Hacker News: slg

New comment by slg in "'They take you out of life, out of time': a journey into Spain's cave paintings"

slg — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:35:00 +0000

>If you've not watched the Herzog classic "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" - I highly highly recommend it - the paintings are amazing.

Especially if you have a chance to see it in 3D and/or on a big screen. The paintings incorporate the curves and contours of the cave walls to represent things like the bulging of muscles or even to simulate movement and that's difficult to convey in 2D. They did a remaster and IMAX re-release earlier this year and seeing it that way makes the images even more magical.

New comment by slg in "CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs"

slg — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 21:47:16 +0000

>convince someone to lend you money in the hope that you'll get it back to them

And it should be noted that many of these people lending money are in a similar situation of not being required to have any qualifications. Sure, some of them have worked their way up through sound investment after sound investment, but many of them were either born into their position or simply got lucky at some point along the way. Just think of all the money investors threw away pursuing crypto and NFTs for example. Many of those investments were transparently stupid from day 1.

New comment by slg in "Apple WWDC 2026"

slg — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:28:13 +0000

I think the potentially most impactful singular feature mentioned in all this is being able to conversationally describe Shortcuts for AI to create. That feels like the type of thing that if done right can change how we all use our phones in a way that things like Siri becoming smarter and more conversational likely won't.

New comment by slg in "Apple WWDC 2026"

slg — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:18:19 +0000

There's something dystopian about the way that they are championing the blurring of the lines between photos and AI generated content with no consideration for the implications of that tech. Apple likes to pretend they are conservative with this tech rather than simply being behind, but this type of thing isn't a conservative feature.

New comment by slg in "Apple WWDC 2026"

slg — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:06:42 +0000

Yeah, the biggest problem is really that they all have the same approach, so these specific details stick out more through repetition. They don't let their presenters speak in their own voice or in their own presentation style. It's ironic for the company that made that 1984 commercial. The attempt at using different speakers to add variety actually ends up doing the opposite because the similarities become even more evident when a dozen people all behave in the same way.

New comment by slg in "The architecture of the internet creates risks for democracy"

slg — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 23:28:50 +0000

That’s not the root. The root is capitalism’s need for constant growth. You can still create a successful business via advertising without the need to turn to algorithmic attention maximizing feeds if the only goal was serving customers and keeping workers employed. The problem is that whoever put up the capital to start the business is unlikely to be satisfied with that. This is why independent media and worker owned media is seeing a rise in popularity. Sustainability is obviously much easier to achieve than perpetual growth.

New comment by slg in "The architecture of the internet creates risks for democracy"

slg — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 22:57:16 +0000

What I don’t get about these centrist takes is that even if you believe this, can you not recognize the difference in motivation and intention of the speech? For example, to me it’s wild to equate something like Democrats wanting to promote Covid safety and Republicans wanting to promote the idea that Californian elections are fraudulent. One is an earnest attempt for public good and the other is a cynical attempt to undermine democracy.

New comment by slg in "The architecture of the internet creates risks for democracy"

slg — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:16:20 +0000

The problem is more specifically "algorithmic feeds" which isn't require by or exclusive to social media. For example, news sites and media sites like Youtube and Spotify (which arguably have social aspects, but most people don't use them like social media) also contribute in similar ways. The root problem is the algorithm optimizing for attention mixing with human nature that tends to make negative reactions more powerful than positive reactions which causes the algorithms to create a sort of polarization death spiral.

New comment by slg in "Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say"

slg — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 01:06:28 +0000

I don't like how Americans dismiss their own agency in this all. This is not being forced on us by Israel. A huge and underdiscussed reason why the US and Israel have the relationship they do is because of the roughly 100m American Evangelicals that want it that way. That's also why the GOP is seen as the party more favorable to Israel (not that the Democrats are necessarily adversarial, but they clearly aren't as agreeable as a whole).

New comment by slg in "DoD Officially Drops 180 Faiths from Military's Recognized Religion List"

slg — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:46:24 +0000

And to make it clear since you didn't say it, Assemblies of God is on the list categorized as Christian while the LDS Church isn't, so this doesn't appear to be the distinction the list makers had in mind.

