Hacker News: z2

New comment by z2 in "Schools Never Taught Critical Thinking: AI Exposed the Lie"

z2 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:14:23 +0000

Even through college I've found that it's hard to optimize for grades vs learning. I've had teachers spite me for disagreeing with them.

Then I developed a formula that essentially went, "While {common sense assertion is true}, we need to consider the nuanced implications of {regurgitated pros/cons}." Combined with the smooth fluff and flow from using speech recognition with minimal edits, suddenly the A's started rolling in. I later found this of course works wonderfully with standardized testing essays in the GRE and GMAT.

Edit: I realize now why I get (even if I don't fully agree with) the 'stochastic parrot' dismissal of language transformer models, I basically lived it.

New comment by z2 in "Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout"

z2 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 16:31:39 +0000

There are non-battery buffers available too--I recently got rooftop residential solar installed, and learned that my area is covered by a grid profile requiring that the solar system stay online through something like 60 +/- 2Hz before shutting down completely, and ramping down production linearly beyond a 1Hz deviation or so. The point is to avoid cascading shutdowns by riding through over/undersupply situations, whereas an older standard for my area would have the all solar systems cut off the moment frequency exceeded 60.5Hz (which would indicate oversupply from power plant generators spinning faster via lower resistance).

In my system's case, switching to this grid profile was just a software toggle.

New comment by z2 in "Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?"

z2 — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:44:01 +0000

You put this well, now that you mention it, I sometimes find myself trying to defend my earlier work as "Pre-ChatGPT," as if that even matters. Relegating future such work to some sort of romanticized "artisanal craftsmanship" feels hollow. That being said, I'm more productive than ever and finally got projects that have stalled out going again, and these projects have made my own life easier as a result. More utility from the result than from having walked the journey perhaps.

New comment by z2 in "Grammarly is offering ‘expert’ AI reviews from famous dead and living writers"

z2 — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 10:00:02 +0000

Neural networks most certainly go through a process to transform input into output (even to mimic the results of another process) but it's a very different one from human neutral networks. But I think this is the crucial point of the debate, essentially unchanged from Searle's "Chinese Room" argument from decades ago.

The person in that room, looking up a dictionary with Chinese phrases and patterns, certainly follows a process, but it's easy to dismiss the notion that the person understands Chinese. But the question is if you zoom out, is the room itself intelligent because it is following a process, even if it's just a bunch of pattern recognition?

New comment by z2 in "Global warming has accelerated significantly"

z2 — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:38:09 +0000

Ah, I thought you were just referring to the decades-long use of the most massive supercomputers to simulate nuclear arsenal maintenance and explosions (maybe literally at the molecular/atomic/sub-atomic level).

New comment by z2 in "Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)"

z2 — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 14:21:35 +0000

Exactly, where it crosses into ultranationalism, it's a coping drug. You may be a nobody on all other scales, but darned if you can't stand under the flag of your country and truly _be someone._

New comment by z2 in "The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)"

z2 — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 19:30:41 +0000

After receiving the orders that were actually printed from an Internet Explorer 6 only website, and faxed over from another office before being re-scanned in along with a barcode that usually failed to make it over the fax, hence the need to hand-type things. True story (not for JR specifically, but circa 2013)

New comment by z2 in "Dario Amodei – "We are near the end of the exponential" [video]"

z2 — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:39:08 +0000

I think we still have trouble defining the 'I' part of AGI and the rest is predicted on that definition being objective and concrete first.

New comment by z2 in "The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else"

z2 — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 02:49:06 +0000

I'm not forecasting that, and it's a virtual strawman in the face of my much narrower claim: that wages depend on marginal labor demand and bargaining power, not average output per worker. If AI substitutes for labor, the marginal value of adding another worker in many roles can fall. That can mean fewer hires or lower wages in some categories, not 'no hiring' or an instant massive recession. I have no idea what the addressable market or demand for our more productive economy is, but for the record I do hope it's high to support new businesses and a bigger pie in general!

New comment by z2 in "The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else"

z2 — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 02:14:42 +0000

The value of labor i.e. wages depend on labor demand (the marginal product of labor) and bargaining power, not output per worker. If AI is a substitute for many tasks, the marginal value of an additional worker, and what a company is willing to pay for their work can fall even if each remaining worker is more productive.

New comment by z2 in "Child prodigies rarely become elite performers"

z2 — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 04:57:56 +0000

That resonates with me. Both in the lack of discipline as the adults in my world basically defaulted to, "You're so smart, keep it up!" And -- very much related -- the fixed mindset I developed not knowing until later how to actually study, learn, and practice. It lasted quite long unfortunately as I was a functioning undisciplined, fixed mindset person who could still one-shot stuff reasonably well.

New comment by z2 in "Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?"

z2 — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:19:48 +0000

Thanks for sharing. Just on the PKM side, is there something about this setup that Claude Code + AGENTS.md (that you get it to write for you) can't do? Is it the chat integration or does it actually have a better knowledge management setup?

New comment by z2 in "Tesla is committing automotive suicide"

z2 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 18:42:40 +0000

Tesla also announced they will be discontinuing the basic lane keep + adaptive speed cruise control they helped pioneer in cars sold going forward. But this is now a standard (free) feature even in basic vehicles like the Toyota Corolla. Why would they intentionally cripple their vehicles to the point hat they would be inferior to most cars today?

Then I learned that Musk's incentive pay has a 10 million full self-driving subscription hurdle, and it all made sense.

New comment by z2 in "Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot"

z2 — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 02:30:10 +0000

Could they have gotten around this by actually serving Eggo waffles? Would that have then fallen under nominative fair use?

New comment by z2 in "Second Win11 emergency out of band update to address disastrous Patch Tuesday"

z2 — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 05:09:46 +0000

I for one am enjoying my last few months of Windows 10, stable, responsive, no surprise updates at last.

New comment by z2 in "GLM-4.7-Flash"

z2 — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 18:06:40 +0000

The two notes from this year are accidentally marked as 2025, the website posts may actually be hand-crafted.

New comment by z2 in "Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%"

z2 — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 18:42:48 +0000

In comparison with Musk's companies ($15 billion in 2023, $7b in 2024), this seems to be a pittance.

https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/117956/documents/...

New comment by z2 in "Show HN: Tiny FOSS Compass and Navigation App (<2MB)"

z2 — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:25:58 +0000

Nice and thank you! I think there's a great opportunity to apply the same love and care and compete with utility apps that tend to come with ads and exploits today. Thinking of music tuners/metronomes, barcode scanners, unit converters, bubble levels, flashlight strobe apps.

New comment by z2 in "U.S. mandates more foreign travelers to pay $15,000 visa bond deposits"

z2 — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 19:16:21 +0000

Seems it's because out of the low hundreds people total who visited in a year and were expected to leave the US, some large percent didn't leave, joining the double-digit overstayers club. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/25_0912_cbp_...

New comment by z2 in "Play Aardwolf MUD"

z2 — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 03:39:24 +0000

Same, this was my first MUD by chance as some friends and I discovered it as a means to play games in a school computer lab that banned games. Good times. Taught me the definition of 'quaff' too.