Hacker News: dahinds

New comment by dahinds in "Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU"

dahinds — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 18:49:28 +0000

If this was copy-pasted, isn't it much more likely that it was copy-pasted from a document describing the performance of the SA3000 chip, than from a document that was written before the SA3000 was developed?

The only overlap from the document with the text you quote is the "106", which is a pretty common mis-formatting issue.

New comment by dahinds in "A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown"

dahinds — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 03:36:16 +0000

Here's a comparison of the Medieval Warm Period with recent temperatures (so no model based speculation).

https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=31

New comment by dahinds in "A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown"

dahinds — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:27:50 +0000

There's a lot to unpack here:

- the warming in the Medieval Warming Period is modest compared to projected modern warming

- The Alps are currently "warm enough" to be crossed without special gear much of the year. Otzi was found wearing multiple layers of hides and furs that would have provided good protection against the elements and is supposed to have been killed in late spring/early summer, not the depths of winter. Glaciers are active things and where he was found could be some distance from where he died.

- Yes the earth has been warmer and colder in the past, climate scientists are aware of these facts, it can also be true that climate is changing quickly in ways that may be very inconvenient for many modern humans.

- Regarding California climate, I don't know who "these same scientists" were, and popular press about climate change is often misleading and superficial. I have lived here for ~35 years and we have had a handful of very wet years but most of that period has been classified as "drought". Yes at the moment we are not but this was a very poor water year and we've benefited from carryover storage from last year. As far as I know, the scientific consensus is still that California is getting warmer and drier on average, and the large year to year fluctuations do not nullify that trend.

New comment by dahinds in "A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown"

dahinds — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 19:55:27 +0000

For the past ~60 years... with maybe just a bit of slack on the start of that, it would include tremendously impactful things like: - the clean air act and clean water act - endangered species act and restrictions on international trade for protected animals and plants - creation of the EPA, and reductions and regulation of pesticides and herbicides - the emergence of the organic food industry - the Montreal protocol and global reduction in CFC production - contribution to the development of clean energy technology -- you could argue that now the boom in clean energy is just economics in action but that comes after decades of basic science and technical innovation motivated by environmental concerns.

New comment by dahinds in "European sunscreens are safer than American (2024)"

dahinds — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 17:26:20 +0000

This isn't really the issue, most of the cost of reviewing new drug applications is covered by user fees. And most of the cost and time required for getting a drug approved is in the clinical trials. FDA resources aren't really the bottleneck, the FDA is generally faster than its counterparts in other countries.

New comment by dahinds in "The curious case of low-protein diets"

dahinds — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 19:54:09 +0000

protein and carbohydrate are both 4 calories per gram?

New comment by dahinds in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

dahinds — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 01:14:38 +0000

I don't think they're asserting that all of human existence can be subsumed as text, though? Just that "consciousness", or "understanding", in some meaningful sense could be exhibited by a system that can only interact with the world through text?

New comment by dahinds in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

dahinds — Sat, 16 May 2026 23:24:31 +0000

That's a bookkeeping issue, it doesn't affect the argument at all (which is that the capex has a finite useful life over which it would need to pay for itself).

New comment by dahinds in "I want to live like Costco people"

dahinds — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:58:39 +0000

The claim could be true even if every customer is exactly like you. The implication is that Costco doesn't really make money selling stuff, they just need to roughly break even. And "breaking even" here includes paying rewards on purchases. The fact that you earn a lot of rewards doesn't stop your membership dues from contributing to Costco's bottom line.

New comment by dahinds in "UK Biobank health data listed for sale in China, government confirms"

dahinds — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:14:44 +0000

Not sure how that follows. It seems mostly irrelevant whether the new incident is related to the github issue.

New comment by dahinds in "SpaceX files to go public"

dahinds — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 23:43:28 +0000

The cheapest option might be to buy the index and sell short the appropriate amount of Musk companies.

New comment by dahinds in "In 2025, Meta paid an effective federal tax rate of 3.5%"

dahinds — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 19:43:12 +0000

Mostly never -- most of the deferral was an accounting adjustment for the value of future tax credits that they could no longer take advantage of, so there is no actual tax liability here that will eventually be paid.

New comment by dahinds in "xAI joins SpaceX"

dahinds — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:37:30 +0000

Yes but if the solar panel area scales linearly with radiator area, the problem doesn't get worse?

New comment by dahinds in "xAI joins SpaceX"

dahinds — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:22:03 +0000

This isn't really true, though? The ISS does it with radiators that are ~1/2 the area of its solar panels, and both should scale linearly with power?

New comment by dahinds in "The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world (2019)"

dahinds — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 23:11:46 +0000

What does it mean to "fund protests"? I'm also a "normal" person who has been to a couple No Kings protests, and no one paid me. Someone spent some money on fliers, I suppose.

The major No Kings events were in June and October last year. January is not a great time for outdoors protests in much of the country. Does it somehow make the protests inauthentic if focus has now shifted towards ICE?

New comment by dahinds in "I have recordings proving Coinbase knew about breach months before disclosure"

dahinds — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 22:09:34 +0000

"With Bitcoin you do not get government bailouts" -- yeah maybe not yet? Is it beyond belief that a government with leadership deeply invested in crypto currencies might take action if something super disruptive happens?

New comment by dahinds in "Pharma is a small component of US health care spending"

dahinds — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 20:06:20 +0000

It is often illegal to purchase drugs from other sources?

The named drugs are injectable and require cold storage so it is not trivial to safely source them from overseas.

New comment by dahinds in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

dahinds — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 21:06:44 +0000

I think I'm not understanding what comparison you're trying to make. I thought you were expressing some doubt about whether H1B, or temporary skilled worker visas generally, were beneficial for the host country. You asked, "why don't other countries encourage this specific type of immigration" and I pointed out that they do have similar programs. Now you ask "why don't they have even higher rates of skilled worker immigration?"

Japan's SSW program has close to 300k workers. The U.S. H1B program has about 700k workers, so by population, Japan's program appears to be a bit larger. New Zealand's AEWV program has 80k workers with a population of 5 million so proportionally that's much larger.

New comment by dahinds in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

dahinds — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 04:44:05 +0000

All the countries you mention offer temporary work visas for skilled workers, of varying similarity to an H1B.

New comment by dahinds in "Tesla said it didn't have key data in a fatal crash, then a hacker found it"

dahinds — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 16:45:58 +0000

> They cheated because their cars didn't meet new emissions standards. They were fine by the standards of the year before.

> So a bureaucracy just declared that a legal level of emissions was now illegal.

That is not at all what happened and not how emissions standards are deployed. The EPA's Tier 2 standards were finalized in 2000 to phase in during the 2004-2008 model years [1].

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2000/02/10/00-19/c...