Hacker News: Kungfuturtle

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "Show HN: Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT"

Kungfuturtle — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 20:54:31 +0000

I've long been a fan of the em dash—one of the first things I did when I migrated back from OSX to Windows was to set up an AutoHotKey function to map +<-> to an em dash.

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

Kungfuturtle — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 20:50:00 +0000

This reminds me of Teilhard de Chardin's take on complexification, as laid out in his seminal book Le Phénomène humain. See e.g., this article[0] for a simple overview of the hypothesis. For further reading, I recommend the excellent new translation by Sarah Appleton-Weber, The Human Phenomenon[1].

[0] <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/%28SICI%2910...>

[1] <https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/...>

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "Bank run on Silicon Valley Bank"

Kungfuturtle — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 06:31:35 +0000

For what it's worth, I agree with you and feel those examples are indeed emblematic of our current economic mode.

The "alternative" you envision is premised on shifting power back to the masses, but I think it's also important to mention guardrails to prevent excessive capital accumulation. There would still be an economy, but it would be driven by a more egalitarian aggregate demand and less likely to suffer the shocks of boom bust cycles associated with financial malarkey.

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "10-sec 1-leg stance duration predicts survival in middle-aged/older individuals"

Kungfuturtle — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 17:30:18 +0000

To say the quiet part out loud: your body's center of mass is located near your belly button. [0] You maintain balance through a combination of your vision, vestibular system, and proprioception [1]—focusing attention on your belly button keys into that last method and reinforces your overall sense of balance.

[0] https://www.professionalptandtraining.com/balance-strategy-b...

[1] https://www.neurolab360.com/blog/balance-and-proprioception

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "My macOS keyboard shortcuts"

Kungfuturtle — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 13:37:47 +0000

I would also suggest https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd for hotkeys; it also pairs well with an associated project for window tiling and management: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "Intelligence as a Planetary Scale Process"

Kungfuturtle — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 19:13:05 +0000

Indeed, why not? ;)

There may yet be something to Teilhard de Chardin's take on the Noosphere which exists in a matrix of consciousness that spans planets, solar systems, galaxies, galaxy clusters, and indeed universes!

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel"

Kungfuturtle — Sun, 24 Oct 2021 23:12:12 +0000

https://youtu.be/Oadf4KNYz-I

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "US throws out millions of doses of Covid vaccine as world goes wanting"

Kungfuturtle — Sat, 16 Oct 2021 18:03:29 +0000

I encourage you to consider an alternative perspective, in which grocery stores intentionally restrict availability of food in order to artificially maintain high profits and externalize the costs of reprocessing for redistribution: https://twitter.com/a_vansi/status/1445450534672998407

What if, for example, food that would spoil in a couple more days were simply moved to a "free" section of the grocery store? No need for complex shipping or logistics costs, simply ask the stocker to move from one aisle to another. Why don't grocery stores do that, if they're concerned about "reducing waste"?

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "US throws out millions of doses of Covid vaccine as world goes wanting"

Kungfuturtle — Sat, 16 Oct 2021 17:56:57 +0000

Reading this comment and shaking my head, I am reminded of the Upton Sinclair quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Dont feed the trolls, folks.

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)"

Kungfuturtle — Wed, 11 Aug 2021 15:21:13 +0000

One kind of building that I came across is called an "Earthship", which relies on "thermal mass construction and natural cross-ventilation to regulate indoor temperature".[1]

It will be somewhat difficult to retrofit buildings to take advantage of e.g. thermal mass inertia, but I'm hopeful that new construction will increasingly favor passive/low-energy cooling methods.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "$100M xPrize for Carbon Removal"

Kungfuturtle — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 01:16:57 +0000

I highly recommend checking out https://twitter.com/BuildSoil if you're interested in learning more about this approach.

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "Clearview AI’s Entire Source Code Exposed in Security Error"

Kungfuturtle — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 23:47:49 +0000

More discussion here:

Security lapse exposed Clearview AI source code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22892494

Also links to the full article on Tech Crunch.

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "Ask HN: Who Is Firing?"

Kungfuturtle — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 20:23:24 +0000

You should not use that term in that manner.

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?"

Kungfuturtle — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 21:30:45 +0000

This is a super neat tool—thank you for creating and sharing!

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "Things that are illegal to build in most American cities now"

Kungfuturtle — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 03:55:11 +0000

No cars?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

More seriously, my guess is that you enjoy those streets because there's so much more character to them. They are generally part of an older, more storied urban core, so the streets are more imbued with a "there"ness of the community.

Contrast this with the experience of walking down a recently-gentrified street.

New comment by Kungfuturtle in "A new India is emerging, and it is a country ruled by fear"

Kungfuturtle — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 17:39:06 +0000

2nd-gen Indian in Austin here: many folks in my generation are highly critical of Modi and the BJP, but just as many if not more are casual supporters. I honestly do find the more informed they are about Modi's policies, the less likely they are to support him.

My parents' generation on the other hand range from moderate supporters, who have "some qualms" about e.g. Kashmir/Assam, to fervent supporters of his nationalist identity and agenda.