Hacker News: EncomLab

New comment by EncomLab in "Central Park hits temp record last seen in 1888"

EncomLab — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 12:36:58 +0000

Wonder if this winter will see another blizzard of 1888 event?

New comment by EncomLab in "AI: Accelerated Incompetence"

EncomLab — Wed, 28 May 2025 11:52:42 +0000

Remember when 3d printing was going to replace all manufacturing? Anybody?

AI is closer to this sentiment than it is to the singularity.

New comment by EncomLab in "LLMs can see and hear without any training"

EncomLab — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 14:41:11 +0000

It's not the technology that is bad - it's the extreme anthropomorphizing language that's used to describe it.

New comment by EncomLab in "LLMs can see and hear without any training"

EncomLab — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 14:01:11 +0000

My photoresistor nightlight can "see" that it is dark and it "knows" to turn on the light - not only does it not have training, it does not have any code!

And if you think that is amazing, my bi-metallic strip thermostat "feels" the temperature and then modifies the environment because it "knows" if it's hot to turn on the A/C, and if it's cold to turn on the heat - no training or code!

All of this AI stuff is just unbelievably incredible - what a brave new world (of word games)!

New comment by EncomLab in "The Truth about Atlantis (2019)"

EncomLab — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 18:34:49 +0000

I thought everyone knew that Atlantis is just another name for the Richat Structure.

New comment by EncomLab in "A 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics"

EncomLab — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 15:15:43 +0000

I spent hours playing with mine in the mid 80's! The key takeaway - then and now - is that you can generate an incredible variety of motion with a single motor and a well designed gear-box; no software required!

New comment by EncomLab in "The Long History of Nitrous Oxide"

EncomLab — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 16:20:02 +0000

As a kid growing up in the 80's and 90's in St. Louis - nitrous "whippets" were sold in every grocery and convenience store. I never considered myself a drug user when I was a teen - because every drug I enjoyed (nitrous, cough syrup, caffeine pills) were all legally available....unlike those dirty hippies and their marijuana!

It's been decades since I hit a balloon - but man those moments when I did were incredible.

New comment by EncomLab in "How Nintendo bled Atari games to death"

EncomLab — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 15:16:47 +0000

I agree - it's not an indicator at all of shady business by Valve. If anything, Valve is the least shady and most transparent player in the game industry.

New comment by EncomLab in "Nintendo Bled Atari Games to Death"

EncomLab — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:36:16 +0000

Hence the demise of the Greenlight program...

New comment by EncomLab in "How Nintendo bled Atari games to death"

EncomLab — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:08:24 +0000

This is true - but the scale is beyond what most people imagine. STEAM revenue last year was nearly $11B - while the median revenue for a game that makes it into the top 8% is estimated at $799. So 17.5k releases earned less than $800, with something like 10k making less than $100.

New comment by EncomLab in "How Nintendo bled Atari games to death"

EncomLab — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:03:26 +0000

It would be pretty hard to review 52 games every day of 2024 to determine if any great games are being lost among the trash. The scale is just too large for most people to really understand - imagine the size of a physical store it would take to display 19,000 game boxes just in "new release" - much less the 100,000+ titles available in STEAM.

New comment by EncomLab in "How Nintendo bled Atari games to death"

EncomLab — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 13:15:59 +0000

The coda to this fascinating saga is that today - in a post publisher, open distribution marketplace - STEAM, the predominate game distribution gateway, allows anyone to publish just about anything for a $100 deposit and a 30% commission per sale. The predictable end result is that 19,000 new games were uploaded to STEAM last year alone, and over 100,000 titles are available for purchase on the platform.

The predictable result is that unless a studio has a lottery-win statistically equivalent outlier or a $50m marketing budget, a new game is swallowed up by the shear volume of titles. 1 in 5 games on STEAM never even earn back the $100 deposit.

New comment by EncomLab in "We're Raising Kids to Prefer AI over People–and No One's Noticing"

EncomLab — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 12:44:01 +0000

Even during the video game/satanic panic of the 80's, it was acknowledged that video games - even at that early stage - allowed children who are introverted or less physically adept to experience "winning" and the satisfaction of overcoming obstacles. It seems the ability to acknowledge that there are also benefits to these new emerging systems of interaction has been lost.

New comment by EncomLab in "We're Raising Kids to Prefer AI over People–and No One's Noticing"

EncomLab — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 12:40:44 +0000

Kids (and humans) are wired to follow individuals who express themselves with authority and confidence - hence the long history of "confidence-men" and politicians throughout history.

If you place that ability to communicate with confidence and authority in an individual with male gender traits who is tall, fit, socially attractive, and has a deep voice - nearly everyone around them will do what they say; even to the extent that doing so many be against the best interest of the individuals listening.

AI speaks with utmost confidence in every interaction - not just kids, but all humans will have a preference for it.

New comment by EncomLab in "Understanding US Power Outages – By Brian Potter"

EncomLab — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 10:53:22 +0000

We live in an ex-urban area of SW Ohio and after years of nearly zero outages, in the last two years we have had several 12+ hour outage events following pretty standard spring storms. We are experiencing a boom in new construction around us as farms are converting to new subdivisions, and have been told that electrical infrastructure is less stable while construction activities are occurring. All of the subdivisions have buried utilities - but they also all tie to a pole near the entrance, the poles all follow roads, and inevitably a car takes out a pole and entire neighborhoods go dark.

New comment by EncomLab in "Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex"

EncomLab — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 10:01:46 +0000

"Complexity" is a hugely problematic term when used in this way - remember that entropy and complexity are related, but they are not interchangeable. A complex system can have lower entropy than a simpler system, and conversely, a system can have high entropy but be relatively simple. By mingling these terms without specifying objective reference points, it all just comes out as word salad.

This paper just reads like an attempt at sounding smart while actually saying little.

New comment by EncomLab in "Kezurou-Kai #39"

EncomLab — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 09:52:48 +0000

Fascinating! I love when people see and appreciate a simple skill, then take it to the most extreme level of refinement possible.

New comment by EncomLab in "Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why"

EncomLab — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 14:38:04 +0000

The generations in my family are full of people who had dementia/Alzheimer's/auto-immune disorders. They all had anxiety, and they all had sleep disorders - I'm certain there is a connection among it all.

I joined a Stanford study and had a spinal tap sample submitted for testing - in theory I am "unlikely" to develop anything for the next 20 years - but that only gets me to my late 60's :(

New comment by EncomLab in "The narrowest escalator in New York City"

EncomLab — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:26:00 +0000

More impressed that it's a Westinghouse escalator - which means it's not been updated since at least 1989.

New comment by EncomLab in "Building the System/360 Mainframe Nearly Destroyed IBM"

EncomLab — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:03:53 +0000

Not sure what you mean by this - it's not as if steam engines are an extensive technology today, and certainly no university is teaching "steam science", while nearly every school is teaching "computer science".

Perhaps this is just the attitude that drives Mr. Kay's point home - do individuals who are interested in CS have little value for who and what has come before them?