Hacker News: akkartik

Book Review: Storm of Steel

akkartik — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:10:29 +0000

Article URL: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-storm-of-steel

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50126455

Points: 9

# Comments: 1

New comment by akkartik in "The Economic Complexity of the Western Roman Empire"

akkartik — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 22:52:15 +0000

Notice how few examples there are in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbicide#In_premodern_times, and how prominently Carthage figures. Or scan the years in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Razed_cities.

The usual approach of the time was enslavement and taxation. Because they were less effort and more reward.

New comment by akkartik in "The Economic Complexity of the Western Roman Empire"

akkartik — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:42:53 +0000

Rome conquered many places without committing genocide. The fate of Carthage stands out even by the standard of the time.

New comment by akkartik in "The Economic Complexity of the Western Roman Empire"

akkartik — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:18:16 +0000

I'll just leave this here: I think the destruction of Carthage was a great catastrophe. Both for the world from a humanitarian perspective and for Rome which squandered a lot of economic generativity.

The cryptoint library (2025) [pdf]

akkartik — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 13:41:08 +0000

Article URL: https://cr.yp.to/papers/cryptoint-20250424.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50103588

Points: 27

# Comments: 0

New comment by akkartik in "Ask HN: What are you reading?"

akkartik — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:42:35 +0000

Tell me more about the abridgements. Which one now, which one next?

New comment by akkartik in "Ask HN: What are you reading?"

akkartik — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:27:48 +0000

That's the one I mean! Can never remember the names of the books/series, hence the gesture.

New comment by akkartik in "Ask HN: What are you reading?"

akkartik — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:56:35 +0000

Lots of scifi and fantasy.

The Works of Vermin. Exceptionally well written. Not an ounce of flab anywhere.

The Carryx series, 2 books so far. Best villains ever.

Tainted Cup and sequel. Sherlock Holmes meets Godzilla.

Goblin Emperor

The Prophet (Gibran)

Los Alamos (Kanon)

Hyperion (reread)

Finally, a shout out to the best book I read in 2025: Terra Ignota. Yes, the whole series.

Seeing Circles, Sines, and Signals

akkartik — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:59:41 +0000

Article URL: https://jackschaedler.github.io/circles-sines-signals/index.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757929

Points: 77

# Comments: 9

New comment by akkartik in "Necker, 1832: "An optical phænomenon on viewing a figure of a geometrical solid""

akkartik — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 02:03:04 +0000

I had to shorten the title to fit it, but there's so much here and the Necker cube is just a final addendum. This is what publishing was intended to be like!

Necker, 1832: "An optical phænomenon on viewing a figure of a geometrical solid"

akkartik — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 02:01:53 +0000

Article URL: https://zenodo.org/records/1430991

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49667916

Points: 35

# Comments: 21

New comment by akkartik in "If a Tesla Cybercab fleet were profitable, Tesla wouldn't sell you one"

akkartik — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 19:25:40 +0000

Headfaked by Moravec's Paradox.

New comment by akkartik in "Nitter has more working instances than before the takedowns"

akkartik — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 14:10:57 +0000

A key design decision was you only need to replace the domain in the URL. So you need only replace it back. It's not like archive.is where I need to also save the original.