Hacker News: nroets

New comment by nroets in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

nroets — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:46:10 +0000

The De Beers cartel was able to avoid anti trust scrutiny because the best reserves are outside (Africa/Canada/Russia) of the most lucrative markets (US/Europe/Asia).

Corporations control only a small faction of housing supply.

New comment by nroets in "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"

nroets — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 08:46:35 +0000

You can pattern match on the prompt (input) then (a) stuff the context with helpful hints to the LLM e.g. "Remember that a car is too heavy for a person to carry" or (b) upgrade to "thinking".

New comment by nroets in "11.8M EU citizens pay taxes to governments they cannot vote for"

nroets — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 20:21:28 +0000

He says nothing about the language barrier that migrants face in the EU.

He went to The Netherlands where it's extremely easy for migrants to integrate: Not only is English widely spoken, but Dutch is also one of the easiest languages to read if you know English and/or German.

So it's unsurprising that he felt he understood enough of politics that he wanted to vote there.

New comment by nroets in "Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only"

nroets — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:58:17 +0000

Here's crazy idea: Instead of the US spending all this money on restraining the Iranian government through military build ups and sanctions, rather drop hundreds of thousands of Starlink kits by drones.

Firstly the protesters will be able to communicate in private.

And secondly, Iranians will continue to be reminded of the freedoms most other Muslims enjoy: As in free speech and free trade.

One of the reasons the Berlin wall fell was that East Europeans saw on TV that how prosperous Western Europe became.

New comment by nroets in "Nvidia Stock Crash Prediction"

nroets — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 06:36:39 +0000

Some changes to the algorithms and implementations will allow cheaper commodity hardware to be used.

New comment by nroets in "I stayed in a $40 capsule hotel (London)"

nroets — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 12:57:42 +0000

In 2023 I stayed in a capsule hotel in Bilbao. There I was told at check in that no talking or loudspeakers of any kind is allow in the capsules. That can only be done in the lounge area.

I spent 3 nights and got much better sleep than I would have at a hostel.

New comment by nroets in "Day laborers protest noise machines installed at Home Depot"

nroets — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 19:26:24 +0000

Could there be a motif unrelated to ICE ? That Home Depot does not like that day labourers are loitering and approaching customers entering and leaving the store.

New comment by nroets in "Twins reared apart do not exist"

nroets — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 17:39:46 +0000

Your comment mentioned "studies" plural.

There are many studies of twins that try to determine if genes influence intelligence.

Some look at twins who are raised together. One [1] concludes that "MZ (identical) twins differ on average by 6 IQ points, while DZ (fraternal) twins differ on average by 10 IQ points".

[1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6202166/

New comment by nroets in "Twins reared apart do not exist"

nroets — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 12:16:53 +0000

What studies ? What data ? David Bessis basically says that there are so few twins reared apart that scientists can't make definitive conclusions.

New comment by nroets in "Twins reared apart do not exist"

nroets — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 11:36:36 +0000

The article only asks the question of scientists have data to conclude that IQ is inherited. The author is only saying that there are so many problems with the little data we have, that he cannot rule out correlation without causation.

New comment by nroets in "The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source"

nroets — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 18:39:15 +0000

So you point to one instance of highly targeted sabotage aka sanctions. But Snowden and others exposed many instances of espionage dragnets.

New comment by nroets in "Perpetual futures, explained"

nroets — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 05:47:38 +0000

You can buy (go long) a BTC future with only $10,000 or less of collateral. So you can get lots of leverage.

Another reason is that the future may be trading slightly below the spot price of BTC due to lots of traders shorting.

New comment by nroets in "Euler Conjecture and CDC 6600"

nroets — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 17:10:01 +0000

Here's a fairly fast algorithm: Look for a number that appears in both { j⁵+k⁵+l⁵ } and { i⁵-n⁵ } where 0 < j <= k <= l and 0 < n < i

If we only consider l and i under 250, then the sets would contain less than 3 million integers each.

Strength reduction can be used to replace all the multiplications with additions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_reduction

New comment by nroets in "Euler Conjecture and CDC 6600"

nroets — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 06:25:51 +0000

It's likely that the original search also used strength reduction to save a lot of cycles (effectively replacing all multiplications with additions):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_reduction

New comment by nroets in "OpenAI Moves to Complete Potentially the Largest Theft in Human History"

nroets — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 18:41:13 +0000

"Theft" means taking something from someone without consent. Who lost what ? There is no law suite, so maybe it's a donation ??

New comment by nroets in "PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program"

nroets — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 10:07:56 +0000

No, it's not hard compared having a good combination of STEM and marketing skills. Many emigrants to the US had no or very few connections: Elon Musk, Sergei Brin, a long list of Indians, Chinese and other Asians.

New comment by nroets in "Space Elevator"

nroets — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 17:21:27 +0000

The rocket fuel needed to produce that 40 MJ weighs close to 1 kg, especially when you include the oxidiser. So the energy needed to accelerate 1kg of payload to LEO velocity is much more.

New comment by nroets in "$19B Wiped Out in Crypto's Biggest Liquidation"

nroets — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 17:52:01 +0000

Here's more speculation that the price manipulation was rife:

https://x.com/ElonTrades/status/1977340254047649966

New comment by nroets in "Why Wikipedia cannot claim the Earth is not flat"

nroets — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 12:58:59 +0000

Rather ask if Wikipedia can claim that human activity is causing climate change:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_climate_change

New comment by nroets in "The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979"

nroets — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 10:27:22 +0000

The Wikipedia article hints that it went through the courts. Probably the only legally recognised rights were of the property (real estate) owners and those rights didn't include using the sidewalk as a display area and blasting out announcements on loudspeakers.

So $30,000 in 1962 was probably very generous, but these business owners held the WTC project ransom by demanding unreasonable payouts.

The wikipedia article mentioned that it went to court.