Hacker News: Shalomboy

New comment by Shalomboy in "Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For"

Shalomboy — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:29:46 +0000

Valve is in a funny position now. They lived long enough to see every one of Sony and XBOX's moats dry up by being pro-consumer where possible, but with Steam as the leader of a fungible game distribution market it may no longer make good business sense to continue to act so benevolently.

We've reached a sort of gaming singularity where nearly every video game can be run on any hardware you choose or be streamed over the network to a thin client. PlayStation and XBOX consoles are basically dedicated gaming PCs that can only run Sony or Microsoft's version of Steam. DirectX is losing ground too thanks to Proton and Vulkan, so Microsoft won't have the last laugh there either. If Valve controls the store you purchase games from, the software which runs the games, and the operating system running the software, they are an ODM contract away from becoming Sony's PlayStation division, and look where they are now.

New comment by Shalomboy in "You might not need a service worker"

Shalomboy — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 13:55:42 +0000

I can appreciate the author's perspective, but in my experience the magic of bringing the online world offline gave our product (https://ww.cardcluster.com/install - duelists, give it a try!) a significant amount of stickiness compared to other similar services. But it should be noted that we built our product with service workers in mind from the beginning; trying to retrofit service workers into a mature application with paying customers and all sounds extremely tricky.

New comment by Shalomboy in "52-hertz whale"

Shalomboy — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 20:19:51 +0000

The cool thing about cheap sea drones is that they are still incredibly expensive to operate. Like, the only cost center they remove is the crew which is negligible compared to fuel, transport, and equipment.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components"

Shalomboy — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:45:43 +0000

I loved this project the first time it came around. As much as I wanted to build it out myself, I was shocked at how much the components actually cost to put together. It definitely seems like an improvement on the charmera though, so it all comes out in the wash.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Techno-libertarians are flocking to the Caribbean"

Shalomboy — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 02:35:26 +0000

Great username. I too wished to live at sea once, but I gotta be honest with you; hang around any of the big submariner/shipwright/offshore groups for long enough and it will shock you how few people with money in those circles are not Andrew Ryan wannabes. As an avid Cousteau and Earle fan all my life, it broke my heart. If you're uber-wealthy, seeking recognition for that success makes enough sense; that recognition typically comes from people who inevitably live on shore someplace. They might commission a big yacht like Gaben or Zuck, but it serves multiple purposes, not the least of which being "hey, look at me!" But there is a particular type of personality for whom keeping to themselves is the height of luxury, and a couple folks of this persuasion are incredibly wealth. These dragons hoard their keep because, philosophically, it is theirs to do with as they please and not anybody else's. For them, the inherent eroticism of the sea calls their name. I swear to God, it happens every time.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Claude Corps"

Shalomboy — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 21:50:41 +0000

I'm negative on this proposal because it sounds like Anthropic put the cart before the horse. Today, at this very moment, 9 out of 10 non-profits and NGOs run of IT infrastructure wholly dependent on email servers, office software, and phone calls. For Anthropic to create a positive result from flooding the space with cut-rate FDEs, NGOS would need to have in-place the sort of infrastructure that could accommodate whatever widgets Sonnet generate, not to mention the right personnel to manage that infrastructure long-term. If an NGO's IT Department is already positioned properly to embrace a Claude Corps Missionary, they near-certainly wouldn't need a Claude Corps Missionary because they would need to publicly justify that department's existence year-after-year. So what does this actually look like for the chosen organizations, other than a sales pitch.

New comment by Shalomboy in "I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling"

Shalomboy — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 15:22:49 +0000

I think the author hit the right notes here; we do know how best optimize learning for high marks at a classroom-level, we do struggle with improving outcomes for students who need extra help, and we do bore students to tears when they outpace their peers. Over their lifetime of schooling, students regularly a standard deviation above or below subject-matter-expectations do breed resentment for the parts of the institution that inconvenience them, and we would probably do well to fix that if we want to avoid ending up recreating "Idiocracy" from first principles. I wish more folks were more reflective on their own opinions like this.

