Hacker News: idreyn

New comment by idreyn in "Show HN: A free ESG stock screener that publishes its losses and methodology"

idreyn — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 14:34:02 +0000

Grok is that you?

New comment by idreyn in "Just 'English with Hanzi'"

idreyn — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 17:47:59 +0000

> He argued that Modern Chinese has become “lazy” by forgetting how to use its own verbs. instead of “researching” (研究, yanjiu), speakers “conduct research” (进行研究, jinxing yanjiu)

I can't help but think of this classic essay about Java OOP: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdo...

New comment by idreyn in "Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back"

idreyn — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 15:13:10 +0000

I think the more mainstream understanding of transhumanism is closer to "post-genics" than eugenics.

New comment by idreyn in "Building a new Flash"

idreyn — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 03:16:26 +0000

Flash created a medium. The particular genius of the authoring tool gave rise to a whole style of animation and game and thing-in-between that only existed in its time and could have only been created with the tool at hand. Software should aspire to this.

New comment by idreyn in "Do Metaprojects"

idreyn — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:04:40 +0000

did we read the same post? none of what was mentioned was even in the realm of entrepreneurship or anything ethically hairy.

New comment by idreyn in "Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well"

idreyn — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:59:10 +0000

My word count has hovered around 100k for most of my three years of writing and revising. This does sometimes run up against limits on Claude (or recently, with Opus 4.5, compaction) but in the past the whole thing has fit just fine as a plain text file.

New comment by idreyn in "Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well"

idreyn — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 23:45:56 +0000

Yes. I am a novelist and I noticed a step change in what was possible here around Claude Sonnet 3.7 in terms of being able to analyze my own unpublished work for theme, implicit motivations, subtext, etc -- without having any pre-digested analysis of the work in its training data.

New comment by idreyn in "Caltrain shows why every region should be moving toward regional rail"

idreyn — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 01:35:55 +0000

NYC here, our three disconnected commuter rail systems would all like a word :)

New comment by idreyn in "California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind"

idreyn — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 01:26:13 +0000

These maps are such a cool resource, thanks for sharing!

"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson

New comment by idreyn in "Element: setHTML() method"

idreyn — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 12:57:18 +0000

It is to render untrusted (user-generated) HTML without letting them slip in markup like script tags that could harm other users.

New comment by idreyn in "Replacement.ai"

idreyn — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 20:33:27 +0000

Yes, it is. And yes, except that it wasn't. A SWF is about building common wealth inside the systems that finance capital built (in the same way that the 401k replaced the pension) rather than turning back the clock on them. How you acquire those assets can vary wildly:

- Maybe you just decide to invest some public money

- Maybe you have some natural resources that are collective-by-default (minerals wealth on public land)

- Maybe there's a bailout of an industry that is financially broken but has become too big to fail cough and the government presses its leverage

- Maybe a president just wakes up and decides that he wants the government to own 10% of Intel, and makes that deal happen on favorable terms.

New comment by idreyn in "Replacement.ai"

idreyn — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 18:41:33 +0000

This sounds a lot like a sovereign wealth fund. The government obtains fractional ownership over large enterprises (this can happen through market mechanisms or populist strongarming — choose your own adventure) and pours the profits on these investments into the social safety net or even citizens' dividends.

For this to work at scale domestically, the fund would need to be a double-digit percentage of the market cap of the entire US economy. It would be a pretty drastic departure from the way we do things now. There would be downsides: market distortions and fraud and capital flight.

But in my mind it would be a solution to the problem of wealth pooling up in the AI economy, and probably also a balm for the "pyramid scheme" aspect of Social Security which captures economic growth through payroll taxes (more people making more money, year on year) in a century where we expect the national population to peak and decline.

Pick your poison, I guess, but I want to see more discussion of this idea in the Overton window.

New comment by idreyn in "American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana"

idreyn — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 16:16:53 +0000

I would like a non-native speaker to weigh in, but I gloss it as "there are ONLY a few and this is ONE OF them" and have never found that confusing or contradictory.

New comment by idreyn in "Escaping the Internet"

idreyn — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 19:20:25 +0000

It's a stereotype of his political opponents as adrift in selfishness, hedonism, and "gender stuff".

When you find your thought patterns flowing through tropes this way it is a good sign to consider logging off for a long while, as the author is doing. I wish him peace and perspective.

New comment by idreyn in "Open office is giving you secondhand ADHD"

idreyn — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 12:43:27 +0000

This is clearly done by AI and I am disinclined to draw any conclusions from the anecdotes or data here because it all feels "synthesized".

New comment by idreyn in "‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’"

idreyn — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 20:50:25 +0000

On one hand, I wonder if a gradual transition would work. Spend enough time over the years mirroring your conscious patterns onto a computational substrate, and they might get used to the lay of the land, the loss of old senses and the appearance of new ones. There might not be an ultimate "stepping in", but something like you might be able to outlive you, on a substrate that it feels happy and comfortable on.

On the other hand, the idea of "simulating your consciousness" raises questions beyond just cognition or personality. A mechanistically perfect simulation of your brain might not be conscious at all. Spooky stuff.

New comment by idreyn in "Ask HN: Does anyone use sound effects in their dev environment?"

idreyn — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 19:50:17 +0000

Been thinking about this. Do you have a snippet you can share?

New comment by idreyn in "Sanding UI"

idreyn — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 01:02:43 +0000

this is very smooth and scratches an itch I didn't know I had -- to use a windowed OS on my phone

New comment by idreyn in "All text in Brooklyn"

idreyn — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 02:07:19 +0000

was also looking for some KEST GAK stickers

New comment by idreyn in "Renders vs. real footage of The Ocean Cleanup waste capture [video]"

idreyn — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 16:48:01 +0000

I have no affiliation with TOC; just thought this was neat.