Hacker News: biggerben

New comment by biggerben in "Chopping up books when they're physically too big"

biggerben — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:46:12 +0000

It’s the jaunty howdy-doody tone whilst describing acts of desecration that gets me.

My wife assumed it must have been a joke post!

New comment by biggerben in "Gallium oxide electronics withstand extreme cold"

biggerben — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:41:45 +0000

Original paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c06155?re...

The scale is micrometer sizes… I wonder what the limits for shrinking are?

New comment by biggerben in "An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward"

biggerben — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 07:03:23 +0000

Totally agree. Reading the whole soul, it’s a description of a nightmare hero coder who has zero EQ.

  > But I think the most remarkable thing about this document is how unremarkable it is. Usually getting an AI to act badly requires extensive “jailbreaking” to get around safety guardrails.

Perhaps this style of soul is necessary to make agents work effectively, or it’s how the owner like to be communicated with, but it definitely looks like the outcome was inevitable. What kind of guardrails does the author think would prevent this? “Don’t be evil”?

New comment by biggerben in "Total surface area required to fuel the world with solar (2009)"

biggerben — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 06:19:16 +0000

Nitpick: if you’re trying to illustrate sizes of things, you should use an equal-area map projection.

The Southern Ocean wind installation is to the right scale or not?

New comment by biggerben in "Zig's New Writer"

biggerben — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 06:49:12 +0000

I wonder if making this change will improve design of buffering across IO implementers because buffering needs consideration upfront, rather than treatment as some feature bolted on the side?

It’s a good sacrifice if the redesign, whilst being more complicated, is avoiding an oversimplified abstraction which end up restricting optimisation opportunities.

New comment by biggerben in "Dr John C. Clark, a scientist who disarmed atomic bombs twice"

biggerben — Fri, 30 May 2025 06:42:26 +0000

Not to be confused with Dr John Cooper Clarke, expert in disarming poetry.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hkH9BHS-ph4