Hacker News: two_handfuls

New comment by two_handfuls in "Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026"

two_handfuls — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 19:55:41 +0000

Inertia was an issue, now it's solved with grid-forming batteries that can provide the same inertia a rotating flywheel did.

Most projects today are solar+battery or just battery alone, so inertia is no longer a blocker, it's just part of designing the project right.

Here is a "Practical Engineering" video on the topic, mentioning that your concern is real: https://youtu.be/7G4ipM2qjfw?si=qfVymRpKFpuexQF_

And here is a more recent video about how Australia runs on a ton of solar with no issues thanks to grid-forming inverters: https://youtu.be/qavFbOpt4jA?si=dlkEEN4sZLCv2os5

New comment by two_handfuls in "CBP Directive 3340-049B: Border Search of Electronic Devices"

two_handfuls — Sun, 24 May 2026 23:11:58 +0000

The question was: "Does that apply to non-citizens?"

Saying "they can deport you" without specifying whether the hypothetical "you" is a citizen or not means you did not answer the question.

Not that you have to answer a stranger's question, but I thought I would clear the confusion in the hope it may be helpful.

New comment by two_handfuls in "3D Gaussian Splatting in a Weekend"

two_handfuls — Sat, 16 May 2026 23:37:49 +0000

There is a neural method for computing 3DGS from video or a series of photographs. Rendering 3DGS uses no neural networks as far as I know.

New comment by two_handfuls in "Tesla recalls every Cybertruck RWD ever sold because the wheels could fall off"

two_handfuls — Tue, 12 May 2026 04:53:21 +0000

Is this satire? It has to be, right?

New comment by two_handfuls in "The Tax of Living in a Low-Trust Society: How Collapsed Trust Costs You"

two_handfuls — Sat, 09 May 2026 01:14:23 +0000

> I spent decades foolishly believing people didn’t cheat because I grew up around a bunch of Christians.

I will just say this: "Christians" is not a wholly uniform population.

New comment by two_handfuls in "Why is Cloudflare protecting the DDoS'er (beamed.st) attacking Ubuntu servers?"

two_handfuls — Tue, 05 May 2026 19:31:32 +0000

Yes that looks the same whether they provide DDoS protection or host.

New comment by two_handfuls in "Peter Thiel backs $1B ocean data centre startup powered by waves"

two_handfuls — Tue, 05 May 2026 01:01:41 +0000

Well that's smarter than putting them in space.

New comment by two_handfuls in "Generalised plusequals"

two_handfuls — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 01:44:49 +0000

It doesn't mutate l exactly, it makes a new list slightly different from the original one and assigns it to l.

That means if someone has a reference to the original l, they do not see the change (because l is immutable. Both of them).

New comment by two_handfuls in "Isopods of the world"

two_handfuls — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:17:48 +0000

The encyclopedia is not the only one. Anyone who says something is a photo would be lying if it was AI-generated instead.

Knowingly posting lies is not ok.

New comment by two_handfuls in "Astronomers find the edge of the Milky Way"

two_handfuls — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:10:17 +0000

They don't mean that the stars migrate out (then further stars would be older), they mean that stars further away from the center start forming later (so further stars are younger).

I agree that the phrasing can be confusing.

New comment by two_handfuls in "Corporate Profits Are at Record Highs. These 4 Factors Could Sink Them"

two_handfuls — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 23:50:48 +0000

Record high before or after adjusting for inflation?

New comment by two_handfuls in "Ask HN: Can you show me some useful AI-written programs?"

two_handfuls — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 23:01:35 +0000

Many programs today are part-written by AI. The only fully AI-written program I know of is Claude Code.

New comment by two_handfuls in "Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight"

two_handfuls — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 22:27:13 +0000

Yup. Once your drive failed (which happened to most people), you never bought from them again.

New comment by two_handfuls in "Robot golf vs. holes that keep getting harder [video]"

two_handfuls — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 04:24:06 +0000

He finally managed to really impress his wife!

New comment by two_handfuls in "Booking.com confirms hackers accessed customers' data"

two_handfuls — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:37:15 +0000

They messed up my reservation when I used them. Never again.

New comment by two_handfuls in "How many "real" high functioning autists vs. 1%ers with some attitude are there?"

two_handfuls — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 23:00:53 +0000

This assumes it's a binary: one is either a "real" autist or not.

But that's not how it works. It's a spectrum.

New comment by two_handfuls in "Google's AI Overviews spew false answers per hour, bombshell study reveals"

two_handfuls — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 05:09:32 +0000

The title is missing a

New comment by two_handfuls in "Desalination Technology, by the Numbers"

two_handfuls — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 02:11:48 +0000

One metric of "user friendliness" for websites (but also apps) is how much of the screen serves the user, and how much is adversarial.

For example, if the google results page is 1/4 ads and 3/4 genuine results, the score is 3/4.

This pages was fully covered in 3 layers of popups. So there were 3 screens of ads for 1 screen of content (well 3/4 of a screen, there was an ad at the top). So I had to figure out how to extend my computation to handle this case.

I think the score here is 0.75/4.25, or an 18% score.

That’s a new record!

New comment by two_handfuls in "Gemma 4 on iPhone"

two_handfuls — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 02:03:11 +0000

The description says it's private, but the legalese it makes you agree to makes no promise. Rather, the opposite:

> We collect information about your activity in our services

Source: https://policies.google.com/privacy#infocollect

New comment by two_handfuls in "F-15E jet shot down over Iran"

two_handfuls — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:38:41 +0000

In case anyone else doubted this, I will save you the time to look it up. Yup, it's sadly true.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/hegseth-no-quarter-interna...