Hacker News: sollewitt

New comment by sollewitt in "Nendo's Wonderful Toru, an Electric Kettle for Alessi"

sollewitt — Thu, 28 May 2026 14:55:02 +0000

The write up is maybe out of date - they are for sale in the US: https://us.alessi.com/products/toru-electric-kettle

(From inheriting an Alessi electric kettle in past life: if you are an aesthete go for it. If you are an engineer in your soul stay away).

New comment by sollewitt in "Ferrari Luce"

sollewitt — Wed, 27 May 2026 08:36:47 +0000

That would have made a great a reboot of the 90s Fiat Coupé.

New comment by sollewitt in "The Rise of the Bullshittery"

sollewitt — Tue, 12 May 2026 20:20:51 +0000

In an attention economy the thing that pays is capturing attention - a terrifyingly finite thing that determines our lived experiences.

Rewarding people who are good that this is a compounding mistake.

New comment by sollewitt in "OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft Back Bill to Fund 'AI Literacy' in Schools"

sollewitt — Tue, 05 May 2026 02:59:26 +0000

The missing bit is a representation of knowledge, and a way to represent a learner’s comprehension.

Even if you shortcut by synthesizing a textbook in every major topic - that’s just one arbitrary representation, and the way topics overlap is outside of the material.

I am very interested in this though, if anyone has references to relevant research I’m all ears.

New comment by sollewitt in "I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable"

sollewitt — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:54:07 +0000

This is US centric, but you can show this to anyone in any major city in the western world and they will nod.

The problem is global. Any time you are told the problem is immigrants in your country or that your local politicians didn’t build enough housing - that’s not the root cause.

The root cause is the inevitable centralization of all wealth in corporations who can dodge taxes. This affords them the ability to accrue assets endlessly, buy politicians, achieve monopolies and bump up the prices.

There are 3 things that need to happen to restore the first frames: 1) some things like housing and healthcare must not be asset classes. It is unsustainable to demand profit growth year over year from either. 2) the wealth needs to be redistributed. It is a systemic risk for corporations and individuals to have accrued as much wealth and power as nations (and it doesn’t seem to be good for the mental health of those at the top) 3) we all need unions so workers can advocate for themselves and even the playing field. Including tech.

I’m not a communist, I think capitalism broadly works, but it requires regulation. We deregulated and it’s made a mess, we need to wind that back and patch the bad logic.

New comment by sollewitt in "Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys"

sollewitt — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:27:13 +0000

I had that reaction when they mailed me an offer to join a recruitment event sometime around 2013.

Not quite as creepy as recently when Anduril sent an email saying I was "on their radar".

New comment by sollewitt in "Bluetooth tracker hidden in postcard and mailed to warship exposed its location"

sollewitt — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 05:24:00 +0000

From TFA: it was in port at the time.

New comment by sollewitt in "Finnish sauna heat exposure induces stronger immune cell than cytokine responses"

sollewitt — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:01:26 +0000

Pine sap. You can get a schnapps of it, obviously.

New comment by sollewitt in "The Cathedral, the Bazaar, and the Winchester Mystery House"

sollewitt — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 15:08:00 +0000

Google is famously a slime mold.

New comment by sollewitt in "Artemis II lifts off: four astronauts begin 10-day lunar mission"

sollewitt — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 23:59:20 +0000

I didn’t mean to be hyperbolic, for carbon footprint I’m looking at cumulative footprint since 1750 and not only recent annual footprint. I’m glad we agree, I take your notes.

New comment by sollewitt in "Car Seats as Contraception"

sollewitt — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:30:37 +0000

In CA AB-435 is written to apply a 5-point fit test to anyone under 16.

E-Bike for the Mind

sollewitt — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 15:55:53 +0000

Article URL: https://www.djmurphy.net/blog/e-bike-for-the-mind/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47478820

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by sollewitt in "Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)"

sollewitt — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:23:20 +0000

If you don't count the externalities, sure. Healthcare is a cost too. We need more holistic accounting, the financialising of everything into a tidy but ultimately false P&L column is literally killing us.

New comment by sollewitt in "Leaving Google has actively improved my life"

sollewitt — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:45:14 +0000

Government physical mail is pretty great, you just need the right regulations.

New comment by sollewitt in "We gave terabytes of CI logs to an LLM"

sollewitt — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 16:50:15 +0000

Thanks - that’s the maddening with flakes - is it the thing under test or the thing doing the testing? Hermeticity is a lie we tell ourselves :)

New comment by sollewitt in "We gave terabytes of CI logs to an LLM"

sollewitt — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 16:45:53 +0000

I would be very interested in reading about this kind of orchestration and filtering than data acquisition if you have the energy for another post :)

New comment by sollewitt in "We gave terabytes of CI logs to an LLM"

sollewitt — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 16:05:23 +0000

But does it work? I’ve used LLMs for log analysis and they have been prone to hallucinate reasons: depending on the logs the distance between cause and effects can be larger than context, usually we’re dealing with multiple failures at once for things to go badly wrong, and plenty of benign issues throw scary sounding errors.

The long tail of niche AI apps on demand

sollewitt — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:08:08 +0000

Article URL: https://www.djmurphy.net/blog/apps-on-demand/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47138107

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Don't use AI for randomness, use the atmosphere (Since 1998)

sollewitt — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:19:15 +0000

Article URL: https://www.random.org/history/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47062656

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by sollewitt in "Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony"

sollewitt — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:05:55 +0000

They are both the legislature and the judiciary.