Hacker News: cjbgkagh

New comment by cjbgkagh in "Show HN: LuaCAD – Parametric CAD Scripted in Lua"

cjbgkagh — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 03:26:52 +0000

AFAIK OpenSCAD does not do any meaningful optimizations that are enabled by having a limited DSL, despite that normally being a good reason to do a DSL. And ironically you often have use a general purpose language (python and C++) to do custom optimizations not possible in the DSL.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "$580M undersea cable rerouted to avoid the grave of Dobby the House Elf"

cjbgkagh — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 23:13:44 +0000

The miners were doing mining surveys for internal use only, the environmentalist were submitting the cultural / environmental surveys as complaints which they’re allowed to do as part of the law the local government made for itself since it was government land that was being leased. It was more of a public consultation process, if no one complained then that’s fine too. The miners already have strict environmental regulations they have to follow regardless of where they build. Having seen these submissions it’s often stuff like, there is a river and since rivers are where people tend to congregate if we were to look we might find some ancient stone age human artifact despite no such thing ever being found within 100s of kms. Also rivers move, especially small ones.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "$580M undersea cable rerouted to avoid the grave of Dobby the House Elf"

cjbgkagh — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:39:52 +0000

The ecological studies also cover the surrounding areas. They can’t say that absolutely everything is significant so to make the stronger case they pile the significance into the area they think is the likely site to be developed. Then the miners are ‘responding’ to the feedback by relocating to a less significant location that already has been ecologically studied and deemed insignificant.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "$580M undersea cable rerouted to avoid the grave of Dobby the House Elf"

cjbgkagh — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:13:16 +0000

A common trick in mining is to send surveyors to an area they don’t want so the various interests just so happen to decide that the area being surveyed is the one with historical / ecological significance. After that has been established they send surveyors for the area they do want.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "Study links GLP-1 drugs to bigger jump in women's employment than a degree"

cjbgkagh — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:35:31 +0000

Not exclusively genetic but inclusively genetic. There are of course other factors involved and I think genes are a big one.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "Study links GLP-1 drugs to bigger jump in women's employment than a degree"

cjbgkagh — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:02:17 +0000

Causality is an issue there, I would suggest that genetic auto immune issues that are rather wide spread can cause all of the above. I think people are finding that GLP-1s help with auto immune issues.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "Melatonin impairs morning cognition in healthy young adults (2023)"

cjbgkagh — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 17:14:40 +0000

Like almost every psychoactive drug it really depends on the individual. I have ME/CFS from a strong genetic propensity to dysautonomia. I think that my ME/CFS is an autoimmune reaction to the dysautonomia where, counter intuitively, medications like melatonin and amitriptyline, by helping with dysautonomia, actually substantially increase energy levels and mental cognition during the day. My case is a bit extreme at ~1/20K but I think ~1/50 of the general population have a similar but much milder reaction. At N=120 a study like this would not be able to detect that. These ~1/50 people are more likely to have the sort of sleep issues / burnout that makes them more likely to reach for melatonin in the first place. So the more interesting study would be conditioned by the subset of the general population that have already decided they need melatonin.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's"

cjbgkagh — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 16:23:38 +0000

I would assume that the task of being a taxi driver would act as a near constant test for Alzheimer’s, would be interesting to do GWAS studies on older taxi drivers and compare against taxi drivers who quit earlier in their careers.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol"

cjbgkagh — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:44:00 +0000

I was unsuccessful because I wouldn’t pay the bribes, I had a number of independent local advisors give pretty consistent accounts to how things work there.

I wouldn’t be so worried about the corruption of my society if I thought there was something implicit that meant we wouldn’t be corrupted in the same way that others are.

Nor do I blame the Cambodians for their predicament. You’re tilting at windmills.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol"

cjbgkagh — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 19:10:00 +0000

No, I don’t think I will

New comment by cjbgkagh in "AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol"

cjbgkagh — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:42:25 +0000

I am suggesting that it's more than the elites, then you'd have to take into account the people who would act in a corrupt way if presented with the opportunity. As someone who has tried and failed to sell software into Cambodia I know from experience that the corruption there is very thorough and continues well on down to the lower strata of society.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol"

cjbgkagh — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:28:13 +0000

By endemic I mean to its core, it’s the difference of having everyone being corrupt versus just the elites / political class being corrupt. If anyone thinks that the problem of corrupt elites could be improved by extending that corruption to everyone then I’m not sure what would convince them otherwise.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol"

cjbgkagh — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 01:44:48 +0000

I would measure by relative destruction of wealth since corruption is an inefficient destructive process that can quite often yield very little left to steal.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol"

cjbgkagh — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 01:41:19 +0000

A society that pretends it is not corrupt is better than one that has given up on that pretense. No matter how bad you think things are it can always get worse. I am not looking forward to the coming free for all.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol"

cjbgkagh — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:14:43 +0000

The point of institutionalizing corruption is to reduce competition from competing corruption entities. Which is bad but not as bad as an endemically corrupt society.

I think it can be true that we have in effect far more corruption in the west than what is readily recognized at the same time that it’s true that we have less corruption than most other countries.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol"

cjbgkagh — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:09:59 +0000

I think what the Trump admin is doing is horribly corrupt and I hope the lot of them go to jail for that and other things, but in relative terms what Trump is doing is still less corrupt than what happens in many poor countries.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "The computer that helped win World War II"

cjbgkagh — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:57:50 +0000

These people still exist, there just isn't the same institutional push to promote them to prominence so you don't know about them.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality"

cjbgkagh — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 17:44:43 +0000

I’m sure there will be attempts but I think our future will be dominated by separatist / spinoff societies. There is an economy of scale in functions of governance as well as a diseconomy of scale in bureaucracy. Using LLMs to make the expensive parts cheaper makes smaller self governing societies much more viable.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality"

cjbgkagh — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:01:31 +0000

My field is lightly regulated but it is regulated and LLMs have helped massively in producing the documentation but also in reviewing the same documentation on the regulators side. This was always a disadvantage for small companies where the fixed regulatory cost couldn’t be amortized over a larger staff size and now because of LLMs it is less of a disadvantage.

New comment by cjbgkagh in "What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality"

cjbgkagh — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 15:28:59 +0000

While I disagree with the counter position I do believe it to be an honest account of their experience. I think the counter intuitive aspect is that marginal cost of software is practically zero so in an efficient market the consumption of it will be dominated by the best software written by senior devs with AI, even if the production of software is dominated by junior devs with AI. I think we are in a transitory phase where still employed juniors can be very productive shortly before becoming unemployed at which point that productivity drops to zero. If junior devs are productively producing software that then goes unused then how productive were they really. But I understand that the latter effect may not have been picked up in the general stats. Anecdotally again, I fired 3 juniors and went solo and I know of many others who have done something similar.

Another aspect is that once the easier work is complete then the remaining residual is the difficult work, and this changes the relative productivity to the point where a junior developer may not be able to make any further progress at all.

Overly bureaucratic companies tend to generate easier work for themselves to the point that this work dominates their total workload. If we are to measure productivity by opening and closing Jira tickets then I would expect the junior developers to get a much bigger ‘productivity’ benefit from AI than senior developers.