Hacker News: htek

New comment by htek in "How an oil refinery works"

htek — Fri, 01 May 2026 18:26:38 +0000

Impressive. I had to perform a site survey at a refinery for an engineering firm I worked for in the US. It was situated outside of a poor/working class, predominantly minority town. The smell hit us in the car as we got off the interstate. The windows were rolled up and the A/C was blasting (it was the middle of summer). The air was hazy miles from the plant and stank of petroleum. It looked like a dystopian video game with a sepia-toned filter over what felt like a deserted town. The noises on site went from bad to horrific (with signage indicating permanent hearing damage if you spent any time in the area for more than a minute to traverse the space while wearing earplugs and headphones). And the suddenly sweet smell of benzene from the (apparently broken for a number of undisclosed years) recovery system when the wind shifted.

New comment by htek in "How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]"

htek — Fri, 01 May 2026 15:48:10 +0000

I took far too many ethics and philosophy electives to have a well-paying career in computing. I should've just taken the one required ethics course for the major and gone to work for the "kinetic delivery system" company that tried to recruit me.

New comment by htek in "How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]"

htek — Fri, 01 May 2026 15:33:47 +0000

How else are you going to justify the ridiculous membership fee, if not with the lending library of national secrets? Rules for thee and not for me and all that.

New comment by htek in "Online age verification is the hill to die on"

htek — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 18:30:10 +0000

At least the EU has GDPR. In the US, our personal data is collected by every app and website and company and packaged, sold and sifted through by a vast collection of private data brokers which the government already ingests.

New comment by htek in "At long last, InfoWars is ours"

htek — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:10:59 +0000

I looked it up and was not surprised to see the rabid ramblings of a tech bro psychopath (but I repeat myself) with a drug addiction who gleefully admitted to wanting to hunt down Palantir's detractors with AI drones used to spray them with fentanyl-laced urine.

New comment by htek in "Playdate’s handheld changed how Duke University teaches game design"

htek — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:16:16 +0000

One professor at my poorly subsidized state uni who had a book he required for class was $180 or so. He had enough (spiral bound Xeroxed) copies in the library for everyone to borrow for the semester. Or you could buy a shiny new one from the bookstore or online at full fare. Another gave the classes copies of the chapters.

New comment by htek in "The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying"

htek — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:12:59 +0000

That says more about the developer than procedural generation as a whole. Using procedural generation IS difficult, it requires understanding how to set up constraints on your p-random generated elements and ensuring the code validates that you have a "good" level/puzzle/whatever before dumping the PC into it.

New comment by htek in "Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court"

htek — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:43:41 +0000

If there was a functioning DOJ, they could bring RICO charges against the whole administration, their business associates and involved family members, all of whom are co-conspirators to corruption of government and bribery. But that would never happen, of course, because Americans don't riot en masse and demand accountability for corrupt government officials.

New comment by htek in "430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found"

htek — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:27:31 +0000

Of course it does. And I should have said not just the military, but the government in general. From day 1 he was working to infiltrate government databases and networking. He was having his DOGE lackeys installing Starlink at the White House [0] and buildings of federal agencies he was raiding to exfiltrate PII and sensitive, if not classified, data from to his own servers for likely use to influence American sentiment and target groups or individuals. So says a whistleblower Dan Berulis [1] and a DOGE goon was caught by Secret Service trying to install a Starlink device on the roof of the Eisenhower Federal Building across from the White House [2]. There is absolutely no valid need for a private network operating in parallel with the US government's system. Unless the intent was to avoid detection when exfiltrating data to private systems.

0. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/18/musk-starlin...

1. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-...

2. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/doge-roof-elon-musk-st...

New comment by htek in "CISA’s acting head uploaded sensitive files into public version of ChatGPT"

htek — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:08:08 +0000

The polygraph is still used for security vetting, today. No word on whether they still read a lamb's entrails for portents or consult the dead with a Ouija board.

