Hacker News: jonas21

New comment by jonas21 in "Tesla Roadster"

jonas21 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:56:20 +0000

So... you want a car that is:

1. New

2. Electric

3. Sub $25k

Drop any one of those, and you'll have plenty of options. This isn't about a K-shaped economy -- it's about adding significant constraints and being unwilling to compromise on any of them.

Also what's wrong with "loans for the rest"? Most new cars are bought with financing and have been for a long time.

New comment by jonas21 in "Fire at Starlink site in Bulgaria after suspected sabotage in Poland"

jonas21 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:57:13 +0000

Did he though? Tesla sales have been basically flat for the past few years -- not growing, but certainly not "destroyed" either. They still have over 50% US market share for EVs.

And Tesla's stock price (which is what correlates with Musk's wealth) is up 50% since the 2024 election.

New comment by jonas21 in "Gemini 4 Argon"

jonas21 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 21:12:04 +0000

By definition, the model with the best performance will be on the pareto frontier (regardless of cost).

New comment by jonas21 in "Gemini 4 Argon"

jonas21 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 18:27:16 +0000

It looks exactly like the images the model generated. The fork certainly doesn't bend forward -- it's perfectly straight.

New comment by jonas21 in "Gemini 4 Argon"

jonas21 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 18:18:08 +0000

If that's the case, how do bikes like this work?

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Huffy-26-inch-Rock-Creek-Men-s-Mo...

(apologies if I'm misunderstanding).

Jonathan Blow Made 500 Hours of Puzzles to Explode Your Mind

jonas21 — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:28:53 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/arts/jonathan-blow-order-of-the-sinking-star.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50022920

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Scrimshaw Jukebox

jonas21 — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:17:52 +0000

Article URL: https://tools.simonwillison.net/scrimshaw-jukebox

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49981417

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by jonas21 in "The lamps in my house"

jonas21 — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:11:12 +0000

Yes, and I believe all consumer products with the Honeywell name are made by other companies that just license the trademark.

Honeywell air filters are Helen of Troy, Honeywell thermostats are Resideo, Honeywell lighting is Huo Ming Technology Guangdong, etc.

New comment by jonas21 in "Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage"

jonas21 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:48:11 +0000

No, but they cover their fossil fuel energy usage by entering into PPAs [1] for new clean energy projects that get added to the grid. This allows renewable projects that would otherwise not have been economical to finance to get built. This is additional renewable capacity that that goes into the energy mix. It moves others onto renewable sources, often without them even knowing it.

From a climate change perspective, what happens at one particular moment doesn't matter -- it's CO2 emissions globally over time that do.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_purchase_agreement

New comment by jonas21 in "Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage"

jonas21 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 05:10:53 +0000

Google, at least, purchases 100% of its electricity from renewable sources. This doesn't mean that they have renewables feeding directly into all their datacenters at all times -- but for every kWh they consume, they purchase a kWh of renewable energy somewhere and add it to the grid.

New comment by jonas21 in "Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage"

jonas21 — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 21:35:14 +0000

They do! In great detail:

https://sustainability.google/files/1699a2e19277e478b38a659f...

The data tables start on p. 90.

New comment by jonas21 in "LeCun has "zero concerns" about AI wiping out humanity, recent "rogue" incidents"

jonas21 — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 00:09:09 +0000

I watched the same interview, and he and LeCun seem to mostly agree -- both are saying that AI autonomously deciding to kill us isn’t the problem -- it’s what people will do with powerful models that lack safeguards that we should be concerned about.

New comment by jonas21 in "Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows AI vision, surging costs"

jonas21 — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:34:57 +0000

Convertible notes are worth more as the valuation of the company increases and under accounting rules that’s considered an expense for the company?

New comment by jonas21 in "Pacing the Frontier is not the actual goal for AI labs"

jonas21 — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 21:41:38 +0000

I think the author is missing the point. A company cannot unilaterally pace the frontier -- they'll just be left behind. It requires coordination across all actors who are at or near the frontier.

Even if the leading US labs could agree amongst themselves to a coordinated slowdown (and this would likely run afoul of antitrust law), you still have Chinese labs who will catch up to the frontier eventually. To solve this, you'd need some sort of international agreement.

That's why Dario and others are saying loudly that we should pace the frontier in hopes that our political leaders will take up the issue and do something about it. We'll see if that happens...

New comment by jonas21 in "Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock"

jonas21 — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 03:36:35 +0000

An open question is what happened to the 15,625 shares that he received when he exercised his options in 1996?

If he had held on to those, they would be worth even more than the additional 9,375 shares he was entitled to -- about $1.7 billion using the same numbers in the post.

My guess is that he probably sold them when they were worth a lot less then they are now, and would have done the same with the additional shares too.

New comment by jonas21 in "When did Google get so weird?"

jonas21 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 22:39:41 +0000

LLMs might not reason exactly like humans, but they do produce much better results if you turn reasoning on.

The "crack-addled idiot savant" phase was really circa 2024, before the big labs figured this out.

I think the issue here is that Google decided that doing reasoning in the AI overviews in Google search would be too slow (and probably also too expensive), so it's still stuck making 2024-era mistakes.

New comment by jonas21 in "Google's first Suncatcher orbital data center test launches October 1"

jonas21 — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:44:34 +0000

I agree with you about Elon Musk's claims, but that's not what we're discussing here.

If it takes until 2035 or even 2045 for space data centers to have an economic advantage, it still seems like a good investment for someone in Google's position.

And FWIW, there are quite a few people claiming that they'd "go against the laws of physics", etc. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49838152

New comment by jonas21 in "Google's first Suncatcher orbital data center test launches October 1"

jonas21 — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:34:18 +0000

I've heard arguments that cooling will be a hard technical challenge and, given current equipment weights and launch costs, they would be uneconomical. But is there an obvious reason space data centers would be impossible?

Most technologies start out looking hard and economically infeasible. But if you invest in development, you might be able to get a few breakthroughs, and suddenly, it's viable.

If they do get things to work, the benefits seem obvious: 24/7 access to clean energy, not upsetting the people who'd rather not have a datacenter next door (or in the same state), and plenty of space to scale up.

New comment by jonas21 in "28% of job postings on company career sites have been open over 90 days"

jonas21 — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 17:11:51 +0000

Every time I've hired someone at a big company, it's taken multiple months to get candidates through the pipeline, and it was not uncommon to have to go back to the candidate pool when someone would accept an offer and change their mind before starting. 90 days to fill a role would be considered relatively quick.

New comment by jonas21 in "OpenAI's Misalignment Framework: A Tactical Bid to Preempt Global AI Governance"

jonas21 — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 16:28:24 +0000

I feel like many of Anthropic's issues are due to Dario being too earnest and open. It seems both refreshing (that a CEO has thought deeply about and is willing to talk publicly about the dangers of their product) and depressing (that so many people cynically think this is some sort of marketing ploy).