Hacker News: johngossman

New comment by johngossman in "The dead economy theory"

johngossman — Sat, 30 May 2026 04:48:47 +0000

According to William Rosen in "Justinian's Flea," this plague also led to an agricultural revolution and population explosion in Western Europe.

One cannot, of course, “know” this in the same way that one can know the date of the battle of Poitiers; applying economic analysis to the spotty record of commerce during late antiquity is a tricky business. However, as can be seen in a subtly reasoned 2003 paper by two development economists, Ronald Findlay of Columbia and Mats Lundahl of the University of Stockholm, it is compelling, as well, despite its reliance on a number of simplifications.

New comment by johngossman in "The dead economy theory"

johngossman — Sat, 30 May 2026 01:30:59 +0000

Lots of serious historians disagree. There are whole books on the topic. Here's just one paper as an example

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-demograph...

New comment by johngossman in "Do teachers need advanced degrees?"

johngossman — Fri, 15 May 2026 00:50:18 +0000

Fwiw, in 1900 my grandfather taught school in Washington State. He was 16 years old.

I don't know how good he was, just saying it wasn't so long ago.

New comment by johngossman in "The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis"

johngossman — Thu, 07 May 2026 10:12:16 +0000

Go look at the demographics of the last election and then tell me which groups shouldn't be allowed to vote.

New comment by johngossman in "The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis"

johngossman — Thu, 07 May 2026 09:38:11 +0000

Wait...aren't you quoting the Boomers from the 60s?

New comment by johngossman in "The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis"

johngossman — Thu, 07 May 2026 08:43:50 +0000

If only the olds would die we could build more datacenters!

More seriously, why wouldn't older, longer-lived people be more likely to address long-term problems like climate change?

New comment by johngossman in "What makes a good smartphone camera?"

johngossman — Thu, 07 May 2026 06:05:34 +0000

"The default setting on phones is to save storage by only using 12 megapixels, so unless you've changed settings, the 200 megapixel phone loses 94% of its megapixels as soon as you press the shutter. Bad deal!"

The final picture is the result of digital processing of the 200 megapixels, which is quite different from losing the data, all other things being the same. His point is right, but this paragraph isn't worthy of the rest of the essay.

New comment by johngossman in "The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis"

johngossman — Thu, 07 May 2026 05:46:42 +0000

Welcome to my rathole: Venetian history. To expand on your thesis, the Council of Ten was the executive power in Venice, but the Doge and minor council attended the Council of Ten meetings and the Doge often chaired those meetings. And even if he was powerless, the Council was made up of other old men. I don't want to push this whole argument, I'm not recommending we adopt the Venetian constitution. But I don't think you can blame current chaos on age.

New comment by johngossman in "The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis"

johngossman — Thu, 07 May 2026 05:39:33 +0000

Average is probably not what you need to worry about: I'd bet David Attenborough and Mel Brooks still have IQs considerably higher than the average 25-year old. And I'm not convinced IQ is as important as that elusive factor called character.

But you may be right. Maybe what the US really needs is a lagoon.

New comment by johngossman in "The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis"

johngossman — Thu, 07 May 2026 01:59:07 +0000

While I mostly agree...

Venice was run by very old men. It was common for the Doge to be in their 80s. Meanwhile, many of their neighbors had kings who were very young, sometimes teenage boys.

Venice was the longest lasting, most stable state in Europe.

New comment by johngossman in "Mistral built a $14B AI empire by not being American"

johngossman — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:18:45 +0000

Businesses are risk averse and in the current environment they are all looking to secure their supply chains, whether to reduce their dependence on silicon from Taiwan, oil from the strait of Hormuz, or digital services from the United States. I think you are also underestimating the power of regulation. Not all European businesses have to be all-in for Mistral (or another alternative) to survive. This is one reason so many countries still have domestic defense, aerospace, and even automobile companies.

New comment by johngossman in "An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road"

johngossman — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:45:31 +0000

While I generally do not trust information from "advertisements", in this case I don't see how this is any worse than including a list of sources in the bibliography. What this could be is an attempt to use those other books to sell the author's through some reflected glory (or SEO-fu) but in that case, the author is still incentivized to recommend good books.

New comment by johngossman in "An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road"

johngossman — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:33:31 +0000

Good list. It does not include "Silk Roads" by Frankopan, which I agree with. That's a good read but much more a history of world trade (hence the plural) and strangely western-centric. I saw strangely because in the introduction Frankopan says he wanted to write a history from the point of view on central Asia, but its not that at all. Dalyrymple's "Golden Road" succeeds at Frankopan's objective and I found it much better in general. I don't want to sound too negative on "Silk Roads" but I think the title is subtly misleading if you want to learn about the trade general referred to as the Silk Road.

New comment by johngossman in "Not buying another Kindle"

johngossman — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 21:46:03 +0000

I got it. And I've played a 1905 Martin and you can still plug a 1950s telecaster into a 1950s amp in turn plugged into wall power and everything works. Just saying, that is not the consumer electronics world in 2026.

New comment by johngossman in "Not buying another Kindle"

johngossman — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:21:15 +0000

I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.

New comment by johngossman in "Ancient DNA reveals pervasive directional selection across West Eurasia [pdf]"

johngossman — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:03:28 +0000

That is correct. Biology uses the term fit slightly different than the general public

New comment by johngossman in "Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection"

johngossman — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:19:06 +0000

In the late 1990s I went to a RealNetworks developer conference and Andreesen, then at Netscape, was a keynote speaker. I was curious and open to his insights, but his talk was so vapid (I remember he kept giggling) and arrogant that I eventually walked out. I remember he kept bragging about Netscape's next big project (something after Netscape 5 maybe?) and how it was going to wipe Microsoft out permanently. Only a few years later did I realize whatever it was never shipped, it turned out to be vaporware.

New comment by johngossman in "CERN uses ultra-compact AI models on FPGAs for real-time LHC data filtering"

johngossman — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 13:43:01 +0000

Not really. Think of the experiment as a very, very high speed camera. They can't store every frame, so they try to capture just the "interesting" ones. They also store some random ones that can be used later as controls or in case they realize they've missed something. That's the whole job of these various layers of algorithms: recognizing interesting frames. Sometimes a new experiment basically just changes the definition of "interesting"

New comment by johngossman in "Last gasps of the rent seeking class?"

johngossman — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 16:26:49 +0000

Like self-driving taxis where the business model is to stop paying drivers so we can pay more to big tech companies. Viva la revolution!

New comment by johngossman in "Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny"

johngossman — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 17:46:02 +0000

It just feels that way sometimes