Hacker News: neaden

New comment by neaden in "Montreal adopts bylaw banning insults against police, municipal employees"

neaden — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 15:23:38 +0000

Are you saying all insults should be illegal? Or just any insult to anyone who is doing work at the time?

New comment by neaden in "For most of history, people's conversations, thoughts, and finances were private"

neaden — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 23:34:06 +0000

This isn't really true though is it? Most people in history were some sort of farmer in a small village where everyone knew everyone, you probably had a home with one room, and your finances such as they were would be immediately obvious to everyone else in the village.

New comment by neaden in "I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea"

neaden — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:01:21 +0000

In battle yes. In sieges it was much more common, along with the murder/enslavement of all or the majority of the non fighting population.

New comment by neaden in "2026 Hugo Awards"

neaden — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 15:09:52 +0000

I agree the line between fantasy and sci Fi is very thin. In general I would say if the author intends for it to be a natural explanation like wormholes or something it's sci fi, if it's a magic teleportation spell it is fantasy. There is a series I read once Starships Mage which plays with this, it's hard sci fi for most things but magic exists and FTL is solved through teleportation. Everything non magic has to obey relativity and such.

New comment by neaden in "2026 Hugo Awards"

neaden — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 15:01:28 +0000

I don't think crime thriller or horror have anything to do with if a story is fantasy. Alien is a sci fi movie and a horror movie. Psycho is a horror movie with no fantasy elements. Sinners is a fantasy horror movie. It sounds like you are talking about epic or high fantasy, but there is fantasy romance, fantasy detective, fantasy crime thriller etc. You can even have a fantasy sci fi movie like Star Wars.

New comment by neaden in "2026 Hugo Awards"

neaden — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 14:37:57 +0000

I think by definition any vampire story is a fantasy story yes. Since vampires are not real and thus a fantasy creature.

New comment by neaden in "Space industry lacks workers needed to rebuild satellites lost in war: report"

neaden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 20:36:28 +0000

I mean, if we have a war with Russia that involves destroying satellites, it seems like there is a pretty big chance that means it's going nuclear and we'll have bigger fish to fry.

New comment by neaden in "Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond"

neaden — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 16:29:48 +0000

The original comment makes it sound like you'd get a police visit for walking with your kid to school though, which is hopefully a misunderstanding.

New comment by neaden in "Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond"

neaden — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 14:17:50 +0000

This is one of those frustrating things. You're just not allowed to not be scared with kids. If you aren't scared of letting your kid walk to a pond, you get punished for it. If you're not scared of the kidnappers, you have to be scared of the police. None of it is rational, it's different how many of us were raised, yet if you try to opt out the law gets involved.

New comment by neaden in "Trade (and Tariffs)"

neaden — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:05:12 +0000

So this is just not correct. First off a factory can run 24/7 regardless of the shift length, which is what will determine the total productivity. Second off it assumes there are no trade offs in terms of more errors or anything else by having longer shifts. Third off it assumes that factories in different countries are going to be equally effective with each other, instead of different nations/areas within nations specializing in certain areas. It also ignores the economic benefits that come with having people in your nation having more leisure time, higher education, more time with children, etc. It's a very simplistic model that is also very incorrect.

New comment by neaden in "Mechanical Turk shutting down September 30"

neaden — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:01:03 +0000

This makes it sound like they kill spies.

New comment by neaden in "Trade (and Tariffs)"

neaden — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:58:05 +0000

"If a nation works 6 days a week, 12 hours a shift then obviously they will outcompete any nation where people work 5 days a week for 8 hours." - This is not obviously true to me, can you explain why it is for you?

New comment by neaden in "Rings forged from meteorites may have been fashionable among ancient Greek elite"

neaden — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 19:47:20 +0000

This doesn't really hold water. Iron weapons aren't really any better than Bronze, it's stiffer and lighter with an equivalent size blade but not any harder or sharper. Bronze can be cast in more complex shapes that can help with weapon effectiveness and even during the Iron Age bronze Weapons were used alongside iron ones. Iron is much more abundant so the revolution of the iron age was having much cheaper and accessible metal, not superior. It isn't until Steel that you really see bronze (and iron) become clearly inferior.

New comment by neaden in "The A.I. In Google's New Pixel 11 Is Not Helpful"

neaden — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 19:04:59 +0000

I have a 10 and find the AI to be more annoying than anything else. Mostly I see it when I accidentally hit something and it pops up since they want it to be quick to access but I essentially never want to use it. The fact that they are going to be replacing the perfectly fine Google Assistant with the Gemini which when I tried it out was so much worse at doing the simple things I actually use it for has me regretting buying a Pixel.

New comment by neaden in "Diesel Margins Top $100 a Barrel to Reach Record High as Supply Crunch Grows"

neaden — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:41:06 +0000

But the person who is president when it incurs the cost, is probably not going to be the president when it makes the profit. That is one of the problems with things like this where you can get the blame for doing the responsible thing.

New comment by neaden in "Diesel Margins Top $100 a Barrel to Reach Record High as Supply Crunch Grows"

neaden — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:02:12 +0000

It's very annoying that the cost of fixing all this and replenishing the stockpile is going to most likely fall on people who had little to nothing to do with it becoming such a big problem.

New comment by neaden in "Is the industry ready for tokens-constrained work?"

neaden — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:51:07 +0000

Between all the benefits, taxes, and the infrastructure the company needs costs rise pretty quickly.

New comment by neaden in "Is the industry ready for tokens-constrained work?"

neaden — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:35:48 +0000

It's also kind of odd because even a junior engineer has to cost a company around 10 grand a month in salary, taxes, and other costs. So if the company thinks it makes you 10% more effective it seems like it should be an easy choice. So either the companies are shooting themselves in the foot limiting spending or they aren't seeing the productivity boost.

New comment by neaden in "Maryland Closes More of Cunningham Falls State Park After Second Beaver Attack"

neaden — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 01:00:22 +0000

The issue there is that the modern Zombie myth of an undead creature that spreads by biting only dates back to 1968.

New comment by neaden in "Google Assistant is going away on Mobile Devices"

neaden — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:39:38 +0000

This is terrible. I tried the Gemini assistant for awhile and it was a much worse experience. Just making my phone to pump up some internal stat. No way to even give feedback, just we are doing this and we don't care what you think. Google is just losing any value as a company to the consumer.