Hacker News: jaqalopes

New comment by jaqalopes in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)"

jaqalopes — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 23:11:43 +0000

Editing my fantasy novel. Made a mindset change recently that helped me get past a months-long block.

New comment by jaqalopes in "The Barbican"

jaqalopes — Mon, 12 May 2025 23:12:57 +0000

Sounds like the perfect setting for a souls-like game.

New comment by jaqalopes in "How the US built 5k ships in WWII"

jaqalopes — Fri, 09 May 2025 00:35:11 +0000

A friend and I were at the WW2 museum in New Orleans a couple years ago and he said something that really stuck with me. Amazed at an exhibit on wartime manufacturing, he turned to me and said, "This is so unbelievable to me. To think what we accomplished when everyone in the country was pulling in the same direction. There's no way that could happen anymore." I hardly want to glorify warfare, but he has a point. As a young person in our chaotic and ambiguous present day looking back into the haze of the past, there really is something incredibly romantic about the era of war mobilization. Ordinary people had a purpose simply assigned to them, and if nothing else I think it's still the case that people in all eras crave purpose.

New comment by jaqalopes in "TV Garden"

jaqalopes — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 21:52:46 +0000

This is pretty amazing. I clicked on a Luganda-language channel in Uganda and it was a concerned-looking woman being interviewed for a news segment about a "for men" testosterone supplement. Kind of heartening to see that people everywhere are the same, for better and for worse.

New comment by jaqalopes in "The Housing Theory of Everything"

jaqalopes — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 02:35:26 +0000

Tangential question: Is housing activist your occupation? And if so how did you get into that line of work?

New comment by jaqalopes in "Watch TV from the 90s and earlier"

jaqalopes — Sat, 29 Jul 2023 03:55:37 +0000

This is miraculous. I randomly flipped to Air Bud and it's just... playing the whole movie! How on Earth was it possible for one person to make this???

New comment by jaqalopes in "A Child's History of the World"

jaqalopes — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:31:04 +0000

> All of the people who lived in the country of the Tigris and Euphrates were white. We don’t know how nor when nor where colored people first lived, though it is interesting to guess.

I guess you can read this as a funny, outdated text but I personally would not give it to my kid.

New comment by jaqalopes in "KernType – A Letter Spacing Game"

jaqalopes — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 13:10:55 +0000

93/100 here, wonder if there’s a difference between mobile and desktop? I played on mobile and being able to bring my phone right up close to my eyes seemed to make it easier to judge the spacing than if I’d done it at my desk.

New comment by jaqalopes in "Have attention spans been declining?"

jaqalopes — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 14:38:24 +0000

I’m a fellow ADHD sufferer and you’re 100% right that it is disabling in many contexts where “normal” function is optimal. But I want to encourage you not to despair entirely—-there are legitimate ways in which the ADHD mind has an edge. Mainly in recognizing lateral connections that neurotypical people might not see—-in essence, creativity, innovation. Not that neurotypical people can’t be creative, they obviously can be. But the ADHD mind has been shown to have this unusual quality. It’s why people with ADHD are often especially good conversationalists and jokers, even if they are terrible at getting their taxes done on time.

New comment by jaqalopes in "A.I. (1981)"

jaqalopes — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 02:38:04 +0000

> I could hardly believe this finish, yet the program certainly earned its victory. … Only one thing marred the scene. Villa, who only a day earlier had reached the summit of his backgammon career in winning the world title, was disconsolate.

This seems to be the pattern for the human champions who are the first to lose to computers. What a truly singular moment in existence to experience. Both a personal loss and a loss for the whole human species, and you have to bear it alone.

New comment by jaqalopes in "Forget Spotify for news – let's fix the real problem (2017)"

jaqalopes — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 22:09:20 +0000

The author conflates individual YouTube channels with "publishers" which is nonsense. The publisher is YouTube. You don't read 10 different "publishers" when you read stories in a newspaper by 10 different journalists. Are we also going to say that watching, say, 20 TikToks from different creators is consuming content from 20 publishers? I sure don't think so. The whole idea of the article seems like nonsense to me. "Spotify for news" is your web browser or the home screen on your phone that has five different news/social media apps. We don't need another layer in between.

