Hacker News: WaxProlix

New comment by WaxProlix in "Rothko for your current weather conditions"

WaxProlix — Fri, 29 May 2026 22:08:34 +0000

Seems to have ingested some non-paintings as well :) https://rothko.joonas.wtf/images/rothko-chapel-1967.jpg

Cool project, would make a good variable display in the home maybe; weather prediction but aesthetic

New comment by WaxProlix in "How to convert between wealth and income tax"

WaxProlix — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:28:41 +0000

This sounds like an investment that didn't pan out - I've had one or two of those myself, never pleasant. But are they providing housing? I guess in my mind the builders, equity incentive assistors, re-zoning advocates, etc might be 'providing housing'. How is a landlord providing housing?

New comment by WaxProlix in "How to convert between wealth and income tax"

WaxProlix — Sat, 23 May 2026 18:00:32 +0000

In what sense are landlords "providing" housing? Is there an argument around like, stabilizing a demand floor for new construction or something, or is this one of those weird in-group terms that cover over what might otherwise be seen as a relationship of power or dominance?

Either way, if I rent out my house and pull in $5k/mo but spend $2k/mo on principal, $2k/mo on interest, and $1.5k/mo on miscellaneous costs, that $500 "loss" translates into me paying $500 for $2k in principal value, all while gaining the benefits of solid inflation-indexed real estate growth AND assistance up the amortization schedule. So even cash-flow negative rentals are usually pretty long-run lucrative.

New comment by WaxProlix in "Cuba says it has run out of fuel, blames U.S. embargo"

WaxProlix — Thu, 14 May 2026 16:58:58 +0000

What we're doing to the Cuban people with this blockade is criminal. I don't expect to see justice in my lifetime. What a miserable state of affairs.

New comment by WaxProlix in "Can I disable all data collection from my vehicle?"

WaxProlix — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:30:53 +0000

Na it's great stay broke

Edit: and mad

New comment by WaxProlix in "Can I disable all data collection from my vehicle?"

WaxProlix — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:12:01 +0000

It was expensive but every day I am happy with my Rivian purchase. Great to have a vehicle where the actual users are obviously thought of (contra for instance the cybertruck where some variety 'cool factor' was obviously prioritized, resulting in finger crunching hoods and such).

New comment by WaxProlix in "Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants"

WaxProlix — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:58:55 +0000

There is so much misinformation in here, so densely packed.

Ivanpah is is not the largest solar power plant in California. It's an experimental solar-thermal plant. Talking about megawatts per year is not a meaningful term (megawatt-years would be). Ivanpah despite its much talked about failures delivers between 350 and 850GWh per year.

The largest solar plant in California is Edwards Sandborn, producing somewhere around 2500GWh per year (it's newer so numbers are less published).

Diablo Canyon produces around 18000GWh/year, which is huge.

But with all costs combined, Diablo's price per MWh is close to ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DOLLARS off of a massive initial capex. Modern solar battery installs trend towards $30-60 for the same output.

So I'm sure your tour guide had some neat numbers but you should be careful not to repeat them verbatim (or unremembered).

New comment by WaxProlix in "How ChatGPT serves ads"

WaxProlix — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 03:22:18 +0000

Sure, https://iabtechlab.com/standards/openrtb/

There's a standardized, normal (in adtech) approach to building 'creative's (viewed/seen ads) around context-dependent scenarios. It's not hard to extend existing IAB primitives to include things like context-enrichment (system prompt augmentation in this case) or whatever. I don't want to malign my downvoters but suspect they're mad I'm pointing it out, rather than engaging with facts as they are. It's trivial for ads to interact with your(our!) AI usage.

New comment by WaxProlix in "How ChatGPT serves ads"

WaxProlix — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 01:49:26 +0000

It's not an issue of how - there's a great ADM with markup/down supported already, waiting for system prompts to be injected in realtime via the same online auction system that powers banner ads and smart tv content. There's got to be some latent resistance to the idea for now - but it's so easy to do, it'll happen.

New comment by WaxProlix in "Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish"

WaxProlix — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 19:58:00 +0000

To use agentic what? Off topic as heck but I really dislike this trend of coercing adjectives into true nominals - we're using programmatic! - like some sort of even-more-obnoxious variant on the verb to noun ('the ask') process.

Why does it bother me so? I have no idea.

New comment by WaxProlix in "The becquerel as an SI unit for request rate"

WaxProlix — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 06:05:18 +0000

In my experience, rate limits are more often per second. It's easy to talk about kilo or mega-units, so this isn't as big an issue as the awkwardness of talking about very very low volume services. Maybe those (generally) inherently don't care about rates as much?

New comment by WaxProlix in "A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing"

WaxProlix — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:40:10 +0000

Hard to talk about favorites in books, but there was a solid decade of my life where I'd have probably said this was my favorite sci fi book. Highly recommend to anyone reading this.

New comment by WaxProlix in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

WaxProlix — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 05:09:46 +0000

Weird, from the outside it seems like bombing civilians and infrastructure is more inflammatory and antagonizing than some words/propaganda.

New comment by WaxProlix in "Magic the Gathering Deck Shuffler"

WaxProlix — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 04:24:10 +0000

I was thinking something 2- or 4-player, but that's cool.

New comment by WaxProlix in "Magic the Gathering Deck Shuffler"

WaxProlix — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:54:38 +0000

Yeah I was hoping for a multiplayer goldfish-style experience, maybe something like tabletop simulator. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but this doesn't seem to be any better than the built in archidekt/moxfield tools

New comment by WaxProlix in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

WaxProlix — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 15:41:44 +0000

The above claim was that Iran had attacked with thousands of rockets. These are from Hamas.

New comment by WaxProlix in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

WaxProlix — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:54:03 +0000

I can't find sources for "tens of thousands of rockets just since oct 7", can you help me? I see a few thousand as parts of exchanges after the Israel-initiated "12 Days War", and then a few thousand more after the (also Israel-initiated) current conflagration. Notably, the rocket attacks stopped during peace talks that US and Israel entered after starting the wars, only to resume after those peace talks were betrayed with bombing.

New comment by WaxProlix in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

WaxProlix — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:45:53 +0000

Two things to note there. One, many did make a peep; I have friends, coworkers who both ardently discussed and even pointlessly protested in small groups with signs.

The other - I don't pay taxes to the Azeris, every moment of my productive life doesn't support the genocide there, and my soul is in some way not as blackened by the atrocities there. I think people care about Palestine because they rightly feel complicity. Maybe Russian citizens - whose labor indirectly goes to supporting Azeri atrocities - are up in arms?

New comment by WaxProlix in "Flighty Airports"

WaxProlix — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 05:56:52 +0000

Ads? It's not great for users but it's decent monetization. If you really have something good, like actually liked, you can do a donation vs ad-supported model.

New comment by WaxProlix in "UMD Scientists Create 'Smart Underwear' to Measure Human Flatulence"

WaxProlix — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 18:38:28 +0000

As long as you're not achieving Plasma you're probably fine.