Hacker News: geertj

New comment by geertj in "Starship V3"

geertj — Wed, 13 May 2026 11:10:17 +0000

The plan is to launch a constellation of smaller AI sats not a monolithic large data center. The calculations I have seen actually have a smaller radiator area than solar panels. Scott Manley’s has a video on this where he goes into some numbers.

New comment by geertj in "Starship V3"

geertj — Wed, 13 May 2026 11:00:53 +0000

I don’t think people are confused between the two. What’s happening is that drive by objections have no real way to assess viability. That calculation you ask for has line items in it that greatly depend on engineering optimizations that, unless you work in the field, are hard to estimate accurately.

New comment by geertj in "Starship V3"

geertj — Wed, 13 May 2026 10:54:05 +0000

The problem putting them in space solves is the approx 5X more solar energy without needing batteries for day and night cycles, along with some smaller wins due to less structural support needed due to microgravity.

New comment by geertj in "Starship V3"

geertj — Wed, 13 May 2026 10:49:14 +0000

If you mean whether he’s putting his money where his mouth is, he is doing that by risking the future of the company that is his biggest asset on it. It may not be exactly 3 years. But is will very likely happen.

New comment by geertj in "Starship V3"

geertj — Wed, 13 May 2026 10:35:33 +0000

The always on orbit exists and is called a dawn-dusk Sun synchronous orbit. It is an orbit that is always above the terminator (line between night and day) where it can face the Sun 100% of the time.

This orbit has to rotate about a degree every day to follow the terminator as the earth orbits the Sun. It uses the equatorial bulge of the earth to achieve that rotation without have to spend rocket fuel. It is really quite interesting.

New comment by geertj in "SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B"

geertj — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 02:08:44 +0000

So far only Nasdaq has changed its rules and will allow fast entry in 15 trading days. S&P has not changed its rules, not yet at least. Total indexed capital of Nasdaq is 1.4T vs 16T in the S&P500. Stated reason for fast tracking is that the indices are supposed to be a broad representation of the market, and leaving a 2T company out would be a significant tracking error.

I do agree that the optics of this aren’t great, and it’s rather easy to be cynical about motives.

New comment by geertj in "SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B"

geertj — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:04:01 +0000

SpaceX reuses its boosters 20+ times. Surely the depreciation is tiny when compared to the revenue of 60M+ per launch?

New comment by geertj in "EFF is leaving X"

geertj — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 11:02:45 +0000

I don’t think your argument holds, or at least, there is missing data. We have a different administration now, and I suspect it significantly reduced the number takedown requests, maybe by an order of magnitude. I would expect that the remaining requests are for unambiguous legal issues and therefore have a higher rate of granting them.

New comment by geertj in "EFF is leaving X"

geertj — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:11:38 +0000

What exactly has Elon done to limit your freedom? For me, Elon has increased my freedom because I can read about certain viewpoints that were previously censored on Twitter.

New comment by geertj in "Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI"

geertj — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:37:52 +0000

> So sometimes when some Junior dev discovers Rust and they get really obnoxious with their evangelicalism it can be very off putting. Really not sure how to solve it. It is good when people get excited about a language. It just can be very annoying for everyone else sometimes.

This rings very true, and I've actually disadvantaged myself somewhat here. I was involved in projects that made very dubious decisions to rewrite large systems in Rust. This caused me to actively stay away from the language, and stick to C++, investing lots of time in overcoming its shortcomings.

Now years later, I started with Rust in a new project. And I must say, I like the language, I really like the tools, and I like the ecosystem. On some dimension I wish I would have done this sooner (but on the other hand, I think I have a better justification of "why Rust" now).

New comment by geertj in "Tesla Sales Down 55% UK, 58% Spain, 59% Germany, 81% Netherlands, 93% Norway"

geertj — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:11:02 +0000

I have not been proclaiming scary good every week for the last 10 years. In fact, I have cancelled my subscription at least two times, once on v13 and once on v14, with the reason ‘not good enough yet.’ I am telling you that for me personally it has crossed a threshold very recently.

New comment by geertj in "Tesla Sales Down 55% UK, 58% Spain, 59% Germany, 81% Netherlands, 93% Norway"

geertj — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:35:12 +0000

Make sure you are on AI4 hardware when you do. If you buy FSD on AI3 you’ll be limited to v13, which is is terrible. I have used both and they are in different leagues altogether.

New comment by geertj in "Tesla Sales Down 55% UK, 58% Spain, 59% Germany, 81% Netherlands, 93% Norway"

geertj — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 06:52:33 +0000

How long ago was that? I doubt it was the v14 software. The software has become scary good in the last few weeks, in my own subjective experience.

New comment by geertj in "Tesla Sales Down 55% UK, 58% Spain, 59% Germany, 81% Netherlands, 93% Norway"

geertj — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 06:48:55 +0000

Tesla have recently started introducing unsupervised cars cars as well.

New comment by geertj in "xAI joins SpaceX"

geertj — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 14:55:57 +0000

> It stops making sense the second you ask how you’d dissipate the heat any GPU would create.

The answer, as you surmised, is indeed radiators.

New comment by geertj in "Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system"

geertj — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 15:29:40 +0000

On the last day of the year, I am taking a few minutes to linger on this. At face value, most would agree with this, myself included. But I think we can dive one layer deeper. There are different schools of thoughts whether mankind is inherently good or evil. Over the years, I have become pretty firm believer that every person has the innate capacity for both good and evil, and the outcome is determined by both character and circumstances. Solzhenitsyn famously wrote (quote by Gemini):

"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil."

If you subscribe to this, then a weapons system can also be a force for good, if used by an entity for the purpose of "peace through strength". The strength keeps our innate capability for evil in check, as the consequences for evil would be guaranteed. A case in point is the MAD doctrine for nuclear weapons which has prevented a world war for the last 80 years.

I'd appreciate philosophical replies. Am I wrong, either in a detail or at the core of the argument? Are there additional layers? I would like to kindly ask to keep replies away from views on the specific players in this specific press release. We'd just be reiterating our positions without convincing anyone.

(edit: grammar, slight rewording)

New comment by geertj in "SpaceX launches Starship megarocket on 11th test flight"

geertj — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 01:14:43 +0000

Snarky comment that adds nothing to the conversation.

New comment by geertj in "DARPA project for automated translation from C to Rust (2024)"

geertj — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 22:02:44 +0000

It’s sad you are getting downvoted for simply expressing what seems to be a genuine opinion.

New comment by geertj in "Nvidia buys $5B in Intel"

geertj — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 12:36:10 +0000

> The plans for glulags for detractors are also being placed.

This needlessly divisive and devoid of any factual basis. No gulags will exist and you know it.

New comment by geertj in "Nvidia buys $5B in Intel"

geertj — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 12:30:23 +0000

> It’s so gross that companies can just dilute and create stock out of thin air like this.

Intel is up 30% pre market on this news so I think the existing shareholders will be fine.