Hacker News: idiotsecant

New comment by idiotsecant in "Bitcoin miners are losing on every coin produced as difficulty drops"

idiotsecant — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 22:27:55 +0000

That's wildly inaccurate. The cost in enormous both on the inference side and the mining side and has short lifetimes if you want SOTA.

New comment by idiotsecant in "Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident"

idiotsecant — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:58:31 +0000

Ah the old 'everyone is responsible so nobody is responsible' canard.

I will give you a helpful rule of thumb: when in doubt the guy with a bank account larger than the total lifetime income of hundreds of thousands of people is probably the one to blame.

New comment by idiotsecant in "EFF is leaving X"

idiotsecant — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:21:45 +0000

'Terminally online is when you post about things I don't like'

New comment by idiotsecant in "EFF is leaving X"

idiotsecant — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:19:15 +0000

Its wild that we've gotten to the point that 'allows tyrants to silence users on their platform' is no longer something we're allowed to dislike without it being a 'political' stance. Some time in the last 30 years acting like a reasonable and decent human being became a political statement.

New comment by idiotsecant in "EFF is leaving X"

idiotsecant — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:17:05 +0000

This just fundamentally isn't true. What people see online massively influences how they think, to the extent that entire media conglomerates have been bought and sold to do exactly that.

New comment by idiotsecant in "EFF is leaving X"

idiotsecant — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:15:44 +0000

If there is an organization who should be promoting federated, decentralized social media services over centralized robber baron engagement factories more than the EFF, I don't know who it would be.

Its not political to prefer open systems.

New comment by idiotsecant in "ML promises to be profoundly weird"

idiotsecant — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:08:10 +0000

You raised a point and then never answered it. Why would anyone plant seeds on someone else's farm?

New comment by idiotsecant in "ML promises to be profoundly weird"

idiotsecant — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:06:20 +0000

how are you enjoying the live action saturday morning cartoon version of Foundation with bonus plucky protagonists?

New comment by idiotsecant in "ML promises to be profoundly weird"

idiotsecant — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:02:54 +0000

Absolute peak HN energy that the top reply to this very insightful point is a rambling pedantic argument about the finer points of agricultural development.

New comment by idiotsecant in "Claude mixes up who said what"

idiotsecant — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 11:33:44 +0000

You don't think this is pedantry bordering on uselessness?

New comment by idiotsecant in "Iran threatens 'complete and utter annihilation' of OpenAI's $30B Stargate"

idiotsecant — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:35:16 +0000

Yes, I find that quite often morality becomes temporarily irrelevant when it's inconvenient for the party acting immorally.

Nevertheless, this is the one of the vanishingly few conflicts where there is a good guy and a bad guy. Sometimes the universe gives us a break from endless grey areas. This is one of those!

If you find the idea of an autonomous sovereign state defending it's borders 'triggering' I might suggest some soothing jazz and a warm milk.

All the best

New comment by idiotsecant in "Iran threatens 'complete and utter annihilation' of OpenAI's $30B Stargate"

idiotsecant — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:04:14 +0000

All Russian infrastructure of all types would be perfectly safe tomorrow if they just stopped brutally invading their neighbors. Let's be plain and clear here: the Russian moral position lies somewhere 10 miles below the floor of the deepest ocean trench. The moral high road is pretty easy to achieve.

New comment by idiotsecant in "Iran's IRGC Publishes Satellite Imagery of OpenAI's $30B Stargate Datacenter"

idiotsecant — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:58:20 +0000

You are puzzled why Iran threatens the destruction of assets of powerful American oligarchs if policy changes aren't made? Allow me to point out that political leaders rely on the patronage those oligarchs and are strongly incentivized to do what they say.

Its exactly the right play for Iran to threaten but not do and hope that corporate greed panic does the work for them.

New comment by idiotsecant in "Electrical transformer manufacturing is throttling the electrified future"

idiotsecant — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:21:34 +0000

>>You can’t stick a solar panel in your backyard and sell the output.

Sure you can. To everyone you run power lines to. Or did you mean you wanted a distribution system designed to profit you instead operate efficiently for everyone else?

New comment by idiotsecant in "Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)"

idiotsecant — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 10:44:22 +0000

People in my life routinely talk about how lucky I am. Its a big enough thing that it's kind of a meme. I think a big part of it is strategic disassociation. You can't do it with every decision in your life but if you pick and choose some focal points where you just pick the choice with the unknown but possibly positive outcome, commit to it fully, and internalize the value of the joy of discovery without worrying about it too hard you often come out ahead.

New comment by idiotsecant in "Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset"

idiotsecant — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:43:26 +0000

What color are the people in these 'high performing societies'? I think I have a guess.

Did 'high performing societies' build the railroads? Mine the steel? Forge it? Did 'high performing societies' build the culture we enjoy today?

Here's a secret that you should know but evidently life has never taught you: people who have to struggle to survive are generally smarter, more vigorous, more honorable people. They understand the toll in sweat and blood that the wrong decision takes. They are exactly who we need.

We don't need a nation of pampered trust fund man-children, turning up their delicate noses at everyone not a member of a 'high performing society'.

New comment by idiotsecant in "Electrical transformer manufacturing is throttling the electrified future"

idiotsecant — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:38:33 +0000

We had a decent domestic transformer manufacturing ecosystem for decades, and all the major manufacturers shut down their NA plants and moved them to South America to make a little bit more money. The problem is, as it often is, the perverse incentives of the religion of quarterly earning reports.

Capitalism is a fire - if you tend it well and regulate it, it serves a useful function. Let it burn out of control and it will consume everything.

New comment by idiotsecant in "Embarrassingly simple self-distillation improves code generation"

idiotsecant — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 20:24:15 +0000

And all you have to do is write an infinite amount of code to cover all possible permutations of reality! No big deal, really.

New comment by idiotsecant in "Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset"

idiotsecant — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 18:17:45 +0000

Immigrants are the lifeblood of America and always have been. Reject them and you lose what literally made America great.

Do you think, on average, a native born American is more useful to America than one who moves here?

New comment by idiotsecant in "German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad"

idiotsecant — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 16:36:41 +0000

Such laws are unenforceable until someone comes along who decides that enforcement would be useful to them.