New comment by htek in "Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants"

htek — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:53:23 +0000

It's a symptom of the "health care" insurance industry. Many people end up paying a specialist doctor's co-pay when they see a psychiatrist. Some plans limit you to a maximum number of sessions you can have (6, in my case) per year. Talk therapy eats up sessions and co-pays like Pac-Man eats dots. One doctor expected me to come in twice a week. Americans don't get all the PTO and/or excused sick time they want to accommodate such a schedule.

New comment by htek in "Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants"

htek — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:46:56 +0000

The problem with antidepressants are that while we know, more or less, what they do, we don't know why they work for some and not for others. Escitalopram (Lexapro) was a vast improvement for me over Citalopram. Then it plateaued and a year later, left me anhedonic. Tried an SNRI that would give me brain zaps every day a few hours before my next dose and it was horrendous to quit using. It also messed with my ability to meditate for a long while. Basically, I could put myself in a mental state that would trigger the same kind of painful brain zaps that withdrawal from the SNRI caused.

New comment by htek in "Extremophile molds are invading art museums"

htek — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:40:20 +0000

Cold Atmospheric Plasma is a possible way to kill molds on artwork, non-destructively.

New comment by htek in "430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found"

htek — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:41:58 +0000

> Musk driving space technology forward, and I don't see him acting militaristic.

Surely, you jest. He's heavily entwined his companies with the US military. StarLink is used heavily in battlefield communications [1]. He sought to deny the courtesy to one of our allies when Russia disrupted Ukraine's satellite communications, but eventually reversed course over the optics of it [2].

Musk's Grok is going to be used by the Pentagon for the usual pursuits of police states everywhere [3].

1. https://spacenews.com/spacexs-expanding-role-in-u-s-defense/

2. https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/when-a-ceo-plays-presi...

3. https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-gains-favor-as-pentagon-emb...

New comment by htek in "Inside CECOT – 60 Minutes [video]"

htek — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 18:51:58 +0000

The FTC has not done its job since after the Microsoft consent decree and economists have claimed that up is down and somehow preventing market monopolies is bad for the economy.

New comment by htek in "A school locked down after AI flagged a gun. It was a clarinet"

htek — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 13:39:14 +0000

This is just conjecture, but I suspect there will be as much review of photos, application of good investigative work and overall professionalism as is conducted during anonymous, virtually untraceable Swatting incidents that terrify the victims, if not get them killed.

New comment by htek in "DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says"

htek — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 20:38:24 +0000

That's Corporatism. It's from the fascist playbook where the state takes partial or complete ownership of private companies. Where does that money go, to some slush fund for the president? The reason for the export controls is to keep our potential adversaries from being on the bleeding edge of frontier AI. It goes against the US's interests to give China a leg up with advanced chips. It's almost laughable, of course, as the Nvidia chips are already manufactured in a country that China claims as their own. If they ever pressed the issue, we could find ourselves without the most advanced chips.

New comment by htek in "Ultra-processed food linked to harm in every major human organ, study finds"

htek — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 13:54:57 +0000

Those identically shaped chicken, turkey and ham for slicing at the deli are generally mechanically separated.

New comment by htek in "Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright"

htek — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 15:36:54 +0000

Most people don't change the brightness of their lights. This is driven by industry using HID and LED lights that have a higher color temperature than the old lighting. It's really a failure of governmental regulation (or lack thereof, in this case).

New comment by htek in "The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer"

htek — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 18:17:19 +0000

IIRC, reflection of the sun off water is 5% when directly overhead to about 65% when at a glancing angle (low on the horizon). I prefer to close my eyes and aim my face at the sun for about 10 minutes a day if I'm working indoors all day plus whatever incidental sunlight I get. I have SAD during the winter months and use a full-spectrum lamp, then.

People who spend more time in the sun have a low-moderate risk of melanoma, but higher risk of other skin cancers, vs those who spend more time indoors having a lower risk of non-melanoma skin cancer and a moderate-higher risk of melanoma cancer.