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simonebrunozzion Trees for a Changing Climate and Resilient Urban Forest (2022)

> At the Eighth Annual Tree Diversity Conference on March 4th, our Front Range conditions for growing trees was described as “harsh”.

Wow, didn't even know that there was such a thing.

The article is... beautiful, in a sense. It is SO clear that it is not written by AI (it's from 2022, in fact), and it seems refreshing to read something without the need to constantly ask yourself what was written with AI and what by a human mind.

Anyway... Planting trees is getting worse and worse. Our climate is pretty much f*cked. That, in 2026, is abuntantly clear. Sigh.

simonebrunozzion EVE Online moves to Python 3

Check out Offworld Trading Company.

simonebrunozzion EVE Online moves to Python 3

Can an experienced player gives us a summary of what's the "vibe" of the EVE online community these days? I was lightly involved ~15 years ago.

simonebrunozzion Naegleria Fowleri

This sounds really awful.

simonebrunozzion Randy Pausch's Last Lecture (2007) [video]

I really liked your comment, and I didn't interpret it as a critique of Randy's point. It's a fair consideration.

simonebrunozzion The turbulent AI era is here

Can you cite an example of a poorer country where direct democracy works so well?

simonebrunozzion The turbulent AI era is here

Works great in a very wealthy country, whose "modern" wealth was generated mostly by being the neutral and untouchable sanctuary for money laundering and illegal money making for centuries. See the 1934 Banking Act, among many things.

simonebrunozzion Don't Wordle

Proof that regulation does not work.

simonebrunozzion Run OpenBSD on DigitalOcean for $4/month

Which just reminds me of the eternal debate: OpenBSD or FreeBSD? Or even NetBSD? Which one is better?

simonebrunozzion My Friend Aaron

Unable to render the site

Failed to fetch dynamically imported module:

https://rorz.io/_next/static/chunks/link-CKkD60iF.js

simonebrunozzion Rural Village in Spain Is Welcoming Digital Nomads with Open Arms

> I'd prefer to be poor than to cater to this demographics.

What's wrong with pensioners?

simonebrunozzion To become a better writer, read as much as you can

I have an even better golden rule: to become a better writer, actually write as much as you can.

A real example.

I read A TON, since I was a kid (I'm close to 50 years old now). I used to write a lot. I even wrote two semi-decent novels, among other things.

I haven't written much in the last 10-12 years.

Now I want to start a little side project, in which I will write a letter to about one hundred people, print it and ship it physically. I have attempted to write the first one a few times, and it's very difficult. I am not used to write anymore.

Write more.

simonebrunozzion Ask HN: Is there an anti-mosquito system that actually works?

Amazing comment, thanks a lot.

simonebrunozzion Three important steps in my maturation process

Short but brilliant. Well done.

I'd add: try to sleep well. It adds up.

simonebrunozzion Hello, me. It's been a while

Went to see the "about" page - almost sweet and innocent to see some spam comments in there. Clearly the author didn't check it recently.

simonebrunozzion New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

I've read your comment, almost waiting for the line that was going to finally disappoint me... and it wasn't there :)

Somehow you recount a memory in an imperfect way, but it is so... apt, so in sync with Snow Crash.

Good reminder that I want to re-read it again now.

Oh, forgot to ask: can you tell us more about that experience? More details?

simonebrunozzion Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

All Archive pages, when accessed from Italy, now are blocked by the Government:

"PAGINA INTERDETTA DAL CENTRO NAZIONALE PER IL CONTRASTO DELLA PEDOPORNOGRAFIA ONLINE (C.N.C.P.O.)"

“PAGE BLOCKED BY THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR COMBATING ONLINE CHILD PORNOGRAPHY (C.N.C.P.O.)”

Oh, we live in an interesting age.

simonebrunozzion If this is true, the hyperscalers are toast

The paper focuses on "intelligence per watt (IPW)", as a way to compare SLMs vs LLMs.

What might happen is that a chunk of the market, whatever its size will be, will end up going to SLMs run on iphones or Macbooks, and eat some of the revenues from LLMs, because not everyone needs the most powerful LLM all the time.

simonebrunozzion Ask HN: What's the best way to raise our kids?

