Hacker News: jml7c5

New comment by jml7c5 in "Show HN: I simulated closing the Strait of Hormuz on real oil trade data"

jml7c5 — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 04:55:01 +0000

No, the two interventions are unrelated. Every indication is that they thought Iran would be a quick war with minimal impact on oil markets. Even if they did think the Strait of Hormuz would be closed for a long time, controlling Venezuela's oil does not help — it takes much longer than two months for Venezuela to meaningfully increase oil production. (And oil is ~fungible, so it doesn't really matter if the US is involved with production and sale. All that matters is that it's produced and sold by anyone.)

New comment by jml7c5 in "An old patent inspired the new "Y-zipper", a three-sided fastener"

jml7c5 — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:11:46 +0000

Extremely similar to a rigid chain actuator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigid_chain_actuator

New comment by jml7c5 in "My falling-out with the rationalist community"

jml7c5 — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:37:35 +0000

>This is a label applied from outside

I don't think this is accurate. Most rationalists seem to self-describe as rationalists, and talk about rationalism as a "thing".

There is some dogma, sort of, in the form of The Sequences. (An extraordinarily goofy name that belies some of the mysticism-adjacent LARP that sought to treat the ideas as revolutionary. I suspect a 20 year old was behind it.) I say "sort of" dogma because people are aware that the studies referenced in there turned out not to replicate and have generally abandoned them. But you still see some references to them and vague reverence of them.

New comment by jml7c5 in "Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law"

jml7c5 — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 02:10:07 +0000

They're not arguing for American-run websites to not exist.

New comment by jml7c5 in "Gallery of Soft Matter 2026"

jml7c5 — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 05:30:52 +0000

I found the winning video entry (Photoelastic Particles in a Rolling Drum) absolutely fascinating.

Gallery of Soft Matter 2026

jml7c5 — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 05:19:44 +0000

Article URL: https://engage.aps.org/dsoft/gallery/gallery/mm26-gallery

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48827829

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by jml7c5 in "Aluminum foil (2021)"

jml7c5 — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 20:34:13 +0000

No, there should be no PFAS. The surface will be covered in trace amounts of oil from production, but other than that it should be entirely aluminum alloy.

https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2025-04/foil-stud...

New comment by jml7c5 in "Performance per dollar is getting faster and cheaper"

jml7c5 — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:24:45 +0000

>The people having glass literally break from the vibrations would probably disagree with your opinion

Can you cite a source for this? It's not in the video, as far as I can tell.

I would be wary of Benn Jordan's videos. They are full of mistakes and misrepresentations, as Andy Masley has convincingly demonstrated: https://blog.andymasley.com/p/contra-benn-jordan-data-center...

I recall seeing Benn Jordan's responses on Bluesky and thinking they were quite poor. He was unwilling to admit to mistakes, and kept trying to grasp at newly searched papers that didn't actually support his arguments.

New comment by jml7c5 in "Steam Controller Auto-Charge – pilot to magnetic charging puck using CV"

jml7c5 — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 23:32:36 +0000

For those who can't decipher what this is, a video might be helpful. It literally crawls the controller along a tabletop using the haptic feedback motors: https://x.com/FossPrime/status/2070013003752251660

New comment by jml7c5 in "Is sunscreen the new margarine? (2019)"

jml7c5 — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 22:05:58 +0000

It was published early 2019, maybe late 2018.

Searching for the title of the article ("Is sunscreen the new margarine?") makes it easy to pinpoint: there is a open letter responding to the article, dated January 15, 2019. https://www.asds.net/Portals/0/PDF/LetterToTheEditor-Outside...

New comment by jml7c5 in "Is sunscreen the new margarine? (2019)"

jml7c5 — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 10:02:15 +0000

(2019)

New comment by jml7c5 in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

jml7c5 — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 23:21:00 +0000

It looks like I misremembered a bit. The first iteration that blew up was AI Dungeon 2 (probably this link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21717022 ), which he apparently had to shut down after a day or two because it ended up costing $20,000 for weird GCS reasons.

It was briefly an easy way to access GPT-3 before the public release, but that was later and apparently not as important as I thought.

New comment by jml7c5 in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

jml7c5 — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 04:25:54 +0000

Was this AI Dungeon? If I recall correctly, it was popular as a way to access GPT-3 which wasn't available publicly.

New comment by jml7c5 in "ESP32-S31"

jml7c5 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:02:24 +0000

Oh, I wouldn't worry about posting a dupe. Announcement vs release is different enough, and people are clearly interested in it. I didn't link it as any sort of admonition; there was just some good discussion there.

New comment by jml7c5 in "Rsync and outrage"

jml7c5 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:14:03 +0000

>If there had been no major regressions, do you think anyone would have complained?

If there had been the same regressions but no AI, do you think there would be a 300 post issue full of people complaining? People are holding the update to a higher standard just because they used AI.

New comment by jml7c5 in "ESP32-S31"

jml7c5 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:24:38 +0000

Previous discussion from two months ago, when this was announced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47561678

New comment by jml7c5 in "Webcam head tracking, webcam to control in‑game FOV"

jml7c5 — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 22:51:11 +0000

I loved that demo, but the problem with "monitor as a window into the world" is that monitors are relatively small and people don't sit very close to them. The FOV you obtain with most setups is disappointingly small. You need to be relatively close to a large display for it to work well. It's one of the reasons why the idea never took off in the first place, I think.

New comment by jml7c5 in "Do turmeric and curcumin have any actual health benefits?"

jml7c5 — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 22:09:59 +0000

The problem is that this is either unsupported by evidence or a meaninglessly shallow claim. After all, almost every herbal remedy does something, but it doesn't mean it's actually therapeutic for some given condition.

New comment by jml7c5 in "What are locusts and what happened to them?"

jml7c5 — Sun, 31 May 2026 19:39:56 +0000

Ah, my mistake! I saw the references to writing style and assumed. I'm sorry. Unfortunately I can't delete or edit my comment any more.

New comment by jml7c5 in "Re: [PATCH] OOM_pardon, a.k.a. don't kill my xlock (2004)"

jml7c5 — Sun, 31 May 2026 19:36:12 +0000

Thanks. I was confused for a bit, given these days you can do

    echo "-1000" > /proc//oom_score_adj

to disable OOM killing for a process.

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/include/uapi/l...