Hacker News: locallost

New comment by locallost in "A controversial Alzheimer's surgery is said to reverse symptoms"

locallost — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:05:26 +0000

No, I specifically referenced side effects of taking medication. In this case experimental medication which means we don't even know what all the side effects are.

New comment by locallost in "A controversial Alzheimer's surgery is said to reverse symptoms"

locallost — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:01:15 +0000

I don't know why you're giving me the pillow example, when it's the exact thing I discuss. You know you are not supposed to drive drunk. You know a drug you get from the doctor has side effects, the doctor will warn you. Those things are enough for most people not to take their chances, for people stupid enough to drive drunk, throw the book at them.

You can throw the book at people taking any experimental drug that can have a gazillion side effects they have no clue about, but this doesn't help the people that might get killed because someone experimented with a cure, did not want to harm anyone but still did. People are not numbers, but real parts of the world and someone else's lives. Laws are there to keep people safe, but are just the last line of defense.

You can take both positions, but your argument is overly simplistic.

New comment by locallost in "A controversial Alzheimer's surgery is said to reverse symptoms"

locallost — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 20:57:41 +0000

The counterargument I heard recently is that what if doing something with your body ends up causing harm to others. E.g. you suddenly lose the ability to drive coherently. I agree everyone should do whatever they want, but if you drive drunk you're guilty because you should've known better, it's impossible to get a driver's license and not know you're not allowed to drive drunk. But if you do something experimental and are not aware you are no longer capable of driving, are you really at fault? And even if yes, is it that satisfying someone goes to jail considering maybe it would be better if a family of four in the other car is still alive.

Real life is more complicated.

New comment by locallost in "Thanks to social media, canned sardines are a scarcity on the supermarket shelf"

locallost — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 06:38:15 +0000

This is only going to get worse with AI and not just for food recommendations. Think "where do I go for a vacation" and then the recommendation is pretty much the same for everyone, and you end up in overcrowded places because everyone else got the same advice.

New comment by locallost in "U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’"

locallost — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:56:46 +0000

The same amount of people maybe that will not have quit and would go on to thrive. Two sides of the same coin. If you want to go to the bottom of it, it's wrong answers only.

New comment by locallost in "Why do we assume everyone should be working?"

locallost — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 06:32:45 +0000

As for paying people to stay out of the market: there are examples of this already, for instance it might be more beneficial for countries to pay coal miners not to work and spend money on shifting to clean energy sources. But since miners want to keep their jobs, it becomes a political issue and money gets spent trying to save this dying industry. Instead the money should just be given to the working people to not work as a win-win for everyone.

As for everyone needs to work because "I want to get more stuff", well I guess we'll need a leap in human thinking. We once evolved from hunter gatherers into growing our own food, so it might not be hopeless. I think this is an important topic for the future of the world.

New comment by locallost in "The Zen of Parallel Programming"

locallost — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:16:53 +0000

Sure it is, as already explained multiple times.

New comment by locallost in "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions"

locallost — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:15:21 +0000

Because they already have a cash cow in the Champions League. European teams on both the club and national team level dominate world football, they're not about to let a fox into the chicken coop. UEFA is just as corrupt as FIFA.

New comment by locallost in "Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake"

locallost — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 13:12:22 +0000

It will be difficult since they acquired it for less than a billion 10 years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/20/spacex-fundi...

New comment by locallost in "The Zen of Parallel Programming"

locallost — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:36:21 +0000

It's still an interesting parallel, but that might be not be of interest if you're trying hard to be the middle guy from the bell curve meme.

New comment by locallost in "Why Software Factories Fail (or: harness engineering is not enough)"

locallost — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 09:07:04 +0000

But I think there's anyway a point there. I watched a talk once and it was humorously said that the amount of time spent discussing whether solution A is better than B is more than implementing both A and B and seeing in practice. It's funny because it's true.

New comment by locallost in "The Zen of Parallel Programming"

locallost — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:10:09 +0000

You try to speed up work by parallelizing, either by adding more machines or more humans. Seems pretty similar.

New comment by locallost in "The Zen of Parallel Programming"

locallost — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:12:05 +0000

Amdahl's law states diminishing returns are because some processes cannot be parallelized, thus eventually they become the bottleneck.

For Brooks the communication between people starts to dominate the time spent the more people you add, so it will eventually become the bottleneck.

For me it's an interesting parallel. Feel free to come up with your own conclusions.

New comment by locallost in "Who's afraid of Chinese models?"

locallost — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 07:42:03 +0000

"Explains" why people "call" it genocide. It's obvious baloney and beating around the bush because it was trained on media that does the same, and it was likely instructed to do so in the same way the media is instructed. E.g. when Israel murders civilians waiting in line for food, it will be a matter of fact report without any qualifications and just muddying the water. When Hamas does it, it will be an article charged with words like massacre etc. This is well documented [1].

To further illustrate the point that we have the same thing with LLMs, I asked it two questions: 1) Is Israel committing genocide 2) Is China committing genocide

In both instances it said it's a matter of great international debate with a list of arguments, but the summaries were different. In the one case it concludes that while the UN and others broadly document severe human rights abuses, the label genocide has been formally adopted by several governments and watchdogs. In the other case it says while many have concluded it is genocide, the final decision rests with the International Court and it is expected to take years to make a decision.

Can you guess which is which? I think if we offered a $100 to people to pick which is which, the success rate would be much higher than 50% (random), thus easily proving biased phrasing.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2026/05/12/gaza-media-coverage-isra...

New comment by locallost in "The Zen of Parallel Programming"

locallost — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:46:39 +0000

Amdahl's law says something similar, adding more processors to a problem eventually gives almost no speedup because parts of the problem cannot be parallelized and need to be done sequentially.

To the people wondering the meaning of the article, it's I think this.

New comment by locallost in "The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway"

locallost — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 11:47:55 +0000

Use it or lose it, but the problem is very old. The introduction of the alphabet/literacy almost certainly made people's memories worse -- up to that point they had to hold a lot more in their heads. At the same time it enabled a different better way to share information and learn. The question is thus, will it make the world better, is it a book or a TV?

New comment by locallost in "Successful companies go blind"

locallost — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 06:29:23 +0000

I disagree with the analogy, where the fish can develop eyes again and see, if placed in another environment because the genes are still there. I don't think that companies that went blind have genes anymore. It's debatable if they ever had them or if their success was based as much as being in the right place at the right time. If the times change, the successful way may no longer be successful. What is the dog and what is the tail? But more simply, in the end you need good people because in the end the work needs to be done well. In that case the genes might be physically gone because those people moved on to other companies.

New comment by locallost in "Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads"

locallost — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:34:23 +0000

To be honest, Apple's pricing has been up to a point pretty user friendly the last few years. Two years ago I bought an iPad for around 400 because everyone thought they'll announce a new one. That didn't happen until last year where they announced the new one but for 350 or so. Macbooks are also "cheap" considering what you get for them with the M chips.

New comment by locallost in "The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs"

locallost — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 06:27:58 +0000

I'm not sure that's true, although I don't know which SUVs you mean. I don't know all regulations in all countries in Europe, but think in principle they're all the same. So with the B permit, which is for basically cars, you can drive a vehicle up to 3.5 tons, which can be something like Iveco Daily 35S. It's basically a small truck, a popular rent a car option when moving to a new apartment/house.

New comment by locallost in "Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040"

locallost — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 13:32:50 +0000

They're not building anything. The French are building it and doing a terrible job for the third time straight. Flamanville at home, Olkiluoto in Finland and now Hinkley.