Hacker News: lucaslazarus

New comment by lucaslazarus in "ChatGPT Images 2.0"

lucaslazarus — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:20:26 +0000

No. Firstly because it is spelled “typo.” Secondly you typically use the diaeresis to tell the reader to not confuse it with a similarly spelled sound or diphthong. So it tells a reader that “reëlect” is not pronounced REEL-ect, “coöperate” is not COOP-uh-ray-t, and “naïve” is not NAY-v.

New comment by lucaslazarus in "ChatGPT Images 2.0"

lucaslazarus — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 23:39:54 +0000

Yes, this is exactly correct, and I will die on this hill. Additionally, I don't like the way a hyphenated "techno-optimism" looks and "technOOPtimism" is a bit too on-the-nose.

New comment by lucaslazarus in "ChatGPT Images 2.0"

lucaslazarus — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 22:35:35 +0000

> I think it's the first time I'm asking myself: Ok, so this new cool tech, what is it good for?

I feel like this is something people in the industry should be thinking about a lot, all the time. Too many social ills today are downstream of the 2000s culture of mainstream absolute technoöptimism.

Vide. Kranzberg's first law--“Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Notes from the SF peptide scene"

lucaslazarus — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 16:26:56 +0000

Your criticism is entirely reasonable despite the pedantry. Yes, these people are bad people, but I think that could be the point here. Not to mention, this is just another chapter in SF's long history of being the vanguard of drug experimentation.

You may enjoy Didion's 1967 Slouching towards Bethlehem[1], a similarly anecdotal (and substantially better-written) piece about the drug scene in SF's Summer of Love.

[1] https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/06/didion/

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Notes from the SF Peptide Scene"

lucaslazarus — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 16:18:22 +0000

Strong parallels with Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1967):

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/06/didion/

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Google Street View in 2026"

lucaslazarus — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:53:03 +0000

Knowing Google’s tendency to kill things they try and fail to revamp, I’ll take this stagnation as long as they keep updating it with new imagery. Street View is the greatest project in human historiography; there’s too much to lose to silly Google management.

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Sizing chaos"

lucaslazarus — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 04:01:02 +0000

re: consistency

https://xkcd.com/927/

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Antirender: remove the glossy shine on architectural renderings"

lucaslazarus — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:52:49 +0000

Au contraire, in a rather realistic way

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Purdue blocks admission of many Chinese grad students in unwritten policy"

lucaslazarus — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 18:15:07 +0000

What about this policy has anything to do with English language skills? And how is this “good policy” if it penalizes important next-generation researchers even when they speak English well? I am not denying your observation re: English language skills among Chinese graduate students—it’s just unclear what this solves that checking for English language skills during the live video interview stage does not.

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Hacker News front page now, but the titles are honest"

lucaslazarus — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 16:45:39 +0000

This is possible but you'd have to deploy it right by a black hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_sphere

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'"

lucaslazarus — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 05:09:35 +0000

Not to mention you would need an order of magnitude improvement in on-device inference speed to make this feasible at current smartphone costs. Or they could offload it and sell an insecure overpriced-subscription laggy texting device that bricks when you don’t have cell service…

New comment by lucaslazarus in "DOE gives Microsoft partner $1B loan to restart Three Mile Island reactor"

lucaslazarus — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 04:57:58 +0000

The U.S. is ranked #17 in that list at 101,900 tonnes, not #55.

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Short Little Difficult Books"

lucaslazarus — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:36:20 +0000

Honestly, even getting through 1/3 of it in a night is pretty impressive. Certainly took me several weeks freshman year of college.

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Jeff Bezos creates A.I. startup where he will be co-chief executive"

lucaslazarus — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 15:34:12 +0000

Erratum: I meant to say that REI is an initialism but not an acronym

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Jeff Bezos creates A.I. startup where he will be co-chief executive"

lucaslazarus — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 03:59:10 +0000

Looks to me like initialisms get periods unless they are acronyms or trademarks. So "ICE" is fine because it is read as "ice" and not I.C.E. (eye-see-ee). REI is not an initialism though, but presumably they have kept it as-is because it's their trademark/"doing business as" style.

New comment by lucaslazarus in "WriterdeckOS"

lucaslazarus — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 02:23:47 +0000

Yes, of course that is terrible and should be made way more clear. My response was a joke about how it technically sure does eliminate distractions.

New comment by lucaslazarus in "AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is"

lucaslazarus — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 16:32:27 +0000

Matter of time until markets reckon with AI investment crowding out non-AI investment (cf. the massive oversubscription of Meta's latest bond offering). Must suck to be a small-cap firm squeezed by tariffs raising costs, unemployment lowering demand, and AI investment raising your own non-AI cost of borrowing.

New comment by lucaslazarus in "WriterdeckOS"

lucaslazarus — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 03:59:15 +0000

What did you think they meant by distraction-free? Vibes? Essays? Papers?

New comment by lucaslazarus in "Michael Burry a.k.a. "Big Short",discloses $1.1B bet against Nvidia&Palantir"

lucaslazarus — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 15:45:35 +0000

A good time to remember that Cisco was briefly the most valued company in the world: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/24/technology/cisco-briefly-...

I met a traveller from an antique land, // Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone // Stand in the desert…

New comment by lucaslazarus in "AI's Dial-Up Era"

lucaslazarus — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 14:19:45 +0000

I see, thank you!