Hacker News: tootie

New comment by tootie in "Solar surpasses nuclear power globally for first time"

tootie — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 20:49:08 +0000

First power hit the grid a few weeks ago

https://spectrum.ieee.org/fervo-cape-station-geothermal

It's still small scale but it's up and running and the site has plenty more capacity that can be added on bit by bit.

New comment by tootie in "Solar surpasses nuclear power globally for first time"

tootie — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 20:41:23 +0000

And we've sunk decades into small modular reactors and it hasn't born much fruit either.

New comment by tootie in "Tesla Roadster"

tootie — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:56:20 +0000

Having been raised watching the Dukes of Hazzard, I'm not impressed.

New comment by tootie in "Tesla Roadster"

tootie — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:55:29 +0000

Nice compared to the biggest flop of the century? Sure. I'd still instantly judge anyone driving this as an asshole.

New comment by tootie in "Tesla Roadster"

tootie — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:52:18 +0000

Grid electricity generation is more efficient than ICE. Fossil fuel extraction is a major emitter even before the fuel is burned. Decarbonising the grid is underway.

New comment by tootie in "Neural networks are clean"

tootie — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 12:01:03 +0000

A lot of people in general hate AI. Twitter is a bit of bubble in that regard (and many other)

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/12/key-findi...

New comment by tootie in "Whatever became of holography? (2011)"

tootie — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 01:12:34 +0000

I had the opportunity to work with a lenticular display a few years back. Just takes an HDMI input and can render a 3d scene like you'd build in Unity and you'd be able to see at least a range of aspects of the image at once by looking from different angles. Not fully 360 but maybe 90 degrees of perspective at once. It was neat but we spent weeks trying to make an impressive demo and none of it was fun for more than 5 seconds.

New comment by tootie in "Yes, and"

tootie — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:51:10 +0000

My daughter likes coding and has a strong knack for it, but when she was applying to college, I advised her to lean towards EE. She can still study CS fundamentals and pursue it as a career or even in grad school, but engineering is hopefully a bit of a hedge where she can keep options open.

New comment by tootie in "Archaeologists Are Reconstructing the 'Invisible' Technologies of the Stone Age"

tootie — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 20:24:18 +0000

We made rope in boy scouts. You just need to braid three strings and you can splice in broken bits pretty easily. You can also work out kinks with just regular straight sticks and it only takes two people. The theory that these batons were for rope seems unlikely in that regard. Apparently the leading hypothesis is for spear throwing.

New comment by tootie in "4-hour battery storage is cheaper to install than gas turbines all across globe"

tootie — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:14:26 +0000

> four-hour storage is forecast to fall a further 33% to $80/MWh by 2035, displacing gas peaking on cost across every gas market in the region.

This seems to be specifically in reference to "gas peakers" which are on-demand gas turbines used to pick up slack in the main grid during peak usage. They typically only run for hours at a go and commonly on very hot days when ACs drain the grid. In those use cases, batteries could be a viable replacement. They're not necessary charged by solar but by the main grid overnight.

New comment by tootie in "Archaeologists Are Reconstructing the 'Invisible' Technologies of the Stone Age"

tootie — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:09:52 +0000

Stefan Milo did a long one on these objects:

https://youtu.be/Q8X9l42ZgsU?is=hW5M_JXqsPtiuHVk

Rope making is possible but not really likely.

New comment by tootie in "Archaeologists Are Reconstructing the 'Invisible' Technologies of the Stone Age"

tootie — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:08:02 +0000

Typically called a "perforated baton" in English. The theory of rope twisting is also not widely accepted. It's possible but it's an overly complex device given that you can twist a rope with regular sticks. These guys have contributed to the debate but it's absolutely not settled. They've also discovered hundreds of these across Europe.

https://youtu.be/Q8X9l42ZgsU?is=hW5M_JXqsPtiuHVk

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

New comment by tootie in "Sharing AI progress in mathematics"

tootie — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:14:12 +0000

Note that these are all preprints. None are verified.

New comment by tootie in "Paramount Skydance has completed its $111B merger with Warner Bros. Discovery"

tootie — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 23:39:35 +0000

Is Israel the main concern? They gave tens of millions to Trump. They are now Republican media.

New comment by tootie in "Sharing AI progress in mathematics"

tootie — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 23:37:02 +0000

Seemingly none are vetted and reviewed yet

OpenAI just dropped 700 preprints of mathematical proofs and counterexamples

tootie — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 23:37:02 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/openai/math/tree/main/preprints

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985740

Points: 42

# Comments: 2

New comment by tootie in "Mistral Large 4"

tootie — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:38:46 +0000

Especially with Mistral taking a fraction of the investment of the big guys. They can maintain the position pretty comfortably just by staying within a standard deviation of the leaders.

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

tootie — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:15:50 +0000

Why are you just summarizing part of the post and not even the most important part?

New comment by tootie in "You are no longer invited to dinner"

tootie — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:01:20 +0000

I actually doubt it. For one, "blame" implies damage and I'm not sure this is even a real problem. But I actually think it corresponds with rising prosperity (which councides with the rise of technology). People associate with tribes and clans for mutual support and protection and it's just much less necessary now.

New comment by tootie in "Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over"

tootie — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:47:44 +0000

Same for me in the 80s. We'd always have the extended family together multiple times a year and frequently at my house. My mom always stressed out over it and it's the only time she yelled at my brother and I for not cleaning enough. I occasionally enjoyed playing with cousins but mostly found it annoying that all these people were using my house.

Nowadays, we definitely get together much less often but also it's usually at a restaurant.