Hacker News: kbelder

New comment by kbelder in "Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 to Navanethem Pillay"

kbelder — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 19:09:44 +0000

A small fraction.

New comment by kbelder in "The cost of lies: A Mineserver story"

kbelder — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 17:44:01 +0000

I would have wanted to know about the Mineserver affair if I was making any sort of business dealing with him. I do think the concept of reputation is valuable, and it's a sad thing that it doesn't seem as important as it once was.

That said, I wouldn't want to have any dealing with the stalkers who can't let go of the offense, and post angry comments a decade later. Those are the sort of people you smile at and slowly back away from. Too risky to interact with.

New comment by kbelder in "“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically"

kbelder — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:50:18 +0000

Maybe some of them are like finding the 1 millionth digit of pi. Not hard, but impossible without the right technological advancement.

Now that we have LLMs, those that are hard for people but easy for LLMs will get cleared out, leaving those that are still hard for both.

New comment by kbelder in "Firefox version 157 is round (and how to make it less round)"

kbelder — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:05:36 +0000

I added

  border-radius: 0px !important;

to my user chrome as per the article, but it didn't seem to accomplish anything. I've restarted with no effect. I didn't have a custom userChrome.css file before, but the instructions were clear enough. Do you have to enable it or something?

-----------------

Ok, found that you need a setting in about:config

  toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets = true

New comment by kbelder in "Is society growing stupider? The clues are simple and repeated"

kbelder — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 15:58:36 +0000

"Stupider" should be "More stupid".

New comment by kbelder in "The art of defusing a second world war bomb"

kbelder — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 20:51:15 +0000

Build a dome and put a spaceship on top. An improvised Project Orion.

New comment by kbelder in "Competitive Programmer's Handbook (2018) [pdf]"

kbelder — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 20:37:37 +0000

I have animosity for most of them!

New comment by kbelder in "Show HN: Thoreau BASIC – What if BASIC hadn't gone out of fashion?"

kbelder — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 18:45:12 +0000

It's designed to optimize something you're not interested in. That's fine.

New comment by kbelder in "Consumer AI Fatigue Is Overwhelming, Local Businesses Should Reconsider Use"

kbelder — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 17:05:30 +0000

Only when it makes the ideas better, like this one.

New comment by kbelder in "Burning Man death rates – A short lesson in statistics"

kbelder — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 16:16:22 +0000

A while ago I was at a playground chatting with a neighborhood mom, and her 5 yr old son fell off the top of a spiral slide, and broke both his forearms. It's sobering how quickly and unpredictably a situation can turn from pleasant to horrible because somebody's grip on a railing was an inch off.

There are things you do 100,000 times in your lifetime, with a 99.999% success rate, where failure may kill you. You can't really avoid those.

New comment by kbelder in "Consumer AI Fatigue Is Overwhelming, Local Businesses Should Reconsider Use"

kbelder — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 23:26:01 +0000

I would rephrase that more neutrally as:

It may be the case that the typical customer doesn't notice or care.

New comment by kbelder in "The last time my family was replaced by technology"

kbelder — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:44:14 +0000

And vice versa.

New comment by kbelder in "The AI Race Just Got Awkward"

kbelder — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 17:12:43 +0000

But it's selling it back to us cheaper and with more utility. That's not something to sneeze at.

New comment by kbelder in "1 in 8 cancer cases worldwide are caused by infections, study finds"

kbelder — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 16:17:27 +0000

I absolutely agree that getting the vaccine is obviously the correct thing to do, but:

>"I casually mentioned the HPV vaccine since his daughter was entering her teens."

Is a little weird to do, and seems like it might be downplaying some provocative or nosy behavior.

New comment by kbelder in "Tank Body Problem"

kbelder — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:18:15 +0000

4.6 km/s, if it was orbiting one earth's diameter above the surface. Seven hour rotational period. Gnarly tides.

New comment by kbelder in "Tank Body Problem"

kbelder — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:07:08 +0000

You could add a very slight velocity decay due to air resistance, perhaps stronger nearer the surface. It should make a stable orbit impossible.

New comment by kbelder in "Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat"

kbelder — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:42:56 +0000

But those are all reasons to want kids!

New comment by kbelder in "I switched to Brave"

kbelder — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 23:51:54 +0000

>Last Ditch Bar's new mask-optional Saturdays.

Wow, hadn't heard of that dustup. People are crazy. I guess they always have been, but... wow.

New comment by kbelder in "What would a serious AI product look like?"

kbelder — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 23:39:11 +0000

Yes, here's an example of an AI product that is not serious:

In the built-in Copilot integration in outlook, describing an email and asking to find it, and being told that Copilot has no access to your inbox.

Electronics in U.S. homes by income [pdf]

kbelder — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 23:02:59 +0000

Article URL: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2024/hc/pdf/HC4.5_2024.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49885666

Points: 2

# Comments: 0