Hacker News: eastof

New comment by eastof in "Travel Locally, Where You Are"

eastof — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 21:30:21 +0000

Yeah that makes sense, that's too bad. The coasts are the most interesting places for local travel, but the elites living there don't seem to have the time of day for it. More for me I guess.

New comment by eastof in "Travel Locally, Where You Are"

eastof — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 21:18:45 +0000

Would you mind sharing the general region where you are? Based on your criticisms it sounds like the US, but my experience is quite different. I have only lived on the West coast though, and we're quite spoiled with amazing natural beauty around every corner here. I had a great time road tripping around small towns in the northeast around Vermont and Maine though.

New comment by eastof in "Travel locally, where you are"

eastof — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 21:12:28 +0000

I am a huge proponent of this. I find it shocking how many people I talk to in California have never even heard of so many amazing parts of the state outside of a few urban bubbles of SF/LA/San Diego and major attractions like Yosemite. Such a better experience in nature when you aren't surrounded by tourists in places like the Mendocino forest or the Inyo mountains. I also learn so much about our history and how regular people live in small rural towns, they often put effort into preserving it, and the locals love to talk about it. I also love seeing all of the huge mines, factories, infrastructure projects, etc. that support our cities, but people rarely think about.

New comment by eastof in "OpenCV 5 Is Here: The Biggest Leap in Years for Computer Vision"

eastof — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:20:23 +0000

One of the great things about OpenCV is how ubiquitous it is, there's a ton samples online and well represented in frontier model training data. I recently vibe-coded an object detector for my own personal photo library so I could separate out my pictures with humans in them. Very approachable with Codex + feeding it a sample from Github.

New comment by eastof in "Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI"

eastof — Thu, 21 May 2026 07:44:10 +0000

I wish this were true but they get paid by taxes. Besides, there are few things more unpleasant than having your hard earned money taken away from you, regardless of how it happens. I don't think it takes fancy paperwork to make people oppose it.

New comment by eastof in "David Attenborough's 100th Birthday"

eastof — Fri, 08 May 2026 23:11:09 +0000

The list you linked explicitly excludes emissions from agriculture, you are talking about %70 of what they measured, not overall emissions. If everyone stopped eating meat, it would reduce overall global emissions by a third which is hugely significant.

New comment by eastof in "David Attenborough's 100th Birthday"

eastof — Fri, 08 May 2026 22:52:28 +0000

No one is saying fields of corn and soybean wouldn't exist, but we would have far less of them without animal agriculture. You are creating a false dichotomy of "sustainable"/"not sustainable" the reality is human societies would be much more sustainable without animal agriculture. More sustainable does in fact result in less extinctions/ecosystem impact and reduced climate change.

Maybe I'm wrong but reading your comment it feels like you are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and you use your conclusion that we will never be sustainable as your excuse to continue to eat animals.

New comment by eastof in "Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit"

eastof — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 06:14:57 +0000

You are still falling for the evil genius trap. The truth is all of us treat our fellow humans this way, see Singer's drowning child. We're simply not wired to care as much about even large groups of people when they are not people we regularly interact with.

New comment by eastof in "How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips"

eastof — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 23:14:12 +0000

We haven't always been awful at keeping secrets, see the actual Manhattan Project. I like the optimism of your proposal, but how would those US companies continue the same level of R&D investment without those extra profits? If the government just directly invests, then you've just become the enemy.

New comment by eastof in "How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips"

eastof — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 23:04:56 +0000

Is there any other way to see it than just we are too divided and 50% of our own people just think we are the bad guys? What you describe is so obvious but one political side in the US at least pretends this isn't happening and actively does anything they can to hamper any response to it. I would love to be convinced otherwise because I am also part of the division, I truly don't understand the other side at all.

New comment by eastof in "Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence"

eastof — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 02:33:59 +0000

In a parallel universe tobacco is critical to the national security interest of the state. I feel you and other commenters in this thread are ignoring the fact that the outcome of the next war will likely be decided on the cyber front.

New comment by eastof in "Alignment is capability"

eastof — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 16:47:57 +0000

Interesting, I understood the dictatorship on the moon as having been based primarily on the AI since the regime didn't have many boots on the ground.

New comment by eastof in "Alignment is capability"

eastof — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 16:38:48 +0000

Just moves the goal posts to overthrowing the goal of the AI right? "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" depicts exactly this.

New comment by eastof in "A Weekend at the Immersion Larp Festival"

eastof — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 14:51:27 +0000

Doesn't Hamas do the same?

New comment by eastof in "China's total wind and solar capacity outstrips coal"

eastof — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 01:54:01 +0000

The reason it's a bigger issue for solar is that you don't get to choose where the best place to put it is, and it might be really inconvenient. Coal plant you can intentionally put it outside the city, but not too far and where a flat road can connect them. Solar is usually best placed in a desert, and usually people don't live anywhere near deserts, and usually they're separated from where people live by mountain ranges (i.e. the Mojave to LA).

New comment by eastof in "Data Formats: 3D, Audio, Image"

eastof — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 14:00:15 +0000

This is awesome! I haven't found this detailed of a description of the vox format in one place anywhere. This will help me a ton on my hobby project for which I wrote my own vox library to write files.

New comment by eastof in "Komorebi: Tiling Window Management for Windows"

eastof — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 22:28:38 +0000

This is not the same thing. "Dappled light" refers to the pattern on the lit objects, while this is referring to the visible beams of light themselves a la https://live.staticflickr.com/3342/3663701610_a5f8e10d7a.jpg

I've heard people call it "sun rays" or "sun beams" in English, but it's definitely not a well defined concept.

New comment by eastof in "Komorebi: Tiling Window Management for Windows"

eastof — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 21:44:24 +0000

There is also a word for this in Icelandic I believe. I remember seeing an interview with the Icelandic band Sólstafir, and they said this is the meaning of their name. I can't find the link now though.

New comment by eastof in "New York Establishes Stringent Protections to Safeguard Kids on Social Media"

eastof — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 23:09:19 +0000

> New Dork Establishes the Nation’s Most Stringent Protections To Safeguard Kids on Piles of Dry Tinder

Governor Kathy Jochul today signed nation-leading legislation to combat match sales to protect kids. Sale of matches to children under the age of 18 is now prohibited. This historic legislation helps parents ensure their children can't self-immolate.

New comment by eastof in "Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers"

eastof — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 07:20:56 +0000

Maybe more likely they just have people inside Apple?