Hacker News: Amorymeltzer

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "The World's Most Complex Machine"

Amorymeltzer — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:11:12 +0000

Don't have it in front of me so I can't comment on the actual language, but wasn't ENIAC designed for the purpose of firing tables, but the time it was "completed" got used for e.g. H-bomb?

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips"

Amorymeltzer — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:36:07 +0000

It's been mentioned before, but Chris Miller's Chip War from a few years back is an excellent, very-readable book on the topic. Goes into depth on the history and development of chips and their production. He did the rounds on the interviews back then, and it's definitely worth a read. The EUV stuff is great, but I particularly liked his history on how the USSR was always going to lose and how integral Apollo really was.

The Hottest Phone for Kids Right Now Is a $100 Landline

Amorymeltzer — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:29:20 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-24/viral-tin-can-phone-brings-landline-nostalgia-back-for-kids-in-2026

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916384

Points: 21

# Comments: 10

Cahokia

Amorymeltzer — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:09:41 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47837328

Points: 24

# Comments: 1

Who Would Believe NASA Used Whale Oil on Voyager and Hubble? (2014)

Amorymeltzer — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 18:00:28 +0000

Article URL: https://ksj.mit.edu/tracker-archive/who-would-believe-nasa-used-whale-oil-vo/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47818000

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "Nintendo's Empire of Secrets with Keza MacDonald [audio]"

Amorymeltzer — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 23:49:38 +0000

The book[1]—Super Nintendo by Keza MacDonald—is a fun enough read. Definitely written as a fan and for fans, it picks a few specific items/series and uses them to tell a narrative. It's not, you know, hard-hitting journalism, but there's good stuff in there I'd never read or heard before. Pretty quick read, and a delight if you're fan of anything Nintendo.

Basically, came for Zelda fandom and got fun things like Navi and Z-targeting coming about from seeing a ninja show to avoid a hot day.

1: https://bookshop.org/p/books/super-nintendo-the-game-changin...

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "The looming college-enrollment death spiral"

Amorymeltzer — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:28:42 +0000

I basically agree, but I think at this point it's an accepted use; see e.g. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratization_of_knowledge> and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratization_of_technology>. Indeed, wiktionary (<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/democratization>) uses your sense as the first, strict definition, but gives "The broadening of access to something, especially for the sake of egalitarianism." as the loose definition.

March inflation soars, confirming Iran war price shock

Amorymeltzer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:29:20 +0000

Article URL: https://www.axios.com/2026/04/10/cpi-march-inflation-iran-trump

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717846

Points: 7

# Comments: 2

Retina monitor explorer

Amorymeltzer — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:53:32 +0000

Article URL: https://retinadisplays.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704558

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

AI Changed Chess, Grandmasters Now Win with Unpredictable Moves

Amorymeltzer — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:16:36 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-27/ai-changed-chess-grandmasters-now-win-with-unpredictable-moves

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47568919

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs"

Amorymeltzer — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 02:00:36 +0000

The (excellent) Megan Greenwell wrote Bad Company, all about private equity; I'd recommend it. It does a good job of telling the story through a few specific and illustrative examples of people/industries[1], while still explaining everything in detail. Greenwell has a perspective, to be sure, but she's not wrong.

1: IIRC, it's a Toys 'R Us employee, a nurse at a rural hospital, a journalist at local newspaper, and a resident in a PE-owned apartment.

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "Apple discontinues the Mac Pro"

Amorymeltzer — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 22:35:17 +0000

Siracusa—probably best known here for doing fabulous OS X reviews for Ars—is a co-host of ATP. He is also known is such circles for having Mac Pros, and using them for a long time (sometimes by choice, sometimes by circumstance). He thinks Apple should make a Mac Pro, not necessarily because it's a big seller, but because he thinks Apple should make a "best computer," much in the same way car companies might make a car that will never sell but pushes engineers, etc.

They made a shirt. It was fun.

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "Apple discontinues the Mac Pro"

Amorymeltzer — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 22:08:06 +0000

For those who don't know what the t-shirt reference is, it's a creation by John Siracusa/The Accidental Tech Podcast: <https://cottonbureau.com/p/4RUVDA/shirt/mac-pro-believe-dark>.

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?"

Amorymeltzer — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 16:30:08 +0000

>Ê with the circumflex accent marks an “e” after which originally some other letter was written (usually an S), but this letter is no longer present in its modern spelling.

[snip]

>By imagining “es” instead of “ê”, we can often deduce the meaning of unknown words; for example, forêt = forest, fête = “feste” = fest(ival); intérêt = interest and many others. The circumflex accent is used in the very same sense also for other vowels, for example île = isle, hôte = “hoste” = host, hâte = haste.

I will always remember this, thanks to my high school French teacher who, knowing her audience, gave us a few examples like "hôpital," and then said "So you can probably guess was 'bâtard' means..."

Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

Amorymeltzer — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:46:29 +0000

Article URL: https://bethmathews.substack.com/p/why-so-many-control-rooms-were-seafoam

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47518960

Points: 1038

# Comments: 202

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "FFmpeg 8.1"

Amorymeltzer — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 17:49:33 +0000

For anyone vaguely familiar with ffmpeg, don't sleep on this video. Quite funny, and everything from `yadif` (which I dealt with today!) to mkvtoolnix to "But then it will explode if you have an apostrophe in your file name. Because it doesn't understand that."

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks"

Amorymeltzer — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 17:39:24 +0000

I'm in the middle of reading Peter Brannen's The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything—it's excellent and goes deep into the (bio)geochemistry of Earth—and he presents a good case for a metabolism-first development of life, taking advantage of "a disequilibrium that needed to be relieved at the vents, an unending stream d free energy to dissipate," rather than the RNA information-first theories.

It fits his overall narrative but it was an interesting way to think about life "as a thermodynamically necessary mechanism to relieve the continuous production of free geochemical energy on Earth... more efficiently than abiotic processes could." (Brannen quoting complex-systems scientist Anne-Marie Grisogono) I highly recommend the book.

Animated 'Firefly' Reboot in Development from Nathan Fillion, 20th TV

Amorymeltzer — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 18:04:34 +0000

Article URL: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/animated-firefly-reboot-in-development-nathan-fillion-1236533089/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47390021

Points: 254

# Comments: 95

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns"

Amorymeltzer — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 19:19:51 +0000

Indeed! He specifically cites Yanis Varoufakiss, dubbing this technofeudalism. If I may quote Doctorow a bit:

>Varoufakis defines capitalism as a system designed to preference profit over rent.

[snip]

>The feudal era wasn't defined by the absence of profits--rather, what made feudalism "feudal" was the triumph of rent over profits. When the interest of rentiers conflicted with the aspirations of capitalists, the rentiers won. Likewise, the defining characteristic of the capitalist era was not the abolition of rents, but rather the triumph of profits. When capitalism's philosopher-theorists lionized "free markets," they didn't mean "markets that were free from regulation," they meant "markets that were free from rents."

[snip]

>This is Varoufakiss technofeudalism exemplified. It's an economic system in which the majority of value is being captured by people who own stuff, at the expense of people who do stuff.... The fight between technofeudalism and technocapitalism is a fight over whether the landlord or the café owner takes the value that's created by the barista.

New comment by Amorymeltzer in "MacBook Neo"

Amorymeltzer — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:44:29 +0000

To name a few components:

- Older chip (and with fewer thermal constraints)

- Only one camera (and much cheaper)

- Less RAM than 17pro and Air

- No cell modem, FaceID, ProMotion, MagSafe, etc.