Hacker News: etskinner

New comment by etskinner in "Show HN: Elevators"

etskinner — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 22:37:13 +0000

This could easily be done locally with no network

New comment by etskinner in "Financing the AI boom: from cash flows to debt [pdf]"

etskinner — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 02:28:07 +0000

Inference is cheap, only the training is expensive. Both Bernie and Trump have suggested doing a partial government takeover of the big AI companies to start a sovereign wealth fund.

So it would look like the government taking ownership, letting investors lose their stake, and then operating as inference-only, which would turn a profit

New comment by etskinner in "FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky"

etskinner — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 17:14:31 +0000

I think what you're missing is that they could all be focused in one spot, not spread over the city. If curved reflective buildings can melt siding, and mirror solar plants can melt salt, I'm pretty sure a city's worth of sun focused on, say, a college campus, could start a massive fire

New comment by etskinner in "No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026"

etskinner — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:32:56 +0000

Right, and orders of magnitude more people have to deal with UTC and timezones compared to TAI and the offset. So it's good to have it in the layer that it's in

New comment by etskinner in "Inkfield"

etskinner — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:51:16 +0000

If you click the splat-looking render mode, it looks more normal.

It defaults to a shader on top of the raw visualizaiont that uses a bad glyph, almost like it's making an ASCII art.

New comment by etskinner in "Do LLMs pass the mirror test?"

etskinner — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 03:14:12 +0000

Who's to say the "rules of reasoning" aren't just predicting the next thing that an intelligent person (you) would do? Emergent behavior isn't magic, it's just emergent.

New comment by etskinner in "Surprise, pay $1000"

etskinner — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:42:09 +0000

Presumably they wanted feature parity with Github Actions. If you have lots of workflows already defined in Github Actions DSL, you're not going to want to port them. And even if you do port them, the activities available in the place you port them aren't going to be the same as Github Actions; there won't be feature parity.

New comment by etskinner in "An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight"

etskinner — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:13:15 +0000

I thought about this when my catalytic converter was stolen. Part of me was like "maybe I should just strap a two $100 bills onto it with a note pleading them not to take it. But then, of course, the type of person to steal a converter is also the type of person that would take the $200 AND steal the converter

New comment by etskinner in "Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods"

etskinner — Thu, 21 May 2026 17:50:25 +0000

Once all cars are autonomous, that day is certainly coming. Even before then, it's very likely we'll see platooning in the future, even if there are still some human drivers.

Also, this already exists in some places. Look at a video of how to cross the street as a pedestrian in Vietnam: You literally just start walking across and people weave around you. Or look at driving in India and similar places.

All I'm saying is never say never

New comment by etskinner in "Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit"

etskinner — Wed, 20 May 2026 17:15:52 +0000

Seems to me that law enforcement officers should be required to carry liability insurance that they personally pay for. Have a lot of settlements / claims? Your insurance rate goes up. That happens enough and now it's not economically feasible to hold the job

New comment by etskinner in "Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license"

etskinner — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:27:17 +0000

They only open-sourced the external surface, not the internals, so it doesn't help repairability much

New comment by etskinner in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

etskinner — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:01:34 +0000

$41k doesn't sound that cheap to me, for what it is

New comment by etskinner in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

etskinner — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:57:18 +0000

Backup cameras don't require touchscreens, they just require a screen in general. Lots of makes are getting by with just putting a little 3" screen in the rear view mirror or similar

New comment by etskinner in "America will come to regret its war on taxes"

etskinner — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:10:14 +0000

Most people suggesting taxing the rich more aren't saying that the middle class should pay very little tax

New comment by etskinner in "1D Chess"

etskinner — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:01:45 +0000

Mancala is roughly 1D too!

New comment by etskinner in "Wit, unker, Git: The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy"

etskinner — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:26:06 +0000

"They" has always (in our lifetimes) been used to refer to a singular person of unknown gender. For example "someone left their coat here. They must be cold"

New comment by etskinner in "Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone"

etskinner — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 12:32:22 +0000

Grandparent comment was being sarcastic

New comment by etskinner in "Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone"

etskinner — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 08:03:30 +0000

I especially liked the part where mission control referred to using the toilet as "donation"

New comment by etskinner in "France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app"

etskinner — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 14:52:27 +0000

Strava just happens to be the most popular run tracking app. If they banned it, another would take its place. If anything, they should be working with Strava to create an incognito mode. At this point, the US military should be willing to spend millions of dollars supporting that one feature

New comment by etskinner in "QGIS 4.0"

etskinner — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:17:53 +0000

Why did you need circular maps?