Fantastic. Thanks a lot for putting the effort to answer so thoroughly.

Have you ever heard of Gordon Training, by chance? [0]

[0]: https://www.gordontraining.com/

Also, on this:

> They do not need to be economically successful because I have been economically successful, but they do not know that yet.

I think I understand your point, in that they have the freedom to choose whether they want to be economically successful or not. Correct? If they want to, you are going to let them. I think it's very hard, though, to make sure that your money does not prevent them from being successful in their own way. Lots of discussions with a few friends about this particular aspect.

And, for context: my son is ~2 years old. I feel I want to study/learn/be better now that it still matters a lot.

Feel free to hit me on email (in my HN profile) if you'd like to keep chatting about this. Or just to say hello! :)

simonebrunozzion The Amazon tax

This is sad, but true. And true for other giant companies, not just for Amazon - Meta/Facebook is another good example.

What can we do about it? Not much. This is something that happens when in a "free" market you have a near monopoly, and the antitrust is too weak to even try to fine these companies.

One might think that there's a "conspiracy" of a few powerful people / billionaires, but I don't believe it it the case. Individuals are driven by results, profits, targets, metrics, etc... The company as a whole responds to shareholders, not the small retail one but large funds and such that own a significant stake in these companies. They want to make money. They lobby the government to make sure that quasi-monopolies like this one can go on undisturbed.

I don't blame Amazon. I think this is a limitation of the (supposedly) free-market society in which we live. By the way, it is not a free market when antitrust does not work, or when you need to bail-out banks, etc.

I admire and respect Seth Godin (I even met him once, years ago), and I would love to see if he had any idea of how to solve this.

simonebrunozzion Ask HN: What's the best way to raise our kids?

This is a great answer, but I feel that it applies to how to live one's life, and not, in particular, on how to raise kids.

Could you elaborate more on what you see that is specific to raising kids?

Thanks in any case.

simonebrunozzion The only known trebuchet casualty in history

So, is this because Trebuchet are not particularly lethal, or because they were not used much?

simonebrunozzion How to put 170 atoms in an atom

The article, rather shallow, is about Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC).

I found it a bit more interesting that the author's middle name is Galileo, and that he is participating in a "blogging" residency [0]:

Inkhaven residency: A 30 day residency for you to grow as a writer. For one month, you'll publish a blogpost every day. Or pack your bags.

[0]: https://www.inkhaven.blog/

simonebrunozzion Stripe will reportedly acquire OpenRouter for $7B+

I think your view is a bit too optimistic/nice in regards to Stripe, for this specific situation.

Payments have nothing to do with LLMs. They are two different businesses. Doing well in one makes Stripe not particularly well suited to do well in the new, other one.

I see this more of an attempt at capturing hype/eyeballs/attention, given that Stripe has been private for a long time, and that the latest valuation is not particularly higher than the one from years ago. It is a company that I really like, but one should question their real business and how likely they are to go public. Owning Openrouter allows them to insert some "story" about the growth potential of the company.

At the end, the retail investor will pay for all the BS, particularly around AI this time - not sure if this acquistion is the case or not, but I suspect it's a possibility.

simonebrunozzion Going Dark, and the era of law enforcement hacking

I strongly disagree with this view. The US government will most certainly convince OpenAI, Anthropic and Google to make sure that their models leave a backdoor in most systems that they code. I don't know how, but that's a problem that a team of people paid tens of millions a year each will try to solve.

There is NO WAY the US government will let most of the software world go dark.

simonebrunozzion Strait of Hormuz Live Traffic Tracking

I thought you were joking! Given it's 404.

simonebrunozzion Ordinary Abundance

> air almost 50 degrees cooler

You mean Fahreneit, of course.

simonebrunozzion What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

Nicholas Berggruen is pretty well known in Venice, Italy, where he bought 2-3 important buildings to host his foundations and art galleries.

simonebrunozzion Assembly Hall of Shame

Related, somehow: Core War [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War

simonebrunozzion So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

> Which IMO is in an even more dire strait than our forests

I think you are probably right, but could you kindly elaborate and provide more details? Very curious to hear your view and learn more.