<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: NathanKP</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=NathanKP</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 20:21:56 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=NathanKP" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Tesla 'Robotaxi' adds 5 more crashes in Austin in a month – 4x worse than humans"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Agreed. The "Tesla backed into objects, one into a pole or tree at 1 mph and another into a fixed object at 2 mph" stood out to me in specific. There is no way that any human driver is going to report backing into something at 1 or 2 mph.<p>While I was living in NYC I saw collisions of that nature all the time. People put a "bumper buddy" on their car because the street parallel parking is so tight and folks "bump" the car behind them while trying to get out.<p>My guess is that at least 3 of those "collisions" are things that would never be reported with a human driver.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Feb 2026 21:11:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47053412</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47053412</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47053412</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Data centers in space makes no sense"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Bingo. I elaborated on this idea more in my comment: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884246">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884246</a><p>People are acting like a space data centre would be running a traditional workload. No, it's probably running a military one, some sort of AI powered modern version of Dead Hand (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand</a>). Autonomous warfare could get real dark, real fast.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:01:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884302</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884302</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884302</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Data centers in space makes no sense"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My dark theory is that the goal is to run an AI overlord in space such that it is difficult to counter it from Earth.<p>If you assume that these people aren't completely stupid, then there is some reason why they want this workload running at great physical distance from all the people down on Earth. It's probably not to protect people on Earth. After all they'll happily deorbit satellites and other junk from orbit and let it rain down on us. And they will happily destroy the environment with all those rocket launches too. Therefore it must be to protect the workload from us.<p>What is a workload that is something that people would probably want to destroy, and which would also provide enough value to offset the expense to launch and run in space? The only thing that might make sense is a military AI platform. Think something that observes Earth, launches missiles, and controls terrestrial drone armies remotely, with relatively low latency.<p>It gets built and launched thanks to endless military budget, and once it is up there, running such an AI from space means that effectively the only people who can take it out are nation state level foes who can launch rockets into low earth orbit. And this thing is a satellite, probably part of a network that is watching the Earth all the time. Start building something that looks like a rocket launch site, and the AI will see, then you get hit by a missile or taken out by a drone first before you get a chance to attack the platform.<p>It sounds like sci-fi, but in the future, if we let it happen, there could absolutely be nearly invulnerable autonomous AI platforms in space overseeing everything, and making decisions, and issuing commands. Of course there could still be a massive solar flare event, or a Kessler syndrome event that releases us all from AI enforced servitude. Anyway, it's a not so fun thought experiment, and let's hope this stays sci-fi, so we can just enjoy a fun Hollywood film about this rather than experiencing it firsthand.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 10:54:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884246</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884246</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884246</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Refusing to Use Twitter"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So far in this thread the majority of Hacker News users have decided they don't like the tone of your comment, therefore they have downvoted your comment.<p>If you don't see the irony, let me point it out: this is a real time demonstration that your following statement is not an inevitable thing:<p>> eventually converges on the same thing in the end: a place to dump out ugly things<p>When a community has the tools for self governance, then it can resist influences that it does not appreciate. In the case of Bluesky in specific, you may not be familiar with how easy it is to subscribe to labelers and blocklists. This decentralized self governance model allows anyone to curate their Bluesky experience, and it allows sub communities to collectively govern in ways that filter the cesspool and remove the ugly things.<p>In short, the fact that you are complaining about downvotes while simultaneously saying that it is inevitable for communities to devolve into places to dump ugly things is highly ironic. One thing that you are complaining about, is the solution to the other thing that you are complaining about.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 26 Jan 2026 22:49:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46772761</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46772761</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46772761</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Refusing to Use Twitter"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You are getting downvoted for tone. By tone I mean the polarizing terms like: "cesspool of stupid opinions" and "low-thinking idiots", etc.<p>When social communities allow the type of tone you are using, that is precisely how they end up worse over time.<p>Hacker News downvoting comments like yours is how it has maintained quite high quality over the last 16 years I've been on this website.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 26 Jan 2026 22:36:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46772597</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46772597</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46772597</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Tesla Optimus robot takes a suspicious tumble in new demo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No.<p>This is a real issue. If a robot is fully AI powered and doing what it does fully autonomously, then it has a very different risk profile compared to a teleoperated robot.<p>For example, you can be fairly certain that given the current state of AI tech, an AI powered robot has no innate desire to creep on your kids, while a teleoperated robot could very well be operated remotely by a pedophile who is watching your kids through the robot cameras, or attempting to interact with them in some way using the robot itself.