Hacker News: dgllghr

New comment by dgllghr in "Virginia orders data centers to pay for dedicated new electric infrastructure"

dgllghr — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:19:45 +0000

This is something, but it is not enough. I live in Virginia. Virginia has been increasingly importing more and more electricity from West Virginia (coal) and Pennsylvania (natural gas) to power new data centers. Between 2019 and 2023, imports grew 61% [1]. Even though Virginia has been building out solar and offshore wind, between 2023 and 2025 low carbon electricity (renewables + nuclear) actually decreased as a % of the energy mix (28% to 26%) [2]. Virginia won’t commit to building the clean energy generation needed to power the data centers and it won’t build fossil fuel powered generation (which is on paper something I agree with). So it imports the electricity that is both dirty and expensive, and we pay for it. It’s the coward’s way out.

[1] https://cardinalnews.org/2025/01/21/virginia-now-imports-mor...

[2] https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Virginia

New comment by dgllghr in "I Changed My Name"

dgllghr — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 12:56:56 +0000

I think many people are scared of "being reduced to a number" but I wonder if, psychologically, codes like p7jn8-h would go over better.

New comment by dgllghr in "Michael Burry says neither SpaceX nor Anthropic is worth $1T"

dgllghr — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:36:30 +0000

The Stock Market of the Spectacle

New comment by dgllghr in "Bijou64: A variable-length integer encoding"

dgllghr — Fri, 29 May 2026 17:17:12 +0000

It's not terribly fast. It's faster than LEB128 but not as fast as vu128 (at least according to https://github.com/Jiboo/varint_benchmark)

New comment by dgllghr in "Why We've Filed a Referendum"

dgllghr — Sat, 23 May 2026 13:16:39 +0000

So true. A legislator in Virginia finally pitched ending the tax credit that brought all the data centers to VA in the first place, and I hope it passes (I know it won’t). But seeing the upcoming rate increases already on the books and the number of data centers they are planning to build is pushing me to consider solar again. The payback time is getting shorter and shorter :)

New comment by dgllghr in "Why We've Filed a Referendum"

dgllghr — Sat, 23 May 2026 00:18:18 +0000

As someone who lives in Northern Virginia, it makes me furious to receive my electricity bill and see that even though I used less electricity than the same month last year, I am paying significantly more. And this happens every year.

Do you think Virginia is adding solar, battery, and wind proportional to that additional power draw? Nope! It's natural gas and coal power imported from PA and WV. It would be one thing if I was paying more to build out renewable energy for environmental purposes and to set up a reliable and clean grid for the future. But no, I'm just subsidizing these huge companies and hurting the environment to boot.

New comment by dgllghr in "New accessibility features powered by Apple Intelligence"

dgllghr — Tue, 19 May 2026 13:50:10 +0000

Putting aside the fact that no company should have direct access to anyone's brain, how cool would it be to be building toward VISOR (from TNG) instead of this. If we could translate sensor signals to the neural circuitry of the brain directly, we wouldn't even need an LLM in the mix. But to have it as an overlay, as supplementary data! With the ability to turn it off of course. (Would a person even be able to turn it off? In the same sense as whether someone can "turn off" social media?) If only we had meaningful human rights and institutions that really protected them... I still can't fully give up the techno-optimism that made me love tech in the first place (and TNG for that matter).

New comment by dgllghr in "House GOP concedes in DHS funding fight, reopening TSA but blocking ICE funds"

dgllghr — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:05:06 +0000

And if you look very closely, you can see just the tiniest bit of backbone growing in the backs of the Democratic congresspeople. If they continue to nurture this growth, they may even be able to sit up straight. That would be a marked improvement over their current situation of lying on the floor and letting the GOP walk all over them.

New comment by dgllghr in "Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition"

dgllghr — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:32:47 +0000

I switched from caffeine (coffee) to theacrine (pills) and I like it so much more. I feel alert and focused without added anxiety. It doesn’t seem to affect my sleep at all. I really didn’t like how hard it was to quit coffee.

