Hacker News: nkrisc

New comment by nkrisc in "Florida's HOAs and condo associations are making the housing crisis worse"

nkrisc — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 19:37:53 +0000

That’s not really a controversial idea and nearly everyone who owns a home where you can see your neighbor’s house wants to do that to some degree.

If you live in close proximity to other people, you should not be allowed to do whatever you want on your private property.

Pretty much every municipality already has laws that limit you in that manner.

New comment by nkrisc in "RepRapMicron"

nkrisc — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 18:55:56 +0000

Scale matters. For example, at large scale you might be able to essentially ignore the friction between two materials, but at 1/1000 scale it might be the same order of magnitude as the forces expected during operation.

While a large piece of sheet metal might slide down a given ramp, a 1/1000 scale bit of foil of that same metal would probably just sit on that same ramp and not move.

There are lots of constants that, by definition, don't scale.

New comment by nkrisc in "Butlerian Jihad"

nkrisc — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 12:24:05 +0000

Language is an inseparable part of modern humans. It’s likely language evolved as an internal tool for thought and executive function, and externalization of language came afterwards as a means to transmit our thoughts to the minds of other humans.

As such, writing (another form of externalizing our internal language) is a reflection of our essential human qualities.

LLMs can certainly mimic that quite effectively, but they can’t exceed it. I think that’s why LLM writing still never quite hits the mark. It’s the right shape, but it’s missing intent. The words were not chosen to represent real thoughts in someone’s mind.

Even if AI intelligence exceeds humans, it still won’t be human.

New comment by nkrisc in "I Love Software Rendering"

nkrisc — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:01:07 +0000

I think the comments section is the perfect place to nitpick something like this.

New comment by nkrisc in "New York City’s horse-drawn carriages expected to take their last trot"

nkrisc — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:43:29 +0000

The meat industry at least has a useful output. Horse drawn carriages have no meaningful benefit and a long list of drawbacks.

New comment by nkrisc in "Show HN: Unfenced – Land for sale that borders public land"

nkrisc — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:04:37 +0000

That’s what happens when you have lots of trees on or adjacent to your property.

If that bothers you, don’t buy property adjacent to 200ft tall trees. They will fall. That’s what trees do. They grow, then die and fall over.

New comment by nkrisc in "Do dentists know what they're doing?"

nkrisc — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:10:29 +0000

But how do you know the unnecessary treatment isn’t necessary? There is likely always something happening in your body that would suggest an unnecessary treatment. So if you start doing scans when you have no outward reason to, you’ll always find something that looks like it needs treatment.

There’s no perfect information in medicine.

The more scans you do, the more times you’ll make the wrong choice and unnecessarily treat something.

New comment by nkrisc in "Do dentists know what they're doing?"

nkrisc — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:07:09 +0000

Having the maximum amount of information assumes you know which information is useful and relevant. That isn’t always clear in medicine.

Treatments you don’t need can be worse than no treatment.

New comment by nkrisc in "Americans' social activity has steeply declined in the past 30 years"

nkrisc — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:46:42 +0000

In many American cities it definitely was about race. If you look at cities like Chicago you can still see today the effects of decades of overtly racist policies that have shaped the demographic layout of the city today.

New comment by nkrisc in "Character.ai has initiated voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy"

nkrisc — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:14:04 +0000

Ah, so they hired them.

New comment by nkrisc in "AI models can provably hide arbitrary capabilities"

nkrisc — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 10:40:02 +0000

In a sense, all life on Earth is only variations of a single organism.

In the same way the color of the sky being “pepperoni” isn’t that outlandish at all. Food items are used to describe things all the time. All variations of the same idea.

New comment by nkrisc in "Secret of Orange Cats Revealed After 60-Year Search"

nkrisc — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 21:51:37 +0000

No, a biscuit in the US almost universally narrowly refers to a flaky, buttery, savory pastry typically eaten at breakfast, either with a sweet jam or a savory sausage gravy.

“Biscuit” is not a category of foods in the US, while “cookie” is absolutely a category of desert with many different kinds.

If you ask for a biscuit here, you’ll get the same thing every time. If you ask for a cookie, you’ll be asked “what kind?”

New comment by nkrisc in "Thinking will become a hobby"

nkrisc — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 18:07:39 +0000

There is nothing that guarantees they will exist perpetually. In even a slightly moderate global crisis (man made or otherwise) LLMs and the like will probably one of the first things to go.

New comment by nkrisc in "Ledger confirms hidden chip in crypto wallet amid $92M theft claims"

nkrisc — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 17:07:59 +0000

And yet people still do it.

New comment by nkrisc in "Deloitte falsified documents to evade tax on Abramovich's wealth"

nkrisc — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:30:06 +0000

I think the article explains why.

New comment by nkrisc in "YouTuber builds 'Flock-like' camera to track police vehicles, gets police visit"

nkrisc — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:05:09 +0000

But then if what Flock (a private company) is doing is acceptable then what this guy is doing is acceptable under the same standards.

After all, they are doing the same thing: recording license plates in public view.

A related but different question is if police use of a private dragnet violates the fourth amendment. I believe that it does.

New comment by nkrisc in "Ledger confirms spy chip implant behind wallet crypto thefts"

nkrisc — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 11:22:48 +0000

Then can you give an example of what you would consider a solution, whether hypothetical or real?

New comment by nkrisc in "Ledger confirms spy chip implant behind wallet crypto thefts"

nkrisc — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 11:14:41 +0000

Because the scammers are instructing victims to use methods that are difficult or impossible to reverse, such as gift cards or cryptocurrency.

New comment by nkrisc in "YouTuber builds 'Flock-like' camera to track police vehicles, gets police visit"

nkrisc — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:19:48 +0000

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic but that’s not really comparable.

Police do have privileges that ordinary citizens do not. That’s understood, and part of the reason they should be held to a higher standard of conduct than ordinary citizens.

Using their emergency lights and ignoring traffic rules in order to get to a real emergency is one of those privileges.

Widespread, automated mass surveillance is not one of those privileges.

New comment by nkrisc in "I paid people to try and follow my README"

nkrisc — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 15:44:23 +0000

At every UX job I've had we generally ran usability tests with 6 participants. This was before the online usability testing tools proliferated and we had a lab in our office (one way mirror with observation room and everything). Every UX researcher I worked with said based on the available research and personal experience it is as you said: more than 5-6 participants would hit diminishing returns pretty hard and wasn't really worth it.