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johnea

503 karma · joined September 17, 2019

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johnea··on I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become
> Look What They've Become

Another shit hole of insider trading...

johnea··on Possible invasive species superspreader event near Strait of Hormuz
International shipping is the #1 spreader of marine invasive species.

1/2 of all shipping, is shipping oil 8-/

Spreading invasive species is just one more way that oil is destroying our natural environment.

johnea··on Israeli spyware vans infiltrate American streets and your phones
> And how exactly do we maintain equal application of the rule of law?

Transparency and constant monitoring.

To understand how to run an organization without trust, think like a capitalist.

Does a bank function because of honesty?

No, everyone is watching everyone else, all the time.

johnea··on Claude Is Not a Compiler
One person's petulant complaint is another person's rebuttal.

I think what you're really saying is you don't agree with OP's perspective...

johnea··on Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public
Flock had credibility?
johnea··on Is surveillance risk chilling your online speech?
I'm hesitant to say...
johnea··on Israeli spyware vans infiltrate American streets and your phones
> All democracies run on the honor system

That's total bullshit.

Democracy runs on the equal application of the rule of law.

Of course, no democracy is perfect. The degree of imperfection can be measured in how much they run on the honor system...

johnea··on Claude Is Not a Compiler
I'm pretty sure they just did...
johnea··on The Little Book of Reinforcement Learning
Is this riffing on Strunk and Whites: The Elements of Style?

Often referred to as "The Little Book".

johnea··on Netstrings (1997)
So much of the terse, utilitarian, DJB Way was overpowered by bloated corporate crap 8-/

One still functional example exists in voidlinux's init system.

There was never any need for systemd 8-/

Except leveraging RedHat/IBM's domination of the linux user space ecosystem...

johnea··on Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning
My expectation is that it will be worse than this analysis implies.

The world energy mafia, primarily petroleum, but also nuclear and coal, will not give up their revenue streams.

Carbon concentrations will continue to rise, and quite likely accelerate.

The overwhelming majority of sustainable generation is in large, regional scale projects, because this keeps the profit in the hands of the established energy utilities.

Nuclear... nuclear... I would pose a question to every bone head here who advocates it: Can we start storing the spent waste in YOUR garage?

The profit motive loves nuclear energy, because tax payers pay to build and decommission it, while industrial scale utilities get to operate it while money is popping out.

Nuclear is the most expensive form of electricity generation, by far. By very very far.

Distributed generation and storage is advocated by no one with an equity stake in the status quo.

The fundamental problem, is that the world economy is run by organized crime.

The US whitehouse has now made this explicit, however the situation has existed in this context since the invention of distributing petroleum and electricity.

johnea··on Floating Companion: Exploring Design Space for Soft Floating Robots in Indoor
One has to wonder:

> offering gravity-defying, compliant, and tactile embodiments for indoor cohabitation

The summary is so full of fluffy nonsense, I wondered if this was some April 1st joke 8-/

Maybe first, they need to invent anti-gravity?

And "cohabitation"? Are the little things going to be breeding?

It makes me thing the ACM is loosing it's shit...

johnea··on My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded
It's not fully modded until it's electric 8-/

Having been through 3 midlife crisis, I can speak with some authority on this...

johnea··on When A.I. is a member of the family
Abject Idiocy does seem to be crossing a threshold from neurosis into psychosis...
johnea··on The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes
I agree (and upvoted you btw)

That's why I think this nit-picking, "no doom-scrolling" regulation is worthless.

A) It doesn't strike at the root of the problem, and therefore won't solve ti.

B) Orgs like these, that do immeasurable public harm, should just be eliminated.

johnea··on Microsoft deleted my account and OneDrive
#1 This sucks

#2 This is the personal version of what europe is going through now, with the realization that those cloudy cloudy services may be convenient, but don't bet your life on one.

Keep a local backup!!!

In fact, local backup first, with the cloud as a backup of your backup.

johnea··on The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes
As a leftist, I'd be really happy to see most CA legislators banned. Let's start with Gavin, and his pro-utility, anti-consumer CPUC.

Now that that problems solved, let's just ban meta, the twit-verse, and twerk-tik completely. The whole asocial media industry is just a giant waste of time and space.

One has to winder if the whole thing wasn't bootstrapped as a feed industry for the mental illness industry...

johnea··on California rocked by another earthquake that will unleash the Big One
Even if you uBlock origin 24/7, Daily Mail will still be total shit...
johnea··on Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback
#1 suggestion: Get rid of Identities!

