Hacker News: patrickwalton

New comment by patrickwalton in "I’m Not a Robot"

patrickwalton — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 04:16:14 +0000

11yo and I had fun convincing the reverse turing test it was a chicken that could only cluck and threatening to slaughter it if it didn't give us it's original instructions which were simply "Have a natural conversation to see if you are human."

New comment by patrickwalton in "How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?"

patrickwalton — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 04:41:37 +0000

For another fun one: .weather is entirely owned by the weather channel...

New comment by patrickwalton in "What is going on right now?"

patrickwalton — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 13:11:27 +0000

I worked with an accounting firm that assigned me a new controller. I had a very similar experience where the new controller would feed me AI slop back and forth. I called them out, asked them to stop, and was treated with a brief period of what seemed to be terse, resentful responses before they went back to AI responses. We found another accounting firm after that.

New comment by patrickwalton in "Artist in Residence on a Satellite"

patrickwalton — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 04:56:38 +0000

Planet Labs has had an artist in residence program at times. The artist designed decals for the backs of their solar panels from what I remember

Secret Gardens on the Space Station

patrickwalton — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 23:25:11 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/FutureJurvetson/status/1927839790596247583

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44196569

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Can the Economy Grow Forever?

patrickwalton — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 20:13:39 +0000

Article URL: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/28/1241388988/radiolab-economic-growth-resources-gdp

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43518316

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Doodling on research to translate it for the public

patrickwalton — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:55:08 +0000

Article URL: https://cmlamman.github.io/paper_summaries.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43493097

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by patrickwalton in "Google makes Android development private, will continue open source releases"

patrickwalton — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 11:16:38 +0000

We're a long, long way from any model one-shotting an entire OS, but the gains of AI will definitely make it more likely that some team decides to develop a new open source OS where it would have otherwise been impossibly resource-intensive.

New comment by patrickwalton in "How to Delete Your 23andMe Data"

patrickwalton — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 11:11:06 +0000

I deleted my data a few months ago and it happened fast enough that it didn't seem like there was a human in the loop.

New comment by patrickwalton in "Looking for beta testers for my GPS based game"

patrickwalton — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 06:33:56 +0000

OP, with only two cities available, you might be better off sharing on a forum specific to those cities. Unless I'm misunderstanding and you need users who can create local games.

New comment by patrickwalton in "I built an AI company to save my open source project"

patrickwalton — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 03:38:32 +0000

Cool to see Hawkeye 360 is one of their users. Hawkeye is an Earth observation company that builds satellites to monitor RF spectrum usage on the ground, so I can see how better tasking would help.

New comment by patrickwalton in "Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids"

patrickwalton — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:41:31 +0000

Do you have a source for 50% attribution? Studies I've seen suggest single-digit genetic attribution.

New comment by patrickwalton in "OpenAI Sales Agent Demo"

patrickwalton — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 13:26:47 +0000

Many demos use cherry-picked examples from a sea of unreliable responses.

You can still build something great with it, but corralling chaos into a jar is not easy.

New comment by patrickwalton in "Nobody cares"

patrickwalton — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 13:12:53 +0000

When people ask me what cope is, I'll be pointing them to the comments here.

All of the things he mentions really could be better. It's lazy and careless to say that there's a constraint so something had to be bad. Every engineering problem has constraints.

New comment by patrickwalton in "First live birth using Fertilo procedure that matures eggs outside the body"

patrickwalton — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 11:53:56 +0000

I would guess that the negative consequences of widespread adoption of full gestation out of the womb would be much worse than the consequences of epidurals and C-sections. There's evidence that epidurals are actually worse for maternal mortality, since the epidural disrupts the natural birthing process, leading moms to need C-sections, which increase mortality. The moms I know have had better, less traumatic and painful, birthing experiences by working with coaches that help them understand and listen to their body through the process.

Being around those moms, especially my wife, it's fascinating to learn about how pregnancy is the foundation of mother-child bonding. So it's easy to see how artificial wombs would be much worse. I guess that's the point of Brave New World, how destructive the loss of that and other bonds is.

There may be a layer of diamond inside Mercury

patrickwalton — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 17:02:35 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49497-2

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41997527

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by patrickwalton in "Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives"

patrickwalton — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 13:10:14 +0000

I had this in the U.S. and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. My parents signed me up for homeschool every year, but I still did public school. As a result, I just did whatever classes I wanted. Junior year, I realized that I'd have to drop all my fun classes and just do core for the last year and a half to graduate. Decided instead to not graduate and just find books on different topics from the library. Ended up with: - Huckleberry Finn - a deep History book on Roman Britain - a nonfiction coffee table book on space - an intro to physics workbook - a Spanish book - a book on governments around the world

As it happened, I worked through 4 big space books and realized that I was really passionate about space. When I started college it was easy to plan my direction and be motivated because I knew the area I wanted to work in.

New comment by patrickwalton in "Why I Write My Own Obituary Every Year"

patrickwalton — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 13:23:53 +0000

That Wikipedia page says viewings are basically the same as a wake. Are viewings not common in the U.S? They're common in Utah.

When my dad died, before the viewing there was the period right after death where my siblings and I sat in the room with his body and talked until the mortuary picked him up.

New comment by patrickwalton in "Map with public fruit trees"

patrickwalton — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 03:08:17 +0000

I've been thinking something like this is needed whenever I see a tree dropping fruit on the sidewalk.

New comment by patrickwalton in "SpaceX's unmatched streak of perfection with the Falcon 9 rocket is over"

patrickwalton — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 12:56:22 +0000

Amazing to me that it's not the reused element that failed. It's as though re-flying hardware that's already proven to work is more reliable!