Hacker News: ks2048

New comment by ks2048 in "The looming college-enrollment death spiral"

ks2048 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:04:41 +0000

> The word 'democratize' is often used just for 'access' through purchasing power.

I guess I'm saying, yes, that is how it often used. I just don't like it and think it is relatively new usage and a change in the older meaning of the word.

In the 90's when Linux was taking off, did people say Torvalds has "democratized Unix"? (honest question - I'm not sure.)

New comment by ks2048 in "The looming college-enrollment death spiral"

ks2048 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:50:08 +0000

> The number of teenagers graduating from American high schools peaked last year.

The article doesn't seem to mention foreigners - particularly Chinese. Are those numbers expected to grow or shrink?

New comment by ks2048 in "The looming college-enrollment death spiral"

ks2048 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:44:54 +0000

Right in the headline is a word choice I've notice lately that irks me, "democratization".

"democratization" doesn't mean more people have access to it. In voting, "more access" means "more governing power" (in principle), but in other things, it does not.

If you want to use "democratized" applied to higher-ed, it would mean more people are involved in the decision-making, leadership, or ownership.

New comment by ks2048 in "Building a CLI for all of Cloudflare"

ks2048 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:27:32 +0000

> TypeScript is "the lingua franca of software engineering."

Seems odd to me. I guess we all live in our bubbles.

If there is some fancy tool out there, "does it have binding for language X"? X seems to be much more commonly Python than Typescript.

New comment by ks2048 in "Building a CLI for All of Cloudflare"

ks2048 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:20:18 +0000

Kind of ironic that AI and Agents seems to be leading to more CLI/API stuff, when AI actually allows human-like computer use for the first time.

A very welcome development - much better for machines to the APIs - but it always would have been welcome without AI.

New comment by ks2048 in "All elementary functions from a single binary operator"

ks2048 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:46:09 +0000

This looks interesting. I haven't looked in-detail, but my first thought is - why hasn't this been found in the past? Surely, people have been interested kind of question for awhile?

New comment by ks2048 in "All elementary functions from a single binary operator"

ks2048 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:10:14 +0000

Definitely prefer his old-school page to the vibe-coded-design page,

https://th.if.uj.edu.pl/~odrzywolek/

New comment by ks2048 in "Apple has removed most of the towns and villages in Lebanon from Apple maps?"

ks2048 — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 21:22:50 +0000

Here's a screenshot from a 2020 tweet that implies this was the case (although it is not zoomed in very far).

https://x.com/hezbolsonaro/status/1310354231795171328

Still odd because OSM has all these towns and Apple appears to be using the OSM street network, but not showing the labels

New comment by ks2048 in "Apple has removed most of the towns and villages in Lebanon from Apple maps?"

ks2048 — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 21:05:19 +0000

The data is in OSM, which Apple uses (to what degree and where, I'm not sure).

New comment by ks2048 in "European AI. A playbook to own it"

ks2048 — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:57:34 +0000

Why do you say they "stopped focusing on AI"? I see a pretty consistent release of pretty good products - particularly in speech and OCR.

New comment by ks2048 in "A Tour of Oodi"

ks2048 — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 19:16:11 +0000

There's nothing "everyone" loves.

Austin Central Library has a 4.7/5.0 on 1,464 reviews on Google Maps. Of course, this is a biased sample. But, I think it's safe to say lots of people love it.

New comment by ks2048 in "Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war"

ks2048 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:52:20 +0000

Lots of publicly traded war profiteering companies. The president even highlighted one a couple of days ago.

New comment by ks2048 in "Show HN: Pardonned.com – A searchable database of US Pardons"

ks2048 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:42:41 +0000

Just yesterday, Trump said he's going to “pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval.” [1] Free reign for crimes for the next 2.5 years.

Maybe removing this pardoning power could be a bipartisan goal... I guess we shouldn't hold our breath.

[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-promises-pardon-ev...

New comment by ks2048 in "Will I ever own a zettaflop?"

ks2048 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 02:18:11 +0000

What's a "a historical simulation" and why is it all such a coincidence?

The "simulation argument" to me is ridiculous.

New comment by ks2048 in "Will I ever own a zettaflop?"

ks2048 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 02:13:08 +0000

I disagree. Comes off as an arrogant guy rather than a curious scientist.

What will it take to get this before you die? What are physical limitations to shrink things more and more and to speed things up more and more? He talks about solar, but what are the physical limits and how can we get there?

I think there's interesting physics here, but this sounds like just a rich guy craving more power.

New comment by ks2048 in "EFF is leaving X"

ks2048 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:12:35 +0000

X11? What is that, one of Musk's children?

New comment by ks2048 in "EFF is leaving X"

ks2048 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:24:57 +0000

> To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.

That's a huge drop. It could be changes to the algorithm or it could be their former readers are no longer on X. I suppose it's both.

New comment by ks2048 in "The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy"

ks2048 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:12:12 +0000

Wait until you find out how many Latinos aren't catholic. (Yes, it's a lot, probably most, but in some LATAM countries Catholics are now outnumbered by evangelicals).

New comment by ks2048 in "Automatic registration for US Military draft to begin in December"

ks2048 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:49:57 +0000

The more history I learn, the more I see how big of a role mercenaries played in wars of the past.

New comment by ks2048 in "Automatic registration for US Military draft to begin in December"

ks2048 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:46:52 +0000

No one gets rich by giving more money to soldiers.