HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

neaden

5,707 karma · joined January 5, 2016

submissionscomments
neaden··on Montreal adopts bylaw banning insults against police, municipal employees
Are you saying all insults should be illegal? Or just any insult to anyone who is doing work at the time?
neaden··on For most of history, people's conversations, thoughts, and finances were private
This isn't really true though is it? Most people in history were some sort of farmer in a small village where everyone knew everyone, you probably had a home with one room, and your finances such as they were would be immediately obvious to everyone else in the village.
neaden··on I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea
In battle yes. In sieges it was much more common, along with the murder/enslavement of all or the majority of the non fighting population.
neaden··on 2026 Hugo Awards
I agree the line between fantasy and sci Fi is very thin. In general I would say if the author intends for it to be a natural explanation like wormholes or something it's sci fi, if it's a magic teleportation spell it is fantasy. There is a series I read once Starships Mage which plays with this, it's hard sci fi for most things but magic exists and FTL is solved through teleportation. Everything non magic has to obey relativity and such.
neaden··on 2026 Hugo Awards
I don't think crime thriller or horror have anything to do with if a story is fantasy. Alien is a sci fi movie and a horror movie. Psycho is a horror movie with no fantasy elements. Sinners is a fantasy horror movie. It sounds like you are talking about epic or high fantasy, but there is fantasy romance, fantasy detective, fantasy crime thriller etc. You can even have a fantasy sci fi movie like Star Wars.
neaden··on 2026 Hugo Awards
I think by definition any vampire story is a fantasy story yes. Since vampires are not real and thus a fantasy creature.
neaden··on Space industry lacks workers needed to rebuild satellites lost in war: report
I mean, if we have a war with Russia that involves destroying satellites, it seems like there is a pretty big chance that means it's going nuclear and we'll have bigger fish to fry.
neaden··on Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
The original comment makes it sound like you'd get a police visit for walking with your kid to school though, which is hopefully a misunderstanding.
neaden··on Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
This is one of those frustrating things. You're just not allowed to not be scared with kids. If you aren't scared of letting your kid walk to a pond, you get punished for it. If you're not scared of the kidnappers, you have to be scared of the police. None of it is rational, it's different how many of us were raised, yet if you try to opt out the law gets involved.
neaden··on Trade (and Tariffs)
So this is just not correct. First off a factory can run 24/7 regardless of the shift length, which is what will determine the total productivity. Second off it assumes there are no trade offs in terms of more errors or anything else by having longer shifts. Third off it assumes that factories in different countries are going to be equally effective with each other, instead of different nations/areas within nations specializing in certain areas. It also ignores the economic benefits that come with having people in your nation having more leisure time, higher education, more time with children, etc. It's a very simplistic model that is also very incorrect.
neaden··on Mechanical Turk shutting down September 30
This makes it sound like they kill spies.
neaden··on Trade (and Tariffs)
"If a nation works 6 days a week, 12 hours a shift then obviously they will outcompete any nation where people work 5 days a week for 8 hours." - This is not obviously true to me, can you explain why it is for you?
neaden··on Rings forged from meteorites may have been fashionable among ancient Greek elite
This doesn't really hold water. Iron weapons aren't really any better than Bronze, it's stiffer and lighter with an equivalent size blade but not any harder or sharper. Bronze can be cast in more complex shapes that can help with weapon effectiveness and even during the Iron Age bronze Weapons were used alongside iron ones. Iron is much more abundant so the revolution of the iron age was having much cheaper and accessible metal, not superior. It isn't until Steel that you really see bronze (and iron) become clearly inferior.
neaden··on The A.I. In Google's New Pixel 11 Is Not Helpful
I have a 10 and find the AI to be more annoying than anything else. Mostly I see it when I accidentally hit something and it pops up since they want it to be quick to access but I essentially never want to use it. The fact that they are going to be replacing the perfectly fine Google Assistant with the Gemini which when I tried it out was so much worse at doing the simple things I actually use it for has me regretting buying a Pixel.
neaden··on Diesel Margins Top $100 a Barrel to Reach Record High as Supply Crunch Grows
But the person who is president when it incurs the cost, is probably not going to be the president when it makes the profit. That is one of the problems with things like this where you can get the blame for doing the responsible thing.
neaden··on Diesel Margins Top $100 a Barrel to Reach Record High as Supply Crunch Grows
It's very annoying that the cost of fixing all this and replenishing the stockpile is going to most likely fall on people who had little to nothing to do with it becoming such a big problem.
neaden··on Is the industry ready for tokens-constrained work?
Between all the benefits, taxes, and the infrastructure the company needs costs rise pretty quickly.
neaden··on Is the industry ready for tokens-constrained work?
It's also kind of odd because even a junior engineer has to cost a company around 10 grand a month in salary, taxes, and other costs. So if the company thinks it makes you 10% more effective it seems like it should be an easy choice. So either the companies are shooting themselves in the foot limiting spending or they aren't seeing the productivity boost.
neaden··on Maryland Closes More of Cunningham Falls State Park After Second Beaver Attack
The issue there is that the modern Zombie myth of an undead creature that spreads by biting only dates back to 1968.
neaden··on Google Assistant is going away on Mobile Devices
This is terrible. I tried the Gemini assistant for awhile and it was a much worse experience. Just making my phone to pump up some internal stat. No way to even give feedback, just we are doing this and we don't care what you think. Google is just losing any value as a company to the consumer.
neaden··on AI is a bubble, just like dot-com
We need a report AI slop button like LinkedIn
neaden··on The AI Demand Bubble
He's saying OpenAI would collapse in 12-24 months back in 2024 if they didn't raise more money than any other company in the history of the valley, but didn't they? I'll give you that it seems from what he tweeted he didn't expect them to be able to pull it off, but it also seems like he correctly laid out what they would have to do to survive, and then they did it.
neaden··on There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]
Though to be fair the very first version was set in 1985, then shortly afterwards 2026, and revised again to 2057.
neaden··on Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts
Yeah, as an android user myself I switch brands all the time, but the iPhone users in my life all bought iPhones 15ish years ago and have kept doing it ever since.
neaden··on Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts
The problem is even if AI ends up being huge all these companies still have to worry about eachother and the Chinese models that are coming out. It's like a dollar auction and it's very possible we are already at the situation where they have all bid more than a dollar.
neaden··on The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)
There would still be many signs. Dug up mines, metal alloys that don't exist in nature along with refined metals in quantities they don't exist, animal and plant species we bred along with all the ones we made extinct.
neaden··on The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)
I mean sure, if they somehow didn't have any trade goods that went in land, didn't work with metals enough to do any appreciable mining, and didn't breed any plants or animals enough to change their genetics. Any hypothetical hidden past civilization would have to have been weird in a number of ways to not leave any evidence.
neaden··on Fields Medals 2026
What do you base that certainty on? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am also skeptical you are correct and since it is four people you can probably look into if any of them have talked about it instead of just deciding that what you think is true.
neaden··on Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse
If you think using a machine to evaluate how well a human is showing empathy is a good idea, you probably shouldn't have any position of power.
neaden··on A metallurgist's doubts about self-replicating probes
Sure North Korea tries, but they don't succeed so it's not really helpful as an example of a self sufficient society to base a space colony off of. As for Israel yeah, they mostly don't import food from their neighbors (most of whom also import the majority of their food calories) but I don't see what that has to do with anything, as I said they import 80% of their calories which is certainly not tenable for a space colony to do.
Page 1 of 34Next →