Hacker News: sophrosyne42

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Pro-Iran crew turns DDoS into shakedown as Ubuntu.com stays down"

sophrosyne42 — Fri, 01 May 2026 17:29:12 +0000

You say "actively" as if it wasn'y a one-off event... maybe because Iran is forcing children to sit at IRGC checkpoints or other military targets?

None of the gulf countries allowed offensive US strikes to occur from their territory. Its all used to defend against attacks from Iran trying to kill Gulf country children.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?"

sophrosyne42 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:00:38 +0000

These are the secondary and tertiary bad effects of lockdowns which were ignored at the time.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "The RAM shortage could last years"

sophrosyne42 — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:09:08 +0000

I don't know who these "capitalists" are, but generally speaking business regularizes as entrepreneurs learn to read new signals after unexpected market shifts.

It is unlike a socialist system in that there are signals to read in the first place. What, do socialists claim that failure is optimal when you can't even tell if you've failed?

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't"

sophrosyne42 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:24:07 +0000

False dilemma

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't"

sophrosyne42 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:23:33 +0000

This, more than anything, is the cause of limited space utilities monopolies. Companies have to license use of the backing infrastructure, and most often municipalities only give these easements to a tiny number of players. It's a textbook government granted monopoly.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics"

sophrosyne42 — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 21:05:07 +0000

Unfortunately too often authors of non alarmist research end up promoting alarmist interpretations of their work in science media.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics"

sophrosyne42 — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 21:03:10 +0000

I agree very strongly with intellectual humility. I just wish the microplastic fear mongerers would also take that lesson.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do"

sophrosyne42 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 03:54:10 +0000

The market producing what people desire is a functioning society. All the concern about so called addiction is simply a displaced puritanism disguised as humanism.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "FCC updates covered list to include foreign-made consumer routers"

sophrosyne42 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 23:35:02 +0000

Open firmware would become commercially viable when IP is abolished

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating system"

sophrosyne42 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 21:22:00 +0000

A guess for what's next is not a slippery slope argument, let alone a fallacy.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Reports of code's death are greatly exaggerated"

sophrosyne42 — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 18:57:22 +0000

If all problems were solved, we should have already found a paradise without anything to want for. Your editing workflow being the similar to another for a 1970s era language does not have any relevance to that question.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Reports of code's death are greatly exaggerated"

sophrosyne42 — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 18:53:43 +0000

The church turing thesis is about following well-defined rules. It is not about the system that creates or decides to follow or not follow such rules. Such a system (the human mind) must exist for rules to be followed, yet that system must be outside mere rule-following since it embodies a function which does not exist in rule-following itself, e.g., the faculty of deciding what rules are to be followed.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Reports of code's death are greatly exaggerated"

sophrosyne42 — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 18:50:21 +0000

Its not an assumption, it is a fact about how computers function today. LLMs interpolate, they do not extrapolate. Nobody has shown a method to get them to extrapolate. The insistence to the contrary involves an unstated assumption that technological progress towards human-like intelligence is in principle possible. In reality, we do not know.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

sophrosyne42 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 07:29:31 +0000

The relative abundance of land compared to other factors of production is, in fact, such a proposition. But when land is restricted through zoning laws this stops holding true. In other words, we must eliminate restrictions on production for the benefit of all people, but particularly the poorest.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

sophrosyne42 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 07:26:59 +0000

OP used the term incorrectly. The term was used by Smith to refer to the fact that in the market, order occurs by the alignment of incentives of different people without any central planner.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

sophrosyne42 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 07:25:00 +0000

There is more than enough land for everyone, and rich people aren't really competing for the kind of housing that poor people are competing for, e.g. smaller plots with smaller homes. The demand of the rich does not eliminate demand of the poor, so the market produces different kinds of housing for different clientele.

Think about it this way: assume you supply all the housing to all the rich people. Then there still remains untapped demand of others that can be fulfilled by further production of homes for those specific people.

This story fails when land becomes restricted, which is exactly what zoning laws cause. Zoning is a big harm to the poor.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

sophrosyne42 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 07:15:42 +0000

Supply increases until the market reaches saturation. The question is why build more housing if the current supply is sufficient?

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine"

sophrosyne42 — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 19:16:38 +0000

A consequence on our focus on legislation rather than the more natural legal apths of addressing these problems, e.g. easements and tort law.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age"

sophrosyne42 — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 01:35:16 +0000

I'm not really convinced that age verification is the solution to that, nor am I convinced that is sufficiently significant to be a problem that requires legislation, nor that legislation is the best means of addressing it if it were a problem. There are necessarily always risks to growing up. A legislator cannot regulate those risks out of existence. Parents are the only ones with the personal knowledge and responsibility to manage those risks.

New comment by sophrosyne42 in "Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age"

sophrosyne42 — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:41:52 +0000

All regulations, because they cause increased costs, will affect the poor the most, since an increased cost will cause the marginal consumer/producer to become submarginal. That is the choice that is made when regulation is enacted, whether the regulatora recognize this fact or not.