<p>If you are allowing this robot device to exist in your home, around your valuables, and around the people you care for, then whether these robots operate fully autonomously, or whether a human operator is connecting via the robot is an extremely significant difference, that has very large safety consequences.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:52:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46199954</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46199954</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46199954</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "The Most Joyless Tech Revolution Ever: AI Is Making Us Rich and Unhappy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"the disconnect between a solid economy and an anxious public"<p>Maybe... the economy isn't actually as solid as he thinks?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Nov 2025 20:01:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45971257</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45971257</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45971257</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Dietary flavanols preserve endothelial function during sitting"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In case anyone else is wondering about practical ways to reproduce these effects, I did some quick searching:<p>Most chocolate / cocoa products are processed in a way that destroys 80%-90% of the flavanols. You either have to buy specialized high flavanol cocoa powder (what the study used), or you would have to be consuming multiple cups of matcha tea, or squares of dark chocolate ever day. You'd likely also want to add high flavanol foods like blueberries, blackberries, and cherries to your daily diet.<p>As someone who spends a lot of time sitting, and also has a family history of heart issues, it sounds promising. I'm planning to give it a try.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Nov 2025 01:22:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45960351</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45960351</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45960351</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "The future of excess mortality after Covid-19"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is coming from Swiss Re, which is the world's largest insurance company for insurance companies.<p>Basically you pay an insurance company premium so that if you have a health emergency the insurance company will take on the cost of your emergency.<p>Insurance companies pay Swiss Re, so that if the insurance company faces a financial squeeze from unforeseen mass disaster, then Swiss Re takes on the cost.<p>Swiss Re is basically warning their clients (insurance companies) that Swiss Re is seeing an ongoing trend of excess deaths post Covid, though they expect it to trail off by 2033. They highly recommend their clients factor that in when they calculate what premium they need to charge to be profitable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:23:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45881771</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45881771</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45881771</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm more fascinated by the question of whether it scales up... imagine much smaller and more efficient electric engines for cruise liners and cargo ships.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2025 20:32:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45804056</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45804056</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45804056</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You'd be surprised how technical farming can be. Us software engineers often have a deep desire to make efficient systems, that function well, in a mostly automated fashion, so that we can observe these systems in action and optimize these systems over time.<p>A farm is just such a system that you can spend a lifetime working on and optimizing. The life you are supporting is "automated", but the process of farming involves an incredible amount of system level thinking. I get tremendous amounts of satisfaction from the technical process of composting, and improving the soil, and optimizing plant layouts and lifecycles to make the perfect syntropic farming setup. That's not even getting into the scientific aspects of balancing soil mixtures and moisture, and acidity, and nutrient levels, and cross pollinating, and seed collecting to find stronger variants with improved yields, etc. Of course the physical labor sucks, but I need the exercise. It's better than sitting at a desk all day long.<p>Anyway, maybe the farmers and shepherds also want to become software engineers. I just know I'm already well on the way to becoming a farmer (with a homelab setup as an added nerdy SWE bonus).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2025 05:13:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45729383</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45729383</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45729383</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm right behind you on the escape to the mountains idea. I've actually already moved from the US to New Zealand, and the next step is a farm with some goats lol.<p>That said... I don't necessarily hate what AI is doing to us. If anything, AI is the ultimate expression of humanity.<p>Throughout history humans have continually searched for another intelligence. We study the apes and other animals, we pray to Gods, we look to the stars and listen to them to see if there are any radio signals from aliens, etc. We keep trying to find something else that understands what it is to be alive.<p>I would propose that maybe humans innately crave to be known by something other than ourselves. The search for that "other" is so fundamentally human, that building AI and interacting with it is just a natural progression of a quest we've already been on for thousands of years.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2025 05:01:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45729338</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45729338</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45729338</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yep, it's just a question of whether on average the "new thing" is more good than bad. Pretty much every "new thing" has some kind of bad side effect for some people, while being good for other people.<p>I would argue that both Tesla self driving (on the highway only), and ChatGPT (for professional use by healthy people) has been more good than bad.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:49:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45728149</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45728149</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45728149</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> It is estimated that more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (59.3 million in 2022; 23.1% of the U.S. adult population).