Hacker News: xvedejas

New comment by xvedejas in "I resigned from Anthropic today"

xvedejas — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 05:39:11 +0000

It has been interesting to me how AI has for many years given people a way to justify any worst case scenario. Nothing is too far-fetched if at any step you tell yourself the AI will be smarter than you, and thus be able to solve any conceivable obstacle. Oh, if only intelligence were the only bottleneck to power.

New comment by xvedejas in "Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU"

xvedejas — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 16:25:59 +0000

Montenegro unilaterally uses the euro and it doesn't seem to otherwise be a failed state. Besides this being a "marker", what do you think are the actual problems caused? Like why does a small country need its own capital controls when there is a very stable currency available nearby?

New comment by xvedejas in "Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering"

xvedejas — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 02:05:36 +0000

Where would one ever read that Go is not memory safe? That's just a false claim, and anyone believing it would have probably gone out of business regardless of choice of programming language.

New comment by xvedejas in "Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's"

xvedejas — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:32:53 +0000

And how would you control for the causal possibility that those who will eventually develop Alzheimer's early on might tend to have undetectable memory issues that prevent them from becoming taxi drivers in the first place? You can't control for profession, since that's behind the very claim itself.

New comment by xvedejas in "Modernizing Property Tax Assessments in Allegheny County"

xvedejas — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 03:18:20 +0000

Property taxes have a component that redistributes wealth from landlords to the working people, but it also has a component that penalizes making better use of the land. The former is usually called "land value tax" and the latter is the part of the tax that is proportional to the improved value of the land. The latter part incentivizes some uncertain amount more towards mcmansions and away from multi-unit buildings.

New comment by xvedejas in "The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war"

xvedejas — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:08:32 +0000

Reading between the lines, it sounds like it was probably one of "tip"/"point"/"head" and "shaft", or similar

New comment by xvedejas in "Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k"

xvedejas — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:20:34 +0000

Not simply "don't want to live here", usually also "can't, there are no opportunities for income here". I know lots of people optimistic that remote work would upend this, but even the few still-fully-remote workers I know need to live in areas where they or their family can find non-remote jobs if ever necessary.

New comment by xvedejas in "The "Bizarre Headgear" exhibit at the Sam Noble museum"

xvedejas — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 21:20:56 +0000

I thought we were moving toward depicting dinosaurs as having feathers? Or is there just too little evidence around what exactly that would look like to add it to visualizations?

New comment by xvedejas in "Data centers trigger voter backlash"

xvedejas — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 20:49:34 +0000

Sounds like a slam-dunk case for SELC?

New comment by xvedejas in "Data centers trigger voter backlash"

xvedejas — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 20:16:32 +0000

Isn't most new capacity solar these days?

New comment by xvedejas in "Data centers trigger voter backlash"

xvedejas — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 19:05:38 +0000

In a working economy, an increase in demand for electricity would be met with an increase in investment and capacity, and (at least in the long-term) would benefit all electricity buyers. I'm sure there are market failures going on here in many places but it's not necessarily the case that you and the companies be on opposing sides. There are positive-sum solutions to a lot of these problems, if people are willing to consider them.

New comment by xvedejas in "GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17"

xvedejas — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 04:44:17 +0000

moto g 2026; yes it's Android. Main downside is the relative lack of RAM honestly.

New comment by xvedejas in "GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17"

xvedejas — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 04:43:46 +0000

I've gone through about 5 USB-C adapters which eventually broke inexplicably. They also have extra noise in the audio when the volume is low for some reason.

New comment by xvedejas in "GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17"

xvedejas — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 04:42:55 +0000

Waymo, Philz coffee, Partiful

New comment by xvedejas in "GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17"

xvedejas — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 02:09:10 +0000

I just moved away from GrapheneOS to Motorola because I decided I needed an audio jack again. There's definitely some annoying things about leaving, but at least now I can use again the three apps that didn't work for me on GrapheneOS...

New comment by xvedejas in "Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony"

xvedejas — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:53:14 +0000

I do wonder how much to trust averages on these statistics. I observe that I am much more risk averse than the average cyclist in my city. Perhaps my risk is really much lower, conditional on that knowledge?

New comment by xvedejas in "Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods"

xvedejas — Thu, 21 May 2026 18:03:06 +0000

Safety margins still will require some level of delay between cars that aren't mechanically linked. Even with perfect reaction times, the physics of driving (maximum acceleration rates, possible loss of traction) dictate this, it's a non-trivial control theory problem. Besides, it doesn't seem to be a goal of Waymo; I've seen lines of their vehicles before and they all behave the same way as in mixed traffic.

New comment by xvedejas in "Nuclear receptor 4A1 linked to health effects of coffee: study"

xvedejas — Mon, 04 May 2026 16:19:18 +0000

What do you mean by detrimental?

New comment by xvedejas in "Nuclear receptor 4A1 linked to health effects of coffee: study"

xvedejas — Sun, 03 May 2026 17:39:59 +0000

My initial charitable reading -- as someone who sometimes dabbles in decaf -- is that decaffeination has the bad side effect of stripping flavors, and likely many of the other biologically active chemicals. I can see from their further posts that they were more interested in unscientific fear mongering instead.

That said, I do think there is some truth that decaf is lacking (including via supercritical CO2) and I wonder how long until we could have a product like genetically engineered coffee plants that produce everything except caffeine. I'd like that, though I can immediately see an issue with growing a plant without its natural pesticide.

New comment by xvedejas in "AI uses less water than the public thinks"

xvedejas — Fri, 01 May 2026 20:18:46 +0000

It's quite regulated in the western US, but usually in the direction of guaranteeing water to incumbent landowners. Some people end up with really strong water rights, and they can be wasteful if the law helps them do so.