Hacker News: kokanee

New comment by kokanee in ".self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting"

kokanee — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 22:03:20 +0000

I'm curious about how this works, but it doesn't look like I can find out without creating an account. I see that it says "Link your existing social accounts to prove you're not a bot." How does having social media accounts prove I'm not a bot?

New comment by kokanee in "Data centers trigger voter backlash"

kokanee — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 22:27:50 +0000

So many of these conversations come back to the problem of privatized gains and socialized losses.

Most things that create value have externalities. I kill the moss on my roof, then it rains and the chemicals go into the stream, then you try to go fishing and get skunked. I exerted my freedom as a private property owner and got the benefits; you paid for the drawbacks. We're all pulling from the same pile of resources, and the Earth doesn't care where your picket fence is.

Data centers incur expensive externalities and you're asking the general public to bear those costs -- or "pay those taxes," if that resonates more. I suppose NIMBYism is part of it, but we're not talking about ugly condos here, we're talking about towns running out of electricity: https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-....

New comment by kokanee in "Finding the best dog treat with statistics"

kokanee — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:33:08 +0000

Yes, and also the presence of a window fan on that side is a big deal because the selection is based on scent. In my experience dogs appear to "like" a scent based on how strong it is, not necessarily how it is "flavored" (for examples, dogs can behave as if they love the smell of poop or skunk spray, but it's actually the powerful sensory information that they're reacting to, not a culinary desire). It seems possible to me that the dog is choosing whichever scent is more powerful.

New comment by kokanee in "Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?"

kokanee — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:25:37 +0000

I've definitely seen some articles on the topic of AI psychosis among executives. I think there's something about being in a position of power that makes the sycophancy really psychologically dangerous.

New comment by kokanee in "I Won't Buy You a Coffee"

kokanee — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0000

I'm surely not the only American reading this and being flabbergasted at the wildly low consumer prices mentioned. I had to double-check the post date to see if this was from 1990 or something.

New comment by kokanee in "Robinhood now lets your AI agents trade stocks"

kokanee — Fri, 29 May 2026 18:13:41 +0000

As much as I hate the idea of enabling the desperate masses to gamble like this, LLMs are very aligned tools for sentiment analysis, which can be the foundation of a trading strategy. I think it's extremely irresponsible to use them for execution, though.

New comment by kokanee in "I am retiring from tech to live offline"

kokanee — Fri, 29 May 2026 17:35:49 +0000

I would take this advice a bit further even -- I don't think savings alone is the key, because inflation and de-dollarization are exponentially eroding purchasing power. The key is ownership of income-producing assets. In late-stage capitalism, the vast majority of people who work in exchange for wages will be members of the debt class; workers who manage to escape debt will still be living on a knife's edge where you can be laid off at any moment regardless of how well your company is doing. The only people living with stability will be those whose lives are paid for by the assets they own, rather than by the hours they sell.

New comment by kokanee in "Private equity bought America's essential services"

kokanee — Wed, 27 May 2026 22:40:58 +0000

We need to figure out how to effectively organize boycotts, and find a way to actually incentivize participation.

I'm spitballing here, but what if we created a browser extension that gives users the option to block various monopolistic/oligarchic tech platforms. If the browser navigates to a blocked platform, we show a "consider these alternatives" page instead. Competitors to the monopolies could offer incentives (raffles, discounts, etc) in exchange for promotion on the recommended alternatives list, creating an incentive to participate in a boycott.

Example: a user opts into an Amazon boycott, but later clicks an affiliate link that leads them to a book listing on amazon.com. The browser extension intercepts this and displays a list of other places to shop for that book. Barnes and Noble offers a 10% discount for people who boycott Amazon, so they're the top recommended alternative, and the user gets the book for a discount.

New comment by kokanee in "Standard Chartered CEO walks back comment about 'lower-value human capital'"

kokanee — Wed, 20 May 2026 18:52:25 +0000

This is the kind of thinking that has resulted in an economy where losses are socialized and gains are privatized. There is strategic business value in managing your company in a way that doesn't contribute to the collapse of the middle class.

