Hacker News: DontBreakAlex

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "The iPhone's Last Stand?"

DontBreakAlex — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:59:46 +0000

Not on my phone. Ah the web, such a beautiful place.

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "How to convert between wealth and income tax"

DontBreakAlex — Fri, 22 May 2026 21:31:13 +0000

I think he meant that you'd have the brackets apply to types of consumption instead of income level, so no tax on food, low tax on restaurants, medium tax on high-end electronics, insane tax on planes and yachts. I mean it sounds like it would be easier to maintain/enforce such tiering system than constantly fight with people trying to not technically be wealthy. Downside of course is that some people's luxuries are other's basic needs, but I wonder if there's been serious research on the implications of such system.

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing"

DontBreakAlex — Thu, 21 May 2026 02:41:18 +0000

My understanding is that after a few minutes without oxygen, the chemistry inside your brain is "fucked up" and even if you get oxygen back it's gone, you're already a vegetable. I like to think that "the state of the machine is gone" but I'm not a doctor

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing"

DontBreakAlex — Wed, 20 May 2026 22:52:37 +0000

[flagged]

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing"

DontBreakAlex — Wed, 20 May 2026 22:40:00 +0000

Everyone upvote this guy more, thanks

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Online age verification is the hill to die on"

DontBreakAlex — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:50:36 +0000

And I also suspect you did not grow up with kids whose parents clearly would like them to go away and stop bothering them. I also did lots of dumb stuff in my parents' back. The nuance here is that when you know that your parents love you, you'll tell them once you do something that's actually harmful/a big mistake, because you trust they'll help you instead of punishing you. I've seen people make "questionable" life choices, in my opinion, because they've learned, consciously or not, to not seek help from others and always hide/blame on others every problem them encounter.

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Online age verification is the hill to die on"

DontBreakAlex — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 18:50:56 +0000

I wish I could upvote this comment harder. I started having unsupervised internet access (with the family computer in the living room) when I was 8. I'm a functional and successful adult because I trusted my parents. When my mother forbade me from registering on online forums I complied. When I read "fellation" in some minecraft chat (albeit somewhat later) I asked my mom what it was and understood that "sex" was something for the grown-ups and that I shouldn't worry about it. All because I would never even conceive that my parents wouldn't do what's best for me, and was unconditionally loved (even though I didn't know about this concept).

I would rather have parenting licenses than online age verification

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus"

DontBreakAlex — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:29:55 +0000

You don't need to incorporate in the US for this to happen to you. You should look up what happened to Marc Lasus after he founded Gemplus (spoiler, he's on social security while the company the CIA stole from him has $3b revenue) or how Frédéric Pierucci was taken hostage to force the sale of France's nuclear reactors to General Electric. I assume the US does this to all the other countries too.

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

DontBreakAlex — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:25:46 +0000

This sounds good until you remember that we have all these electronics precisely to avoid the 1955 smog situation and climate change. Going back to 1990-era cars isn't solving anything. What we need is a patent and intellectual property reform. My personal opinion is that the same company shouldn't be allowed to sell both the hardware and the software. Open source ECU, anyone?

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective"

DontBreakAlex — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 19:48:19 +0000

I can already bring my regular bike in the office. The problem is when you're meeting with friends, going to a restaurant, well anything that's not commuting to work...

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective"

DontBreakAlex — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 19:33:06 +0000

YES! I moved to SF from Paris (where I spent my whole life before that) a year ago. I exclusively use lime instead of public transit because of how slow it is! Going from Folsom&8th to Mason&Girard takes 50 minutes! And you spend most of the time stopped! With a lime I can usually get there in 20 to 25 minutes. I would use my own bike that I use to commute to work if you could lock a bike without getting it stolen almost immediately.

Did GPT 5.2 make a breakthrough discovery in theoretical physics?

DontBreakAlex — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 23:42:21 +0000

Article URL: https://huggingface.co/blog/dlouapre/gpt-single-minus-gluons

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47081454

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "xAI joins SpaceX"

DontBreakAlex — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:43:33 +0000

Radiators can only be made as long as desirable because there's gravity for the fluid inside to go back down once it condenses. Even seen those copper heat pipes in your PC radiator?

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "When Every Network is 192.168.1.x"

DontBreakAlex — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:14:51 +0000

Can we please just use ipv6? PLEASE

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Show HN: Ourguide – OS wide task guidance system that shows you where to click"

DontBreakAlex — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 21:36:04 +0000

Looks cool, I think you should try to target it towards the elderly. My 99 year old grandpa is capable of using a computer and browsing the web, but struggles whenever he gets out of the "usual flow" (accidentally removes the chrome icon from his taskbar, whenever the crappy web-based email he insists on using over thunderbird moves the add attachment button). I end up having to do teamviewer to show him what I can't explain over the phone. He would very much use an assistant that shows him what to do, especially if he can speak to it.

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Donut Lab’s all-solid-state battery delivers 400 Wh/kg of energy density"

DontBreakAlex — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 10:48:19 +0000

Look, non-nonviolent communication is a valid form of protest (I know what I'm talking about, I'm french)

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower"

DontBreakAlex — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 18:43:22 +0000

I mean if your have a 750kw motor for each wheel, then they're probably always spinning when you floor it, so you also have enough torque to fully use your tires for stopping purposes

EDIT: Quick maths show that decelerating at 1g (basically what the best sport tires can do) in a 2000kg car at 300kph requires absorbing ~1500kw, so conveniently two of these motors.

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Tell HN: Azure outage"

DontBreakAlex — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 19:55:08 +0000

In europe, voting typically happens in one day, where everyone physically goes to their designated voting place and puts papers in a transparent box. You can stay there and wait for the count at the end of the day if you want to. Tom Scott has a very good video about why we don't want electronic/mail voting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Life next to 199 data centres"

DontBreakAlex — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 18:08:20 +0000

I once visited a fairly large DC in the outskirts of paris (Scaleway DC5) and it was basically dead silent outside. I guess these large DCs are just build with absolutely no concern for noise pollution?

New comment by DontBreakAlex in "Starcloud"

DontBreakAlex — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 18:42:20 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generat...

> and even the nuclear decay (due to practical considerations the latter, as well as the atmospheric noise, is not viable except for fairly restricted applications or online distribution services)