New comment by Shalomboy in "The dead economy theory"

Shalomboy — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:12:09 +0000

... so now the money explicitly does not go to research, on purpose.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People (2016)"

Shalomboy — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:09:49 +0000

This is the first I've heard of it, but wowwww what a cool game. Thanks!

New comment by Shalomboy in "Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers"

Shalomboy — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:21:51 +0000

> Farming consumes more water than datacenters.

But you don't see center-pivot or linear-movement farmland built up in areas with high population density, nor do you see them using the municipal, potable water supply for irrigation. That is where datacenters are being built and what datacenters are doing, however, and it is why datacenters are blamed for the exacerbation of municipal water systems in these communities. Groundwater, surface water, harvested rainwater, and reclaimed wastewater are the major sources used by farms. Dasani is the major source of water for datacenters, and it makes a massive difference on the water use math.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People (2016)"

Shalomboy — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 19:02:51 +0000

SOMA was a cognito-hazard for me and my roommate in college; we played it in the dark together while on some sort of mild hallucinogen and when it came time for Simon to find that high-pressure dive suit, we lost our minds (no pun intended). Watching the WAU twist its way through PATHOS II in whatever way worked first is a particularly jarring analogy for what has happened to our own profession. I can't help but think it would be nice for Frictional Games to revisit this topic again soon.

Sidenote: It breaks my heart that all the great underwater-settings in media are hotbeds of horror scenarios. I think Subnautica broke the mold for this, here's to hoping the next generation of aquanauts take to the depths from that series.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Decades of Effort Restore Steelhead and Salmon Passage on Alameda Creek"

Shalomboy — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:41:43 +0000

Excellent work as expected from NOAA's Habit Conservation team. These fish ladders are such an excellent investment in the future of our inshore fisheries, I wish it were easier to express that to citizens and corporations,

New comment by Shalomboy in "The dead economy theory"

Shalomboy — Fri, 29 May 2026 17:53:04 +0000

There is absolutely zero will in the United States to invest money in unprofitable exploration or scientific research. There used to be such will generations ago, but today's wannabee-autocrats couldn't care less. Look at how they gleefully cut scientific research funding, undermine academic sovereignty, and strip-mine the public sector performing that work in favor of private enterprises. When the shit hits the fan and we're all broke because the corpos laid everybody off for Devin, Claude, and Clippy, there won't be much left besides surrogacy and plasma donation.

New comment by Shalomboy in "It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12"

Shalomboy — Fri, 29 May 2026 15:53:16 +0000

It is such a shame, too, because what Framework has achieved at this pricepoint should be commended. The fact that their business can sustain a lower-margin SKU like the Framework 12 is nothing short of extraordinary! But wow, the MacBook Neo threw a bomb into the low-end market.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Outsourcing plus local AI will soon become more economical vs. frontier labs"

Shalomboy — Tue, 26 May 2026 15:06:33 +0000

I thought the same thing. The author's reference point for LCOL developer seems a bit outdated. With what we pay our teammates in Colombia, the model pushed out to 22 months before crossover.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses"

Shalomboy — Fri, 22 May 2026 21:02:03 +0000

I'm also a big fan of Copilot CLI, especially after demoing it to a coworker who liked Claude Code.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Why Japanese companies do so many different things"

Shalomboy — Fri, 22 May 2026 20:43:20 +0000

I'm gonna be honest at tremendous personal expense:

I just don't think Italy _gets_ pizza the way America does.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Trump Mobile exposed customers' personal data"

Shalomboy — Fri, 22 May 2026 19:26:37 +0000

Well you didn't die of nuclear holocaust, but the mindset stuck anyways. I call foul.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence"

Shalomboy — Fri, 22 May 2026 12:54:15 +0000

Eric Schmidt has no clearer a crystal ball than Woz has; to say one is telling the truth while the other is lying is not particularly objective of you.

New comment by Shalomboy in "Seattle Shield, an intelligence-sharing network operated by the Seattle police"

Shalomboy — Thu, 21 May 2026 18:16:02 +0000

My take away from the article was that this likely isn't the only public-private intelligence network propped up by local PDs; that was pretty alarming to me.