Hacker News: jackmott42

New comment by jackmott42 in "No Man's Sky Cosmos"

jackmott42 — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 16:26:39 +0000

The best proc gen experience I have had is with minecraft modpack called hexxit. The world is procedural generated, but then there is a library of ~200+ hand built structures/features that are scattered throughout the generated terrain. So you wander through a forest and find a cave into a volcano full of diamongs but guarded by angry dwarves, then head over into the desert and find a castle with a witch king, etc etc

There are enough hand built things that you don't quickly start running into repeats, and they are just melded into the generated terrain.

New comment by jackmott42 in "British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years"

jackmott42 — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 16:09:19 +0000

It is very easy to do the math on the aerodynamics, even at running speeds it isn't insignificant. It drives me crazy that many pro marathoners are in flappy clothes, or big hair cuts!

In a mile it could be between 1 and 7 tenths, depending on wind and and how bad the default outfit was.

And that may seem insignificant but its big margins at the elite level.

New comment by jackmott42 in "British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years"

jackmott42 — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 15:51:18 +0000

Because most humans don't really try, not limited to east africans.

New comment by jackmott42 in "British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years"

jackmott42 — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 15:50:38 +0000

The mile record has dropped due to equipment (tracks and shoes) and pacing innovation since the very first. And I repeat this all the time but nobody listens: modern shoes are fast because of the special foam and light weight, the carbon plates have very little to do with it, experiments have cut those plates in half and running economy remains unchanged. they likely provide important structural support for the thick foam, and carbon makes sense to use for that for weight reasons, on a budget plastic is fine.

New comment by jackmott42 in "It's not me, it's the compiler"

jackmott42 — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 22:42:14 +0000

I started programming at ~8 and as a kid you often are sure the compiler is wrong, and it never is. (maybe once, have a vague memory of it)

Then years later I started playing with Nim when it was still in beta, I think I found 3 compiler bugs in a few weeks! Reported them all, all got fixed!

And then a few years later found a bug in LLVM, doing weird stuff with Rust and SIMD intrinsics. Was difficult to even communicate what was going wrong but did get it reported and confirmed eventually!

New comment by jackmott42 in "Rocketlab acquires Iridium"

jackmott42 — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 18:09:08 +0000

Why do people reply with this "it was always american" response? Do you feel like it is necessary to protect RocketLab or something?

It was founded by a guy in new zealand with the first launch complex and first launches coming out of new zealand.

to characterize that as "always american" is so silly it makes you seem like a non serious person.

of course they would have had american resources and connections from the start.

New comment by jackmott42 in "The Doctor Who Treats Patients with a Gaming Mouse"

jackmott42 — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 15:11:08 +0000

Aside from the website being annoying, the story is horrific, a doctor speed running patient interactions with pre canned snippets. Disgusting.

New comment by jackmott42 in "How to earn a billion dollars"

jackmott42 — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 15:25:41 +0000

A reminder that in a recent Paul Graham blog post, he vowed to help the 2nd Trump Admin crush woke youth, and asserted that racism isn't bad as the left thinks.

In the following weeks we saw Elon do two Nazi salutes in front of the presidential seal, and we saw the Trump admin hire tons of thugs to rip minority children out of their beds, and those same thugs have murdered a number of citizens, with Stephen Miller loudly shouting that they have absolute immunity.

I'm surprised Paul Graham and the signers of the blog post are not to embarrassed to continue posting their thoughts. At worst Paul should stop talking, better, he should apologize and admit he is a fool.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor"

jackmott42 — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:21:20 +0000

There isn't going to be a lot of improvement in overall EV performance/capability from better motors. Existing, boring motors are already close to 100% efficient, already small, and already powerful.

Advancements here chip away at margins, its nice but nothing to get super excited about. Whereas a modest ~20% increase in energy density from batteries would be amazing. Every little bit we improve there unlocks new capabilities. Towing long distances, smaller affordable economy cars and sports cars, airplanes, etc.

New comment by jackmott42 in "GTA 6 Developers Unionize"

jackmott42 — Fri, 29 May 2026 18:48:11 +0000

supply and demand as always

New comment by jackmott42 in "Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM"

jackmott42 — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:46:37 +0000

In countries where students perform better, they do the opposite of your plan. Resources are pumped into the failing schools to get them to do better. You seem to be just arguing for even more privatization in American which is awful, the kids that are failing have parents that won't be paying for good education or setting up schools. They won't bother with it at all if it isn't public and required.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Disney erased FiveThirtyEight"

jackmott42 — Tue, 19 May 2026 20:44:11 +0000

Nate was a huge outlier in that prediction, he gave trump a better chance than almost anyone else that I can recall, so why are you mad at him about that?

What made me mad is Nate seemed to turn into a MAGA troll himself after that election.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Actually, democracy dies in H.R."

jackmott42 — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:30:49 +0000

It did until oligarchs bought it.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale"

jackmott42 — Thu, 14 May 2026 15:46:22 +0000

Why does anyone want to work for companies run by such awful people in the first place? I saw me CEO make up a whole new persona to suck up the new nazi administration I would be gone the next day.

New comment by jackmott42 in "If AI writes your code, why use Python?"

jackmott42 — Tue, 12 May 2026 10:54:36 +0000

I recently started a game project in Rust aided by Claude Code because I asked myself that same question. I like Rust, but it is definitely harder than C# for me. But with the AI aid, doesn't seem to matter which language I use. So I take the performance and safety wins.

New comment by jackmott42 in "I built a Game Boy emulator in F#"

jackmott42 — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:12:10 +0000

With some care about what features to use and when, F# can be very fast. Which is nice, use functional paradigm when you want, or low level imperative code in hot loops if you need. But yeah if you use linked lists and sequences and immutable data types everywhere it sure isn't Rust.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Trump fires NSF's oversight board"

jackmott42 — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:14:18 +0000

I think you are right that we should focus on the fact that the president raped children, invaded Iran with no plan and for no reason when he promised not to start a war, and violates the constitution and law daily without consequence.

We are all failing morally for not revolting at this level of corruption.

He raped kids and the entire GOP is helping to cover that up.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Humpback whales are forming super-groups"

jackmott42 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 15:44:54 +0000

The disingenuous people who discredit climate change will do so no matter how serious people act. There is no point in changing behavior on their account.

New comment by jackmott42 in "AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It"

jackmott42 — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 16:42:07 +0000

Yes, our tech leaders would rather send america into fascism that have any impediments put in the way of their business plans. It is disgusting, and sad.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Artemis II safely splashes down"

jackmott42 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:33:36 +0000

>It's physically not possible at our current level of technology to make this "safer"

Absolutely it is, if NASA was not constrained by congress to use shuttle components to build the spacecraft, they could have had double the payload mass capability at least (the Saturn V was almost twice as capable, we should be able to do a little better now). This would provide tons of extra margin for safety, and allow a shorter and thus safer route to the moon as well.