Hacker News: plewd

New comment by plewd in "Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act"

plewd — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:57:15 +0000

Even noticing the sarcasm, it just seems a bit... unnecessary? It interrupts a discussion without adding much, so to me just seems snarky for no good reason.

New comment by plewd in "The “small web” is bigger than you might think"

plewd — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:29:03 +0000

I doubt the web will allow itself to be transformed into our idealized version of it, so the question seems to just be: do you want to be part of the obscure circle or not?

Neither choice is right or wrong, but I like the idea of a cool community amidst the enshittification of the rest of the web.

New comment by plewd in "Willingness to look stupid"

plewd — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 10:15:14 +0000

As an intern I feel the same everyday. It feels more natural to me to just keep digging into the codebase until I figure something out instead of asking for help.

Part of it is what you mentioned, as well as the fact that I sometimes feel bad for "wasting" a much more productive engineer's time.

New comment by plewd in "Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans"

plewd — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:16:24 +0000

I think people care less about risk and more about human creativity & genuinity. Personally, I get disgusted when I see AI encroaching into artistic fields because I hope new technologies will be used to replace our monotonous work, not take away from authentic discussion/work.

New comment by plewd in "Grammarly is offering ‘expert’ AI reviews from famous dead and living writers"

plewd — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:59:07 +0000

like OP originally said, the LLM doesn't have access to the actual process of the author, only the completed/refined output.

Not sure why you need a concrete example to "test", but just think about the fact that the LLM has no idea how a writer brainstorms, re-iterates on their work, or even comes up with the ideas in the first place.

New comment by plewd in "In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse"

plewd — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 12:40:33 +0000

But surely there are also more truths, and they spread faster than ever before? The amount of lies has increased but so has the amount of information in general, any question you have can be answered within 10 seconds.

New comment by plewd in "In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse"

plewd — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 11:15:34 +0000

Aphantasia is really annoying to explain to people, like trying to explain blindness to a person who's always seen. I can't "see" anything, but I'm able to reason about it and kinda trace what I imagine with my eyes.

Interestingly enough, I have very lucid dreams and have realized that I am able to visualize (with color!) inside of them. I can't imagine being able to do that at will while awake, must be amazing.

New comment by plewd in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

plewd — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 12:09:06 +0000

I really don't believe this is just a trend in Democrats; Republicans aren't innocent of this either. They'll resort to the overused labels of "socialist," "woke," or "un-American" for anyone with progressive views.

The whole system is just so polarized that both sides absolutely despise each other, and so both side dehumanize the other. I don't see this ever improving, it's just a shit show where both sides blindfold themselves to opposing ideas and fling as much of it as they can.

New comment by plewd in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

plewd — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 11:58:17 +0000

> Men feeling threatened by women who make more than them or are smarter than them seems like something that needs to be worked on individually rather than socially.

I get where you're coming from, but I think there’s more to it than just individual insecurities. Society as a whole still pushes the idea that men should be the breadwinners, so when they fail at that their worth (in their eyes as well as society's) just plummets.

Even though people say that the idea of the male breadwinner is outdated, these expectations are still baked into how we think about success and relationships.

New comment by plewd in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

plewd — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 11:32:04 +0000

I'm not quite sure what you mean, that friends/family are a good source because they filter out noise? I would assume it's the worst type of source, people that are biased and don't provide a basis for their views, and might not always be understanding if you ask doubtful questions.

New comment by plewd in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

plewd — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 11:21:21 +0000

I wonder if there is even that much dark money is circulating beyond official numbers. Why would they bother, given that they have the legal loophole of PACs, Super PACs, and 501(c) groups.

It already seems so easy to throw money at a candidate if you wanted to, without even needing to do it behind closed doors.

New comment by plewd in "Programming languages that blew my mind (2023)"

plewd — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 10:08:52 +0000

Was honestly looking for a comment pointing it out, it really kills the interest I have in an article. Also, what's up with that face on the flying debris on the right?

New comment by plewd in "Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations"

plewd — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 13:32:25 +0000

I'm a bit surprised they talked so much about the AI startup's effectiveness without actually explaining the solution

New comment by plewd in "Training Language Models to Self-Correct via Reinforcement Learning"

plewd — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 11:51:55 +0000

Is LeCun's Law even a thing? Searching up for it doesn't yield many results, except for a HN comment where it has a different definition. I guess it could be from some obscure paper, but with how poorly it's documented it seems weird to bring it up in this context.

New comment by plewd in "Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host"

plewd — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 07:37:46 +0000

Is there a source for this?

New comment by plewd in "Why to Not Write a Book"

plewd — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 08:51:01 +0000

So 0.1% of people who don't have a burning desire for it should still write a book, which seems like a large amount of people to me.

And there's not really a way to know if you're gifted and talented at writing, so just go for it anyways. Your appeal to exception falls flat because there's no reason why there can't be another one.

New comment by plewd in "Show HN: I've spent nearly 5y on a web app that creates 3D apartments"

plewd — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 07:25:20 +0000

I would think that WASD movement would be very unintuitive for most people who don't play first person 3D games (although it would be nice for the minority who do expect it, and it shouldn't be too hard to implement either).

New comment by plewd in "East Germany invented 'unbreakable' drinking glasses"

plewd — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 07:17:45 +0000

Not exactly the most reliable supporting evidence, but Veritasium has a video which talks about this stuff.

https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE?feature=shared

New comment by plewd in "If we want a shift to walking, we need to prioritize dignity"

plewd — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 13:36:44 +0000

I agree with most of the points, but I'm surprised about the "lack of green spaces" you mentioned. From my experience, Europe has far more and better urban parks than what I have seen in the US. The general atmosphere of European parks is something that I will forever miss while living in the US.

New comment by plewd in "Monster gravitational waves spotted for first time"

plewd — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 01:45:25 +0000

> heavy and light bodies do experience the same acceleration, but a heavy body will collide sooner than a light body.

I still don't understand, why would the heavy body collide sooner if they have the same acceleration (and starting at rest)?