<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: scythe</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=scythe</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:10:24 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=scythe" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "The AI Race Just Got Awkward"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is an ancient practice, that when a human creates something, other humans will observe it and learn from it. Every group of humans living together has practiced this in some form for tens of thousands of years if not longer. Even animals do it. It's a natural assumption when making any form of art.<p>It is <i>not</i> a natural assumption that someone will digitize the artwork and use it to adjust a couple thousand matrix coefficients in a complex computer program. To most people that seems like copying with extra steps. The brain may in some ways resemble a computer, but what sets it apart is that we have always lived with brains. Everything a human does has already anticipated the presence of other brains, while etched circuits on ultrapure silicon crystals are something new.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 17:07:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49911626</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49911626</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49911626</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "The Beatles have permeated research papers across academic disciplines"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My favorite example is "The Beatles" of chemotherapy, viz. platinum, paclitaxel and doxorubicin, at least one of which appears in nearly all first-line cancer drug regimens.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:13:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49894739</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49894739</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49894739</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Italian parliament votes for return to nuclear energy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think that there are plenty of blue areas on that map</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2026 22:59:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49823814</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49823814</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49823814</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Bill to Ban Private Equity from Owning Medical Practices"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We know how to make MRI cheaper. Put it in a can. MRI suites are built with copper shielding in the walls, and the machines are really heavy, which creates huge capital costs. (Capex is a big problem for medicine.) There's an easy solution: you can just put an MRI machine in a standard tractor-trailer container and bring the patients in. Nothing has to be constructed or installed.<p>None of the private equity chains with the sans-serif fonts, simplified logos and trisyllabic names are doing this, though. It's bad marketing. Patients don't want to walk outside to an MRI machine in the parking lot. It feels sketchy. Never mind that they score just as well on the ACR image quality tests as the in-room machines. Who the hell knows what that is?<p>In reality, it's the county hospitals and big universities that use them! Places that have in-house physicists who can argue for what really makes sense in practice. A major problem with healthcare as a business is that the customer does not usually understand the product, but they still need to buy it, and there are time constraints.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:05:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781489</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781489</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781489</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "North Korean nuclear test sets off years of earthquakes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If human society collapses, our cities and landfills will become ores. Strange ores filled with unnatural mixtures of metals, but ores nonetheless.<p>The sources you've linked discuss mostly the recovery of additional metals on top of what we have already recovered. That's a different and much harder problem. It's worth remembering that historically, the amount of metal obtained was much smaller — the vast majority of the copper that has ever been mined was mined in the last century, even though humans have been using copper for thousands of years. But historically, that copper was mostly used for consumer products, while today it becomes electrical cables, so it's less obvious how much copper we all use. There's surely enough copper in the walls of my apartment for everyone living here to cook in a copper pan, even though we think of copper pans as being too expensive nowadays.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 19 Sep 2026 00:02:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49761890</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49761890</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49761890</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Most people prefer traditional architecture"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is a defense of glass, specifically, and not a class of architecture in general. And "traditional" architecture is not a properly descriptive term; it tells us where the architecture came from, not what it is. Architecture is basically a creative process, and we can't handwave away the complexity by using temporal language like "traditional" and "modern".<p>The problem with modern architecture, in my opinion, is its preference for "dramatic effect": long contours, flat surfaces, high contrast. This is visually exhausting. It looks nice in a catalog and from a large distance, but it's uncomfortable to be close to. This doesn't follow from the use of more glass. It's a historical coincidence that the float glass process made windows cheaper around the same time that architects started experimenting with smoothness.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 16 Sep 2026 03:53:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49721906</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49721906</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49721906</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle?<p>You're equating life skills to professional skills. I was not taught to milk a cow, but my milk comes from someone who was. The topic is whether software engineers in a professional context learned certain things about software.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 13 Sep 2026 16:26:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49685716</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49685716</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49685716</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Splash-free urinals (2025)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Even women won't consistently sit down on public toilets</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 07 Sep 2026 13:48:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49598427</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49598427</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49598427</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Wearable machines that assist just one part of the body are proving useful"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><a href="https://archive.ph/0Y2FO" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/0Y2FO</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:35:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49549175</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49549175</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49549175</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Wearable machines that assist just one part of the body are proving useful]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/09/02/humble-exoskeletons-work-better-than-combat-supersuits">https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/09/02/humble-exoskeletons-work-better-than-combat-supersuits</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49549174">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49549174</a></p>
