HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

curiousObject

1,006 karma · joined February 23, 2023

submissionscomments
curiousObject··on The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)
No, because then the rocket would probably launch in the middle of the sentence. He had to start saying that sentence at the right second and pace the words and his movements perfectly.
curiousObject··on Show HN: Modafinil - Let agents continue running while MacBook lid is closed
I was about ready to warn you that was a trademark, but it isn’t I think, only the generic name. Nice work.
curiousObject··on Student hackers revenge on final exams 'ShinyHunters' attacks nearly 9k schools
“Student hackers”!?!
curiousObject··on Roblox shares plummet 18% as child safety measures weigh on bookings
This is quite like saying that because you’ve “aged out” of high school, you must be suddenly cut off from interacting with all the friends you made in high school

IRL, you stay in touch with some of those old high school friends for years.

I don’t know if it’s the Roblox system deliberately trying to prevent players from maintaining contact outside the game with their friends? Or maybe just that the players haven’t foreseen the need to be ready for the abrupt cut in communication on their next birthday? (Happy Birthday!)

Sounds like a serious strategic error by Roblox though.

curiousObject··on SatoshiGuesser – Roll for Bitcoin
51% attack allows you to undo a recent transaction (as if it never happened). It does not allow you to change the destination of a transaction or arbitrarily move bitcoins around.
curiousObject··on SatoshiGuesser – Roll for Bitcoin
>At one spin per millisecond (faster than this app runs), you'd expect a hit roughly once per 1.7 × 10⁶² years — about 10⁵² times the current age of the universe. The heat death of the universe occurs first

Alright! Now there’s only the heat death of the universe standing between me and massive wealth? I like these odds.

curiousObject··on Talkie: a 13B vintage language model from 1930
> The establishment of an Indian parliament is demanded, in which the queen shall be represented by a viceroy,

Britain’s monarch was a king, not a queen, from about 1900-1950. Obviously there is some big “temporal leakage” from the training, which is affecting these predictions

curiousObject··on Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
It is sad. That reply, which you rightfully were irritated by, could have been expressed as a polite question.

That sort of question is what the response from user @bsder above helpfully tries to answer. That mode would invite more productive discussion, not more defensive annoyance.

Rules on HN say “Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.” but it is hard.

All I can suggest is: be patient and try to be positive

curiousObject··on Why Not Venus?
Yes, that is the point. It’s a good point.

But, if our airship in the Venusian atmosphere finds nothing interesting (no life signs), then there’s not much more to do at Venus, because atmosphere is all mixed and all the same. Going to the surface, even for a day or two, is hard and very expensive.

OTOH Mars - that can be explored for many years, on the surface and below the surface. We might still find nothing, but it’ll take hundreds of years to be sure.

curiousObject··on A Roblox cheat and one AI tool brought down Vercel's platform
The author’s site is on Vercel.

So I believe the author has exposure to the issue and interest in understanding it, that’s more than AI alone has got.

curiousObject··on 80386 Memory Pipeline
I think you’re missing the point. This person is implementing various CPU cores on FPGA. The insights they can share from that complex process are sometimes interesting, because they are looking at the system from a new angle.

https://nand2mario.github.io/projects/

curiousObject··on Human Accelerated Region 1
Evolution would design the alternative to be something slightly less capable than the minimum. /s

Really, the likelihood is that these mutations must have had an impact that far outweighs their space in the genome.

That’s how all our close competition got murdered by Homo Sapiens. Just significant difference in mental abilities.

curiousObject··on Are sugar substitutes healthier than the real thing?
Bitter truths: https://archive.is/Oti1j
curiousObject··on Internet outage in Iran reaches 1,008 hours
That’s unbroken 6 weeks of no direct access for almost everyone

Of course information does still get in and out, but that is severely throttled

curiousObject··on Artemis II safely splashes down
>documented attempt to capture Salyut-7 https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2554/1

This isn’t true. The same article even explains that.

From that article: “It takes only some basic fact checking to debunk all the preposterous allegations…”

curiousObject··on How NASA built Artemis II’s fault-tolerant computer
>Just slapped 8x the number of computers on it

‘Just’ is not an appropriate word in this context. Much of the article is about the difficulty of synchronization, recovery from faults, and about the redundant backup and recovery systems

curiousObject··on Ask HN: Gmail's missing paste-to-link feature
I don’t understand what you mean.
curiousObject··on A Review of Dice that came with The White Castle (2025)
Thank you. I didn’t know that.
curiousObject··on Email obfuscation: What works in 2026?
I believe you’re right. But sometimes, you really have to think about how mad your adversary is.

A dog will keep biting long after that is a disastrous plan.

curiousObject··on Email obfuscation: What works in 2026?
The OP put those addresses on that web page, and only on that web page. Some addresses received spam.

Edit: that’s not to deny that big data leaks are a serious problem

curiousObject··on Everyone Hates iPhone Autocorrect. An Update Fixes One of the Biggest Problems
https://archive.is/g2mWU
curiousObject··on AI Perfected Chess. Humans Made It Unpredictable Again
https://archive.is/o69yu
curiousObject··on Byte Interviews Chuck Peddle, Father of the MOS 6502 and Commodore PET (1982)
Clearly Chuck Peddle is a major designer and engineer. So what went wrong with the new computer he’s describing?

The company filed for bankruptcy protection within a couple years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius_Systems_Technology

curiousObject··on Goodbye to Sora
>If intelligence is necessarily coupled to a desire for self-preservation and self-interest, at what level of machine intelligence do the machines simply refuse to design their own more intelligent replacements,

At a higher level of intelligence than many humans, current experience suggests

curiousObject··on The Resolv hack: How one compromised key printed $23M
If they take too much then confidence in the coin is absolutely lost and the coin fails and it’s price rapidly goes towards zero, so they’re possibly being smart by only taking a small percentage — if that was the hackers decision

Yeah $25m is only little but could still be useful

curiousObject··on A Review of Dice that came with The White Castle (2025)
Maybe a player can learn which dice are biased then choose those dice to throw depending on what result would be best for them at that moment? So they gain a slight edge.
curiousObject··on Global warming has accelerated significantly
Rationally, you apply fines as close to the source as possible. Because they will pass those costs up the stack.

But the source could be the most likely place for corrupt reporting. Or: Maybe the source element is not dangerous but downstream by-products are.

Like you’ve said: It’s a problem.

curiousObject··on GPT‑5.3 Instant
Try asking for jokes about, eg Kenyans, Ugandans, South Africans

I think it might still refuse, but in your original test, German usually means a nationality, but African doesn’t.

I’m sure the jokes were terrible anyways

curiousObject··on AI-generated replies are a scourge these days
>AI-generated replies really are the scourge of Twitter these days

This is a complex problem. But the first step of that problem is Twitter/X

Avoid it, and the next step toward a solution may be easier.

curiousObject··on Signal launches version 8.0 with Signal Secure Backups
The official Signal website is signal.org

Because of the security and privacy focus of the app, it is best to look there for news about Signal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=signal.org

← PreviousPage 2 of 8Next →