Hacker News: quirkot

New comment by quirkot in "The "File" menu isn't about files"

quirkot — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 19:00:48 +0000

It's a real Chesterton's fence situation. There's a lot of latent information contained in a tradition of calling the first menu item "File" including expectations around what can be found there.

You could also say it pierced the metaphor and no longer refers to files on a computer, but to the concept of filing that computer files were named after.

New comment by quirkot in "Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage"

quirkot — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 01:37:00 +0000

> At the end of the day, these communities don’t care if your code works at all...

I think the key word to all this is "communities." If you can make something alone, just do it. If you enjoy gathering together to build a bigger thing, often the bigger thing is 1/3 an excuse to gather together. In that way, the LLM is like revealing the answer to a murder mystery game too early and expecting it still to be fun for everyone.

New comment by quirkot in "That post never existed. Stop listening to that thing"

quirkot — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:35:33 +0000

I mean... they're called "agents," they must do what they're told and they don't get paid. Sounds pretty slavey.

New comment by quirkot in "That post never existed. Stop listening to that thing"

quirkot — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 20:46:59 +0000

> Thus, anyone who wants to corral that kind of entity and make it do their bidding? Yeah, they want slaves.

That's the horror buried underneath all the tech, policy, and gloss. The real, animal brain, desire that drives most of this is: I'd like a slave I don't have to feel bad about.

New comment by quirkot in "Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (1989)"

quirkot — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:24:37 +0000

I cannot express how much I drank this kool-aid. When there were still updates every 2-3 years I would scour google maps to try and find the site. Based on Long Now promo images and local newspaper photos, this is my leading contender. The dirt roads were all gradually expanded and construction equipment was visible here in the 2009-2013 time frame. https://maps.app.goo.gl/3QWhyYGu7DrD8jQWA

New comment by quirkot in "Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (1989)"

quirkot — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:21:18 +0000

banging on the door like a madman where's the clock? where's the clock we all donated money for? tell us about the clock you cowards!

New comment by quirkot in "Punch Yourself in the Face with Reality"

quirkot — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:36:04 +0000

Such a great synopsis. The things that are easy to signal (landing page, presentation deck, logo, etc) have never been the make-or-break aspect. The part that's always been hard, that remains hard, is that a business must solve a problem for people. Even B2B is solving business problems for specific people. And people are a difficult, difficult problem to solve.

New comment by quirkot in "Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke"

quirkot — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:36:24 +0000

In terms of removing friction, I think of moving a boulder. Wheels = good. Ice slide = bad

New comment by quirkot in "Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor"

quirkot — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 11:59:55 +0000

you'll have to take that up with the folks from worldnuclearwastereport.org

New comment by quirkot in "Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor"

quirkot — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:18:01 +0000

Footnote has the backup. 2-3x is guesstimate, but it doesn't really matter. The answer is there's just not much waste to store

New comment by quirkot in "Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor"

quirkot — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 13:21:45 +0000

Europe has about 60,000 tons of nuclear waste storage[1], so lets say the global nuclear waste quantity is 2-3x or 120,000 to 180,000 tons. That sounds like a lot, however it's less than 2 weeks of coal deliveries to a coal plant (at 1 train of 115 cars each with 116 tons of coal = 13,340 tons delivered per day[2]). To take another approach, the average landfill size is 600 acres[3].

The "eh, just bury it" approach is really not a bad one. Its not even that much stuff to bury

[1] https://worldnuclearwastereport.org/

[2] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=16651

[3] https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2021/04/15/hidden-damage-la...

New comment by quirkot in "Daisugi, the Japanese technique of growing trees out of other trees (2020)"

quirkot — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 13:40:38 +0000

In english this is called pollarding a tree. Historically it has been used for smaller wood pieces (firewood, etc). It's fuctionally different [from daisugi] because you don't get construction grade timber from it

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

[edit: clarification]

New comment by quirkot in "Do we need billionaires?"

quirkot — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 15:17:17 +0000

If you want good checks against a government, one dude rich enough to field an army has historically been a bad way to keep the government in existence

New comment by quirkot in "Do we need billionaires?"

quirkot — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 15:13:59 +0000

Made $1 billion? Throw 'em a parade, put their name on a plaque on Wall Street, and never let them touch a new penny from here on out.

New comment by quirkot in "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People (2016)"

quirkot — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:46:54 +0000

Gotta keep in mind that "you control what you can destroy" was expressed as the crux of a single-planet guerrilla group's maximalist negotiation strategy with an interstellar government, where the destruction was of the ability to travel between the stars. It's not a coherent theory of control outside of the razor thin application of "I'm willing to accept pain as long it hurts you much more." It is not a control that builds stability and infrastructure, it is the control of base extortion

New comment by quirkot in "We let AIs run radio stations"

quirkot — Mon, 18 May 2026 21:03:27 +0000

> do children have personalities if we left them in a dark room with no interactions with other humans?

Short answer: yes. generally speaking, personality traits range between 30% to 60% heritable

New comment by quirkot in "Music has scales / raagas. What about storytelling in movies and prestige shows?"

quirkot — Tue, 12 May 2026 13:52:06 +0000

Maybe there's some technical definitions for the words used to describe the films, but match between archetype and movie is incomprehensible to me. I'm not seeing a single one where the film is where I'd expect based on the descriptions

New comment by quirkot in "ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips"

quirkot — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:53:28 +0000

> But it boils down to having the vision, the belief and the strength to follow through over many years

And importantly, that vision being correct. The graveyard of history is full of the dedicated yet incorrect.

New comment by quirkot in "Microsoft and OpenAI end their exclusive and revenue-sharing deal"

quirkot — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:17:47 +0000

By that example, PostgreSQL itself is a form of intelligence relative to a physical filing system. It doesn't seem like your working definition of intelligence has a large overlap with a layman's conception of the word.

New comment by quirkot in "How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences"

quirkot — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 12:36:25 +0000

"being yourself" means choosing to believe that the you that is true is competent and capable of growth while the awkwardness is a temporary barrier between that is not reflective of your true nature.