<p>Points: 3</p>
<p># Comments: 1</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:35:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/09/02/humble-exoskeletons-work-better-than-combat-supersuits</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49549174</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49549174</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The Pinkerton incident involved WotC protecting a trade secret, generally the least controversial part of IP law. This was not a case of a mobbed up card vendor roughing up a competitor. People can reasonably object to the tactics used, but the distribution of materials that were never approved for release is a small fraction of piracy and one where the grey hats start to get a little darker.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2026 19:06:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49526529</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49526529</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49526529</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "The Einstein-Szilard Refrigerator (2020)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The efficiency of most existing heat-driven refrigerator and heat-pump designs is kind of disappointing. This isn't a fundamental thermodynamic issue; the Carnot efficiency for a gas burner at 2000 C running a refrigerator offering a 40 C temperature drop is close to the electric efficiency. In principle, it could be a more efficient way to use stored hydrogen than a fuel cell. In practice, it isn't. Maybe actually taking advantage of such high temperature differences requires very good refractory alloys. I would be curious to know the absolute efficiency proposed here rather than just a rough estimate of relative efficiency.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 30 Aug 2026 13:43:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49498607</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49498607</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49498607</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Highest-ever ocean temperature measured as powerful El Niño forms"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think you missed the point of the nuclear tangent. The point was that people might be reluctant to build out energy storage capacity before demand appears because of what happened last time. The difference is that climate change is more predictable than the economy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 30 Aug 2026 04:03:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495596</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495596</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495596</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Highest-ever ocean temperature measured as powerful El Niño forms"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Renewable energy is expanding faster than ever. And it's hard for people to look at that and think we're moving too slowly. But we still are. That's the basic cultural disconnect.<p>When nuclear power became a thing in the seventies, there was massive planning around a presumed nuclear-powered future. The largest energy storage facilities in the US were all built around that time. This turned out to be a mirage as the cost of nuclear went up with the safety expectations of the electorate, while petrochemical prices dropped. But this time it's not prices we're predicting, it's temperature, which is much more reliable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 30 Aug 2026 01:32:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49494859</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49494859</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49494859</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well, for one thing, the only existing Yb-176 production facilities are in Russia. That means demand for a domestic supply is pretty high right now.<p>The other thing is that for a nuclear reactor, you need many kilograms of uranium. But for a Pluvicto patient, you need less than a gram of ytterbium.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 26 Aug 2026 21:08:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49455933</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49455933</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49455933</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You responded to an abbreviation of the original argument. The original was "people had one year to <i>prepare for</i> or protest this". And the impact of a required equipment replacement is dependent on the expected lifetime of the equipment. Practically all equipment lasts more than a year. Disposable items bought in bulk are basically a form of equipment that lasts until you run out. Five years will see about a third of stuff get turned over. I have seen some fluoroscopy equipment still running since the late 90s.<p>Ultimately "make better rules" is only half the battle. You still need a process for implementation.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:54:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49428556</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49428556</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49428556</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>And there is ironclad evidence from foreign sources.<p>Including a rather unusual battle between the Tang Dynasty and the Abbasid Caliphate:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Talas" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Talas</a><p>It's recorded that the Caliph, on hearing of the battle, said "What is this? A crossover episode?"</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 22:32:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426763</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426763</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426763</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>Notepad but with Rich Text formatting<p>TextEdit on Mac uses RTF. Perhaps that's why Windows switched.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 22:27:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426719</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426719</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426719</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Stop Making TUIs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>Finally, I can think of one strong argument for TUIs: they’re cross-platform.<p>>[...]<p>>But remember: I’m not really building applications for other people to use. I’m building them for me.<p>Giant caveat to the whole argument and it's buried 80% of the way down. Granted, he alludes to that a little earlier, but if other people using your application are a completely irrelevant outcome, you're an unusual case.<p>I mean, sure, I make tiny one-offs, but those barely even have something you could call a CLI. I push as much complexity into command-line options and config files as possible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 22 Aug 2026 22:44:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49404586</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49404586</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49404586</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scythe in "Make a 6-Tesla-class high-temperature superconducting dipole magnet at 4.2 K"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>High-temperature superconductor refers to the critical temperature at zero field. But the crucial field decreases sharply with temperature, so the superconducting phase appears concave on a T–B phase diagram. Therefore, in order to operate superconducting magnets at high field, liquid helium is necessary irrespective of the superconducting transition temperature (critical temperature).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Aug 2026 03:45:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49383537</link><dc:creator>scythe</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49383537</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49383537</guid></item></channel></rss>