Hacker News: ndileas

New comment by ndileas in "AI and Home-Cooked Software"

ndileas — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:40:15 +0000

I wasn't around for the second millennium versions. At some point, doesn't there exist a kind of activation energy threshold where enough money/promise etc is gained from the prototype that this pattern works for good ideas and not for bad ones?

New comment by ndileas in "Software update bricks some Jeep 4xe hybrids over the weekend"

ndileas — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 23:18:14 +0000

Yes ... However. Most car manufacturers manage to deal with this without it becoming too common, with standard engineering controls ( proper fasteners, torque specifications, QC etc).

New comment by ndileas in "The Beer Can (2023)"

ndileas — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 12:06:56 +0000

You do realize averages don't imply anything about local conditions?

New comment by ndileas in "Paper Folding Assembly Line [video]"

ndileas — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 01:10:57 +0000

Oh, I see. I must have misread, my bad. That makes a lot of sense.

New comment by ndileas in "Paper Folding Assembly Line [video]"

ndileas — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 23:14:16 +0000

Don't your rule and corollary disagree?

This is one of those things that's incredibly context dependent. There are lots of fat cat small companies out there who do easy tasks with thick margins. There are also jobs that are deceptively hard which it makes sense to hire out.

I usually try to err on the side of diy, but everyone has a different threshold on these things. Sometimes the economics work out when you don't count your time.

New comment by ndileas in "Toxic "forever chemicals" found in 95% of beers tested in the U.S."

ndileas — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 13:56:44 +0000

I'm all for safety and health at a reasonable cost, but yeah, seems like it doesn't matter how good things are. We gotta have something to worry about.

New comment by ndileas in "Seedship – Text-Based Game"

ndileas — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 01:42:20 +0000

This reminds a little of the paperclip simulator, but this seems about 85% less likely to cause me to skip an entire day of work while clicking furiously. It's really good though!

New comment by ndileas in "Freeway guardrails are now a favorite target of thieves"

ndileas — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 18:49:50 +0000

People willing and able to do this probably have a few things going on at a time. Plus they're not necessarily at the high end of living expenses. A couple grand haul for a couple hours work is pretty good.

New comment by ndileas in "30 minutes with a stranger"

ndileas — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 11:24:22 +0000

Would be nice if you would stop expecting the whole web to have stopped developing at your preferred point in time.

New comment by ndileas in "When the sun will literally set on what's left of the British Empire"

ndileas — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 22:08:32 +0000

Physical shorelines instantiations of a true fractal are always limited. I'd go so far as to say that there is no such real object in the world.

New comment by ndileas in "When the sun will literally set on what's left of the British Empire"

ndileas — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 21:49:16 +0000

Exactly. The coastline paradox is a mathematical curiousity, not a practical objection to measuring things. Coastlines are not infinite length in practice. You define a system of measurement then a length in that system

New comment by ndileas in "When the sun will literally set on what's left of the British Empire"

ndileas — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 18:27:51 +0000

You could say the exact same set of objections to shoreline paradox.

New comment by ndileas in "Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City"

ndileas — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 20:42:30 +0000

This is an interesting point of view, and I think it intuitively makes sense. But it breaks down when considering people who block the flow of traffic by running red lights and clogging the intersection - that's just straightforwardly worse for everyone except the blocker.

New comment by ndileas in "Pfeilstorch"

ndileas — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 13:26:01 +0000

Maybe honkery?

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

ndileas — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 21:21:24 +0000

I think this is something that's very difficult to learn. It's a set of attitudes more than anything, and it's very countercultural (and not in a cool way).

Mr money mustache isn't my favorite for various reasons, but he's pretty good at evangelizing the diy/fire sprit. Just take it with a grain of salt.

New comment by ndileas in "Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole"

ndileas — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 16:42:44 +0000

To be fair... Lots of people just never close their tabs. So there's very real resource limitations. I've seen my partner's phone with a few hundred tabs open.

New comment by ndileas in "How to make almost anything (2019)"

ndileas — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 16:32:10 +0000

Good tools are very important. Especially for things like woodworking, metalworking, sewing. A good machine has decades or centuries of trial and error and has systmatically eliminated pain points and possible mistakes.

New comment by ndileas in "People still use our old-fashioned Unix login servers"

ndileas — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 12:25:42 +0000

Mostly annoying network configs and token expirations etc. Not saying it can't be set up well, but in my experience some security guru gets a hardon for making my life miserable.

New comment by ndileas in "The Rickover Corpus: A digital archive of Admiral Rickover's speeches and memos"

ndileas — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 12:11:46 +0000

There's a lot of timeless, good analysis. But there's also somewhat dated concerns (like the energy crisis stuff) where it's clear that he's responding to the issue du jour.

New comment by ndileas in "The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong"

ndileas — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 10:50:24 +0000

Good news! You can't perceive the electrons in sunlight, only the photons.