Hacker News: ErigmolCt

New comment by ErigmolCt in "New Zealand lost its music media, and what we're building to replace it"

ErigmolCt — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 05:19:44 +0000

I think the revenue number needs a lot more context for exactly this reason

New comment by ErigmolCt in "Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area"

ErigmolCt — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 05:14:32 +0000

And I'm writing my comment to understand it better...

New comment by ErigmolCt in "Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area"

ErigmolCt — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 06:29:52 +0000

The really haunting part is that Europeans often arrived late enough to see the collapse, but not early enough to understand what had collapsed

New comment by ErigmolCt in "Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area"

ErigmolCt — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 06:27:41 +0000

A landscape does not become "pristine" a decade after millions of people disappear. The human influence would still be everywhere, but it would not necessarily look like European agriculture

New comment by ErigmolCt in "Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area"

ErigmolCt — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 06:24:20 +0000

Europeans often failed to recognize Indigenous land management because it did not resemble European cities or farms

New comment by ErigmolCt in "Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area"

ErigmolCt — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 06:21:14 +0000

The important lesson is not that ancient people left no ecological footprint, but that a heavily managed landscape can still remain remarkably biodiverse

New comment by ErigmolCt in "Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area"

ErigmolCt — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 06:19:10 +0000

Finding hundreds of previously unknown earthworks is a major archaeological result. Extrapolating from them to millions of inhabitants is where I would slow down...

New comment by ErigmolCt in "First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star"

ErigmolCt — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:27:53 +0000

A machine civilization could probably spread into many environments that biology cannot tolerate, but it still has to be invented somewhere first

New comment by ErigmolCt in "First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star"

ErigmolCt — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:25:15 +0000

I do not really believe the wormholes or computronium scenario, but letting my mind run through those possibilities resets my sense of scale

New comment by ErigmolCt in "First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star"

ErigmolCt — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:23:22 +0000

Yeps. The target-selection problem will likely solve itself long before the engineering does

New comment by ErigmolCt in "First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star"

ErigmolCt — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:22:06 +0000

I went through almost exactly the same thought process reading this :)

New comment by ErigmolCt in "How do wombats poop cubes? (2021)"

ErigmolCt — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:13:04 +0000

If Einstein had known about this, physics might have gone in a very different direction

New comment by ErigmolCt in "How do wombats poop cubes?"

ErigmolCt — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:09:25 +0000

The fact that the inviting red part is mostly fine but the plant around it is deadly is very on-brand for nature

New comment by ErigmolCt in "How do wombats poop cubes? (2021)"

ErigmolCt — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:05:57 +0000

The amount of childhood survival that comes down to "thankfully I only poked it and didn't eat it" is kind of alarming in retrospect

New comment by ErigmolCt in "How do wombats poop cubes?"

ErigmolCt — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 08:40:39 +0000

Nature keeps finding engineering solutions we would never arrive at from first principles

New comment by ErigmolCt in "Doing a masters while working in Spain"

ErigmolCt — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:27:42 +0000

Respect for going back after 10 years, honestly. Cybersec while working full time sounds useful but definitely not light

New comment by ErigmolCt in "Doing a masters while working in Spain"

ErigmolCt — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:20:57 +0000

Geology is a great choice. I sometimes think the best subjects to study are the ones that have nothing to do with your job, but they're also the hardest to justify when your brain is already tired from work

New comment by ErigmolCt in "Doing a masters while working in Spain"

ErigmolCt — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:12:43 +0000

It feels like the real reason many people go back to school: not some grand career optimization plan, but being bored, stuck and wanting life to move again

New comment by ErigmolCt in "An interview with an Apple emoji designer"

ErigmolCt — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:54:43 +0000

Also "petty, small change" is exactly the right scale for a walnut emoji campaign

New comment by ErigmolCt in "An interview with an Apple emoji designer"

ErigmolCt — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:52:07 +0000

Representation emojis and object emojis are solving different problems