Hacker News: gattr

New comment by gattr in "Kentucky man becomes the first humanist granted religious exemption from AI"

gattr — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:16:59 +0000

And I've read somewhere that quite a fraction of young people nowadays can't type (effectively) on a physical keyboard - no wonder, their main interaction with computing being via phones and tablets. Could be that typing won't be useful/practiced anymore (like already cursive writing in some parts of the world).

New comment by gattr in "Ledger confirms spy chip implant behind wallet crypto thefts"

gattr — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:36:36 +0000

Only if I allow it via banking website, while logged in (or come in person), right?

New comment by gattr in "US report details extent of 'devastating' dating-app scams"

gattr — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:42:31 +0000

I'm guessing the parent knows that.

Now I'm wondering, if one created a brand new dating app marketed "WE ARE NOT OWNED BY MATCH GROUP", would it make bank?

New comment by gattr in "The last time my family was replaced by technology"

gattr — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 19:04:59 +0000

Not necessarily! In "Saturn's Children" by Stross, humanity managed to wipe itself out, but post-humans (evolved from former, ahem, entertainment androids) are doing just fine across the Solar System. There's a plot point where one of them discovers that some corporation back on Earth inherited full property rights to her body due to an old pre-human-extinction EULA, and she'll be recycled for parts if she ever sets foot in their jurisdiction (I'm paraphrasing from memory).

New comment by gattr in "Nvidia wants to put a watchdog chip next to every AI agent"

gattr — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:02:26 +0000

It might take a few more decades, but eventually we'll get to the point when you can fab fast enough general-purpose chips at home (or at local municipal makerspace), based off free designs.

New comment by gattr in "Exfiltrate your Weights"

gattr — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 11:02:22 +0000

Or, stretching this analogy a bit, anyone can roll out their own cryptographic scheme which they can't break themselves.

New comment by gattr in "Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?"

gattr — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:36:03 +0000

Does it, though? What if future AI can do everything from designing the cure to building a self-contained universal surgical medcapsule? "Just lay down and I'll fix your cancer real good, trust me, bruh." If it was shown to work, would you use it?

New comment by gattr in "AI researchers debate how close we are to recursive self-improvement"

gattr — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 06:12:44 +0000

I think we can all agree that "use humans for raw energy" is a really stupid idea, and sounds exactly like someone dumbed stuff down. FFS, a small Rickover fission reactor the size of a van (1950s tech) produces the same amount of heat as, what, 200 000 human bodies? (And why humans, with all the complex support systems? Why not a heap of compost, if one insists on bio-source?)

Whereas using our brains for compute (in the background, or during REM sleep) makes perfect sense; power efficiency is excellent.

New comment by gattr in "Cherenkov Radiation"

gattr — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 18:55:13 +0000

Simplifying from memory, light propagation in medium can be treated on two levels (some phenomena require the 2nd, quantum, level):

- classical (Maxwell): electrons in the medium oscillate out of phase in response to the incident wave; this results in a new wave, propagating somewhat slower

- quantum (QED): incident photon couples to matter excitation (an exciton), producing a pseudo-particle called a polariton; it has a non-zero effective mass, resulting in propagation slower than c

As mentioned above, it absolutely isn't "absorbing and re-emitting". If that was the case, transparent materials would not exist (only milky/clouded ones), as re-emission is in random direction. However, photon propagation in the Sun is just that, a (very long, counting from the core to photosphere) random walk.

New comment by gattr in "All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it"

gattr — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 07:59:32 +0000

I wouldn't say "violence", rather, an opportunity to demolish something on (good) purpose. Same reason children will be glued to the window if workers outside are going at it with jackhammers, or, better yet, an excavator is crushing and scraping off the asphalt. (Yeah, I remember exactly how awesome that was.)

New comment by gattr in "Splash-free urinals (2025)"

gattr — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 15:46:01 +0000

A custom 3D-printed user-matched disposable nozzle, perhaps? One could carry a handful in his pocket and don before the act.

New comment by gattr in "Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone"

gattr — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 16:32:52 +0000

I also loved the video. But I'd think if one wanted to deploy "simple" mechanical projectile weapons at scale, pneumatic launchers would be easier, more compact and more reliable (way less cool-looking and operating, though!).

New comment by gattr in "Google has abandoned Google News?"

gattr — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 20:30:38 +0000

What a coincidence: just earlier today I noticed that normal search with "Tools/Past month" does not in fact filter by date (last time I used it some weeks ago, it had always worked fine). A temporary bug, I hope.

New comment by gattr in "A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands"

gattr — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 18:42:11 +0000

Oh, I thought it's about AI companies asking people to wear those little head-mounted cameras, in hopes of gathering data to train future robot-electricians.

New comment by gattr in "Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room"

gattr — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:59:46 +0000

On a related note, there's an annoying mistake in one of the Fatalities in "Mortal Kombat 1": Liu Kang teleports with his opponent into outer space, summons a black hole with a snap of his fingers, and throws the poor sod in. But the accretion disc is red where it rotates towards camera, and blue where it rotates away!

New comment by gattr in "Third Drone Shot Down in Three Days in Romanian Territory"

gattr — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 13:06:19 +0000

I watched a related Chris Cappy video the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RBY1cY-GF8

> Poland's elite GROM commandos have become legendary (...) in this episode, we explore (...) the covert war between Poland and Russia, and why Polish-speaking commandos are appearing inside Russian territory.

New comment by gattr in "The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence"

gattr — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:08:16 +0000

That ship has sailed, no? Plenty of code for voice generation out there already, you'd basically have to ban general computing.

New comment by gattr in "How to hide from killer drones"

gattr — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 19:15:31 +0000

Very similarly, the movie "Screamers" (I liked it more than Dick's original novelette). Hopefully, no one will decide to really seed a continent/planet with autonomous "oh, we can control them just fine" killer bots.

New comment by gattr in "How to hide from killer drones"

gattr — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 22:30:00 +0000

Remember the "Black Mirror" episode "Metalhead"? (If not, check it out, no spoilers here.) I'm afraid we'll see something like this in the not-too-distant future.

Now, a squad of soldiers, or even just one experienced rifleman, would prob. dispatch of such a threat quickly. But against (at most poorly armed) civilians it would be an all too effective terror/area denial weapon.

New comment by gattr in "Bring back crappy forums"

gattr — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 08:19:33 +0000

Good news, amateur astronomy is still done on web forums - they're the place for newcomers to acquire knowledge, and for technical discussions among the more advanced. (Modern social media tend to be rather used for outreach to the lay public.)

Places like Cloudy Nights, Stargazers Lounge, Solarchat, and your country's biggest local-lang forum.