New comment by jaqalopes in "How to Do Great Work"

jaqalopes — Sat, 08 Jul 2023 14:17:09 +0000

I'm surprised how many negative responses this essay has received. If you read it as prescriptive, "Do these steps and you will achieve greatness," then yeah obviously he is skimping on the "why" of it all. But as he says at the very top, this essay is actually descriptive. This is an analysis of how great work comes about, based on looking at many cases of "it." Your own mileage may vary.

For my part, I found it perfectly thought provoking; not a strict roadmap to follow, but a set of observations against which to measure my own experiences and ideas, and see if I can't improve on what works for me. I appreciate anyone who is trying to dig deeper into how human beings can better themselves and create meaning in our indifferent universe.

New comment by jaqalopes in "Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?"

jaqalopes — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 01:33:40 +0000

https://www.chriszombik.com/blog/

Most of my writing energy the last couple months is going into finishing a book projects but when that's done I will have more to write on other topics!

New comment by jaqalopes in "All Those Naked Greeks"

jaqalopes — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 12:39:51 +0000

On the topic of the nude statues, I have no evidence for this idea, except: modern toy dolls are often "nude," with the idea children will put clothes on them. Is it possible that the Greeks put different clothes and decorations on their nude base statues, clothes which are now gone, evanescent as the paint that once adorned the marble statues as well?

New comment by jaqalopes in "Agents are the next AI killer app after ChatGPT"

jaqalopes — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 15:52:02 +0000

This first struck me as obvious, but really it's only obvious if you're already deep into generative AI. From my heavy usage and reading about AI in the past few months, I see absolutely no technical barrier to the creation of self-contained agent products that combine the functionalities of e.g. Alexa, GPT-4, Zapier, Wolfram-Alpha, Google, etc. all into one steerable package. It's just a matter of time.

Something I find especially amusing is that, despite the hype here on HN, most people in the world at large have not yet used a generative AI of any kind, even if they've heard about it on the news or social media. Because these things are developing so quickly, I think the first of these "agents" are going to hit the market before most people have even tried something like a ChatGPT. And so the experience of a "normal" person who's not in the loop will be of ~1 year of AI news hype followed by the sudden existence of sci-fi style actual artificial intelligences being everywhere. This will be extremely jarring but ultimately probably very cool for everyone.

Too Much “Generative,” Not Enough “AI”

jaqalopes — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 15:43:31 +0000

Article URL: https://www.chriszombik.com/blog/too-much-generative-not-enough-ai

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35629605

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by jaqalopes in "What Kind of Mind Does ChatGPT Have?"

jaqalopes — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 19:33:53 +0000

Not an hour ago I was remarking to my roommate that airplanes are "better" at flying than bumblebees, but the bumblebee does things no machine can, and that I see AI versus human intelligence similarly. Yours is pithier though!

New comment by jaqalopes in "Launch HN: Type (YC W23) – AI-powered document editor"

jaqalopes — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 19:53:58 +0000

> "Generate a testimonials section."

What a perfect use case for AI hallucinations!

New comment by jaqalopes in "Nearly 20% Adults May Have Misophonia – Significant Negative Responses to Sounds"

jaqalopes — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 19:10:14 +0000

I wonder if this is why my heart rate goes up and I feel inexplicably enraged when I can slightly, just barely hear my roommate two rooms away watching TV when I'm in bed trying to fall asleep. I ask for things to be turned down and I use a white noise machine (have tried ear plugs, they work but they make my ears hurt), which helps, but sometimes the only effective thing is to pull a pillow over my head. It's even worse with people who snore. I can't imagine how my mother has slept next to my sleep apnea father in the same bed for 40 years and not gone insane.

New comment by jaqalopes in "UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years"

jaqalopes — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 15:52:39 +0000

Anecdotally, my buddy (31M) in London says he's having the time of his life. Making a lot of money at BP, parties every weekend, just moved into a nice flat with a partner. I suspect, just like in America, that if you're inside the "formal economy" (corporate job with real benefits and potential for career growth) your life is pretty great. If you're outside that (service worker, gig economy, small business owner, NEET) then things are pretty grim.