Hacker News: nervousvarun

New comment by nervousvarun in "Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology (2019)"

nervousvarun — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:54:47 +0000

As with most things cyberpunk, Gibson also did this masterfully w/ the Panther Moderns, specifically Lupus Yonderboy. One of my favorite parts of Neuromancer is when Lupus has his interaction with Armitage and says (from the link below) "Lupus didn't bother to count it, being sure that 'Mr. Who' paid well to remain so, and not be a 'Mr. Name', which Armitage received as a threat."

Gibson (and later Stephenson) were prescient enough to realize that anonymity would be a commodity in the near future.

https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Lupus_Yonderboy

Really excited to see what Apple does with these guys in the upcoming adaptation.

New comment by nervousvarun in "Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer"

nervousvarun — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 21:54:05 +0000

Brian May stands out even among that group (well maybe not w/ Les Paul there)

The guy built his own guitar as a teenager and has played it for the rest of his career: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Special

New comment by nervousvarun in "How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital"

nervousvarun — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 13:38:21 +0000

Right as an American this reads like "American who's never been to large Asian cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing etc..

New comment by nervousvarun in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

nervousvarun — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:22:59 +0000

Totally agree. When people say "Reddit is mostly bots" I find they're really talking about political subs.

Niche/hobby subs are mostly bot-free.

New comment by nervousvarun in "Brown/MIT shooting suspect found dead, officials say"

nervousvarun — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 21:40:14 +0000

How could they possibly have solved it faster than this? There's no magic to this and it takes time like anything else. Yes there's digital footage but someone has to go through it. The murder in Massachusetts isn't immediately obviously related.

Of course the family wants it solved right away but there's a reality to this that seems to be overlooked here but is also not unique here. A lot of murders are never solved. Luck is a factor all the time.

New comment by nervousvarun in "Brown/MIT shooting suspect found dead, officials say"

nervousvarun — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 21:28:37 +0000

I keep seeing this sort of sentiment everywhere and I'm trying to understand it. The same thing happened after Charlie Kirk was killed and the arrest there hinged on a confession by the killer to his dad. A lot of commentary then that the police/FBI got lucky. Ditto Mangione. They got lucky he was found in a random McDonalds.

What exactly is the expectation here? Is there some sort of wide-spread belief that the world works like an episode of Law and Order and every crime is instantly solved by rolling up your sleeves and doing good old fashioned detective work?

Would assume for the majority of planned murder to be resolved as quickly as these highly publicized cases have been (the Kirk deal took about 2 days also) there's going to have to be an element of luck. Piecing together digital/forensic evidence is going to require time and effort. If it's not an obvious connection (domestic violence etc.) and there's no direct witnesses it seems logical you only have a few outcomes:

A) Going to be solved due to a lucky break

B) Going to be solved after a ton of time/interviews/piecing together forensic evidence

C) Not be solved.

Also he only "got away" because he killed himself. They likely would have caught him fairly soon after this because they had his identity from the car tags. I guess the point is though luck is all you have if it's solved this quickly because it's so random.

New comment by nervousvarun in "Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES"

nervousvarun — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 23:08:35 +0000

Man you just unlocked a memory. I'm about the same age...I had forgot about when we lucked our way into "turtle trapping" (didn't know until I read your post it was even called that). When the lives counter goes crazy (we called it "infinity men") we genuinely had no idea what was going on at first and thought we broke the game.

It happened when a buddy and I were completely bored messing around with the game and I remember calling my friends and explaining it but no one "got it" until we showed them.

New comment by nervousvarun in "Cat Gap"

nervousvarun — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 16:22:26 +0000

Obligatory Banks Culture universe reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series

Basically when the "minds" are benevolent deities all scenarios are possible including this one. We can spend our time with cats, we can even turn into cats...as he writes about "Changers" who genetically alter themselves or shift species at whim.

And as always if someone acts up and violates the Golden Rule they get a slap drone: https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Slap-drone

New comment by nervousvarun in "Comparing the Latitude of Europe and America"

nervousvarun — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 13:25:59 +0000

Ah ok. That’s uh…a quite the obscure custom but alrighty then!

New comment by nervousvarun in "Comparing the Latitude of Europe and America"

nervousvarun — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 11:26:09 +0000

Just curious...what's the point of pointing out the year? Typically that's done to emphasize out of date content.

Would you expect a map of comparative latitudes to significantly change in a decade?

New comment by nervousvarun in "Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'"

nervousvarun — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 11:57:13 +0000

Only tangentially related but maybe interesting to someone here so linking anyways: Brian Kohberger is a visual snow sufferer. Reading about his background was my first exposure to this relatively underpublicized phenomenon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_University_of_Idaho_murde...

New comment by nervousvarun in "How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep"

nervousvarun — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 12:44:11 +0000

You're right! Edited the post...thanks for pointing this out was actually a mistake on my part the article was about incorrect dosage which was the point I wanted to make.

New comment by nervousvarun in "How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep"

nervousvarun — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 11:18:14 +0000

Seconding this...also works well when I wake up in the middle of the night to get back to sleep which unfortunately seems to happen more and more every year.

New comment by nervousvarun in "How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep"

nervousvarun — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 11:17:01 +0000

FYI it's unlikely you will eventually develop a tolerance, but it's important to not increase dosage: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-mi...

New comment by nervousvarun in "Power-over-Skin: Full-Body Wearables Powered by Intra-Body RF Energy (2024)"

nervousvarun — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:10:25 +0000

Makes sense...basically the energy equivalent of Herbert's https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Stillsuit

New comment by nervousvarun in "A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator"

nervousvarun — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 13:59:47 +0000

Is that actually true? The U.S. was pretty damn divided in the late 60s.

Widescale race riots, Vietnam war protests, a President and Presidential candidate assassinated etc. That said a few cms or so difference and that bullet takes out Trump.

Certainly divided right now just genuinely not sure if it's quite at that level or not.

New comment by nervousvarun in "Man gets drunk, wakes up with a medical mystery that nearly kills him"

nervousvarun — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 11:02:44 +0000

Or...it could be as simple as his being born in Central America and this taking place in the U.S. means they didn't have access to his earlier health records.

New comment by nervousvarun in "Meta launches Hyperscape, technology to turn real-world spaces into VR"

nervousvarun — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 10:59:27 +0000

Similarly, what about flight simulators?

New comment by nervousvarun in "Nine things I learned in ninety years"

nervousvarun — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 14:06:25 +0000

These books were incredibly important to me as an 80s kid. Was a voracious reader in general but absolutely loved these because they had replay value! I remember scouring through these on long family trips in the car to find every possible ending.

The parallels with modern video games are obvious.

New comment by nervousvarun in "William Gibson Reads Neuromancer (2004)"

nervousvarun — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 13:44:00 +0000

https://youtu.be/qIDVvhy9Z0I

Giblophile so encountered this years ago...definitely worth a watch.