Hacker News: gotwaz

New comment by gotwaz in "Ask HN: Why Isn't Everything Public?"

gotwaz — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 05:33:55 +0000

Because if a chimp knows you are watching it, it has the ability to change its behavior. Then you have to react. It reacts to your reaction and its turtles all the way down.

The large point is chimps have 3 inch brains. Which creates upper bounds on what they can understand and control. And to survive and cope with the fact that they cant control everything in the universe they start making up stories. If only...

New comment by gotwaz in "Comparison shows audiophiles waste a lot of money"

gotwaz — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 16:32:14 +0000

For some, tis not about Quality but about Control. "If x y z happens I feel safe/in control". Changing anything about it = unsafe/the sky may fall.

Same logic scales up to social level if you notice what large groups burn cash on. The only way to reduce the cash burn is to give them something else to do that makes them feel safe and in control. Which is not for the faint of heart.

New comment by gotwaz in "Pentagon prepares for weeks of ground operations in Iran"

gotwaz — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:44:10 +0000

My point was the regime may collapse for other reasons. Just like the USSR. There was no dearth of plans there and no lack of effort of US trying to destablize them.

New comment by gotwaz in "Pentagon prepares for weeks of ground operations in Iran"

gotwaz — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 05:21:21 +0000

Iran already has a lot of issues. If the regime does collapse over night ala Soviets/Arab Spring by just making some mistake while reacting to all this pressure, I dont look forward to the amount of gloating Trump and Netanyahu are going to do.

New comment by gotwaz in "Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs"

gotwaz — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 23:03:43 +0000

People created limited liability and private equity. Fiction is not something you get rid off. Its something you live with. It is a permanent side effect of how the over rated Humam Brain works. The brain makes predictions over multiple time horizons. When there are contradictions between these predictions how is the 3 inch chimp brain supposed to handle it while not splitting? Make up a story for the sake of coherence. Everyone is doing it everyday. They are all making up fictions to handle unpredictability.

New comment by gotwaz in "Michael Mosley: 'Forget walking 10k steps a day' (2018)"

gotwaz — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 17:45:26 +0000

Climbing ladders also works. Gets the hear pumping faster than brisk walks.

New comment by gotwaz in "Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables"

gotwaz — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 16:43:51 +0000

The key is factories ideally are mobile. Follow the winds. Come online and go offline when the wind blows. Use as much free energy as possible to hit yearly production targets and then take the rest of the year off.

New comment by gotwaz in "Sports Betting Is Everywhere, Especially on Credit Reports"

gotwaz — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 04:26:31 +0000

It takes a village. Especially if the problem is systemic and not just the individual. When you count the number of people with some addiction or the other the total represents how many people havent found anything better to do within the system. Thats like finding cells in your brain that are busy looping randomly not fully attached in some useful way to the system. Ofcourse you can zap them and isolate them or remove them but the imaginative solution is reattach them and make them useful to the system in some way. Cause the brains that do will have larger capacities and capabilities than brains that dont.

New comment by gotwaz in "DOJ confirms FBI Director Kash Patel's personal email was hacked"

gotwaz — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 01:44:03 +0000

"Competent" people are not valuable and over rated because they will flake out in such jobs when the group holds them responsible for all sorts of things they have no control over. They are the first people who recognize lumits. Their own, their teams and the systems. But people dont want to hear about Limits. They want saviors and messaihs. They want fantasy and magic. So the system runs not optimized for efficiency but illusion of control, for damping of anxieties and fears.

New comment by gotwaz in "Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence"

gotwaz — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:15:51 +0000

Why does sycophantic behavior and attachement/dependence even emerge and exist in the chimp troupe?

AI was not required to produce these behaviors.

Prosocial interactions are important for certain groups to stay sane not everyone. The evidence is in the fact every culture has produced some form of monastic life. And we have major religions like Buddhism built and surving for thousands of years on foundations of detachment. Thats is not an accident because people arent all alike. Philosophy even teaches "Detachment and Flourishing" - https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-181/lecture-8

New comment by gotwaz in "Ask HN: Build trust for closed source product"

gotwaz — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:01:50 +0000

I said your needs. Think about why you are doing what you are doing. And at what point that need is met. So if your need is financial then you say my need is to recover my costs(time you put in * hourly rate+hardware costs+energy costs etc etc) + some profit. Once you have achieved that the moat becomes less important right? If the need is not financial but this project is going to look good on my resume and get me more interesting work, then the moment you do get a better job the moat doesnt matter. So I was encouraging you to think about why you do what you do. Cuz after you feel like you have meet your own needs moats matter less.

New comment by gotwaz in "Ask HN: Build trust for closed source product"

gotwaz — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 01:57:00 +0000

Think about what your own needs are. Moats are only required till the need is meet.

New comment by gotwaz in "AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion"

gotwaz — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 18:44:34 +0000

Religions have been doing it without tech for thousands of years. The 3 inch chimp brain is not exactly immune to delusion. In fact delusion or story telling is fundamental to how it handles unpredictability.

New comment by gotwaz in "Leon Radvinsky, 43, Dies; Built the Adult-Entertainment Giant OnlyFans"

gotwaz — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:43:56 +0000

These platforms are missing a psych dashboard. Too much time has gone into building money and attention dashboards. So things resembles a farm or a factory. People arent corn or widgets and consequence shall accumulate unless there are dignity generating/restoring processes too.

New comment by gotwaz in "Ask HN: How do I contribute to OSS without giving training data to AI companies?"

gotwaz — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:36:47 +0000

API + controlled access.

New comment by gotwaz in "UK total wind generation record beaten today"

gotwaz — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:46:39 +0000

Some context would make it more interesting. How much of it was used? How much does wind contribute to full day consumption?

New comment by gotwaz in "Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms"

gotwaz — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:53:45 +0000

Just have to read the quarterly conference calls between Zuck and Wall Street. Both groups are in total denial. And will be till we never hear from Zuck ever again.

New comment by gotwaz in "Regular army and reserve components enlistment program: Summary of change"

gotwaz — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 04:36:25 +0000

Farms need fit 40 year olds too.

New comment by gotwaz in "How the world’s first electric grid was built"

gotwaz — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 22:41:07 +0000

Fragmentation is natural. The human body doesnt need all this infra and a grid operator/energy schedules to run. Cells dont bill each other if they over/under generate ATP molecules. There is no deviation settlement mech and no need for everything to sync to some arbit frequency. Watch how the grid changes post Ukraine drone wars where taking out generators, transmission lines and substations has become a fully automated process.

New comment by gotwaz in "JP Morgan's Monitors Employee's Keystrokes and Meetings; for Their Wellbeing"

gotwaz — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 08:12:29 +0000

They have also built a secular seminary in Syracuse where they train managers to provide Pastoral Care.