Hacker News: numitus

New comment by numitus in "Why Japan has such good railways"

numitus — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 15:51:16 +0000

The answer is simple: high population density. The more densely people live, the more effective public transport is.

New comment by numitus in "Are We Idiocracy Yet?"

numitus — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:01:05 +0000

In every country, if your parents are scientists, you will be in average smarter, than if your parents are peasants.

New comment by numitus in "Are We Idiocracy Yet?"

numitus — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:23:21 +0000

> Even simple features like height are thought to have ~12k variables.

But you wouldn't deny that there are groups of people who are tall and groups who are short.

New comment by numitus in "Are We Idiocracy Yet?"

numitus — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:19:16 +0000

That’s a pretty weak argument. What percentage of people actually have the qualifications to understand and verify a research paper? And how much can you even trust the raw data? At the end of the day, it’s just a matter of faith—whether you choose to believe the guy in the church or the guy at the university.

New comment by numitus in "Are We Idiocracy Yet?"

numitus — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:29:36 +0000

But it's a proven fact. Less educated people are poorer. The less educated tend to have more children. And children who grow up in poor families receive a lower quality of education.

New comment by numitus in "How I estimate work"

numitus — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:43:33 +0000

I’m not talking about difficulty; I’m talking about uniqueness—uniqueness for me personally. There are people who spend their whole lives designing bridges. I, on the other hand, have been writing software for 15 years, and almost every task I encounter is unlike the previous one. I’m not saying it’s difficult, but solving it requires gaining new experience that will be useless for future tasks. Sometimes, I have to do something similar to a previous task, but in 90 percent of cases, I first need to create documentation on how it currently works, figure out how to turn a task description consisting of a 15-word headline into a set of concrete actions, and then test it.

New comment by numitus in "How I estimate work"

numitus — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 19:55:53 +0000

Incorrect analogy. Bridge construction is a clearly algorithmic process. All bridges resemble each other, and from an engineering perspective, designing one is not rocket science. Construction itself is a set of well-studied steps that can be easily calculated. If I were to write my operating system 100 times, I could give an estimate accurate to within 10%, but every task I’ve ever done in life is unique, and I have nothing to compare it to except intuitive judgments. Returning to bridges: there is 1% of projects that are unique, and their design can take decades, while construction might not even begin

New comment by numitus in "Influential study on glyphosate safety retracted 25 years after publication"

numitus — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 11:50:12 +0000

I watched a video on the Vertasium channel, and I got the impression that this story is completely different from the story of PFAS. The actual links to diseases are very weak; it wasn't even labeled as carcinogenic, but rather listed as possibly carcinogenic. I have a theory that this scandal was caused by the company itself because its patent was expiring, and if not for the scandal, competitors would have been able to use this extremely effective herbicide.

New comment by numitus in "I wasted years of my life in crypto"

numitus — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 10:22:20 +0000

Crypto is 99% gambling, tax evasion scam, sanction evasion, steal energy on mining, or financing criminal. I suppose big countries may totally forbid it quite soon.

New comment by numitus in "Solarpunk is happening in Africa"

numitus — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 22:45:21 +0000

Unfortunately, all such calculations are egocentric. People assume that everyone can use solar panels for 13 days 2 weeks, and when needed, we’ll just get electricity from the grid. But what they don’t take into account is that when there’s load today but none tomorrow, the grid becomes unstable. 2) This also increases costs. You might save electricity consumption in 14 times, but your expenses for grid electricity can increase in 14 times, because the grid still needs to be maintained — staff must be kept at power plants to ensure you can be supplied with 100% of your energy at any moment.

New comment by numitus in "Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone""

numitus — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 18:17:04 +0000

Unfortunately, there is a lot of ideology in the issue of restricting car traffic in cities, for example, the Netherlands is often cited as an example, but they forget that it is one of the most motorized countries in the world (80% of families have a car, and 33% have two), and has one of the densest networks of motorways in the world, and 78% of trips in the Netherlands are made by car, and the average distance of a bicycle trip is only 5 kilometers. I do not argue that local restrictions or a ban on cars, especially in the center, make life more comfortable, but this does not mean that it is necessary to restrict it everywhere.

I often ride a bike, but it is generally surprising that after a century of development of the car, the creation of comfortable climate control systems, noise insulation and multimedia, I am seriously asked to take children to school in the rain, wind or snow on a bike. For me, this sounds like regression

New comment by numitus in "Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation"

numitus — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 09:25:55 +0000

The problem is, as my wife says, accounting is a very creative field. Depending on how you calculate it, the cost of renewable energy can vary by a factor of ten. I suppose that if it were profitable, big businesses would have a monopoly on green energy and installed solar panels and batteries instead of offering them to homeowners.

New comment by numitus in "Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says"

numitus — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 18:00:37 +0000

AI system manufacturers want to sell their products by advertising their superhuman reliability, but they don't want to take responsibility for any mistakes. I should mention that I don't have any Tesla cars in my environment, but a friend of mine claimed in 2017 that the car was capable of fully autonomous and safe driving without human intervention. It's interesting how advertising can distort the essence of technology in people's eyes.

New comment by numitus in "The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality"

numitus — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 19:43:09 +0000

My parents have no washing machine in 80s, because it cost 1/4 of yearly salary(USSR)

New comment by numitus in "Cops say criminals use a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS – I say that's freedom"

numitus — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 20:28:07 +0000

Please read about Bayes' theorem. If 50% of criminals use the os, and 1% of population it is goodnpoint to check any the OS owner. The same way Police Will check your id if you Wear robbery mask, or sell small packets on the Street.

New comment by numitus in "Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic"

numitus — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 20:54:13 +0000

85% of travels in Netherlands happens using car https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/TRAN_HV_MS_PS...

New comment by numitus in "How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?"

numitus — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 22:39:16 +0000

This shows how non-automated retail is. on the production line, workers assemble the crosses in 5 minutes. And when selling, the courier will spend 15 minutes looking for your house to give it to you. It is reason why production is 1/4 of the price

New comment by numitus in "Why is it so hard to buy things that work well? (2022)"

numitus — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:28:29 +0000

in my opinion, the problem here is optimization. It is not difficult to make a courier service that will work like clockwork. It is difficult to make one where illiterate couriers will deliver parcels on time for a minimum wage, and the price will be comparable with competitors. The processes are simplified until the buyers of your product or service start suing you.

New comment by numitus in "Cargo Airships Are Happening"

numitus — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 20:43:13 +0000

I calculated, than the airship with 100tonns capacity, and wind speed 25m/s require 25tons trust to compensatecthenwind. It is Boeing jet engine, not Electric fan require.

New comment by numitus in "Zed, a collaborative code editor, is now open source"

numitus — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 23:41:18 +0000

I am just wondered, how many lines of codes people writes every day, that code-editor speed is so important?