Hacker News: BlarfMcFlarf

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "The dead economy theory"

BlarfMcFlarf — Fri, 29 May 2026 18:35:41 +0000

Endgame assumes intentionality. Maybe the economy is just people responding to much shorter term incentives and the whole thing is a misaligned runaway process.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "Ordinary Lab Gloves May Have Skewed Microplastic Data"

BlarfMcFlarf — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:48:46 +0000

It doesn’t have to be an identical material, just one that has similar properties in attracting and holding contaminants.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "Our commitment to Windows quality"

BlarfMcFlarf — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 04:11:06 +0000

If it was kernel level only, maybe. But why does windows seem like it needs to restart after every little update?

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)"

BlarfMcFlarf — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:36:47 +0000

Supply is only one half of value. The demand for gold is almost entirely speculative, whereas dollars can be directly used for almost anything.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "FOSS in times of war, scarcity and (adversarial) AI [video]"

BlarfMcFlarf — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 22:16:44 +0000

Licenses like GPL are built on top of an enforcement mechanism like copyright. Without an enforced legal framework preventing usage unless a license is agreed to, a license is just a polite request.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment"

BlarfMcFlarf — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 01:11:21 +0000

Are billionaire oligarchs misaligned with humanity, or is egalitarianism and democracy misaligned with them? Time will tell.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge"

BlarfMcFlarf — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 16:13:40 +0000

Reality is short term thinking.

Idealism is long term thinking.

If you disregard reality, you will never understand the world around you to make change.

If you disregard idealism, you will only ever be able to react. You will end up dragged around by the nose, and pulled towards someone elses ideal that might not be so good for you.

Thinking that power is inviolable is an idealism that benefits existing power. They don’t want you to think of the countless times power has been overthrown, and a more just society has been built on the ruins of one with benefits for only those with power.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched"

BlarfMcFlarf — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 12:01:58 +0000

I mean, we already had PRISM, why is anyone acting like this is a big deal?

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "Populism and economic prosperity"

BlarfMcFlarf — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 21:02:36 +0000

39% of US adults think they live in the end times, and 10% think Jesus will definitely show up in their lifetime. Given those priors, planning ahead probably seems like the less rational choice for them.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "Reader Response to "AI Overinvestment""

BlarfMcFlarf — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 05:21:26 +0000

Poorly. GPUs are easily the bulk of the costs, and a disposable asset.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "Cognitive load is what matters"

BlarfMcFlarf — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 23:13:39 +0000

You can pick any set of axis you feel like and get similar results. “Do you like X? Wow you are an X person!”. So yeah, technically better than horoscopes, more like a “warm” reading where you tell a person what they told you earlier. But it’s entirely unclear why these axis are the right ones over a million other possible ones, if these are particularly stable categories in time and context, or if the harm of encouraging people to box themselves or others into specific stereotypes has any possible benefit to outweigh the obvious harms of simplifying stereotypes.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "Citybound: City building game, microscopic models to vividly simulate organism"

BlarfMcFlarf — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 12:03:20 +0000

But it has the suburban cars and suburban zoning, without the parking lots or even a full simulation of the generated traffic (because that would render it nearly unplayable). It sells new generations of potential urbanists on the idea that a car centric city can work as anything other than a failing pothole filled parking wasteland.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "I used to know how to write in Japanese"

BlarfMcFlarf — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 11:56:19 +0000

I tried this, but I couldn’t really tell the differences between even quite obvious characters until I sat down with them individually.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "The U.S. grid is so weak, the AI race may be over"

BlarfMcFlarf — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 11:42:03 +0000

In the USA, any non-private government investment is considered to be foolish and doomed at best, and an existential threat to business at worst. The best we can do is “public-private partnership” where all the profits get absorbed by middle men, preventing virtuous cycles and still leaving a cap on risk and future planning.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "FCC abandons efforts to make U.S. broadband fast and affordable"

BlarfMcFlarf — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 21:07:10 +0000

Talk radio reaches well past broadband. These problems aren’t new, they are just social problems from decades ago finally surfacing.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "The Math Is Haunted"

BlarfMcFlarf — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 16:26:06 +0000

What about proven facts that get disproven? Is there room to rethink your priors?

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]"

BlarfMcFlarf — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 07:54:15 +0000

Imagine you are a 19 year old in charge of some Hamas survivors. Let’s say you want to surrender.

1. Would it even mean anything? It’s not like you or anyone else has the control to stop everyone else. And Israel will use any attack as a sign of bad faith and ignore the surrender.

2. Would it improve anything for your people? If Israelis are intentionally starving babies, there is no reason to think they will stop the genocide just because the militarized part has given up. Have you even heard any news of Hamas even fighting back recently or has it all just been killing civilians?

All a surrender would do is get you tortured for information and executed for no gain.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "NIH is cheaper than the wrong dependency"

BlarfMcFlarf — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 14:58:40 +0000

Most games that use an existing engine get like 60% on metacritic and ship like less than 1000 copies and are a generic flop. “Shipping no matter what” is a lot less valuable in games.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses"

BlarfMcFlarf — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 22:51:08 +0000

Do what Japan desperately wants people to do, and visit any of the 95% of the country that isn’t Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Fuji, or Nara.

New comment by BlarfMcFlarf in "AI cameras change driver behavior at intersections"

BlarfMcFlarf — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 17:51:21 +0000

The whole idea that the way to reduce crime is by surveillance and enforcement is a con. Like in this case, all the places that managed to significantly reduce traffic accidents do so by carefully redesigning their street network to make safety easier and more intuitive.