentic Platform"

AdamN — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 13:15:14 +0000

lol - it's probably going to just get worse. AI will continue to generate ghetto code and nobody cares so it will just degrade even further.