Hacker News: fallingfrog

New comment by fallingfrog in "The first early human eggs from stem cells"

fallingfrog — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:09:42 +0000

I have noticed that lately certain topics on HN seem to be eliciting low quality comments like "genetics/evolution don't yet seem to fully explain how humans exist". That is a really ignorant and silly thing to say. Are we being flooded with AI generated comment slop or do topics involving genetics attract a less knowledgeable crowd?

New comment by fallingfrog in "War Crimes Seem to Be Official US Policy Now"

fallingfrog — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 20:19:13 +0000

Ah. ...first time?

Sorry but we've been committing war crimes as a matter of policy for decades at least.

New comment by fallingfrog in "Magnifica Humanitas"

fallingfrog — Wed, 27 May 2026 03:31:09 +0000

Yes, all this is my understanding also. I would add to that that think it's good to keep as a goal that we want to have the political ability to make prudent changes to avoid disasters even if those disasters are not totally world ending but merely catastrophic levels of suffering for a hundred years or so.

New comment by fallingfrog in "Russian Troops' Fear Grows as Ukraine AI "Slaughterbot" Drones Headhunt Them"

fallingfrog — Thu, 21 May 2026 06:41:47 +0000

"Politicians hide themselves away

They only started the war

Why should they go out to fight?

They leave that role to the poor"

Nothing ever changes.

New comment by fallingfrog in "Idempotency is easy until the second request is different"

fallingfrog — Sun, 10 May 2026 15:18:26 +0000

Idempotency is just the next generation realizing that goto and global variables are still antipatterns.

And then some lazy birdbrain will come up with some new way to either jump to a random place in the code without guardrails on program state, or referencing data that other code or threads could have touched, and they'll call it a time saving feature.

And then we will all learn the hard way that those annoying restrictions were in place for a reason.

This is the great circle of life and death and rebirth

New comment by fallingfrog in "Sam Altman falls out of love with universal basic income"

fallingfrog — Fri, 01 May 2026 23:32:08 +0000

Sam Altman is willing to roll the dice on human extinction in order to make a buck. Even though hes already outrageously rich.

I feel that I cannot properly voice my feelings about him without being banned from hacker news.

New comment by fallingfrog in "For first time since World War II, US national debt now larger than its economy"

fallingfrog — Fri, 01 May 2026 15:54:23 +0000

And assuming that median salary drops the same percentage as gdp per capita, it would drop to 41k, which puts a lot of people beneath the threshold to pay their mortgage.

Of course taking a huge pay cut is not something most people are willing to do, so you'd probably actually see mass unemployment and salaries being inflated away.

In response the fed will do the only thing it knows, which is to rev up the money printer even more. But thats going to make all these problems worse, leading to a vicious cycle.

And in the midst of economic chaos, people's danger switches get activated and they will turn to an authoritarian strongman who will make them feel safe.

And generally speaking, once such a person is in power, they can only think of one way to solve their problems, which is to plunder their neighbors by going to war. Thats basically the imperial cycle.

It sucks to be able to see all this coming and yet be powerless to stop it..

New comment by fallingfrog in "For first time since World War II, US national debt now larger than its economy"

fallingfrog — Fri, 01 May 2026 15:26:12 +0000

The debt can be inflated away (which is the only plausible way this is going to go) but it might cause the dollar to be dropped as the world reserve currency. I don't know for sure what happens in that case..

I suspect that imports would become enormously more expensive, which would reveal the catastrophic erosion in worker rights and pay due to neoliberalism. People would be suddenly aware of how much less they are making and how much more the wealthy are taking than was the case 40 years ago. This in turn might result in political instability. But who knows.

New comment by fallingfrog in "Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case"

fallingfrog — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 16:03:41 +0000

They'll rule in favor of whoever has the most money.

New comment by fallingfrog in "Deezer says 44% of songs uploaded to its platform daily are AI-generated"

fallingfrog — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:39:00 +0000

Sorry, but that music is really boring. I certainly would not have bought it in 1983. But, you're right that the average person on the street probably can't tell the difference.

