Hacker News: yyyk

New comment by yyyk in "Helium is hard to replace"

yyyk — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 19:03:42 +0000

It looks like that by simply reducing use in welding, lifting, and purging gas (all with clear alternatives) and maybe also 'leak detection' and 'other' (not expounded on in the article), they can fill in for the entire Qatari output, and that's without including extra production and recycling which is quiet possible.

New comment by yyyk in "Iran strikes leave Amazon availability zones "hard down" in Bahrain and Dubai"

yyyk — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 23:04:05 +0000

There are ways to shield data centers if one is serious about it...

e.g.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/oracle-opens-first...

New comment by yyyk in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

yyyk — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 17:33:15 +0000

But without a nuclear weapons program, the entire sanctions regime wouldn't have started (yea, I know today half of those are anti-terrorist sanctions, but that's not how it started, it was morphed later on). It should be considered as part of the losses.

New comment by yyyk in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

yyyk — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 07:23:53 +0000

Iran claims 1T USD damages as a result of US leaving JCPOA alone - in 2021. Now add in 5 more years, wars, sanctions before JCPOA was signed, direct expenditures on enrichment...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/21/us-sanctions-inflic...

New comment by yyyk in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

yyyk — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 07:04:20 +0000

A treaty whose key articles would start expiring in.. late 2025. Which Iran had no motivation whatsoever to extend had it being kept (imagine this Iran but with 2-4 trillion dollars more, more than a few going to drones and missiles). You'd have this war but on way worse terms.

New comment by yyyk in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

yyyk — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:36:33 +0000

Yea, the US joined in in 2025, what should it imply about a future war? The assumption that Iran doesn't know who's bombing it sounds rather dubious. If anything, it should be very much in their interest to assume away US involvement unless 100% proven, given fighting an additional enemy tend to be very bad and US is so powerful. Unless...

Maybe the strategic balance creates a situation where it's advantageous for Iran to pull US in regardless of non-involvement. They don't do well against Israel alone (see rather low damage of 4 separate large scale attempts at attacking Israel directly), but US is so much easier to pressure via the Gulf. Indeed, this scenario doesn't quite need Israel.

So US risked getting pulled in not due to attacking in June 2025, but because the cheque given to the Gulf was starting to expire, the power balance was objectively swinging in favor of Iran at the location where Devereaux sees as the most important part of the Middle East. Now, say there are powerful states who feel they are in a decent position now but also that the strategic balance would slip away. What do they tend to do? Devereaux can consult his WW1 history.

New comment by yyyk in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

yyyk — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:05:04 +0000

We saw regime collapses in the Arab Spring - it's not a simple or short process, most regimes survived (either directly or via reversion). Even when a regime was overthrown, the replacement was usually not more hostile to Israel. e.g. Syria isn't more hostile than it was. Thing is there isn't all that much 'fury' since Arabs already assume the worst of Israel, while reasons for relative peace remain as is or are actually strengthened by the revolution process (e.g. economy, desire for quiet following violent revolution, new regime wanting to establish itself, etc.)

New comment by yyyk in "Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?"

yyyk — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 01:11:26 +0000

Look, it's a done deal. Some of the choices Wayland made are not to my liking, there will be a long term cost (even static linking won't save you from differing protocol implementations). But it's done and there's no point in complaining.

(Running X11 right now, I'll switch when the distro forces me to, in hope I'll get a bug free experience after everyone else runs it)

New comment by yyyk in "Oil and gas prices jump after Iran and Israel attack gasfields"

yyyk — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 23:44:47 +0000

Everyone Iranian leader who is killed is post-facto named 'moderate', with very little proof of being moderate while alive.

New comment by yyyk in "Oil nears $110 a barrel after gas field strike"

yyyk — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 19:40:48 +0000

Nobody forced Iran to bomb gas and oil fields that aren't even of their enemies, and to start doing it before Pars was bombed (e.g. Shah gas field was targeted 2 days ago). Place the blame on Iran who is actually 'wrecking Asia' and not the ones fighting it.

