Hacker News: ClayShentrup

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults"

ClayShentrup — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 23:32:23 +0000

preach, brudda.

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults"

ClayShentrup — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 23:32:08 +0000

what's so bad about IRV?

https://www.rangevoting.org/CoreSuppPocket https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig

https://web.archive.org/web/20190219005733/https://sites.goo...

https://clayshentrup.medium.com/later-no-harm-72c44e145510 https://clayshentrup.medium.com/star-voting-is-simpler-than-...

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults"

ClayShentrup — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 23:31:34 +0000

nailed it.

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults"

ClayShentrup — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 23:31:23 +0000

a common fallacy of basic logic.

with FPTP, strategic voting means NOT voting for your favorite. so at the very least, you'd "vote for the person you'd normally support under FPTP, _plus_ everyone you like better".

but in real life, a lot of people will use intermediate scores.

https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat6

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid"

ClayShentrup — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 04:52:25 +0000

there's no such thing as "acceptable" or not, there are just utilities and _relative_ satisfaction. you want to get the most satisfaction possible from the options you have.

https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat6

approval voting is insanely good at this.

https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state"

ClayShentrup — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:26:40 +0000

massively false based on actual data. https://clayshentrup.medium.com/star-voting-is-simpler-than-...

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state"

ClayShentrup — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:25:43 +0000

this is dead simple. thousands of voters have had no problem. https://approval.vote/

if you really want to get into the game theory, here it is. https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat6

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state"

ClayShentrup — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:25:08 +0000

it's the worst of the commonly discussed alternatives.

https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state"

ClayShentrup — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:24:26 +0000

LOL, people get it just fine. fargo adopted it by a 64% supermajority and st louis adopted it by a 68% supermajority.

https://approval.vote/

> You can explain to me until you're blue in the face why approval is strictly better even in this situation, but I am emotionally attached to my vote counting for Bernie more than any other candidate, so reason isn't going to work on my lizard brain.

but your actual strategy is to rank hillary in 1st because bernie can't win. or, in the case of my aunt, she preferred warren but voted biden to beat trump. she would have ranked them biden>warren>trump in a ranked election for that very reason. this is called "compromise strategy".

bro, approving both of them is better than being strategically forced to say that you prefer clinton to bernie or biden to warren.

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state"

ClayShentrup — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:21:53 +0000

it's ironic that approval voting is better, but people therefore often wrongly think it's less optimal, when it's actually _more_ optimal.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190219005733/https://sites.goo...

you used to live across the street from me on harper street in berkeley by the way.

New comment by ClayShentrup in "The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling"

ClayShentrup — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 02:49:09 +0000

the voting method is HUGELY important.

https://www.rangevoting.org/RelImport

https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig

New comment by ClayShentrup in "The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling"

ClayShentrup — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 02:45:16 +0000

https://clayshentrup.github.io/ca-approval/

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Ask HN: ADHD – How do you manage the constant stream of thoughts and ideas?"

ClayShentrup — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 23:38:38 +0000

Read the book ADHD is awesome. I read the audiobook during a recent solo trip to London because my son was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago and I wanted to understand him better and be more patient with him. I think a lot of it he gets from me and I relate to a lot of this stuff where where, all I want to do is work on these crazy ideas all day. I co-founded a non-profit that does electoral reform because I want to optimize everything. I learned Esperanto I type on a dvorak key map etc. everywhere I look all I see is things to be optimized. but I'm able to manage it fairly well to hold down a software engineering job. I think he has not learned that yet so he struggles. but reading this book helped me see him and understand him better instead of just getting frustrated with him.

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections"

ClayShentrup — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:53:06 +0000

yes. election by jury is the good parts of sortition without the bad parts. https://www.electionbyjury.org/

approval voting is great. i co-founded a major non-profit that got it adopted in fargo and st louis. for election by jury i'd advocate score voting, since higher resolution is more valuable with small groups.

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections"

ClayShentrup — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:51:58 +0000

election by jury is better. elections aren't the problem — uninformed voters are the problem. especially if the turnout is statistically demographically biased (older, whiter, wealthier, more conservative, etc.)

https://www.electionbyjury.org/

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades"

ClayShentrup — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 04:25:59 +0000

legend. no words.

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Show HN: Does Information Density Cause Time Dilation?"

ClayShentrup — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 18:52:40 +0000

there's no such thing as information.

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Even in a Populist Moment, Democrats Are Split on the Problem of Corporate Power"

ClayShentrup — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 05:52:48 +0000

yeah. https://asitoughttobemagazine.com/2010/07/18/score-voting/

New comment by ClayShentrup in "Even in a Populist Moment, Democrats Are Split on the Problem of Corporate Power"

ClayShentrup — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 05:52:22 +0000

nope. you need approval voting. https://asitoughttobemagazine.com/2010/07/18/score-voting/

New comment by ClayShentrup in "The efficiency of truth: introducing the jot"

ClayShentrup — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 20:03:24 +0000

The Watt-hour is a "UI hack" that hides the conflict between base-10 math and base-60 time. It forces us to multiply a rate (Watts) by time to get energy, only to divide back by time to understand flow.

I propose a unit shift to align physics with human scheduling: The Jot (Jt ), defined as 1 Joule/hour.

It shifts the awkward math (1 hr=3600 s) out of the usage calculation and onto the device rating.

    Conversion: 1 Watt = 3.6 kiloJots (kJt ).

    Usage Math: A 50 kJt  bulb running for 10 hours uses exactly 500 kJ. No conversion factors.

    Battery Math: Capacity (Joules) / Rate (Jots) = Time (Hours). Pure integer division.

This post argues for killing the Watt-hour, measuring energy in Petajoules, and measuring power in Jots.