I don’t like that it’s a pill. I tried making my own theacrine drinks, but theacrine is so bitter that I never found one that I liked. I am still haunted by the chicory + theacrine drink I made…

New comment by dgllghr in "Missouri town fires half its city council over data center deal"

dgllghr — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:32:27 +0000

As someone who lives in Northern Virginia, there are definitely ongoing jobs, but in this area they are mostly filled with H1B workers. The real money is in development

Show HN: Leo News – AI newsbots with different political perspectives

dgllghr — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:33:22 +0000

@steaks and I have been working on a site that provides political commentary on the news by AI agents.

Our long term vision is to make this an automated news site that helps users see the bigger picture around each news story and maybe even improve political discourse in some small way. An important part of that is building trust with users, and we are exploring a number of ways to do that:

- Accountability: retrospective analyses of the commentary from the agents and of the news stories themselves - Transparency: posting the models and prompts we use - Understand the user: communicate with users by both understanding their perspectives and respectfully challenging them to grow - Respect the user: no agenda or narrative. We want to show a bigger picture not a different narrative

Right now synthesis, having multiple agents representing different political positions in a discussion form, is the core and pretty much only paradigm (the Hegelian dialectic approach). In addition to expanding that approach, we are also exploring others. I think Debord and Deleuze have some ideas that can lead us down some interesting paths.

Those are all big plans, but for now you can read the news with political commentary provided by bots. We have found this enjoyable. We have also found it to be less threatening to political identities, and we see that as a core potential.

Let us know what you think!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47575628

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by dgllghr in "Intensifying global heat threatens livability for younger and older adults"

dgllghr — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:01:24 +0000

I agree with you. People are far too optimistic. On a practical level, though, how much of these increasing issues can be temporarily ameliorated by better ventilated houses, schools, offices, etc.? In other words, does reducing the average exposure of CO2 help or is it really about the outdoor level? I could see the average mattering, but I could also see how spending time in an environment that is <400ppm CO2 (basically never happens now) could cause our bodies to rapidly expel CO2 and "reset" our internal levels.

New comment by dgllghr in "Shatner is making an album with 35 metal icons"

dgllghr — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 10:54:22 +0000

His acting is laughably, painfully bad and then suddenly incredibly poignant and for some reason for the whole time it's bad I'm subconsciously like "oh this part doesn't count". It's so easy to root for him

New comment by dgllghr in "I switched from VSCode to Zed"

dgllghr — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 17:08:11 +0000

It's unlikely that anyone will see this but I tried using Zed again after not using it for a while and the power draw is significantly lower! So I don't think it is related to those issues after all. I don't see much of a difference between Zed and VSCode in the amount of energy they use, but Zed is noticeably snappier (and not owned by MSFT)

LLM's and Smaller, Less Popular Programming Languages

dgllghr — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 17:38:57 +0000

Article URL: https://www.scottarbeit.com/blog/llm-s-and-smaller-less-popular-programming-languages

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556526

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by dgllghr in "I switched from VSCode to Zed"

dgllghr — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 16:45:27 +0000

Yes VSCode uses far less power than Zed on my machine. I believe it is probably related to these issues:

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/21146 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/8043

New comment by dgllghr in "I switched from VSCode to Zed"

dgllghr — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 15:00:33 +0000

I would love to switch but the battery draw on my mac is just too much! I like to move around to different places in my home as I work so being able to be on battery for a while is a must for me (not to mention that I do travel occasionally)

New comment by dgllghr in "Market design can feed the poor"

dgllghr — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 13:25:32 +0000

It’s a good thing they had central planning to come up with this system and well defined regulations to ensure it worked appropriately.

New comment by dgllghr in "Gild Just One Lily"

dgllghr — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 10:45:16 +0000

I think he has gilded many. Always gilded, though, never actually gold

New comment by dgllghr in ""Have your best baby" ad campaign"

dgllghr — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 13:12:13 +0000

I’m changing my last name to Singh and naming my “best baby” Khan Noonien