Hacker News: renjimen

New comment by renjimen in "Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division"

renjimen — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:44:36 +0000

I love all these. I'd add Blightsight by Peter Watts to the list. It has the creepy, psychological bent of Annihilation combined with the hard science elements common to qntm's, Neal Stephenson's and Greg Egan's books.

New comment by renjimen in "The Brand Age"

renjimen — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:34:14 +0000

Where I thought this was going: entering the Brand Age of AI. LLMs become commoditized, so the big labs increasingly focus on marketing and rhetoric to maintain market share. See the Anthropic spat with DoD (though I do applaud them for that, whatever their motivations).

New comment by renjimen in "The Brand Age"

renjimen — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:27:26 +0000

Ditto. I kept waiting for the AI comparison. My interpretation was less agentic coding than the commodification of LLMs, forcing Anthropic and OpenAI into a pivot to focus on brand. Anthropic's spat with the DoD could be viewed through that lens: losing money on a deal to better position the brand.

New comment by renjimen in "I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services"

renjimen — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:56:15 +0000

Both. The same as for other materials we don't want kids to access, like alcohol. We can't expect parents to always be watching their kids. That's not how societies have ever worked.

But what I'm actually questioning in my comment above is effectiveness of the technology solution proposed at the device level.

New comment by renjimen in "I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services"

renjimen — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:53:29 +0000

For sure, I'm not blanket supporting age verification technology. Just saying the alternative proposed by the parent commenter isn't very reliable either.

New comment by renjimen in "I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services"

renjimen — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0000

It's only effective if "Children's devices are almost always set up by parents", which is a big assumption. My parents were about as tech savvy as you could reasonably expect but I still got away with buying R-rated video games and such. Kids are persistent and the dangers aren't always obvious.

New comment by renjimen in "I baked a pie every day for a year"

renjimen — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 23:17:35 +0000

Name checks out! Your clarification makes sense on a second read. Thanks

New comment by renjimen in "Banned in California"

renjimen — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 23:15:41 +0000

Agree to disagree, I guess. Not everything interesting has to be comprehensive.

I think I'm done with this conversation now you're comparing a website about manufacturing to child porn. That's in bad taste.

New comment by renjimen in "I baked a pie every day for a year"

renjimen — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 20:53:54 +0000

How do you stay injury free climbing every day? I feel like at even twice week I am entering the danger zone with ligamentisis.

New comment by renjimen in "I baked a pie every day for a year"

renjimen — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 20:50:32 +0000

Sourdough is the bomb though. I agree about the lack of variety, but in its defense, sourdough starter can be used for a variety of other baked goods.

New comment by renjimen in "Banned in California"

renjimen — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:13:54 +0000

Fair point. My actual conclusion: California has made it structurally impossible to manufacture things it consumes, and has exported the environmental burden to places with fewer protections.

New comment by renjimen in "Banned in California"

renjimen — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:13:20 +0000

All data points can be called confirmation bias if you frame them that way. The question is whether the data is accurate, not whether it's complete.

The site isn't claiming regulations are the only factor, just that they're sufficient to make things impossible regardless of other factors.

New comment by renjimen in "Banned in California"

renjimen — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:41:12 +0000

It's providing a single geographic data point to you, for free. You're welcome to do your own research if you want a complete picture.

New comment by renjimen in "Why isn't LA repaving streets?"

renjimen — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:39:16 +0000

Having less garbage is a whole other issue. Small utility vehicles makes a lot of sense but doesn't seem to be the way it's done in NA. Maybe it’s a labour cost thing. But even the long haul trucks are huge here compared to the rest of the world. They haul the same amount but the cab and engine are enormous. Maybe because the roads are wider they can just make everything bigger.

New comment by renjimen in "Banned in California"

renjimen — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:47:16 +0000

I assume you're being a little obtuse. The comparison to wherever manufacturers phones and EVs is implicit. They are manufactured somewhere with looser environmental regulation than California, where they are purchased en masse. You can draw your own conclusions from that.

New comment by renjimen in "Banned in California"

renjimen — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 23:38:45 +0000

> Not sure what the point of the website is

I think it's just informative. I found it interesting at least. I formed my own conclusions from it.

New comment by renjimen in "Why isn't LA repaving streets?"

renjimen — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 23:14:17 +0000

We can't do without garbage trucks though

New comment by renjimen in "We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science"

renjimen — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 23:59:20 +0000

For every scientific discipline that is well represented across modern corporate labs there are a dozen that are not. Most "serious" research is not directly connected to making money.

New comment by renjimen in "There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)"

renjimen — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 22:14:23 +0000

Individuals can of course make choices to reduce their emissions, Americans more than most since they're starting higher. Buy less new stuff, eat less meat, fly less, etc.

But policy is where real change needs to be made, and the effects of policy still scale with population in most cases.

New comment by renjimen in "There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)"

renjimen — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 22:11:08 +0000

Climate doesn't care about political borders either.

But per capita is more informative when thinking about policy for curbing emissions, which is how we actually change our effect on the climate.