Hacker News: gcanyon

New comment by gcanyon in "Eternity in six hours: Intergalactic spreading of intelligent life (2013)"

gcanyon — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:22:18 +0000

For sure, but that's my point; "taking a few pair of animals and relocate them to a safer area" is not what this paper is discussing. A better parallel would be "take digital photos of the endangered animal and circulate them around the internet." The proposed method doesn't spread us -- it spreads teeny tiny machines we made, for no reason at all other than to say we did it. And long after we're gone, when the Sun has died, far away galaxies will be polluted with little machines, each containing a copy of some data about us.

New comment by gcanyon in "Eternity in six hours: Intergalactic spreading of intelligent life (2013)"

gcanyon — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:07:43 +0000

But the thing is that the Fermi paradox isn't illuminated by scenarios that are technically possible but extremely unlikely. I get that all it takes is some subset of people who want to do it to make it happen, or as you say, some alien species that decides it's a good idea, but I'd argue that the idea is patently bad, and there's good reason to think that no species would bother -- not 100%, obviously, and the steel man argument would say it only takes a fraction of a percent, but I'm personally unconvinced that anyone would bother.

New comment by gcanyon in "Eternity in six hours: Intergalactic spreading of intelligent life (2013)"

gcanyon — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 16:43:16 +0000

No humans go, no information returns.

Sending an acorn-sized probe to another galaxy to make more acorn-sized probes: what even is the point of that? To make very slow grey goo a reality?

If actual humans find a way to go to Andromeda (other than waiting for it to arrive, heh) and want to, good for them. Otherwise we should actively discourage anything like the project proposed

New comment by gcanyon in "Artemis II safely splashes down"

gcanyon — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:01:39 +0000

Has NASA (or anyone) said anything about how the heat shield performed?

New comment by gcanyon in "Show HN: Pardonned.com – A searchable database of US Pardons"

gcanyon — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 13:57:14 +0000

Ford did real damage that day.

New comment by gcanyon in "Artemis II safely splashes down"

gcanyon — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 04:56:25 +0000

The movie was good too. I haven't seen it in years, but from memory:

Gordo! Who's the best pilot you ever saw? -- You're lookin' at him!

Loan me a stick of Beemans.

Light this candle!

It just blew!

No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

New comment by gcanyon in "Helium is hard to replace"

gcanyon — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:24:28 +0000

I don't want "the other side" to fail, and I absolutely don't wan the U.S. to fail when they are in power. I want the U.S. to succeed, and for "the other side" to be competent and fair.

New comment by gcanyon in "Show HN: I built a 2-min quiz that shows you how bad you are at estimating"

gcanyon — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:40:42 +0000

I think the 100% certain and always right scenario invalidates the calculation. In that outcome you know nothing about my (over) confidence level when I am wrong.

You should either return NA in that circumstance, or keep asking questions until you have actual data to work with.

New comment by gcanyon in "They're made out of meat (1991)"

gcanyon — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:41:38 +0000

They only look like they're made of meat. And they only look like they're made of meat to you because you know you're made of meat, and they look like you.

To them, they're just disguised as "what the creatures on this planet look like," which is obviously (to them) not meat, because they've never seen meat beings. To them, we are obviously not-meat, although how we appear is compatible with being meat. But silicone dyed the correct shade can look like meat. Stone painted the right color can look like meat.

And if you say that silicone and stone don't look like meat even when prepared to copy it, bear in mind that we are made of meat and very good at distinguishing it. Different races favor different attributes for distinguishing one person from another, hence why "they all look alike" is somewhat true for pretty much any "them" you care to name. Rocky from Project Hail Mary almost certainly thinks all humans look alike.

New comment by gcanyon in "The team behind a pro-Iran, Lego-themed viral-video campaign"

gcanyon — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 03:48:43 +0000

Wait, cites on the "US supplied Iranian protestors with weapons" bit? Other than Trump? It sounds ridiculous to question whether he's telling the truth, but here we are...

New comment by gcanyon in "Show HN: I built a 2-min quiz that shows you how bad you are at estimating"

gcanyon — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:05:29 +0000

Wait, so roughly is it rewarding being confident when correct, and penalizing being confident when wrong? Meaning that the highest score is only achievable if you answer fully confident true or false, and get all 10 correct?

If so, isn't that conflating knowledge with over/under confidence?

New comment by gcanyon in "Gemma 4 on iPhone"

gcanyon — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 11:59:41 +0000

> Everyone's a little bit racist, sometimes.

You're welcome...

New comment by gcanyon in "Banray.eu: Raising awareness of the terrible idea that is always-on AI glasses"

gcanyon — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:45:08 +0000

Is the terrible idea "always-on AI glasses" or is it "giving all the data they collect to Meta with no proper regulation in place"?

My phone and laptop already collect a ton of data that is more than I would like to share with a company that thinks of me as a product. But that data collection is unavoidable as a side effect of very useful functionality. We need to focus on trust, not restriction.

New comment by gcanyon in "Scientists Figured Out How Eels Reproduce (2022)"

gcanyon — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:40:59 +0000

"figured out how" seems a little strong, when:

> questions remain about the timing and navigation of the eels across thousands of kilometers of open water

New comment by gcanyon in "'Fatal decision': EU slammed for caving to US pressure on digital rules"

gcanyon — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:51:49 +0000

When Disney World is behind a sea wall, we will have deserved it.

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

gcanyon — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:49:05 +0000

Every time early astronaut relief comes up (it's come up two or three times, which is more nickels than I would have expected) I see this line:

> being able to pee and poop simultaneously

... and I know that I could never have been an astronaut. There are many other reasons, but the ability to hold one while doing the other... yeah, I'm out.

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

gcanyon — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:45:29 +0000

More like an infection certainty. Don't ask me how I know :-(

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

gcanyon — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:40:31 +0000

They should have trained plumbers to be astronauts instead of training astronauts to be plumbers. (Armageddon reference)

But seriously, although I guess it’s fair to say that errors will occur, still: they couldn’t get the plumbing right?

New comment by gcanyon in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

gcanyon — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:53:04 +0000

I didn’t say it was original with the U.S., just that it has been their strategy for some time.

And the U.S. has been prepping/testing lasers on boats for some time. Combine rapid fire/quick kill with good radar and you have (airborne) drone defense.

New comment by gcanyon in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

gcanyon — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:23:21 +0000

I am not a military expert, but the US theory of war has for a long time started with and was based on airspace dominance/control, and drones/cheap missiles put a serious dent in achieving that. Maybe laser weapons put the balance back toward the side that has them?