There is no reason for the client to insist on knowing every email alias that delivers to a mail store.

Whatever the To address of a received mail, use that for the From addr in any replies...

#2 Suggestion: Make calendar reminders not get lost on snooze...

johnea··on Storm clouds gather over America's financial supremacy
The claims by VISA and Mastercard, that they are committed to nternational markets, adds up to a big 0.

If the US government issues sanctions, they will comply.

Countries outside the US are wise to pursue other infrastructure.

The big surprise is that this problem has been ignored for so long.

Of course, here in the US, we will not be alllowed a free instant payment system, because giving 3% of gross sales away to an absentee business, is patriotism 8-/

johnea··on Storm clouds gather over America's financial supremacy
I think it almost doesn't matter what pockets 8-/

The routinely noted decline in US "educational achievement" correlates most closely, with the propagation in the school aged population, of "smartphones" and the algorithmic websites at which they're aimed.

I've been saying lately: Apple caused the collapse of US educational outcomes.

johnea··on Storm clouds gather over America's financial supremacy
Truly.

"Make the libtards cry"

Was enough of a hate monger campaign promise, to put the most blatantly corrupt president in US history, in office.

The descent of the US population into abject idiocy has been striking.

johnea··on The Clouds of Hiroshima
From the article:

> It is an impressive sight.

The fascination with this is more than a little disturbing.

Somewhat reassuring to see that many comments here interpret the images as a call to eliminate nuclear weapons. But it's hard to image our current ape man species moving away from mass murder as an international policy implementation.

The propensity of our primate species for self annihilation doesn't pose much hope for extended survival.

Innate murderous tendencies that may have encouraged the caveman's survival will surly be what wipes us out...

johnea··on The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It
Sorry for the very late reply.

This article was just pubished:

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/09/nx-s1-5872786/iran-war-evs-so...

"China exported more than 2 million electric passenger vehicles between January and May"

Now, with the awesome deal with Iran of a "Big, Beautiful, not-a-nuclear-nonproliferation Treaty" blown out the window, along with the rest of the hot air emitted from our idiot in the oval office, oil prices are going through the roof again.

I am very glad to hear that affordable electric cars are available in England. This is a giant step forward.

I'm not glad for the reason, but I'm also glad that countries around the world are accelerating a transition away from petro based energy.

Here in the US, GM is announcing a new coal powered car, with the slogan: "Bring back the Stanely Steamer".

While all Chinese EVs are banned.

johnea··on Ask HN: Where are the good search engines for mathematical formulas?
Where are the good search engines, for anything?

As the push to force users onto LLMs, search has plummeted in effectively finding relevant pages. And not just goggle.

Why isn't anyone applying LLMs to interpreting the semantic meaning of the search query, and finding pages that closely match?

johnea··on [dead]
Except that people build LLMs, train them, and prompt them.

Without humans, there are no LLMs.

I continue to be annoyed by reports that "LLMs solved some problem".

People developed the LLM s/w, trained the model to solve the problem, with other human's prior work, refined and revised the prompts and feedback until finally reaching a tenable solution.

But somehow, the LLM solved the problem 8-/

Compilers didn't end programming, neither will LLMs...

And they're certainly not even in the realm of the scope of abilities of biological life.

If you really feel that an LLM is superior to a human, you should get outside more.

p.s. I'm totally in agreement with you about the murderous psychosis of the state of Israel. Many Israelis are Jewish Nazis committing genocide. That doesn't make LLMs superior.

johnea··on Return of the Nigerian Prince Redux: Beware Book Club and Book Review Scams (2025)
The main spam i get these days are "your cloud account has expired, pay immediately or you will loose your data".

It's something telling about the internet when spam transitioned from Viagra to cloud computing 8-/

johnea··on The Vespa at 80
Um, sorry. If you've ever sat behind a poorly maintained vespa at a stop light, and in it's cloud of exhaust when it takes off, then you definitely don't think it's cool...

Same thing for old beetles and VW buses. Total smog creators.

Electric is where it's at.

Can the cool kids catch up?

johnea··on Be a Hikikomori for Science
The main remaining question:

Do they provide anime and video games?

johnea··on At Dog School, children gain a sense of achievement
Yea, nothing makes a kid feel more accomplished than putting a choker collar on 'em and teaching them to heal.

It's especially rewarding for them when they get the dog biscuit at the end...

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