Hacker News: thijson

New comment by thijson in "Core PPI up 9.6% annualized (0.8% MoM) in May"

thijson — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:02:29 +0000

I think the Athenians named our current system an oligarchy. Selection by lot would take a lot of the corrupting influence of money out of the system too. There would need to be safeguards though, similar to how juries are protected during a trial.

I read somewhere recently about how congress should be much bigger than it is currently due to population growth, and how that would make all the redistricting that currently happens irrelevant.

New comment by thijson in "India's surprise baby bust"

thijson — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 19:58:01 +0000

Giving birth to future tax payers should confer sizable tax deductions for the parents.

I'm not sure that's enough to reverse the demographic slide though, it's been tried.

For our ancestors, they married young, and didn't have access to birth control. Babies weren't really planned, they just happened.

New comment by thijson in "32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building"

thijson — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:23:36 +0000

Price should send a signal to manufacturers to build more capacity. I wonder if they will though, it takes quite a bit of time, and it's not certain that the demand will continue to exist once built.

New comment by thijson in "Private Equity Bought America's Essential Services"

thijson — Wed, 27 May 2026 14:00:16 +0000

I wonder if this creates opportunity for spinning up competitors to these PE owned companies. If they are underinvesting in their products in order to extract value eventually their offerings will not be competitive.

New comment by thijson in "Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?"

thijson — Wed, 27 May 2026 13:09:59 +0000

I'm not sure it's quite as clean cut as you say. FPGA's have a 10x penalty in area due to the extra routing wires they need.

Also, it seems like the node that Xilinx has been using lately (28 nm) isn't as cutting edge as it used to be.

New comment by thijson in "Colonization of Venus"

thijson — Tue, 19 May 2026 12:58:43 +0000

The issue with Venus and Mars is that there is no magnetosphere. Over geological time periods the hydrogen is slowly lost into space. All that CO2 in the atmosphere could become H20 given enough introduced hydrogen, and photosynthesis.

New comment by thijson in "Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait"

thijson — Mon, 18 May 2026 20:02:11 +0000

It is bigger news indeed. I think previously China and Saudi were settling their account deficit with gold, a big airplane load every now and then.

New comment by thijson in "Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens"

thijson — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:10:53 +0000

There's an alternative path that removes carbon from the cycle:

electricity + H20 + N2 -> NH3 + O2

Ammonia can be liquified and stored similar to Propane, it does attack copper and brass.

It can be burned in an internal combustion engine, it's about half as energy dense as hydrocarbons though.

There's a danger to humans from it though, it requires sprinkler systems if there is ever a leak.

I think that a large part of the energy budget in a plant is harvesting and concentrating CO2 from the air. N2 is a lot more abundant in the air.

There is work currently on using giant sodium batteries in these large container ships. That might be more cost effective than the above longer term.

New comment by thijson in "Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens"

thijson — Wed, 06 May 2026 18:26:49 +0000

Brazil has had a pretty active program of converting cane sugar to ethanol for a while now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil

Sugar cane doesn't require replanting every year either, like corn does.

Plants are actually not a good converter of solar energy to chemical energy though. They capture a few percent of it.

Solar cells are able to capture about 10 times that, a much smaller footprint.

New comment by thijson in "Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school"

thijson — Wed, 06 May 2026 12:32:15 +0000

I understand that caning leaves lifetime scars, at least the type I heard about. It's not something you can put weight on for a while.

New comment by thijson in "Talking to strangers at the gym"

thijson — Mon, 04 May 2026 14:56:55 +0000

I think that's why people gravitate towards friendly dogs. Dogs have no deception in their intent, and they communicate it physically well before you reach them.

New comment by thijson in "QNX on the Commodore 900 – Raiders of the lost hard drive [video] (2025)"

thijson — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:23:59 +0000

I learned it on QNX too, Burroughs ICON computer with a watcom compiler. Those computers too need to be preserved. If anyone has software for them, please upload to archive.org

New comment by thijson in "The Theory of Interstellar Trade [pdf] (1978)"

thijson — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:58:48 +0000

It's possible to navigate around the solar system with very little energy input. It just takes a long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Netwo...

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

thijson — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 02:17:23 +0000

I've read that the chip manufacturers are looking into high bandwidth flash for on package storage of ai models. That would solve some of the cost issue, flash is significantly cheaper than dram.

New comment by thijson in "Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975"

thijson — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 15:02:15 +0000

I recall the same thing with each new edition of Rainbow magazine. I would read it cover to cover several times. Eventually I would hand type in some of the BASIC programs. I remember reading about people connecting to various BBS's and be jealous of them. Now it's all at our finger tips for better or worse. I guess today there needs to be a conscious effort to filter out distracting noise, our attention has become monetized.

New comment by thijson in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

thijson — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 13:09:10 +0000

I recently heard that a professor said to the class, you can use an ai to solve the assignments. However I'll see if you really understand the material on the final exam.

New comment by thijson in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

thijson — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 13:06:30 +0000

Maybe the solution is for an AI that acts as an instructor instead of just trying to solve everything itself. I do this with my kids, they ask me how to do something. I will give them hints, but not outright do it all for them. The article writer in the first part mentioned that this is how they would instruct too.

New comment by thijson in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

thijson — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 12:41:51 +0000

In the 80's the Americans thought that the Russians were backwards to be still using vacuum tubes in their military vehicles. Later they found out that they were being used because they are more tolerant to EMP from a nuclear blast.

New comment by thijson in "MacBook M5 Pro and Qwen3.5 = Local AI Security System"

thijson — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 18:14:57 +0000

I remember my Dad buying a 386 25MHz a few years earlier for a similar amount.

In 1984 he bought a TRS-80 for almost a thousand dollars. 32kB RAM, around 1 MHz 8 bit CPU.

I bought a Pentium 90 in the late 90's for several thousand dollars. It had the FDIV bug in it.

After experiencing a lifetime of high depreciation in electronics, I'm extremely price sensitive when buying it. I feel that if I wait a few years everything will become much cheaper. Maybe that's not the case with the slow down in Moore's law and the AI datacenter build out.

New comment by thijson in "The fiery, deadly crashes involving the Tesla Cybertruck"

thijson — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:32:15 +0000

I think there was sometime that drowned that was, Angela Chao, sister of former U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. She backed into the lake or pond with her Tesla and was trapped.

I think that the Scout brand of trucks may also return to everything manual. They are supposed to be targeting cost.