New comment by slg in "DoD Officially Drops 180 Faiths from Military's Recognized Religion List"

slg — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:44:32 +0000

And yet Jehovah's Witnesses are denoted on the list as a Christian faith. So whatever the distinction that is being made here, it isn't simply rejection of the Nicene Creed.

New comment by slg in "DoD Officially Drops 180 Faiths from Military's Recognized Religion List"

slg — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 23:59:16 +0000

It's notable that the original list with the extra 180 religions was from Trump's first term, so this is another example of the doubling down on white Christian identity politics that has come to define Trump's second term.

Also one small potentially controversial decision here that I find amusing in a narcissism of small differences kind of way, Mormons aren't considered Christian according to this list.

New comment by slg in "Sagrada Família Lego set"

slg — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:48:56 +0000

Because it doesn't appear to either be designed at a consistent scale or be a solid rectangular cuboid making volume feel like an even less accurate basis for my silly joke.

New comment by slg in "Sagrada Família Lego set"

slg — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:35:26 +0000

If we scale it by height, a historically accurate building of this set should take you approximately 200 days.

New comment by slg in "'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut"

slg — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 01:51:34 +0000

>I think the other thing is that there are a ton of free things for me to watch on various streaming platforms.

Yes, I think it's just people today have more options for entertainment. There are lots of people in this thread trying to rationalize their declining interest in movies as the failing of someone else with "there's no Steam for movies", "they don't make good original movies anymore", or "they don't hire talented people anymore" but that stuff is all happening and has been for a while. People just found other stuff to do with their time so they aren't seeking movies out as much anymore, but it's all out there if you put in a little effort to find it.

New comment by slg in "'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut"

slg — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:46:46 +0000

I just opened the Apple TV app on my phone and "$4.99 Essential Movies" is listed prominently just under the top charts and new releases. I'm not trying to be rude, but this whole thread has people just speculating on stuff with limited self-awareness. The reason you aren't building a big film library is probably because you aren't that passionate about films, it isn't because no one is providing you a list of cheap movies. It's all there already, you just had to open the app.

New comment by slg in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

slg — Sat, 30 May 2026 02:18:05 +0000

You are treating multiple related issues as one singular issue. Battle passes and microtransactions aren't inherently a form a gambling. They can be implemented with gambling, but plenty of games aren't setup that way. If we have a problem with a model that specifically relies on gambling, we can regulate it like other jurisdictions have done[1]. But this specific piece of regulation is addressing something else and doesn't do anything to point the market specifically towards gambling.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box#Regulation_and_legisl...

New comment by slg in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

slg — Fri, 29 May 2026 22:57:50 +0000

Are we still talking about negative impacts of this regulation? Because I don't follow the argument that games going free-to-play is bad for the consumer. Consumer pressure has pushed most games with battle passes and microtransactions to limit those to optional expansions of the base game, often merely cosmetic. People can and do spend hundreds of hours playing Fortnite without paying a cent and I don't see how that type of outcome is bad for the consumer.

And if the consumer doesn't invest any money into the experience, I have a hard time justifying a requirement for the publisher to provide options to keep the game running in perpetuity, so I'm fine with that exception.

New comment by slg in "EV Stupidity Checklist"

slg — Fri, 29 May 2026 22:18:48 +0000

Almost none of this is specific to EVs, manufacturers just see EV consumers as technology forward (which seems to largely stem from Tesla's design approach) so they have been more aggressive with technology than with their traditional ICE models.

New comment by slg in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

slg — Fri, 29 May 2026 22:12:03 +0000

The natural incentives had already pointed to subscription based games, these companies attempted it, and consumers mostly rejected it. I'm extremely dubious that this regulation would be enough to reverse that. It's a much easier decision for a company to put a small development team on readying the server tools for public release than brute forcing a new business model on a resistant consumer base and all the associated risks that come along with it.