<p><a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness" rel="nofollow">https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness</a><p>Most people don't understand just how mentally unwell the US population is. Of course there are one million talking to ChatGPT about suicide weekly. This is not a surprising stat at all. It's just a question of what to do about it.<p>At least OpenAI is trying to do something about it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:25:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45727983</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45727983</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45727983</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "More random home lab things I've recently learned"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Running stuff on an underpowered Raspberry Pi is a good way to sniff test whether an infrastructure or software setup is sane. Powerful computers can hide horrible decisions for a long time, while less powerful devices make it immediately obvious if you need to switch a more efficient configuration.<p>I think this is one of the main reasons why Raspberry Pi has such a strong representation in homelabs, including my own.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2025 23:11:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45574315</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45574315</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45574315</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "What if the singularity lies beyond a plateau we cannot cross?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Objects that need new hard drives every 3-5 years to store, replenished on a constant cycle<p>The replenishment of these hard drives is baked into the cost of S3. If there is a major disruption of hard drive supply then S3 prices will definitely rise, and enterprises that currently store lots of garbage that they don't need, will be priced out of storing this data on hard drives, into Glacier or at worst full deletion of old junk data. That's not necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion.<p>There is lots of junk data in S3 that should probably be in cold storage rather than spinning metal, if merely for environmental reasons.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2025 01:32:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45534694</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45534694</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45534694</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Clankers Die on Christmas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>ChatGPT 5 still says "My knowledge cutoff is June 2024"<p>There is a reason these models are still operating on old knowledge cutoff dates</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Sep 2025 03:03:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45176910</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45176910</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45176910</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I just ended an eight year stretch of working for AWS. I quit in order to move out of the United States to New Zealand, so indirectly I quit over RTO. I wanted to work outside of a US hub city, even if it would have required relocating to AWS New Zealand and taking a resulting pay decrease that would have saved the company significant money to get the same amount of work from me.<p>Acquisition and retention of good talent is absolutely a major issue for AWS. Don't get me wrong, I still like AWS a lot, even all it's frequently chaotic mess, but I'll probably wait until Amazon starts its Satya era before I'd consider reapplying to work there.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 Sep 2025 03:52:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45134837</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45134837</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45134837</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Yes, America Has a Housing Emergency – Paul Krugman"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The graph showing the difference between home price index, and consumer price index does not consider that many of the items in the consumer price index are heavily subsidized by the government.<p>For example notice the item categories in the index: <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm</a><p>And then compare them to the companies in the subsidy tracker: <a href="https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent-totals" rel="nofollow">https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent-totals</a><p>So another story we could be seeing here is that heavy government subsidies are barely managing to keep consumer prices down in many categories, except for housing.<p>My general opinion: we don't have just a housing emergency. We have a general emergency across many, many categories. If the government stops all these subsidies we'd see prices for everything else skyrocket across the board to match housing prices. Then wages would be forced to rise too, and you'd see the true underlying crisis: hyperinflation. Houses are worth so much because they are one of the best hedges against hyperinflation. If the US dollar gets inflated my house suddenly gets very easy to pay off and its now my primary form of wealth. So no wonder housing is so expensive.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 Sep 2025 03:25:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45134721</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45134721</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45134721</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by NathanKP in "Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've seen this regularly on fringe articles that are clearly being manipulated. I don't have direct links right now, but things I have seen in the past:<p>* A sketchy online university that was clearly manipulating their Wikipedia page with lots of positive information about themselves to suppress info about their active lawsuits and controversies<p>* On medical topics: non scientific, baseless claims about the efficacy of various herbal treatments, vitamin supplements, or other snake oil treatments.<p>* On various fringe politicians. Someone clearly rewrites the article or adds additional things to the article with claims about what the politician has done or not done or wants to do, but these claims are arguably not fact based.<p>Now these things usually don't last for a long time. They do get rolled back or removed. But it doesn't have to be on there long for it to be utilized. For example, someone just needs to modify the Wikipedia page long enough to get through their active lawsuits, or the snake oil salesman just needs their info up on Wikipedia for long enough to use it to increase their perceived authenticity to trick some seniors. There is such a constant stream of bad actors trying to put this stuff out there that you'll see it eventually, and it doesn't even have to be up there for long for it to be harmful.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2025 21:46:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132585</link><dc:creator>NathanKP</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132585</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132585</guid></item></channel></rss>