Hacker News: sb057

New comment by sb057 in "Iran war energy crisis is a renewable energy wake-up call"

sb057 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 01:52:51 +0000

>which makes buildouts difficult without significant state support

Which is why I said to subsidize it as state policy in the original comment.

>cost to build is significantly higher in the US because land is privately owned

Which is why I said there should be liberal use of eminent domain in the original comment.

New comment by sb057 in "Iran war energy crisis is a renewable energy wake-up call"

sb057 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:42:03 +0000

The U.S. spends $500 billion a year on electricity[1]. $2 trillion dollars worth of bonds to lower the price per kWh is modest, especially given that it would enable new tax revenue from manufacturing and chemical production, where electricity is usually the highest input cost, even in China.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=62945

New comment by sb057 in "Iran war energy crisis is a renewable energy wake-up call"

sb057 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:45 +0000

I am speaking from a position of total ignorance, so this is probably a dumb take, but I don't see why rich nations[1] don't simply subsidize mass nuclear energy production as state policy. The two main issues with nuclear are unit cost (solvable if you build dozens/hundreds in serial production) and financing (a reactor with a 30 year payback period is much more viable with 3.5% sovereign financing compared to 8% private bonds). France did it 50 years ago with more primitive reactor designs. China is currently doing it somewhat halfheartedly. I bet if the U.S. committed to $2 trillion to one standardized design and heavily used eminent domain, America would have knocked electricity costs down by half within a decade.

[1] Honestly probably only really viable in China and the U.S. plus maybe South Korea; nuclear is unpopular in Japan after Fukushima, and I doubt the E.U. would be able to coordinate everything. Everyone else is probably too poor outside of petrostates, which have the whole petro thing going on.

New comment by sb057 in "Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline"

sb057 — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 22:41:42 +0000

Just delete the model file?

New comment by sb057 in "What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves"

sb057 — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 22:36:00 +0000

See also: public school teachers. You either need to be insanely passionate or incredibly stupid to take ~$55k/year for long hours as an educator that is also a babysitter. And insanely passionate teachers are in short supply.

New comment by sb057 in "Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years"

sb057 — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:31:50 +0000

Also in the pipeline: elimination of jury trials

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2x01yne13o

We've freed Cookie's Bustle from copyright hell

sb057 — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 20:14:18 +0000

Article URL: https://gamehistory.org/cookies-bustle/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47238279

Points: 143

# Comments: 37

New comment by sb057 in "Seed of Might color correction process (2023) [pdf]"

sb057 — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 05:22:43 +0000

> They've pushed AV1 (and other) encoders forward substantially.

AFAIK fansubbers were the first to adopt 10-bit video, way back in 2011.

New comment by sb057 in "Operational issue – Multiple services (UAE)"

sb057 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 20:25:47 +0000

Looking at Google Maps, there's Al Dhafra Air Base a couple of miles to the datacenter's south, an oil refinery a bit to the east, ports to the north, and a military academy to the west.

The Subject Supposed to Know Nothing: Lacan and the Large Language Model

sb057 — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 06:44:41 +0000

Article URL: http://thecombedthunderclap.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-subject-supposed-to-know-nothing.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098121

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by sb057 in "New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers"

sb057 — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 01:39:31 +0000

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/23/ban-sales-po...

New comment by sb057 in "New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers"

sb057 — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 01:36:12 +0000

Counterfeiting money is bad, and should be illegal (the wisdom of forcing such software into printers notwithstanding). Manufacturing your own products is good, and shouldn't be illegal.

New comment by sb057 in "New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers"

sb057 — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 01:27:29 +0000

None of what you said is true.

> the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which gives you the right to manufacture a fire arm

There has been a right to manufacture firearms since before the Revolutionary War, and which has remained a right continually since.

> it must be for personal use

Not necessarily; though you can't conduct business without a federal license, you can, for example, manufacture a firearm to be given as a gift.

> cannot be transferred

See above.

>must have a serial number

Not only is that not true, a federal judge struck down the prohibition on defacing serial numbers in United States v. Randy Price (2022):

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wvsd.23...

New comment by sb057 in "Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors"

sb057 — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 02:59:43 +0000

>Taiwan is already independent.

That is a very controversial statement, and one that both Taipei and Beijing disagree with.

New comment by sb057 in "LED lighting undermines visual performance unless supplemented by wider spectra"

sb057 — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 23:41:31 +0000

Per your link:

>The primary meta-analysis of indoor ALAN and breast cancer risk suggested an association, but it was not statistically significant.

That said, I'm actually sympathetic to the idea, and personally use incandescent lights. I just don't have any hard evidence to back it up (yet).

New comment by sb057 in "FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE"

sb057 — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 23:35:30 +0000

If you threaten to kill somebody then follow them around for days at a time, is that intimidation?

New comment by sb057 in "LED lighting undermines visual performance unless supplemented by wider spectra"

sb057 — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:46:41 +0000

There's a mostly-unsubstantiated-by-data belief that LED lighting can cause health problems by some combination of flickering and narrow color spectrum.

New comment by sb057 in "Disney Imagineering Debuts Next-Generation Robotic Character, Olaf"

sb057 — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 03:22:50 +0000

The lack of a video demonstration doesn't really inspire confidence.

New comment by sb057 in "Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe"

sb057 — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 03:13:07 +0000

"You're absolutely right; that runway was decommissioned in 1974 and is now a cornfield. Would you like me to contact emergency medical services and file an accident report with the F.A.A.?"

New comment by sb057 in "Explaining the widening divides in us midlife mortality: Is there a smoking gun?"

sb057 — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 02:12:26 +0000

From a layman's perspective, it seems like it's mostly an expected outcome of college degrees becoming a class signifier. In 1990, only a fifth of American adults had bachelor's degrees, with those who held them making 70% more than high school graduates. A sizeable gap, sure, but those non-college graduates have minimum wage retail workers and general laborers, and union steel and auto workers in the same educational bucket.

By 2020, it had risen to well over a third of Americans who had bachelor's, and 105% more income for those with them. One might expect a dilution in a degree's value, but I think it's just a matter of minimum wage workers still being high school graduates, whereas virtually all professional workers (including the increasingly few manufacturing workers) needing a bachelor's to get past the first stage of HR.

[1] https://educationdata.org/education-attainment-statistics

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...