New comment by kokanee in "Microsoft and OpenAI end their exclusive and revenue-sharing deal"

kokanee — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:08:27 +0000

I hate that I agree with you. But there's a difference between whether AI is as powerful as some say, and whether it's good for humanity. A cursory review of human history shows that some revolutionary technologies make life as a human better (fire, writing, medicine) and others make it worse (weapons, drugs, processed foods). While we adapt to the commoditization of our skills, we should also be questioning whether the technologies being rolled out right now are going to do more harm than good, and we should be organizing around causes that optimize for quality of life as a human. If we don't push for that, then the only thing we're optimizing for is wealth consolidation.

New comment by kokanee in "Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs"

kokanee — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:27:22 +0000

My theory is that Zuck has profound imposter syndrome due to the public knowledge that his joke of a side project in college went uber-viral and he has had to play CEO dress-up ever since. He has been desperate to prove that he actually has deep technological insight with his big bets on wearables and the metaverse and AI, but the truth is that his entire dynasty is built on people's need to snoop on pictures of their crushes and their exes. I think the company has actually done some impressive things with staying alive via acquisition as facebook has rotted, but he wants to be known as a tech genius, not an M&A suit.

New comment by kokanee in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

kokanee — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 23:37:58 +0000

The disincentive to provide a durable product is unfortunate. Ideally businesses pair high-ticket one-time sales with low-cost recurring sales of related products and services.

New comment by kokanee in "NASA Force"

kokanee — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:21:55 +0000

This website is vibe coded

New comment by kokanee in "Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data"

kokanee — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:53:19 +0000

Weird take. When it comes to trying to compel tech companies to not be evil, trying to use legal precedent for crimes you can charge them with is usually difficult and turns into a semantic debate. I think what's more important is that we recognize when people and companies abuse power to do evil things, regardless of what legal precedent or written corporate policy is relevant. These companies act exactly as evil as they can possibly get away with without pushing us to other products and services.

New comment by kokanee in "If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true"

kokanee — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:45:06 +0000

One year before 1969 we had never been to the moon. In the 70s credible scientists and physicists predicted that large martian colonies would exist before the year 2000.

If a metric goes from 0 to 2 it doesn't mean it's on a long-lived exponential trajectory.

New comment by kokanee in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

kokanee — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 23:22:33 +0000

The seasons idea is interesting -- to me, both proposals feel wrong. I think it's because the weather changes that I perceive seem to lag behind the changes to daylight length by a few weeks.

I would propose boundaries that align partly with how I perceive the weather, and partly with how we plan our year (by months): Summer starts June 1st, Fall starts September 1st, Winter starts December 1st, and Spring starts March 1st.

New comment by kokanee in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

kokanee — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 23:15:48 +0000

I'm conflicted -- the author's rounded Mac looks more comfortable to use, but aesthetically it looks worse. He turned the track pad notch into an amorphous shape that looks like a mistake.

New comment by kokanee in "ML promises to be profoundly weird"

kokanee — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 23:12:58 +0000

That seems fine if you're not publishing content for a living. A lot of people are.

New comment by kokanee in "Live: Artemis II Launch Day Updates"

kokanee — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:08:17 +0000

> the agency said it was confident that a change to the re-entry trajectory would be more than adequate to offset any spalling issues. Somewhat confusingly, they also announced their intention to switch to a new heat shield design, starting with Artemis III.

It's fine to be concerned, but this kind of take is why public agencies are damned no matter what they do. In the private sector, operating with the suboptimal resources you have while working on a better iteration is standard practice, even in industrial settings. But when you're a public organization, if anyone can find anything that is less than 100% optimal, the same people who complain about how slow the public sector is will complain that you're cutting corners, or that you're inept.

New comment by kokanee in "What Young Workers Are Doing to AI-Proof Themselves"

kokanee — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 21:15:35 +0000

But everyone at the company has that private domain knowledge. The only thing you're bringing to the table that anyone in any other role doesn't offer is the commoditized skill set.