Hacker News Reader

MisterBastahrdon Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

I used to live in a neighboring parish to the west of New Orleans. If you dug more than 3 feet into the ground, you were hitting water. Driving pilings is a sloppy mess.

MisterBastahrdon Karpathy: Let's reproduce GPT-2 (1.6B): one 8XH100 node 24h $672 in llm.c

You're trying to big brain something that isn't that complicated or special.

I never said that every interaction with an NPC must necessarily require AI to create a new quest and reward from scratch. Players aren't that savvy. You just generate a pool of quests and assign them to NPCs in the instance. Players who are addicted to loot treadmills will stay in the game and pay for boosts and other rewards as long as there is content to engage them. This more than pays for the AI service.

MisterBastahrdon AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

Be nice to have a new federal law: you get breached, you pay $5K plus lifetime credit monitoring to each person involved. Non-dischargeable by bankruptcy. No arbitration, no lawsuit. You pay.

MisterBastahrdon Karpathy: Let's reproduce GPT-2 (1.6B): one 8XH100 node 24h $672 in llm.c

You don't even necessarily need to have them coming up with valid speech. Simply giving out random quests and rewards would keep people running on a loot treadmill for most open world multiplayer games.

MisterBastahrdon Metal thieves in America's cities

It certainly makes it easier to ignore the people doing the complaining.

MisterBastahrdon MIT: Raising State Minimum Wages, Lowering Community College Enrollment

Many states require that CC courses transfer for the CC associate's degree program to exist. Virtually all CCs and 4 year public institutions have documentation that you can access well in advance of pursuing a degree plan that will tell you what transfers, so you can avoid the electives that don't.

MisterBastahrdon The greatest social media site is Craigslist

I have no problem with them dying, since they're as responsible for the elimination of funding of quality journalism in the US as much as any other entity on the planet. Not that they planned for it to happen, but it's still largely their fault.

MisterBastahrdon Show HN: A Modern Palletization App

I suppose this would be useful for large supply chains. Once you get away from that and move to shipping from warehouse to store, though, this would be a largely be a waste of time. Stacking a pallet with various different sized boxes and shapes is a bit of an art form that is largely learned through trial and error until you "get" it (I was on a full time night stock crew while I was in college). It would literally take more time for workers to refer to the layout than it would for them to simply stack the goods onto the pallet.

MisterBastahrdon Zuckerberg disses closed-source AI competitors as trying to 'create God'

At this point, I think Nvidia has enough of an incentive to chase AI chips and their specific needs as an entirely different product. But yeah, for home users who give up, definitely.

MisterBastahrdon The loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player

Not really sure how this is much different from any consultant who does long projects on the road, at least as far as social isolation is concerned, really. You go to work, you do a job, and then you go back to the hotel. What I suspect is happening on top of everything else for these players is that (a) they're in a competitive field so they have to stay on top of their rest and diet at all times, (b) isolation is definitely a thing, but (c) many of them come from upper middle class backgrounds and it's a culture shock to bleed through money just to travel for tournaments and have proper gear.

MisterBastahrdon And Now Xylitol

Xylitol. It's made from a birch bark extract. I only learned the specifics after I caught my pup having dug an empty pint of Rebel out of the trash and lost it. Then I looked up the info online. Some sweeteners will upset their stomachs, but Xylitol will kill them.

MisterBastahrdon Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

"Common knowledge" and "black site" have never made sense together in the same sentence unless you are a conspiracy nut.

MisterBastahrdon Lawyers' Committee Opposes New Draft of American Privacy Rights Act

We aren't talking about other rights. We're talking about this one. And THIS particular right is rooted in the fourth, fifth, and ninth amendments but isn't actually found in the constitution as a singular entity and wouldn't be codified until the 1960s. Guess which court case created that right in the first place? Griswold v Connecticut. Guess which one was overturned along with Roe v Wade because there's no explicit mention of a right to privacy in the Constitution? Same one.

The basis for the right which was, in part, ABSOLUTELY rooted in the idea that the because people and governments have a tendency to discriminate against you based on what you believe, then as long as you do not disclose your interests publicly, there should be no basis for discrimination. And why is this discrimination so important when NOT dealing with the government (which are nothing but glorified property protection rackets)?

Economics. Specifically, trade. That thing that mankind has been doing since before we've actually had recorded history? Whether it's bartering or seashells or labor or whatever, it's an essential part of being human, because it's how you get things you need to survive.

Again, we do not assign rights for which we cannot find a real purpose. You cannot be a functioning human being in a society without economic activity, whether you perform it or someone performs it on behalf of you.

You're flat out wrong.

MisterBastahrdon Lawyers' Committee Opposes New Draft of American Privacy Rights Act

If you can't figure out why indefinite detainment after an arrest is bad, I'm afraid that nobody is going to be able to help you.

MisterBastahrdon Lawyers' Committee Opposes New Draft of American Privacy Rights Act

They're the exact same thing. There's no point to privacy if there's no reason for having it. Simply declaring it a human right is worthless if you can't justify why it is one.

