Hacker News: istjohn

New comment by istjohn in "Ofcom concedes defeat in 4chan case"

istjohn — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:28:27 +0000

You're forgetting that a perfectly serviceable truce was established with the JCPOA until Trump tore it up to satisfy Israeli interests.

New comment by istjohn in "Ofcom concedes defeat in 4chan case"

istjohn — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:23:10 +0000

This whole war is happening because after his easy coup in Venezuela, Trump thought he could just do it again in Iran, and now he can't extricate himself without losing face. And American politicians on both sides of the aisle are subserviant to Israel.

New comment by istjohn in "There's never been a better time to go into math (by: 3blue1brown) [video]"

istjohn — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:05:24 +0000

It does? Standard of living increases in the last 300 years have made leisure time more accessible to more people than ever.

New comment by istjohn in "Claude Haiku 5.5"

istjohn — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 18:25:29 +0000

According to Epoch AI:

> The cost of achieving a given level of AI performance has fallen about 47% per quarter since 2023, or 13× per year. [0]

0. https://epoch.ai/publications/the-plunging-price-of-thought

New comment by istjohn in "Sharing AI progress in mathematics"

istjohn — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:19:45 +0000

> It’s possible that these problems were lower-hanging fruit (in relative terms), such that they could be resolved simply by throwing a ton of compute at the problem guided by an intelligence that is not itself remarkable in comparison to a human.

See:

> The average result used the equivalent compute of roughly three hours of ChatGPT Pro thinking. (TFA)

New comment by istjohn in "Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'"

istjohn — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 23:29:04 +0000

There's also: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

New comment by istjohn in "Getting the most out of Opus 5.5 in Claude and Claude Code"

istjohn — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 21:57:39 +0000

Look up the grilling skill[0]. To make it even better, tell Claude to modify it to use the AskUserQuestion functionality. It's so much better than plan mode.

0. https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/produc...

New comment by istjohn in "Getting the most out of Opus 5.5 in Claude and Claude Code"

istjohn — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 21:53:32 +0000

Otoh, I've had it push back against my false assumptions when I was confidently incorrect, finding proof unasked.

New comment by istjohn in "Plan mode is dead"

istjohn — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 14:48:05 +0000

I've found Opus 5.5 is quite good at surfacing and clarifying these issues using Grilling[0]. Often I find that I want to expand the scope of work much larger than Claude would consider based on my original request.

0. https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/produc...

New comment by istjohn in "The Year of Internal Tools"

istjohn — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:02:01 +0000

Cost per intelligence-adjusted token has been in free-fall since GPT-3 landed five years ago [0]. I see no compelling reason to think we'll see that trend suddenly stop, much less reverse.

0. "The cost of achieving a given level of AI performance has fallen about 47% per quarter since 2023, or 13× per year." https://epoch.ai/publications/the-plunging-price-of-thought

New comment by istjohn in "GPT-6 Sol and Luna"

istjohn — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 22:32:01 +0000

You meant Astra, not Sol, I think. But Opus 5.5 is slightly better than Fable and Astra now.

New comment by istjohn in "Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)"

istjohn — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:31:29 +0000

But the US supplies most of Israel's weapons imports, and 99% are supplied by just the US and Germany.

> The USA was the largest supplier to Israel in 2021–25 (accounting for 68 per cent of Israeli arms imports), followed by Germany (31 per cent). [0]

0. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/fs_2603_at...

Why the oldest cheddar-maker uses a 'milk-source' heat pump

istjohn — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:12:20 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/17/milk-source-heat-pump-barbers-cheesemakers

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49742000

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by istjohn in "Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)"

istjohn — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 18:52:01 +0000

If your country's defense department is conducting itself ethically, and the contracts are for equipment or technology that is not inherently ethically fraught (like autonymous weapon systems), then one might consider that acceptable if you aren't a pacifist. An enormous amount of US military technology and weapons have been recently used to perpetuate a genocide, so the US is certainly an outlier in the global landscape.

New comment by istjohn in "Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?"

istjohn — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 02:34:06 +0000

Reality encompasses more than the physical universe. Abstract mathematics describe an aspect of reality, too.

New comment by istjohn in "Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise"

istjohn — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 20:57:42 +0000

If I recall correctly solar panels are already so cheap that to halve the installed cost again will require most of the efficiencies to be found in other costs like manufacture of associated hardware and equipment and installation. I don't know if those costs will be so easy to reduce.

New comment by istjohn in "Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise"

istjohn — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 20:44:05 +0000

It is if the nuclear industry pays for it to be. See the disclaimer at the bottom of the article.

New comment by istjohn in "Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here"

istjohn — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:47:55 +0000

I believe there's a controversy filter that down ranks items if the ratio of comments to item upvotes is too high.

New comment by istjohn in "Manabu Kosaka's Handmade Paper Sculptures"

istjohn — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:44:36 +0000

One of his YouTube videos[1] has a couple freeze frames showing him carving a three-dimensional shape to form a shoe upper.

1: https://youtu.be/M8YMUMmFbFs?t=9

New comment by istjohn in "Manabu Kosaka's Handmade Paper Sculptures"

istjohn — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:21:40 +0000

I would imagine wheat or rice paste.

Edit: He has a lot of footage of him cutting out and placing letters and wires on his YouTube channel, but it doesn't show him applying any adhesive. Now I really want to know how he does it.