<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: defen</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=defen</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 12 Oct 2026 05:11:58 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=defen" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Does Georgism work? Five years later"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've lived or spent significant time in a bunch of places around the US - rural NJ, suburban NJ, NYC, Philly, Orlando exurbs, San Diego, San Francisco, South Bay,  and I now live in inner SE Portland. And I agree with you that there is something really special about it.<p>In some ways it's similar to the tourism or gentrification problem - the very things that make a place desirable lead to the destruction of those things. Some people view the world through a purely economic lens and treat individual people as abstracted production/consumption units. And unfortunately there's no real way to put a dollar value on "all the neighbors know each other and help each other out". And even if you could - you can't just BUY your way into that, no matter how much money you have! The only way to unlock that value is to live there and engage with the community. Obviously there will be turnover but what some people don't seem to grasp is that there is a tipping point, where enough newcomers overwhelm the "old timers" and destroy the culture of a place. And think about the game theory of it from the point of view of a resident - why invest time and resources in a community if you're just going to leave in a year or two? Or if the beneficiaries are future random people who are not going to give a shit about the community?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 27 Sep 2026 22:39:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49871535</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49871535</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49871535</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "What even is an OS now?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys<p><a href="https://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2026 02:26:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852613</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852613</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852613</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Top Pentagon Official Contracted Personal Lawyer to Handle Minerals Deal"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The British attempted “full punishment” against the American colonies and look where that got them. There are no easy solutions.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 04 Sep 2026 17:10:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567332</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567332</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567332</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "A Selection of Los Alamos Rolodex Business Cards"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If the "Zero Blast-N-Peen" company operating out of "Hooker Circle" with the robot logo showed up in a Fallout game, it would be criticized as too over the top - breaks the immersion too much since it's so absurd.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:42:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49538903</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49538903</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49538903</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Text AI watermarks will always be trivial to remove"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You could do that, but a real human doesn't just type things out in one straight shot (modulo typos that are fixed "in-line"). There's going to be editing, pauses, copy-pasting, moving things around, etc. And at worst it puts a cap on how much text you can generate since at minimum it does need to be manually retyped.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2026 19:20:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49303409</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49303409</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49303409</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Text AI watermarks will always be trivial to remove"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>AI watermarks feel like they're approaching the problem from the wrong side - no matter what it will be possible to remove the watermark (Via manual rewriting, local LLLMs, etc). Instead it seems like we need "proof of human creation". And the only way I see that being possible is hardware-attested proof of keypresses. Which obviously has huge privacy implications, but how else would you actually know that a piece of content was produced by a human pressing keys on a keyboard? The proof would also need to include timestamps for the keypresses, so tell if someone is just copying from another window.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:25:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289152</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289152</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289152</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Very disturbing comment and not something you should joke about, especially number 3.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2026 04:24:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49218883</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49218883</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49218883</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ewing Theory, but for trillion dollar corporations.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 05 Aug 2026 20:58:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49188913</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49188913</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49188913</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Read the novels and forget everything else"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I just read this one. The other thing that's going on is that Stephen has a secret mission that requires him to be put on shore in France, so he wants to do that during a new moon. The question is Stephen's adorable way of "encrypting" that question so as not to reveal the mission to the rest of the crew.<p>Imagine that you were in a big meeting and you wanted an excuse to leave, so you whispered to your co-worker "Do you think my phone can receive messages in this room?" And he replied "Phones are the foundation of modern telecommunication infrastructure and we're in a large city, I assure you that you will promptly receive any messages that are sent to you."</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 15:49:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49157375</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49157375</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49157375</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Read the novels and forget everything else"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>None of his personal failures leak through into his books. It's not like reading someone who injects their abhorrent philosophy or ideology into their book and you're worried it will rub off on you. Imagine if you found out tomorrow that the author of your favorite book ever was an awful person - I don't see why that would change how you feel about the book.<p>Anyway - yes there is a ton of content out there, more than enough for 100 lifetimes. If you have two hours and eighteen minutes the movie <i>Master And Command: Far Side of the World</i> does the source material good justice and is an excellent film in its own right. It's quite true to the books so it is probably a good predictor of whether you'd enjoy the books.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 07:29:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49152376</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49152376</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49152376</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Read the novels and forget everything else"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think it's a mistake to dismiss them just for that reason. He's been dead for 26 years, and you can get the books second-hand, so it's easy to acquire them while ensuring no money goes to him or his estate if that's what you're worried about. They're an absolutely fantastic set of novels, full of joy and adventure and excitement and humor and astonishing erudition.. Tom Stoppard admired him (as mentioned in the article) and Thomas Pynchon even wrote him into a brief scene in <i>Mason & Dixon</i>.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 04:47:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151312</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151312</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151312</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Zig's Incremental Compilation Internals"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The issue is that most "hello world" programs are not correct.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:42:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089656</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089656</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089656</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Buz – A fork of Bun using modern Zig, with sub-1s incremental builds"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>iOS</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2026 22:42:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042511</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042511</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042511</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Buz – A fork of Bun using modern Zig, with sub-1s incremental builds"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not sure about op but if I post here from my phone I get those. Example: “quoted string”</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:47:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49039253</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49039253</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49039253</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Em dashes are amazing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That’s a common trope I see in “old” books (most recently for me in _Old Mortality_) that I can’t recall ever seeing in modern ones - deliberately obscured words intended to convey a notion of realism without naming an actual place or person. I guess it’s the 555 phone number of old books.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:35:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49039090</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49039090</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49039090</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Dupes took over the world"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So what are the good Australian boot/shoe brands now?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 07:03:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48975202</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48975202</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48975202</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"US jurisdiction" also includes foreign heads of state residing in, and present in, their own country. I don't think a theoretical definition of jurisdiction is tenable; only a realist one.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:07:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736735</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736735</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736735</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Is this a very obscure Norm Macdonald reference?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:56:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48678428</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48678428</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48678428</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How does that work when you don't have enough assets to cover the cost of the thing you broke or stole?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 23:49:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48638168</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48638168</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48638168</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by defen in "Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I bought my 8 year old daughter the hardcover box set for Christmas. When she opened it her initial reaction was definitely "oh...thanks" (she was clearly not excited about it but wanted to be nice). Within a week it was borderline impossible to get her to put them down and go to sleep at night.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:22:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48562316</link><dc:creator>defen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48562316</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48562316</guid></item></channel></rss>