Hacker News: snikeris

New comment by snikeris in "France pulls last gold held in US for $15B gain"

snikeris — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:51:47 +0000

https://www.helleniscope.com/2025/07/31/august-1971-the-day-...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/august-15-1971_b_4284327

New comment by snikeris in "The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI"

snikeris — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:01:34 +0000

You don't have to read the whole thing to upvote it.

New comment by snikeris in "Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar"

snikeris — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 16:46:49 +0000

Taking the time to craft a well-formed message requires a degree of empathy. The golden rule suggests that we write messages in a way that dignifies the recipient. The Global Elite may lack these traits and sensibilities.

New comment by snikeris in "Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge"

snikeris — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:29:47 +0000

Science and engineering didn't begin with the Industrial Revolution. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza

New comment by snikeris in "ShannonMax: A Library to Optimize Emacs Keybindings with Information Theory"

snikeris — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:35:23 +0000

This is cool.

While we're discussing optimizing emacs keybindings...I've found it key to have my bindings set up such that my thumbs operate the control modifier key.

New comment by snikeris in "Privilege is bad grammar"

snikeris — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:54:46 +0000

This is a good point. Perhaps the poor attempt at grammar indicates a lack of empathy, which is a trait the Epstein-adjacent share.

New comment by snikeris in "The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline"

snikeris — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:51:32 +0000

It's a tale as old as life itself. Some organisms succeed in coping with the environment they find themselves in. The genes and culture of these organisms gets passed on to the next generation.

New comment by snikeris in "The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline"

snikeris — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:38:17 +0000

If you planted an apple tree and it never produced apples, you might start to wonder what's wrong with the tree. Maybe there's something wrong with the soil?

How do you know if an organism is thriving in its environment? You count the offspring over generations.

New comment by snikeris in "De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)"

snikeris — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 19:53:16 +0000

Joe Biden.

New comment by snikeris in "The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence"

snikeris — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 22:18:05 +0000

Nearly 2 in 5 Americans are covered by Medicare or Medicaid. TANSTAAFL. The other 3 bear the burden. At some point Atlas shrugs and decides welfare is a better deal.

New comment by snikeris in "Editing Code in Emacs"

snikeris — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 19:11:06 +0000

I've found it crucial to have Control mapped to the keys immediately next to and on both sides of the spacebar. Thumbs are stronger than pinkies for modifying keypresses.

New comment by snikeris in "You are how you act"

snikeris — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:23:23 +0000

"It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright."

- Benjamin Franklin

New comment by snikeris in "Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)"

snikeris — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:53:02 +0000

> If you wish to not get stuck, seek to perceive what you have not yet perceived

This may seem like impractical advice. How does one increase the scope of perception? Personally, I’ve found that a meditation practice leads to this.

New comment by snikeris in "Baffled by generational garbage collection – wingolog"

snikeris — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 17:21:41 +0000

I think the idea is to reduce the set of memory that needs to be frequently collected. Long lived objects age to the old generation which can be large and infrequently collected. I've used this kind of collector in the past for applications which held a large and mostly static dataset in memory.

New comment by snikeris in "How corn syrup took over America"

snikeris — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 15:51:50 +0000

This is the ketchup you are looking for:

https://www.truemadefoods.com/

New comment by snikeris in "Programming as Theory Building (1985) [pdf]"

snikeris — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 13:50:00 +0000

How good are LLMs at reducing code? For example, will they recognize a common problem and build an abstraction around it? I imagine that the solutions they produce tend to have a lot of repetition with small differences that could be improved by abstraction.

New comment by snikeris in "Programming as Theory Building (1985) [pdf]"

snikeris — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 13:44:08 +0000

The point is also brought up a few times in SICP:

> First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations, but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

New comment by snikeris in "Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season"

snikeris — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 17:11:08 +0000

I worked for a Walmart store as a young man. It was well run, and they were adamant that you took your breaks throughout the day. I faced no exploitative or abusive conditions and was well paid.

New comment by snikeris in "Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?"

snikeris — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:36:02 +0000

A quote from SICP:

From this perspective, the code base isn’t just an artifact left over from the struggle of getting the computer to understand the business’s problems. Instead, it is an evolving methodological documentation (for humans) of how the business operates.

Thought experiment: suppose that you could endlessly iterate with an LLM using natural language to build a complex system to run your business. However, there is no source code emitted. You just get a black box executable. However, the LLM will endlessly iterate on this black box for you as you desire to improve the system.

Would you run a business with a system like this?

For me, it depends on the business. For example, I wouldn’t start Google this way.

New comment by snikeris in "God Plays Chess (2018)"

snikeris — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 21:30:42 +0000

Yes, indeed. It’s like you are witnessing the unfolding of the universe with each move.