Hacker News: JDEW

Introducing Plan A

JDEW — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:44:09 +0000

Article URL: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/introducing-plan-a

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854775

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

New comment by JDEW in "I wanted to build vertical SaaS for pest control, so I took a technician job"

JDEW — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:01:15 +0000

> Like my Dyson…

Which is wild because a Dyson has a premium price tag.

New comment by JDEW in "Flighty Airports"

JDEW — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:41:32 +0000

CDG shows yellow (“minor issues”), 65% of planes arrive on time, 0% cancelled. FRA shows green (“normal operations”) 59% of planes arrive on time, 4% cancelled.

Surely that’s wrong?

New comment by JDEW in "Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court"

JDEW — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 16:18:39 +0000

> by the other countries

That makes zero sense. You mean “by lowering the profit margin on the goods sold to the US by that specific company”.

Countries don’t pay tarrifs (bar state intervention), companies do.

But yes, it’s probably a mix of the two: raising prices and lowering profit margins.

New comment by JDEW in "Children and Helical Time"

JDEW — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 13:14:52 +0000

> The motivation for making school more rewarding and less stultifying should not primarily be its effect on outcomes later in life, but rather that childhood is itself part of life, a very important part.

Almost makes me tear up. 1000 times this.

New comment by JDEW in "Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025"

JDEW — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 07:20:18 +0000

Nice! The entry for Abundance [0] is listed as another book (An Abundance of Katherines [1])

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176444106-abundance [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215526423-an-abundance-o...

New comment by JDEW in "Thousands of U.S. farmers have Parkinson's. They blame a deadly pesticide"

JDEW — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 17:40:28 +0000

> …undisputed evidence… do not cause problems…

This is unworkable in practice; nothing will ever be completely safe. Instead, we need a public regulatory body that makes reasonable risk/reward tradeoffs when approving necessary chemicals. However, this system breaks down completely when you allow for lobbying and a revolving door between the public and private sectors.

New comment by JDEW in "Size of Life"

JDEW — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 17:35:42 +0000

Beautiful site. Also very pleased to see the mitochondrion being referred to as the powerhouse of the cell, as is law.

New comment by JDEW in "OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly"

JDEW — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 02:41:57 +0000

> 1/800 users mentioning suicide…

“conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent.”

Sounds like more than just mentioning suicide. Also it’s per week, which is a pretty short time interval.

Rebuilding the Architecture of Science

JDEW — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 15:32:45 +0000

Article URL: https://catalyzernd.substack.com/p/rebuilding-the-architecture-of-science

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45712704

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by JDEW in "Electricity can heal wounds three times as fast (2023)"

JDEW — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 21:30:09 +0000

> Therefore, grains are cheap and people eat too much of them.

People only overeat themselves into obesity once you process those carbs into high fructose corn syrup etc. Seems like a very different problem.

New comment by JDEW in "Electricity can heal wounds three times as fast (2023)"

JDEW — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 21:26:38 +0000

To blame abundant food for obesity and not the fact that we make everything ultra addictive [0] seems like inverse logic to me.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-025-01143-7

Microsoft Amplifier

JDEW — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 15:19:54 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/microsoft/amplifier

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45549848

Points: 262

# Comments: 150

New comment by JDEW in "A recent chess controversy"

JDEW — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 15:36:15 +0000

“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”

-Feynman, from Six Easy Pieces

New comment by JDEW in "Japan and the Birth of Modern Shipbuilding"

JDEW — Sat, 24 May 2025 01:09:07 +0000

> The laissez-faire approach gave people happy, low-stress, and materially rich lives.

The usual schtick conveniently ignoring the absolute marauding of resources from non-western countries and the effective slave labor extracted from Asia.

New comment by JDEW in "Three Hundred Years Later, a Tool from Isaac Newton Gets an Update"

JDEW — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 02:36:16 +0000

> “Our algorithm right now is provably faster, in theory,” Ahmadi said. He’s hopeful, he added, that in 10 to 20 years, it will also be so in practice.

New comment by JDEW in "“A calculator app? Anyone could make that”"

JDEW — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 13:44:04 +0000

Also the “highschool poem”-type writing style is quite jarring but forgiven when he acknowledged it at the end of the article.

> Also I decided to try writing this thread in the style of a linkedin influencer lol, sorry about that.

I Built an Omni-Directional Ball-Wheeled Bike [video]

JDEW — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 03:30:19 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVFB2g25OkM

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42827461

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by JDEW in "I Met Paul Graham Once"

JDEW — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 17:02:51 +0000

> Are “identity politics” just a status game that economically advantaged elites play?

Yes. But it's a disgrace that we're throwing the baby (genuine progress, like the slow acceptance of non-binary people) out with the bathwater.

New comment by JDEW in "An academic Great Gatsby Curve – How much academic success is inherited?"

JDEW — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 18:21:01 +0000

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the article, but I find it baffling that they don’t mention the simple fact that the “best” professors have access to the “best” students. Especially early in career students. Never mind the fact that great schools -> employ great researchers -> enroll great students, even within one cohort this is clear. The top 5% of a class can do their undergraduate research everywhere they please and are in fact often scouted out by top chairs.