Hacker News: bugake

New comment by bugake in "The work by Valve's Timur Kristóf on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux"

bugake — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 05:13:49 +0000

Some other benefits of older GPUs:

Use as a dedicated GPU for encoding and decoding video. Post processing like frame interpolation or superresolution. Use for GPGPU workloads. Run additional monitors independently. Use for GPU passthrough to virtual machines. Use as a backup GPU for troubleshooting. Use for test code without breaking the main GPU

New comment by bugake in "Why the Bronze Age Collapsed"

bugake — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 07:01:25 +0000

Primitive iron was inferior to bronze and harder to produce. It was weak, malleable, and rapidly rusted. It only became practical once people learned to make a primitive steel by adding charcoal. This is why it took a long time for iron to replace bronze.

New comment by bugake in "Why the Bronze Age Collapsed"

bugake — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 06:49:15 +0000

The text wrongly claims that the Spanish defeated the Aztecs because of their iron weapons. Actually, the Spanish were vastly outnumbered, so their weapons alone were irrelevant in the battle. The Spanish had alliances with Indigenous peoples who opposed the Aztec Empire, giving them a much larger army. That defeated the Aztecs.

New comment by bugake in "California is chasing wealth that has feet"

bugake — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 15:07:37 +0000

Is not "your" town

New comment by bugake in "California is chasing wealth that has feet"

bugake — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 15:05:30 +0000

You can't tax "the land". You tax the owner. The money doesn't come from the land but whatever source of income the owner has. That's what you are really taxing.

To actually tax the land, the owner needs to sell it, but who is going to buy taxed land? You are forced to sell it to pay the tax.

So taxed land, in the end, loses value, because it's sold more and bought less, and the source of income goes away, because he was forced to sell the land.

New comment by bugake in "California is chasing wealth that has feet"

bugake — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 14:59:46 +0000

Taxing is a lie.

If an island produces 2 burgers a day and has 3 inhabitants: one is rich, another is the poorest worker who can afford a burger, and the third is indigent, the rich person buys his burger, the poorest worker buys the second burger, and the indigent buys nothing, because there are only 2 burgers.

So a socialist sees this and claims he will tax the rich to give a burger to the indigent.

He taxes the rich as much as necessary to ensure that the indigent gets the burger.

As the worker tries to pay more for his burger, the price rises, so the socialist raises the tax as much as necessary to ensure that the indigent still gets the burger.

So the next day, the rich person buys his burger, the indigent buys another burger, and the poorest worker goes hungry, because there are only 2 burgers.

The result is the same if the socialist taxes the rich, prints money, or takes on debt. He always takes the burger from the poorest worker.

So taxes and public spending are always paid by the poorest workers. It does not matter where the socialist gets the money from: he always taxes the poorest workers.

New comment by bugake in "Gravity seems holographic. What does that mean for reality?"

bugake — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 13:41:55 +0000

No. You are only counting the integral of the field on the surface, but if you take into account the orientation of the field on the surface, you can know the internal distribution of charges.

If the field is always radial, the charge can only be in the center, by symmetry. A different distribution of charges will not produce a radial field on the surface, even if it has the same integral.

New comment by bugake in "Gravity seems holographic. What does that mean for reality?"

bugake — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 13:35:08 +0000

It is not outrageous. For example, conservation of energy tells you that if you observe the surface of a box, you can know things inside the box. If you observe how much energy enters or exits the box, you know the change of energy inside the box. And that's true independently of what is inside the box.

Inside the box, there may be one rat, a galaxy, a nuclear bomb, or whatever thing you can imagine, and still you know exactly the change in stored energy. It only depends on what happened on the surface of the box.

Also, when you solve a differential equation, you need the contour conditions. The contour completely determines what happens inside.