Hacker News: bigDinosaur

New comment by bigDinosaur in "What we know so far about Spain train crash"

bigDinosaur — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 10:38:48 +0000

To have had this many incidents compared to other HSR networks around the world gives all the signs of a classic case of normalisation of deviance.

Sadly we'll probably watch a lot of individuals being blamed/scapegoated for systemic issues, but hopefully even Spanish politics can organise a proper investigation after this many deaths in a single year.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "How to grow a cacao tree at home (2024)"

bigDinosaur — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 11:00:44 +0000

80% alike is to my mind dramatically different and would not be a substitute at all. I also don't think 95% cocoa chocolate is a substitute for 80% cocoa chocolate etc. as even the small difference results in a dramatically different product and that's the simplest variation possible for chocolate.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "The Fall of Scientific American"

bigDinosaur — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 05:12:38 +0000

Lowest denominator politics like this is what dominates social media and none of it improves anything. Choosing to focus on publishing objectively rigorous science is inherently speaking truth to power and does far more good than almost anything else. Of course, anyone can see the value science has as a way of providing objective understanding and wants to use it to justify their issue du jour.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970"

bigDinosaur — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 23:54:40 +0000

Scandinavian countries are the most capitalistic of Europe - and socialists don't like social democrats. The Scandinavian countries are the latter, not the former.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "Woman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name"

bigDinosaur — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 01:09:44 +0000

You aren't taking into account that transport agencies can raise a lot of funding based on yearly revenue so multiplying fares out in terms of the debt that can be serviced yearly can easily reach billions which can be used for capital investment.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "Woman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name"

bigDinosaur — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 01:07:12 +0000

It's nice to have an opinion but free public transport causes many issues and isn't great policy, it actually means transport agencies have less money to invest and take out debt on as system use increases which is a very bad position financially. The same issues actually apply to roads as well and are a reason things like congestion taxes are a good idea.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "What shall I teach my son?"

bigDinosaur — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 07:32:34 +0000

Many adults have mutually incompatible ideas of what would make the world better. Many adults are willing to use violence to make their version of the world become a thing. It's not really as simple as saying it doesn't have to be this way.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?"

bigDinosaur — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 09:30:32 +0000

It's pretty remarkable to see 'I don't like them, therefore their arguments are all terrible' in action, but it's so rampant in this comments section it's genuinely sad. Every single argument against rationalists can be leveraged at academic philosophers too.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "Anthropic reported diary entry to police, woman faces felony charge"

bigDinosaur — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 07:04:26 +0000

I'd expect someone's BFF to call the police if their friend is making credible talk about shooting up a school or whatever. I sometimes feel like privacy talk online can be seriously divorced from how human relationships actually work.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "Microsoft abandons personal AI chatbot race with Copilot reboot"

bigDinosaur — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 03:01:36 +0000

It didn't 'learn' anything in any shape or form at all, it performed an echo .

New comment by bigDinosaur in "Microsoft abandons personal AI chatbot race with Copilot reboot"

bigDinosaur — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 02:59:01 +0000

Siri is highly useful for setting timers and is a solid 9/10 at doing so reliably.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "Back and shoulder surgery is often worse than useless"

bigDinosaur — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 02:38:31 +0000

That's not what single payer actually means, since Australia has both a single payer public system and a separate private system. The part that allows these to both exist is that the public system has vast resources (i.e. an entire national/set of state governments) that can act as one for immense negotiating power. This does not preclude a private system from existing.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "US interest rates raised for first time in three years"

bigDinosaur — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:47:26 +0000

Iran is the source for the Islamic justification for suicide bombing (suicide is forbidden in the Quran and thus 'innovation' was needed to justify it). That alone puts immense amounts of blood on their hands. They invented this justification for their own religious and geopolitical aims (getting the US out of the ME). They are interventionists who want to be the spiritual centre of Islam, they are the opposite of passive actors in their region.

The bigger question is whether the other Gulf states (that we ally with or support) are any better and whether or not they deserve sanctions too. The West is clearly not in a place within the ME to preach morals, but that doesn't mean countries like Iran don't deserve sanctions.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "LG says we're fake news [video]"

bigDinosaur — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 01:36:41 +0000

If someone is supposedly concerned about being recorded, having their privacy invaded etc. but they're too lazy to change the wifi password and deal with the trivial inconvenience of changing it on other household devices then in this case the revealed preference really is that they don't really care.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it"

bigDinosaur — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:51:41 +0000

As a parent you should absolutely think about what kind of expectations and behaviours you're setting up for the future if 'if they enjoy it then it's worth the money' is teaching kids. Sure it's not perfectly clear cut but not thinking about value at all does not end well.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "Switzerland's Federal Government Is Replacing Microsoft on 3k Computers"

bigDinosaur — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:16:53 +0000

The US has been by far the largest funder of medical and other scientific research since WW2 which has benefited billions immensely.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "GPT-6 Astra"

bigDinosaur — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 03:27:24 +0000

The marginal return on education spending decreases fairly quickly, but obviously becomes zero at the point by which there are not enough hours in the day/year/decade to cover every single topic that humans know about - no matter the talent or resources available to the student.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?"

bigDinosaur — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 07:55:46 +0000

You can define any word to be whatever you want and thus have linguistically correct predictions that are functionally useless.

New comment by bigDinosaur in "Oceans hit highest temperature on record"

bigDinosaur — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:53:56 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#History

"1954 – The first practical photovoltaic cell was publicly demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.[27] The inventors were Calvin Souther Fuller, Daryl Chapin and Gerald Pearson.[28]"

The references are on Wikipedia. Maybe do the most basic thing in Wikipedia and click on some links to the related pages before asking for sources. One can still quibble that 'first practical' is indeed different from 'first' but the practical part is the part that actually matters in this argument anyway (i.e. solar rollout).

(also, of course it was Bell Labs.)

New comment by bigDinosaur in "I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch"

bigDinosaur — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:04:29 +0000

If there's a single unifying fault to the unsuccessful people I know (for any definition of unsuccesful, including my own failures) is that they're precisely bad at working out why they failed - if they even think to ask the question. The successful people are generally much clearer that it was studying hard or networking or natural talent that contributed to their success. The latter group may have people who don't realise luck played a part, but they massively increased their chances of good luck by the aforementioned behaviours.