Hacker News: mcmoor

New comment by mcmoor in "Reading Is Magic"

mcmoor — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 05:22:40 +0000

Yeah, I've a friend that'll react the same way. This reminds me of a question, why are a lot of early stories a fable? It's because it's the easiest way to discuss an abstract thing, to become something still concrete enough to imagine, but detached enough from reality to not create unnecessary problems.

New comment by mcmoor in "Google removes "Doki Doki Literature Club" from Google Play"

mcmoor — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:10:04 +0000

I've played it, but what's impressive about this game (technically)? I don't remember its implementation being anything special as opposed its plot.

New comment by mcmoor in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

mcmoor — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 06:36:22 +0000

Ive heard someone saying that, Microsoft or Oracle already has hundreds of those 10x engineers for decades now, and what they produce is... current Microsoft and Oracle.

New comment by mcmoor in "LLM Neuroanatomy II: Modern LLM Hacking and Hints of a Universal Language?"

mcmoor — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:17:15 +0000

If the first 5 layers are translator to "universal language", now I'm curious, if we repeat this layer several times, would it converge?

New comment by mcmoor in "SpaceX files to go public"

mcmoor — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:38:28 +0000

I tried it when it has the most extensive free offering, and it definitely answers my worldbuilding questions in more detail than I expected and compared to Gemini or Chatgpt. Can't say anything about hallucinations tho.

New comment by mcmoor in "One of the largest salt mines in the world exists under Lake Erie"

mcmoor — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 03:19:18 +0000

Is it unusually rich for any region that big? I don't actually know, but it'd be interesting to see a comparison to another similarly sized country.

New comment by mcmoor in "DeployTarot.com – Tarot card reading for deployments"

mcmoor — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:23:52 +0000

Ah thanks I missed that part. So it IS deterministic and (pseudo-)random.

New comment by mcmoor in "Deploytarot.com – tarot card reading for deployments"

mcmoor — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:14:17 +0000

Wait, deterministic? I thought it shuffled random cards and then have LLM construct narrative out of that?

New comment by mcmoor in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

mcmoor — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:20:42 +0000

This same blog really chastises that statement and tries to debunk it. I don't really see anything wrong with that article so until then, I guess I believe airpower can never win a war https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...

New comment by mcmoor in "Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure"

mcmoor — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 03:35:05 +0000

I mean looks like booth capture can only capture a booth at most and to capture more you practically need armed rebellion. But if we automate it, then you only need to capture a location to capture all booths in the region.

Against the Survival of the Prettiest (2022)

mcmoor — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 04:28:39 +0000

Article URL: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/against-the-survival-of-the-prettiest/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161844

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by mcmoor in "Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid"

mcmoor — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 01:02:05 +0000

I thought it was getting increasingly disadvantageous and on the way out, then cotton mill suddenly make it advantageous again, recementing slavery.

New comment by mcmoor in "99% of adults over 40 have shoulder "abnormalities" on an MRI, study finds"

mcmoor — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 04:23:17 +0000

From the article, it seems like even if we only consider one dimension, there'd be ~70% of pilots that are uncomfortable. I'd have thought to at least cover 1 standard deviation, thus covering 68% of "average" pilots. But with 10 dimension it'd still only cover measly 2% of them. If we go to 2 std (95%), the 10-power would be ~60%. Quite small but seems acceptable if the initial target is only ~30% of pilots.

But of course this assume all variables are independent. Seems like we could actually push the tolerance much lower than this raw math would suggest.

New comment by mcmoor in "EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear"

mcmoor — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 02:46:38 +0000

For all the grievances people made against food pyramid, this is actually the real reason why it was instituted. Meat has always been expensive, and with limited money people had, they'd rather spend it all on grains and save the money for something else. Food pyramid encourages people to at least add some proteins in their diet. And it works, people's height had been increasing decade-by-decade.

In a way, the movement to disparage food pyramid because it institutes too much grain really seems like a first world problem. Especially any that encourages more meat.

New comment by mcmoor in "1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?"

mcmoor — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 05:59:51 +0000

> even the metric people are not so crazy

No, they were absolutely that crazy [1]. Luckily the proposal fell through.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

New comment by mcmoor in "The Universal Pattern Popping Up in Math, Physics and Biology (2013)"

mcmoor — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 04:50:45 +0000

Yeah I suspected something to do with CDN cost efficiency.

New comment by mcmoor in "Heathrow scraps liquid container limit"

mcmoor — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 05:56:20 +0000

There has been way less terrorism in general too. I'm always curious whether the war on terrorism is that effective, or there's major socioeconomic factor that matters most (or there's just less lead in the air).

New comment by mcmoor in "Video Games as Art"

mcmoor — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 10:00:17 +0000

I really appreciate this article. It continues some series of introspection [1] that emphasizes a part of game that's ironically very underrated, gameplay. A game can be good not (just) because of its visuals (you can just see paintings), not because of its plot (you can just read books), not even because of both (you can just watch movies). But it's the interactivity that can elevate a game beyond the sum of its parts, and it can be done despite mediocre visual or plot.

Realizing this, it can be very disappointing that some discussion about video game art do only emphasize plot or visual, because that's what we understand as art. In this way, Roger Ebert is right, video game can only be art the more it resembles movie or book. But I hope not, and in time, this discourse can be moved especially when there will be more interactive medium out there to be invented (somehow). The treasure is the journey afterall.

[1] Ones I have seen are A Core's ["Can Game Mechanics be Art"] (https://youtu.be/a33ITEZDQwg) and the last parts of Mandalore's [Pathologic 2 Review](https://youtu.be/E7uKUgire7Y)

New comment by mcmoor in "Alarm overload is undermining safety at sea as crews face thousands of alerts"

mcmoor — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 04:25:32 +0000

Yeah I thought the point is not necessarily safety but to organize things so everyone can move faster. In some of my intersections everything runs fine without traffic light but once it gets crowded, someone comes down and organize things.

New comment by mcmoor in "The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world (2019)"

mcmoor — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 02:40:03 +0000

It's always ironic seeing Arab Spring in hindsight. I've seen western observers celebrating Arab countries society upheaval, when the very same thing will also happen to them in less than 10 years.