Hacker News: jl6

New comment by jl6 in "Gaussian Splat of a Strawberry"

jl6 — Tue, 19 May 2026 14:54:53 +0000

Splattenuation

New comment by jl6 in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

jl6 — Sat, 16 May 2026 15:54:57 +0000

Another possibility is that the hype continues, growing and growing and sucking up more and more resources, and the piper has to wait yet another day to be paid, until someone figures out how to pivot to the next big thing and all the debt (financial, social, environmental) gets carried forward and we keep going.

In other words, BAU for the last few thousand years.

New comment by jl6 in "Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund Backs KDE with €1.3M"

jl6 — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:52:06 +0000

> The names Sécurix and Bureautix are nods to the famous indomitable Gauls Astérix and Obélix

Incoming retcon of Unix…

New comment by jl6 in "Permacomputing Principles"

jl6 — Thu, 07 May 2026 08:02:09 +0000

When I don’t put salt in my coffee, it’s not because I’m uncurious about what salt is, and nor does it mean I don’t appreciate salt in other contexts. But if a coffee shop only sells salted coffee, the burden is definitely on them to understand why they have so few customers. (And for my part I’ve seen enough shops that claim to be coffee shops but are actually salt shops).

New comment by jl6 in "Permacomputing Principles"

jl6 — Thu, 07 May 2026 06:57:11 +0000

Taking some parts and leaving others is exactly how intersectionalism should work: at an individual level. You throw your lot in with the orgs and movements you like, and leave or oppose the ones you don’t. The intersection is within you.

Unfortunately the fashion is now for orgs and movements to declare their own intersections, which does nothing to further the core issues, while actively repelling those outside the intersection (which, by the time you’ve intersected a bunch of different things, is nearly everyone).

There is nothing inherently “post-Marxist” or “decolonial” about the core ideas here (scare quotes because these are extra-unhelpfully underdefined terms). Framing the project this way just signals that non-post-Marxists (etc.) will not be welcome, which makes it quite hard to enjoy the good bits for people who have been pre-declared to be the enemy.

Successful orgs are laser-focused on their core purpose.

New comment by jl6 in "Permacomputing Principles"

jl6 — Thu, 07 May 2026 06:04:54 +0000

There’s a lot to love about more mindful and resilient and ecological use of computing, but I wish they would build a consensus around that instead of bolting on extra politics. It’s a symptom of polarization… you can’t have independent causes, they have to align to a bunch of other causes too, each one taking a slice off your support base until you’re left with the tiny, powerless intersection that already agrees with you. It’s the self-torpedoing recipe that makes the omnicause so impotent.

New comment by jl6 in "Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens"

jl6 — Wed, 06 May 2026 18:51:07 +0000

Ethanol is quite a useful thing to have though, as a multi-season stable store of energy. We will need to synthesise it (or other synfuels and feedstocks), to fully transition away from fossil sources, and that 10x efficiency factor will be essential, as synthesis is highly energy-lossy.

New comment by jl6 in "Kids can bypass some age checks with a drawn-on mustache"

jl6 — Tue, 05 May 2026 06:41:33 +0000

Maybe age verification will encourage kids to be more social in person, because they’ll need to have at least two inside the trenchcoat.

New comment by jl6 in "Chernobyl wildlife forty years on"

jl6 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 06:53:05 +0000

It’s embarrassing for humanity that we cause an almighty ecological disaster and then one of the biggest factors in the recovery of local ecosystems is our absence.

New comment by jl6 in "Ubuntu 26.04"

jl6 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 06:31:43 +0000

Did they publish some rationale somewhere? It’s a useful feature.

New comment by jl6 in "The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood"

jl6 — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 12:33:03 +0000

It’s easier to let kids play around the neighborhood when you know who the neighbors are.

New comment by jl6 in "IPv6 traffic crosses the 50% mark"

jl6 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:13:53 +0000

Everyone's saying progress is slow, but maybe this is just how long it takes to do massive decentralized global migrations affecting billions of people. What are we comparing against? Maybe the ICE-to-EV transition?

New comment by jl6 in "Where did my taxes go?"

jl6 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:02:44 +0000

I think many Americans do not realize how much is spent on debt interest payments, which are a tidy source of income for rich people.

New comment by jl6 in "A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”"

jl6 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 06:37:49 +0000

Geminispace is a very chill place. It’s definitely not a replacement for the web, but if you can handle the compromises, it feels like both the past and the future.

New comment by jl6 in "One neat trick to end extreme poverty"

jl6 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 20:57:53 +0000

Remember it said rich-world respondents, not rich people. There are still poor people in rich-world countries that would find it painful to give up any part of what they have.

New comment by jl6 in "South Korea introduces universal basic mobile data access"

jl6 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 13:52:43 +0000

> the scheme will provide over seven million subscribers with unlimited downloads at just 400 kbps after their data allowances expire.

Does this mean it’s not a universal entitlement as such, because you presumably first have to pay for a plan with an allowance? (Not to mention having to pay for a device).

New comment by jl6 in "CPU-Z and HWMonitor compromised"

jl6 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:38:25 +0000

To our new generation of human shields willing to use software releases less than a month old, we salute your sacrifice.

New comment by jl6 in "EFF is leaving X"

jl6 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 23:20:11 +0000

I read the post.

> Last year, our 1,500 posts earned roughly 13 million impressions for the entire year.

Their YouTube channel reports 2,759,491 views in total, since 2006. So while X may be a fraction of what it was, it's still a significant multiple of at least one of the other channels they are happy to use.

What kind of activist org turns down the opportunity to reach 13 million people for essentially zero cost? One that has a different reason for doing so. The subtext is clear.

New comment by jl6 in "EFF is leaving X"

jl6 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:15:00 +0000

Seems like any activist org should have two audiences:

1) Supporters who may become donors

2) Neutrals/opponents who may become supporters.

If you only ever communicate in forums where people already agree with you, you’ll probably have optimized your fundraising, but will probably never achieve your actual purpose.

Activist orgs have to reach and turn the non-supporters somehow, and the absolute best way to achieve the opposite is to brand them as The Enemy and cut yourself off from them. Joining the omnicause is the icing on the cake, signalling the end of focused goal-oriented activism in favor of the dilute, general grievance mire.

The left are always looking for someone to expel, and the right are always looking for someone to recruit. Guess how this ends.

New comment by jl6 in "Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026"

jl6 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 08:47:20 +0000

Nuclear power buys you not just electricity, but also resilience and diversity. Even if it’s much more expensive, it can still be worth it.