Hacker News: Tycho

New comment by Tycho in "Dream-RSI: Recursive Self-Improvement through Evolving Worlds"

Tycho — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 17:24:33 +0000

I don’t really understand this. Some real examples would help. Making a “simulator” out of a bunch of historic states does not tell me enough.

New comment by Tycho in "Mark Zuckerberg: "Cambridge Analytica" (2017)"

Tycho — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 21:16:57 +0000

There was that leaked video of a Cambridge Analytica exec bragging that they came up with the handcuffs in the Crooked Hillary meme. Except that was hardly a big thing. The phrase Crooked Hillary was arguably “linguistic killshot” by Trump; CA’s little riff on it was insignificant - and that was them trying to sell their services with their most impressive feats.

New comment by Tycho in "Young Americans have never witnessed a functioning foreign policy"

Tycho — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:57:46 +0000

In the long term I think my did. It meant the US had an interest in the middle east so would be around long term for Israel to lean on.

New comment by Tycho in "Investing in mothers? The long-run impact of a universal child care"

Tycho — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 16:17:34 +0000

So from a fiscal perspective, it more or less pays for itself through greater career taxable earnings of the women, according to the study.

(EDIT: unless of course these extra earnings were mostly transfers so-to-speak from non-mothers to mothers)

From a societal and human perspective, unclear that it’s worth it.

New comment by Tycho in "Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time"

Tycho — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:26:48 +0000

And sad thing is they will be mostly scrolling through pictures and videos, with extremely low information density, when the could be scrolling high quality text like HN comments or a well curated X feed.

New comment by Tycho in "Young Americans have never witnessed a functioning foreign policy"

Tycho — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:09:18 +0000

Israel is currently in the position where it can bomb Tehran, using American tech and logistical support, with complete impunity. This is the golden age of Israel.

New comment by Tycho in "Young Americans have never witnessed a functioning foreign policy"

Tycho — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 16:55:44 +0000

Well under Dubya it was pretty successful. Firstly, there was never a repeat of 9/11. Secondly, they pulled off one of the most overwhelming military victories of all time against Iraq, a full-blown invasion completed in weeks with hardly any losses. This also secured Israel’s long term prospects in the region, which seems to be one of the most sacred directives of American policy. It did also lead ultimately to civil war in Syria and political destabilisation in Germany/Europe (from refugees), but that is no skin off Uncle Sam’s nose. You may not like it, but in the history books that’s what peak foreign policy looks like.

New comment by Tycho in "Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]"

Tycho — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:05:51 +0000

Does this have any relation to the singularities in black holes?

New comment by Tycho in "RAG Is Simpler Than You Think"

Tycho — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:09:21 +0000

I don’t understand the 4th option, “on the fly”. It didn’t seem to be explained properly.

New comment by Tycho in "xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab"

Tycho — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 04:12:53 +0000

The idea is that eventually the power demand for AI compute will be too great to satisfy by terrestrial means.

New comment by Tycho in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

Tycho — Sat, 16 May 2026 12:40:52 +0000

Just use an LLM to make a good knowledge base for the databases. Based on schema info and production queries. An agent can use that to write queries that work.

New comment by Tycho in "ai;dr"

Tycho — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:45:50 +0000

When people put together memos or decks in the last, even if that weren’t read very carefully, at least they reassured management that someone had actually things through. But that is no longer a reliable signal.

New comment by Tycho in "Scott Adams has died"

Tycho — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 20:56:02 +0000

> “deeply off the rails”

How sheltered are you people? Scott Adams was a pretty standard non-woke boomer. Do you think that just because you don’t hear certain opinions in the workplace or the faculty or the Atlantic podcast, that they aren’t widely held by members of the public? Do you think everyone’s into DEI, BLM, trans-rights, multi-culturalism etc?

New comment by Tycho in "Scott Adams has died"

Tycho — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:02:15 +0000

I kept meaning to tune in again to his livestream before the end. It was always a good listen as he went over the news with his dry sense of humour and judgment on fact vs fiction.I liked how he kept going after they cancelled all the Dilbert syndication - good lesson in resilience. RIP.

New comment by Tycho in "BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech"

Tycho — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 23:35:05 +0000

But the driver isn’t reacting to any of the LiDAR readings, only what they can see, so what is the point?

New comment by Tycho in "BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech"

Tycho — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 21:46:54 +0000

How do you train a model to drive with LiDAR when the human drivers who generate the training data don’t use LiDAR?

New comment by Tycho in "Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades"

Tycho — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 01:36:46 +0000

According to the paper you posted (interesting analysis), it’s not just low-vol assets, but good quality ones. Also, they would no doubt do a lot more buying of undervalued (good quality) companies if they weren’t by this point “too big to care”, so to speak.

New comment by Tycho in "Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades"

Tycho — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 02:22:36 +0000

When people say undervalued in this context, they usually mean it has a low price to earnings ratio. Intel is definitely not that - although it could still be a good bet if you have reason to believe their fortunes will greatly improve in the future. But it wouldn’t be a Buffett target in its current state.

New comment by Tycho in "Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades"

Tycho — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 02:14:10 +0000

So, best investor ever? (Not counting people who built enterprises, just people whose trade was to invest.)

I plan to buy some BRK stock. I’m sure it will be a good investment. But also, somewhat sentimentally, just to own a part of a financial masterpiece.

New comment by Tycho in "Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades"

Tycho — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 02:02:24 +0000

Not quite right. The pivot was from good companies at a great price to great companies at a good price (unless you can get a great price, but that’s unlikely).

Over the long run the latter is a better and more scalable strategy.