New comment by yyyk in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

yyyk — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:22:25 +0000

>I think the idea behind a prediction market is pretty interesting...

>But we're in an era of less and less responsible government oversight

The era doesn't matter. The incentives are so bad, eventually you'd get a horrible result even with oversight. These markets are prone to this and shouldn't exist.

New comment by yyyk in "An ode to bzip"

yyyk — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:38:26 +0000

>continuous compression

'Solid compression' (as WinRAR calls it) is still optional with RAR. I recall the default is 'off'. At the time, that mode was still pretty good compared to bzip2.

New comment by yyyk in "An ode to bzip"

yyyk — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 21:14:59 +0000

Even then, there were better options in the Windows world (RAR/ACE/etc.). Also, bzip2 was considered slow even when it was new.

New comment by yyyk in "Oil hits $100 a barrel despite deal to release record amount of reserves"

yyyk — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:56:04 +0000

Except here the entire Iranian strategy (what's left of it) _relies_ on targeting civilian 3rd parties. Without threatening Gulf oil, they've got nothing.

New comment by yyyk in "Oil hits $100 a barrel despite deal to release record amount of reserves"

yyyk — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 04:41:18 +0000

"fighting back" == blowing 3rd party civilian installations.

New comment by yyyk in "The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran"

yyyk — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 18:25:25 +0000

First, JCPOA restrictions would have started to end this year, the 2031 situation was just extra bad.

Second, had NPT been enough, why was JCPOA necessary? Because NPT was not near enough to stop a determined state. NPT 'limits' do not limit enrichment. They just state enrichment must be done for civilian purposes and leave no enforcement mechanism. JCPOA also had no real enforcement mechanism starting in 2026. Iran could have simply taken all the money, buy weapons (legally), reach the legal max (which is basically infinity in 2031, a bit less earlier), and pressed forwards immediately. There was simply no way to enforce (some people think _this_ operation is too risky! Now lets give Iran over a trillion dollars and years to prepare).

Third, you're just wrong about current negotiations. Iran explicitly demanded 20%[0], beyond the JCPOA and with no civilian use.

Look, JCPOA debates always end in the same way. The advocates are asked how the original deal was enforceable in any way past 2031 (or even 2026) and they have to deploy word salad because the actual answer is 'Iran could have easily built a nuke, inspectors just allow us to see it but they would have been no way to do something about it'. It would be more honest if many of them just admitted they wanted to allow Iranian nukes.

[0] https://xcancel.com/laurnorman/status/2028050672583618946

New comment by yyyk in "New iron nanomaterial wipes out cancer cells without harming healthy tissue"

yyyk — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 18:49:20 +0000

Doesn't harm the mouse. But would it harm the normal human cells?

New comment by yyyk in "The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran"

yyyk — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 18:47:10 +0000

The 'solution' explicitly allowed (by 2031) unlimited enrichment, burying centrifuges, and purchasing unlimited amounts of AD. Then no US admin could have possibly prevented an Iranian nuke. Once the faction who tried to make an ally of Iran got voted out, JCPOA was going to go. Negotiations then failed cuz Iran demanded 20% enrichment which was ridiculous. My favorite though is making the regime calling 'death to X' all the time appear as the one being defensive.

New comment by yyyk in "Microsoft announces new "mini PCs" for Windows 365"

yyyk — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 04:59:46 +0000

Google failed with Stadia because no sane AAA company would want to risk App/Play Store terms. The offering maybe made sense for A companies, but Google's requirements were too much for them (their marketing certain wasn't there). Google ended up subsidizing a few AAA companies, and then it fell to typical Google kill-it-now cost cutting. Microsoft has existing relationships and won't have this problem.

The "video game preservation service" Myrient is shutting down in March

yyyk — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 19:16:54 +0000

Article URL: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/the-video-game-preservation-service-myrient-is-shutting-down-in-march/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47199095

Points: 5

# Comments: 0