Hacker News: thijson

New comment by thijson in "Behind the scenes at the NeXT Computer office"

thijson — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 15:46:21 +0000

Some of my favorite memories of that time are firing up a multiplayer game of Doom on the university LAN, and then later at my first job playing Duke Nukem 3D at lunch time with my colleagues. A little later at another job playing 4 vs 4 player Age of Empires with my colleagues. We don't have that anymore, and hardly any games these days are LAN multiplayer as well.

New comment by thijson in "A practical guide to AI image generation, from diffusion to agents"

thijson — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 20:53:58 +0000

Looks great. This could be a form of image compression.

New comment by thijson in "GLP-1 may slow biological aging"

thijson — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 17:39:27 +0000

I saw reports on that before the GLP1 craze. Calorie reduced diets for lab animals generally increased their life span.

New comment by thijson in "Why the Bronze Age Collapsed"

thijson — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:20:26 +0000

I think the opium war were also won due to weapon advantages. The British cannons could be fired from further away, they could handle larger charges of gunpowder than the Chinese. Another advantage of metallurgy. Today's jet engines are largely the same thing. Maybe the troops were also more battle hardened.

New comment by thijson in "Ask HN: What are you reading?"

thijson — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 16:58:06 +0000

Also liked Dungeon Crawler Carl.

New comment by thijson in "Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain"

thijson — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 10:54:32 +0000

I've done some long trips with my i3. The key is to turn the engine on when the battery reaches 75%. The battery then absorbed the large power draws when accelerating or going up big hills. The engine does vary in RPM depending on my power draw, and by the end of my trip, the battery is usually not significantly lower, maybe around 60%. I usually turn off the engine when I'm almost at my destination so I can use the remaining battery energy.

New comment by thijson in "US Treasuries Have Become Unappetizing for Foreign Central Banks and Governments"

thijson — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:26:41 +0000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOdabtEUoyY

New comment by thijson in "US Treasuries Have Become Unappetizing for Foreign Central Banks and Governments"

thijson — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:20:58 +0000

I think that's becoming gold. That's why we're seeing the price action in it over the last few years. In a world with little trust, only gold is trusted. Even the Netherlands is repatriating a portion of their gold reserves from New York to London.

New comment by thijson in "'Offensively cheap': solar power is looking up"

thijson — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 12:09:51 +0000

I wonder if heavy trucks pay correspondingly higher then. I would imagine the damage they do is disproportionately higher.

New comment by thijson in "South Africa is at risk of becoming a mafia state"

thijson — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 16:29:26 +0000

The government itself is the biggest criminal enterprise. I guess they are worried about being eclipsed.

New comment by thijson in "'Offensively cheap': solar power is looking up"

thijson — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:24:47 +0000

Another policy is to charge EV's registration fees that are way higher than ICE vehicles.

New comment by thijson in "1M+ German households have hung solar panels off their balcony railings"

thijson — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 02:05:45 +0000

Plug in solar is nice because you don't have to hire an electrician, just plug into an outlet.

New comment by thijson in "Ukrainian drones strike Russian gas facility over 3k km away in Siberia"

thijson — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:43:54 +0000

The same thing happened in Afghanistan (to both Russia and the USA). Really has a David vs Goliath feel to it. Effectively the whole population is against you, so how do you win them over? No military strategy is going to be able to do that.

New comment by thijson in "Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time"

thijson — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:37:08 +0000

Smoking has morphed into vaping and zyn.

New comment by thijson in "Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time"

thijson — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:27:46 +0000

They have a term for it, it's called brain rot. That's what I witness them watching anyway.

New comment by thijson in "South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones"

thijson — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 01:00:43 +0000

I wonder if diamonds become cheap enough, and we are growing the crystal anyway, if we can introduce dopants and get interesting electrical properties.

New comment by thijson in "SK Hynix CEO sees memory chip shortage lasting until 2030"

thijson — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 13:39:53 +0000

I remember in the 90's there was some sort of shortage reportedly due to fires. In the end it was found the shortage was due to collusion by the manufacturers.

https://share.google/aimode/ewJpwCHUINOHzjBVg

New comment by thijson in "Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down"

thijson — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:16:38 +0000

It's a slow moving train wreck. I hope the consequences of these petulant actions scar the minds of voters for years to come. We're seeing the yield on treasuries creeping up, I think that's one of the consequences.

New comment by thijson in "When Genius Fails: The Intellectual Arrogance of the AI Labs"

thijson — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 16:56:10 +0000

This is anecdotal, however I remember hearing about farmers trying to maximize for egg production. Multiple hens would share a cage. The initial criteria was to only breed the hen that produced the most eggs. Overall egg production declined though. It turns out that the best performing hen was doing so at the cost of the others, ie. eating more than its fair share, being combative. The strategy that worked in raising overall egg production was breeding all the hens from the best performing cage.

New comment by thijson in "When Genius Fails: The Intellectual Arrogance of the AI Labs"

thijson — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 16:16:22 +0000

These kinds of late design decisions can cost a huge amount of money. And it may cost lives because it's now shoe horned in, less reliable.