Hacker News: reedf1

New comment by reedf1 in "Solar Energy Saves Europeans $135M a Day"

reedf1 — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 15:39:14 +0000

$135M a day is almost nothing (~$50b/yr) for an area with combined GDP of ~$30T.

Edit: People's general understanding of the scale of economies is genuinely terrifying to witness.

New comment by reedf1 in "To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks"

reedf1 — Sat, 30 May 2026 16:34:41 +0000

We can't put the genie back in the bottle.

New comment by reedf1 in "Why Japanese companies do so many different things"

reedf1 — Fri, 22 May 2026 15:59:53 +0000

Did you read it? I can see how you can come to this conclusion devoid of context. This is actually a topical article - mainly because it is a surprise to many that a toilet company could be one of the biggest winners in the AI pick-and-shovel trade. These names have just recently been hoisted into the spotlight. It's not really a romanization but an explanation of why.

New comment by reedf1 in "Why Japanese companies do so many different things"

reedf1 — Fri, 22 May 2026 15:40:19 +0000

The writing is a joy and the context is useful. Hardly buried.

New comment by reedf1 in "Was my $48K GPU server worth it?"

reedf1 — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:27:06 +0000

Buy one of these next time, https://tinygrad.org/#tinybox. At least geohot knows what he is doing.

New comment by reedf1 in "Lost Images from the 1945 Trinity Nuclear Test Restored"

reedf1 — Fri, 22 May 2026 08:01:48 +0000

This very much overstates the certainty of the scientists in the outcome of the explosion. They could be pretty certain it would work - but they were not at all certain about the result of producing energy, pressures, temperature and forces that have never been tested on earthly reality before. There were many unexcepted outcomes of the explosion, we are just lucky (as we usually are with new science) that they weren't particularly bad.

New comment by reedf1 in "Which country voted the best at Eurovision?"

reedf1 — Mon, 18 May 2026 09:31:45 +0000

I think a correlation matrix would have been a more suitable general representation for identifying interesting voting characteristics between countries. Then this analysis (and any others you want to do) just drops right out of a dot product.

New comment by reedf1 in "Avoiding and reducing microplastic false positives from dry glove contact"

reedf1 — Fri, 15 May 2026 04:55:51 +0000

I've heavily couched my language and not claimed authority. If you are looking for examples of irresponsible communication, look inward. You've mixed real quotes from me with ones you've injected ""bombshell"". I purposefully did not use such language. I get this is an issue that can emote, and I respect your view. Perhaps you've underestimated how much of your view I share.

New comment by reedf1 in "Avoiding and reducing microplastic false positives from dry glove contact"

reedf1 — Thu, 14 May 2026 13:54:46 +0000

Actually this is the shocking part - it actually is enough to move the needle. Incidents of young people with cancer is small so a 100% increase can be driven by a small absolute number of patients. There has been an absolutely enormous increasing in high endurance sport something more like 20x (or 1900% increase) and ultramarathon/marathon runners are 7.5x more likely to get colon cancer, so this leads to a surprisingly large relative increase in colon cancer.

New comment by reedf1 in "Avoiding and reducing microplastic false positives from dry glove contact"

reedf1 — Thu, 14 May 2026 13:48:33 +0000

I respectfully disagree, this was a commonly cited technique for measuring microplastics, which is why it calls into question many studies. Thanks for calling me weird :) I guess the suggestion though is I'm paid by big plastic or something, no infact I'm just a guy reading papers who is scared of death like everyone else.

New comment by reedf1 in "Avoiding and reducing microplastic false positives from dry glove contact"

reedf1 — Thu, 14 May 2026 10:03:45 +0000

I agree that there is not evidence to "not worry", but many explicit worries are being accounted for.

Also - in terms of human tissue:

"The problem is that some small molecules in the fumes derived from polyethylene and PVC can also be produced from fats in human tissue. Human samples are “digested” with chemicals to remove tissue before analysis, but if some remains the result can be false positives for MNPs. Rauert’s paper lists 18 studies that did not include consideration of the risk of such false positives." (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/micropla...)

and Rauert's paper (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c12599)

New comment by reedf1 in "Avoiding and reducing microplastic false positives from dry glove contact"

reedf1 — Thu, 14 May 2026 08:49:56 +0000

There is growing evidence that there is much less to worry about on microplastics on several fronts.

1. A whole cohort of core studies have been judged to have invalid methodology due to not recording baseline microplastic levels (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2411099121)

2. Young-onset cancers (especially colorectal cancer) which were inferred to be caused by a rise in microplastics are being linked explicitly to other mechanisms and cohorts. (https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2025.43.16_suppl.3619)

New comment by reedf1 in "Bob Odenkirk would like to remind you that life is a meaningless farce"

reedf1 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:40:51 +0000

I'm not sure what you are trying to express here. Is it "rich people shouldn't express their worldview" or "the idea that life is inherently meaningless is incorrect"? A younger me ingested this sentiment as a call to action to create the meaning I wanted in the world.

New comment by reedf1 in "How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences"

reedf1 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:36:48 +0000

Sounds like you understand the problem. My read is that you have a likeable frenetic personality; it won't be for everyone but some people will be really attracted to it, best not to question it and just be yourself.

New comment by reedf1 in "How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences"

reedf1 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:05:16 +0000

hey not to give unsolicited advice but to share my experience - it took me a long time to realize that I'm not anti-social, but just anti-party and anti-work social. I flourish in most other spaces - especially hobby spaces.

New comment by reedf1 in "How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences"

reedf1 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 12:49:14 +0000

I'm not so sure I agree - well maybe I do, I meant literally feeling in my statement not merely understanding. e.g. I eat meat - but I can literally feel the cringing sadness and disgust of a vegan if I imagine their perspective, even if I disagree.

New comment by reedf1 in "How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences"

reedf1 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:51:10 +0000

The other day someone described themselves to me as an 'empath' which was odd, because in the context of the discussion it was invalidating to hear. And ironic considering they hadn't forseen how I would take it.

Some people have ultimate confidence in their social judgements and the true sign of empathy is a kind of meta-empathy that allows you to consider truly alternative understandings of the world i.e. empathy for empathy.

New comment by reedf1 in "Composition shouldn't be this hard"

reedf1 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:12:25 +0000

Em dash , corny sub headings, numbered lists for no reason. I think some of this may be human written or edited, but it isn't passing my smell test. Sorry if this is mostly or all human written, but you have a very AI style.

New comment by reedf1 in "Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition"

reedf1 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 05:07:59 +0000

At least subjectively, coffee seems to help my memory. But maybe that's why I started drinking coffee?

I would probably drop coffee it was proven to have negative effects on memory.

New comment by reedf1 in "The Onion to Take over InfoWars"

reedf1 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 07:48:47 +0000

> It feels personal at this point.

Fucking hell that's a funny line.