Hacker News: nazgulnarsil

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "Backpacks got worse on purpose"

nazgulnarsil — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:51:33 +0000

This should be called what it is: Brand Fracking

Trust will be arbitraged until there are few information asymmetries to exploit.

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

nazgulnarsil — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:13:50 +0000

Yeah, seems like classic representation vs traversal complexity trade-off a la David Marr.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "Astral to Join OpenAI"

nazgulnarsil — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 17:40:43 +0000

the previous normal lasted decades, this one will last a year.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "Astral to Join OpenAI"

nazgulnarsil — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:18:31 +0000

it never made sense to have devs all over the world doing the same task with tiny variation. Centralization was inevitable. LLMs might have been a step change but the trajectory was already set.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people"

nazgulnarsil — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 20:35:43 +0000

US has tensions (lack of broad social agreement) in its regard for several subjects, so those areas absorb infinite money as the incoherent regulations and rent seeking around those black holes festers. Housing, Medicine, Education, Justice/Policing/Prison system. Denial of reality is always expensive. If you ask the median voter questions about any of these areas it is certain that there will be many basic misunderstandings about them.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness"

nazgulnarsil — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 19:43:46 +0000

We have eliminated the ability to discriminate against those displaying anti-social behaviors or commons damaging externalities in the name of fairness, leaving monetary discrimination the only remaining legally viable recourse and are destroying every other form of commons.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "Being fat is a trap"

nazgulnarsil — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 02:36:58 +0000

There is a blame industry and an excuses industry in an arms race with each other.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "How to live on $432 a month in America"

nazgulnarsil — Sat, 24 May 2025 02:14:53 +0000

>our ancestors died extremely early

No they didn't, stop using averages.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?"

nazgulnarsil — Thu, 22 May 2025 18:11:24 +0000

If you buy things that are productive you come out ahead on a trade deficit. If you buy things that are consumptive you are pawning future productive capacity of the country. Every country does both, obviously, what matters is the overall balance. The US has notably (as in quantified by economists, civil engineers, people who study urban planning etc.) failed to invest in productive infra for quite a while now.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive"

nazgulnarsil — Thu, 22 May 2025 16:49:23 +0000

good designers are obsessed with how things are used. the others are platonically wanking.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "Apple Debuts iPhone 16e"

nazgulnarsil — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:37:56 +0000

Because the 13" is close to the same physical size as the old 11

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "I've acquired a new superpower"

nazgulnarsil — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:57:10 +0000

A bunch of math is like this too.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says tech leaders are 'pretending to be Republicans'"

nazgulnarsil — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:55:11 +0000

Already

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market"

nazgulnarsil — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:14:42 +0000

Capitalism-meritocracy= lottery. This feeling percolates deeply into society over time.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "Marshall Brain has died"

nazgulnarsil — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 18:31:12 +0000

Accelerando

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)"

nazgulnarsil — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 21:10:14 +0000

frozen, thawed and reheated rice and potatoes triples their resistant starch content, drastically increasing their satiety.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)"

nazgulnarsil — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 16:35:48 +0000

Nutrition researcher here. The combination of free acids and free sugars seems to have a synergistically terrible effect on metabolism. The man who discovered diabetes tried to warn about this. The bottom line is you don't want processed carbs or processed fats. They aren't in a form that is much available in the environment, even supposed similar items like pure honey or cream don't show the same effects. Eat starches, fruit, and natural fats (animal, fish, nuts).

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "Post World War II Food"

nazgulnarsil — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 16:49:02 +0000

Not covered in the article are the snack bars which to this day tend to be an oat and chocolate base with added protein and vitamins. This persisted far past the time it was possible to make something better tasting and better for you. I wound up researching this quite heavily while developing mealsquares.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "The muscular imagination of Iain M. Banks: a future you might want"

nazgulnarsil — Sun, 08 Sep 2024 23:11:24 +0000

Highly recommend Statistical Physics of Human Cooperation.

New comment by nazgulnarsil in "The muscular imagination of Iain M. Banks: a future you might want"

nazgulnarsil — Sun, 08 Sep 2024 20:15:16 +0000

the mechanics of cooperation probably scale better than those of defection, by their nature. Defectors need to pay higher costs guarding themselves against the other defectors, and always trying to figure out how they are going to pick the right defections for themselves to win.