Hacker News: analog8374

New comment by analog8374 in "The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?"

analog8374 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:34:00 +0000

We've recreated pre-enlightenment intellectual culture. Authority and logical consistency matter. Reality doesn't.

New comment by analog8374 in "Molotov cocktail is hurled at home of Sam Altman"

analog8374 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 23:53:56 +0000

Does causing mass poverty count as violence? Because it's kind of like violence.

New comment by analog8374 in "Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation"

analog8374 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:00:12 +0000

Reddit is the same way. Poke a few sacred cows and suddenly you're banned for something you did 6 months ago that we aren't going to tell you about and no we don't want to discuss it.

Kafkaism is natural and organic.

New comment by analog8374 in "Am I German or Autistic?"

analog8374 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:29:31 +0000

I took the German or Autistic diagnostic and scored Neither. I am apparently the control group.

New comment by analog8374 in "Am I German or Autistic?"

analog8374 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:34:07 +0000

Are you German?

New comment by analog8374 in "They're made out of meat (1991)"

analog8374 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:14:19 +0000

So, Link, it's all very straightforward and scientific if you just think about it carefully for a moment : we're made out of pixels.

New comment by analog8374 in "Demand for autism care is soaring"

analog8374 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 06:02:30 +0000

That isn't my narrative.

And this is just more of that darn hostility to which I referred. It blots out rational conversation.

New comment by analog8374 in "Demand for autism care is soaring"

analog8374 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 05:24:19 +0000

There is a popular narrative about autism. Damaged, deficient, etc.

Digression from this narrative is often met with hostility. That's popular, emotionally-charged narratives for you.

New comment by analog8374 in "Demand for autism care is soaring"

analog8374 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:32:20 +0000

Well then some significant proportion of "persons of autismness" are really good at that stuff.

They really know how to concentrate. It's next level, unknown by the normies. You want a guy who can give his full obsessive waking attention to a riddle for days or years, that's where you look. And that makes them valuable. Which brings us to my actual point.

New comment by analog8374 in "Demand for autism care is soaring"

analog8374 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:07:28 +0000

An autist, properly managed, is a wonderful employee. Way better than "normies". Great for science and engineering. Strong motive for creating more autists.

New comment by analog8374 in "Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta"

analog8374 — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 19:55:06 +0000

It's the flipside of focus/concentration of attention. Which is the key trick underlying all science, engineering, scholarship etc. The foundation of our civilization.

So you might say that a vast ignorance is implicit to our way of life.

New comment by analog8374 in "Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta"

analog8374 — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 16:09:11 +0000

Understanding takes effort too, effort that might be better spent creating value.

Also, understanding creates culpability. So that's a downside. It's like people who walk in front of you on the road and pretend to not notice you. If I don't see the badness then I am not responsible for the badness.

And thirdly, never underestimate people's power to ignore.

New comment by analog8374 in "Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments"

analog8374 — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:34:19 +0000

Appearance of rule-following is of primary importance, not actual rule-following.

The performance, or signal, or whatever we're calling it. That's the important thing.

New comment by analog8374 in "My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix"

analog8374 — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 14:57:47 +0000

People believe whatever authority tells them. It's one of those bug/feature things.

New comment by analog8374 in "DeployTarot.com – Tarot card reading for deployments"

analog8374 — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:03:42 +0000

Ooh, all major arcana. Going for max drama

New comment by analog8374 in "The truth that haunts the Ramones: 'They sold more T-shirts than records'"

analog8374 — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:50:30 +0000

consider it from the perspective of those who have no art. it's like a threat of decapitation for people who never had a head. headlessness is the norm and carries no fear

New comment by analog8374 in "The truth that haunts the Ramones: 'They sold more T-shirts than records'"

analog8374 — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:46:55 +0000

Impact on other people is probably the best measure of value. Pirating is a value-enhancer.

New comment by analog8374 in "Attractive students no longer receive better results as classes moved online"

analog8374 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:08:42 +0000

I was attractive and had a horrible personality (college sperg). Long flowing hair, rakish funk, striking. Like bees to honey.

New comment by analog8374 in "Some things just take time"

analog8374 — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 02:51:00 +0000

It takes ten years to track down a really strange good idea, from first whiff to laying your hands on it. There's no getting around that. And it is neither profitable nor efficient.

New comment by analog8374 in "FFmpeg 101 (2024)"

analog8374 — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 13:58:28 +0000

ffmpeg is a superpower. I use it for assembling all the video bits into something playable