MisterBastahrdon The case for not sanitising fairy tales

The most common cause of death during the American Civil War was disease. Not bullets, not bayonet wounds, not cannon fire.

Disease.

Imagine being the guy who discovered that washing your hands and tools meant less maternal mortality immediately after childbirth and being shunned because people had real understanding of infections or microbiology.

When you think about those fairy tales, you cannot do it properly without thinking about the context in which they were written. Children were face to face with mortality every day. Polio, measles, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, diarrhea, plagues, minor wounds that got infected, etc.

Kids today live in a world where if you make it to adulthood, you have a very strong likelihood that you will survive until you are no longer able to be productive.

Your mental illness "theory" makes absolutely zero sense, because virtually all mental illnesses outside of degenerative conditions present themselves during childhood. I've had ADHD since I was a child. I didn't get diagnosed until well into adulthood, because my family never sought treatment. I didn't get this "mental illness" because of a lack of proper fairy tales. I was born with it.

MisterBastahrdon Solid-state battery with 100x energy density could be used in Apple devices

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/tdk-claims-insane-en...

Was posted here just yesterday and is a far better article.

MisterBastahrdon U.S.-Saudi petrodollar pact ends after 50 years

One side is currently run like a cult, and the other has an incumbent with a massive fundraising apparatus behind him. Just because some people complain on the internet doesn't mean that there are enough of them to make a meaningful difference when it comes to selecting candidates.

MisterBastahrdon US Supreme Court backs Starbucks over fired pro-union workers

Employees who attempt to organize are not doing so to help a supplier or favored customer. They're doing it to improve their relationship with their employer. When you deal with management at a large corporation, you are rarely ever dealing on a 1:1 basis with someone. You are dealing with a group of people. So why should employees not have the same opportunity?

MisterBastahrdon Cheapest source of fossil fuel generation is double the cost of solar

There were over 500K residents effected just 2 weeks ago. Seems Wikipedia only keeps up to date if someone edits Wikipedia.

MisterBastahrdon Cheapest source of fossil fuel generation is double the cost of solar

They keep on being localized in the place that I live.

I never said that it was completely preventable.

I said that I was considering solar to mitigate the damage to my personal property.

You have a reading comprehension problem.

MisterBastahrdon Cheapest source of fossil fuel generation is double the cost of solar

No. I'm not.

And I never said a single thing about "running out of power," because that wasn't the issue in most areas. The power infrastructure was physically damaged. The state is on its own grid, refuses to winterize, and people also carried on in their households as if it were a normal day, which overloaded local transformers.

It took me a week to regain power in 2021 because the transformer blew behind my house on Valentine's Day and Oncor would keep sending trucks with technicians who didn't realize they had access to the transformer via the giant vacant lot behind it. Instead of doing the intelligent thing and calling to ask for a frame of reference, they would cancel the report. They did this for days while the temperatures were near zero.

Dallas had a week-long blackout in some areas a week ago. We had an almost day's long power outage in January in some areas. This is becoming a common occurrence in the area due to severe weather.

MisterBastahrdon Cheapest source of fossil fuel generation is double the cost of solar

That might be true, but in places like North Texas where multiday blackouts are becoming common during the winter, it might make sense to invest in storage if you have the option. Not going to help much with heating, but at least your fridge / freezer can stay running.

MisterBastahrdon Water is bursting from another abandoned West Texas oil well, continuing a trend

Another fun part of having capped oil wells all over the place is that they can seep hydrogen sulfide gas. It can permanently disable you or even kill you.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/tox...

MisterBastahrdon Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity

$500K right now would pay off my home and do a good job of setting me up for retirement in the future.

$5M when you already have $45M doesn't move the needle much.

MisterBastahrdon Water is bursting from another abandoned West Texas oil well, continuing a trend

Watched a video of a guy who owns an oil and gas company and when a nearby company started fracking their well, it produced enough pressure to 10x his own output without any effort on his part.

MisterBastahrdon Decade of the Battery

USD. I live in Texas and locked in a 3 year rate. It comes with a larger cancellation fee ($250ish), but if I'm doing 1500-2000kWh a month most months, I'm easily saving money even if I cancel before the year is even up because the rate difference is usually 1.5-2c.

MisterBastahrdon Decade of the Battery

As someone who has been blissfully oblivious to electricity prices due to a 36 month contract at $0.10/kWh, I looked up the recent rates and saw that they're now in the $0.15/kWh range. Makes me a bit more receptive to biting the bullet and just going with solar with battery if this trend is going to continue in that fashion.

MisterBastahrdon Norway discovers Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals

The thing about money is that people will chase it regardless of the weather conditions if they can make enough of it. The folks out there in the Gulf of Mexico who spend 16 hour days working on oil rigs aren't there because it's fun.

MisterBastahrdon All three game console makers have now abandoned X integration

"We had something that was working, but then our owner decided to be a wingnut and turned the entire platform to a highly unprofitable pile of radioactive shit" is a hell of a business move. There's a reason that most super-rich people tend to deal with political content in a very hands-off manner publicly. If he had kept his opinions to himself instead of being a terrible shitposter, they likely still wouldn't be making any money, but the company would also be worth far more than it currently is.