Music out there in the real world runs in clusters and communities that form around real world places where people go to be together and make and share things. Its so much more colorful and interesting than you can imagine. But, it is admittedly just a small slice of the weirdest and most creative and crazy people who participate in those communities. For everyone else music is just a recording that appears out of thin air in their car stereo without context and the glossiest product is the one they pick.

What do you think of this?

https://youtu.be/5KszaGOsFR8?si=YVorLTuTMr7jjAvY

Or this? https://youtu.be/pdEmM79MRmU?si=CMGkWs6CyZxXyVaH

Or this?

https://youtu.be/Bdzt39vX1Sw?si=06NNB4m0xuB7Lcbl

New comment by fallingfrog in "I’m spending months coding the old way"

fallingfrog — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:56:54 +0000

I mean, that's the only way I code. I don't use llm's to do my work for me. I'm perfectly capable of solving any sort of problem on my own, and then I'll understand it well enough to explain it to someone later.

New comment by fallingfrog in "40% of lost calories globally are from beef, needing 33 cal of feed per 1 cal"

fallingfrog — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 20:42:44 +0000

Ok but don't cattle often browse on land that is too marginal for farming? And don't they eat grass? I don't know if this argument holds up.

New comment by fallingfrog in "The looming college-enrollment death spiral"

fallingfrog — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:06:38 +0000

Well this has been essentially the plan since the 70's. The 60's scared the bejeezus out of the ruling class and they began taking steps to bring the people to heel from the 70's onward. In the words of Ronald Reagan's education advisor, Roger Freeman: "We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go to college].”

New comment by fallingfrog in "Intelligent people are better judges of the intelligence of others"

fallingfrog — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:26:58 +0000

I interact with people who seem about as smart as me fairly often- my college professors for example. And, I certainly have been in many situations where my domain knowledge was vastly less than some other person with real expertise. But I have a hard time thinking of a time when I thought someone else was significantly smarter than me. Probably, that's an example of exactly what the article is talking about- maybe I've met those people but failed to recognize them. They certainly must be out there (unless i am the smartest person in the world, in which case we're all in serious trouble).

New comment by fallingfrog in "Smart people recognize each other – science proves it"

fallingfrog — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:14:51 +0000

Well, I mean, tone deaf people cannot accurately judge musical talent.

New comment by fallingfrog in "Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny"

fallingfrog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:24:07 +0000

Having proof on video of trump sexually assaulting a minor would still be significant, I think. Such footage probably exists and would make great leverage.

New comment by fallingfrog in "Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny"

fallingfrog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:20:12 +0000

And who was the person or group who made correct predictions in advance of the announcement? Why not just say who it was?

New comment by fallingfrog in "Tech companies defeat bill as AI drains local water supplies"

fallingfrog — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 18:13:49 +0000

It's funny that in movies like the matrix they imagine that humanity would fight back against the machines. In reality the first thing ai will do, which it has already done, is capture our governments through the application of money, and then the humans would first have to defeat their own institutions before they can even begin to fight the machines. Neoliberalism is profoundly unable to deal with threats if the threats produce short term profits. That goes for housing shortages, global warming, health care costs, falling birth rates, across the board if it produces short term profits that can be used to bribe politicians its impossible to address. AI is no different.

New comment by fallingfrog in "Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs"

fallingfrog — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 15:11:00 +0000

Yeah at my last job at a larger organization they would occasionally get us all in the big auditorium and start showering us with this sort of language. I would excuse myself to use the restroom then go back to my desk and get some work done. Peace and quiet! Never got called out on it, they don't need me sitting there rolling my eyes and grimacing through the whole thing anyway.

New comment by fallingfrog in "Dyson Spheres on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram"

fallingfrog — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 15:24:51 +0000

Personally I very much doubt that any civilization would build Dyson spheres in their naive spherical shell form, because the gravitational field inside a hollow shell is zero and therefore nothing would stick to the inner surface and would instead drift towards the host star. (Proved by sir Issac newton)

But more than that- the concept of the sphere is making a ton of hidden assumptions about the desirability of always wanting more and more space and energy which are probably a side effect of the kind of authoritarian power structures that rule most humans currently. But that may not be common.

Cool work though- good to know what to look for