Hacker News: Procrastes

New comment by Procrastes in "Just bury your trash: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?"

Procrastes — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 15:03:50 +0000

I'm one of those folks who appreciate a well-engineered landfill. We had a great one in Nevada County, CA. Now that I've moved back to Texas, I've learned the difference the hard way, although not as hard as the people who lost their homes.[1]

1. https://abc7amarillo.com/news/local/officials-say-stinky-fir...

New comment by Procrastes in "Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise"

Procrastes — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 20:21:27 +0000

Some of the data centers in Texas are at least partly being built to turn surplus natural gas into cash.[1][2]

1. https://energynow.com/2026/03/us-natgas-prices-at-waha-hub-i...

2. https://www.rbccm.com/en/insights/2026/05/natural-gas-powers...

New comment by Procrastes in "Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise"

Procrastes — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 20:17:58 +0000

I'm not a geologist, but for comparison, the Siberian Traps[1] erupted for 2 million years, and there have been other large events on that scale. Any heat we release will be insignificant in comparison.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps

New comment by Procrastes in "A humble cabbage became one of the Forbidden City’s treasures (2025)"

Procrastes — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 18:44:02 +0000

It really is beautiful. It also makes me think of Sir Terry Pratchett, which is a good thing. If this were Ankh-Morpork, it would be a stunningly realistic carving of a cabbage—carved from another, larger cabbage.

New comment by Procrastes in "Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)"

Procrastes — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:59:46 +0000

"A.I."[1] like "technology"[2] is a term colloquially reserved for things that don't work yet. Once something works, we have to call it something else.

1. "Every time we figure out a piece of it, it stops being called AI; it becomes just computation." - Ray Kurzweil

2. "Technology n. - Something that doesn't work yet." - Douglas Adams

New comment by Procrastes in "Swedish parliament abolishes permanent residence visas for migrants"

Procrastes — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:32:37 +0000

Sorry, I conflated Finnish lunches and Norwegian matpakke in my head. Nothing wrong with Finnish lunch.

New comment by Procrastes in "Incident CVE-2026-LGTM"

Procrastes — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:21:58 +0000

I actually know a goat rancher who is working to require ag impact studies for data centers in Texas. Sounds like I should give him a call while I can.

(Also CVE-2026-LGTM would be an awesome name for a Culture ship)

New comment by Procrastes in "Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites"

Procrastes — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 03:20:11 +0000

This is great! Thank you for sharing it. Fun to use and already customizable.

New comment by Procrastes in "Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites"

Procrastes — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 03:18:18 +0000

I was thinking the same thing, or even just little minigames and Easter eggs for people to find.

New comment by Procrastes in "Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible"

Procrastes — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:22:55 +0000

Yes, definitely. Shades of Accelerando, Saturn's Children, and Neptune's Brood. Give me the tentacles any day.

New comment by Procrastes in "Swedish parliament abolishes permanent residence visas for migrants"

Procrastes — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 22:56:30 +0000

> Democrats US who always love to say “Follow the Nordic Model”

past performance is not indicative of future results

I'm not about to run out and suggest Finnish lunches or buy a tin of Surströmming for breakfast, but it might be nice to have a balanced budget.

New comment by Procrastes in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

Procrastes — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 22:32:33 +0000

As I recall, the Dr. knows were programmed to feed that information to runaway mechas who, who were, in turn, programmed to seek out the blue fairy.

Probably a lesson in there somewhere.

New comment by Procrastes in "Google Declaring War on the Web"

Procrastes — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:57:23 +0000

The metaphor may not hold up well in practice, but as counterexamples, I've had a pair of motorcycle boots since the late 80s that have never needed any maintenance beyond some saddle soap, and my grandfather's fountain pen from the 1920s just turned 100 and still writes fine. I put a new nib in it about 15 years ago or so.

New comment by Procrastes in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

Procrastes — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:47:27 +0000

Yes, that's more what I'm saying. There's no aether, but there's a much more interesting and complex world of forces and fields. There are no humors, but anatomy and biological processes are spectacularly complex and full of surprises. Aether and humors just aren't useful abstractions.

Maybe it's the same. Rocks are different, sure, trees, dogs, cows. But why do we assume that the way they are different is somehow related, that there's some overarching concept that contains all the complexities of those differences? It doesn't even make sense when I think of it that way.

New comment by Procrastes in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

Procrastes — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 20:47:46 +0000

But not in any convincing way, which seems like the root of the problem.

New comment by Procrastes in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

Procrastes — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 20:45:46 +0000

I sometimes wonder if we'd make more progress in understanding ourselves if we gave up the whole concept. More and more, it feels as though "consciousness," like "aether" or "humors," is an insufficient abstraction built on overemphasizing some observations at the expense of others.

New comment by Procrastes in "Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers"

Procrastes — Sat, 23 May 2026 20:47:32 +0000

I gave up on Kindles long ago. They wake up and drain their batteries, so they're always dead when I pick them up to read something. Not a problem with Kobo. But I really want to pick up one of these little Xteink readers next. They just seem perfect for pulling out of a pocket and reading. Also, I'm a smaller person, and they look like they would fit my hand. Modern phones feel like tablets to me.

New comment by Procrastes in "I Miss Terry Pratchett"

Procrastes — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:06:39 +0000

These were the last posts from Sir Terry's Twitter account, March 12th 2015:

AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.

Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.

The end.

New comment by Procrastes in "Shunning AI is the human choice"

Procrastes — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:01:10 +0000

As Jack T. Chick said, "No one can save you. We will all be eaten."[1] But isn't the real goal to be eaten first, so you can miss out on all that noisy screaming and awful mess?

Eschatons have a solid track record of never showing up when invited, so there's that.

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Cthulhu/comments/1m9uxmp/who_will_b...

New comment by Procrastes in "Google Declaring War on the Web"

Procrastes — Thu, 21 May 2026 00:51:09 +0000

I want to buy you a CMOT Dibbler Sausage for the Vimes reference. Perfect metaphor for this situation. His point was that it was the cheap boots that keep people poor, so that makes me think artist and artisan patronage will be an even bigger thing in years to come.