Hacker News: Starman_Jones

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Judge Orders Meta to Name Employees Who Approved Torrenting"

Starman_Jones — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:56:48 +0000

Malum prohibitum vs malum in se - that which is wrong because it is forbidden, as opposed to that which is wrong in and of itself.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Francis Halzen"

Starman_Jones — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:06:01 +0000

I had a professor who talked about working there. In his words, “Thank God for whiskey!”

While there is some romantic imagery (penguins!) down there, and the disconnect from the rest of the world might be appealing, for large parts of the year you’re just stuck inside.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops"

Starman_Jones — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 21:29:29 +0000

California’s wine grapes (vitis vinifera) aren’t suitable for eating. Some varieties (vitis labrusca) can be used for table grapes or wine grapes, but those aren’t really grown in California.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Feds Target AI Critics as "Foreign Agents""

Starman_Jones — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:38:42 +0000

The qualifier here is that the public demonstrations must further the propaganda of a foreign power? If so, that doesn’t seem to be much of an obstacle if the people making the arrest are the ones who decide whether or not a protest is furthering foreign propaganda.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Let's make quality the norm again"

Starman_Jones — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:23:26 +0000

American automakers in the 1960s are the prototypical example of the problem being described, and its risks [0]. I’ll grant you that the semiconductor has greatly improved the quality of electronics, but those two examples are exceptions, not the norm. In the intervening decades, almost all products have followed the path of cars in the 60s.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Remember Hong Kong"

Starman_Jones — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:04:48 +0000

Because China’s no different, and geopolitics don’t map well onto personal relationships, except that trust matters. Even in your example, it would be that the drug dealer attacked and stole from my great-great-great-grandfather, and now the drug dealer’s great-great-great-granddaughter is returning the property. It’s a bit foolish to treat her with the same level of distrust, and it would be even more foolish to be the one to break the agreement if I know that I will have to keep doing business with her in the future.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Remember Hong Kong"

Starman_Jones — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 13:39:26 +0000

Why should one party to an agreement hold the other party accountable to the terms of the agreement?

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Codex on GPT6 Astra Low launched a rocket into space in Factorio Space Age 2.1"

Starman_Jones — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 13:01:16 +0000

Let’s see the factory layouts though. Release the blueprints!

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Global Trade and the United States Navy"

Starman_Jones — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 21:10:36 +0000

Did AI add the typos as well?

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope"

Starman_Jones — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 21:27:52 +0000

The primary detector is the wide-field instrument, which, believe it or not, takes pictures with a wide field of view. The secondary detector is the coronagraph instrument, which uses a bunch of funky filters to block out the light from the star to see the halo around it.

Edit: These are the detectors, which are the cameras. There is only one mirror assembly (with two mirrors) that focuses light into these instruments.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers"

Starman_Jones — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 11:52:47 +0000

Why? The hacker ethos is all about understanding systems as they actually are; not as the people at the top want them to be. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s pretty clear that the Luddites were right; the industrialization of weaving did destroy their profession, and, contrary to the opinions of the political leaders, this had a direct, negative impact on society for many decades. The curious-minded hacker should not ignore that reality, even if they think the circumstances are different this time.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Ukrainian drones wipe out US tank brigade in live war game"

Starman_Jones — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:18:26 +0000

I’m not convinced on ships yet. The strategic failure in Iran has overshadowed the tactical successes, including the fact that US ships have handled everything Iran has thrown at them. That could change, but right now, drones have yet to prove their effectiveness against warships which are prepared against them.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Controversial creators are benefiting from monetization programs run by Meta"

Starman_Jones — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:28:57 +0000

Did Meta set up the selection criteria for the automated selection system?

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Nobel Disease"

Starman_Jones — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 13:49:01 +0000

I have to assume that this list is pared down considerably. When I opened the list, I fully expected to see Roger Penrose, who believes that the human brain is a quantum computer. This is not a view that is espoused by people who study human brains or quantum computers. The list seems to be limited to scientists holding opinions that have conclusively been ruled out, and not just kooky ideas outside their field of expertise.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions"

Starman_Jones — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:07:12 +0000

I agree with you, but I think it’s worth pointing out that the NFL is balanced because they tried to make it balanced - the salary cap, draft, revenue sharing, etc. are all outcomes of that plan, not the prime motivators themselves.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Delivery workers made $104M more in tips after NYC began enforcing new law"

Starman_Jones — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 20:40:12 +0000

That happened to me as well! I was asked to tip on an automated coffee dispenser…

New comment by Starman_Jones in "AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making"

Starman_Jones — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 18:18:48 +0000

Our brains also have evolved rewards for performing life-continuing behaviors, and then evolved to rewarding proxy behaviors, instead of the actual life-continuing behavior. This is perfectly in line with what you are saying, but now we are rewarded for spotting enemy snipers in CODBLOPS, rather than spotting lions/snakes/crocodiles.

We have gotten very good at hacking this reward function. It has reached a point where a thinking-minimization engine will pay a significant amount of resources to, say, Paradox Studios to do what is effectively the opposite of not thinking.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "DOGE is done. What happened to its records?"

Starman_Jones — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:28:54 +0000

Through Medicare and Medicaid, the US spends more public money per capita on healthcare than any other country spends period. This is largely because Medicare/Medicaid were not allowed to negotiate pricing; they were legally required to accept whatever price companies wanted to set for a treatment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

New comment by Starman_Jones in "MacKenzie Scott's giving, in quality-adjusted life years"

Starman_Jones — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:59:18 +0000

For the cost to develop the polio vaccine, March of Dimes could have bought enough iron lungs to save 12,000 lives. Of course, they had no idea what the actual number would be beforehand; all they knew is that they were spending enormous sums of money on something that could turn out to be a catastrophic waste, rather than saving thousands of lives. At the end of the day, they felt that was a worthwhile risk. With hindsight, we can see that they right.

New comment by Starman_Jones in "Bonnie Tyler has died"

Starman_Jones — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:31:45 +0000

I just learned earlier this week that he produced “In The Dark of the Night” from Anastasia!