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wsgeorge

911 karma · joined January 3, 2016

writer, composer, photographer, developer.

jessejojojohnson.com

hnchat:ESqRDEP9dCT6KBxuIDCc

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wsgeorge··on Anthropeum – Where in the world, and when, does this human artifact belong?
Honestly surprised by this outcome. My geo estimates were way better than my period estimates.

Anthropeum.com · Jul 28 2026

64,056 · top 55% of players today!

wsgeorge··on Firefox Containers Preview
But Firefox also has browser profiles now (something I wanted for so long I moved back to chrome to get it), so what’s the purpose of first-party containers now? Don’t browser profiles provide a more robust, very visible delineation between different accounts/user profiles?
wsgeorge··on Internet traffic in Iran increasing
> (Yes, the invader could try to get Mexico to agree to host the invading army, but the US would probably find out about that plan and respond by either blockading Mexico or invading it if it doesn't immediately abandon the plan.)

Curious, how viable would this strategy be when invading via Canada?

wsgeorge··on Muse Spark: Scaling towards personal superintelligence
Alexandr Wang suggesting this might be open-weights/source in the future gives me hope. Hopefully they stay on this path.
wsgeorge··on TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe
> a positive reinforcement of not doing it because then the stress goes away and that is nice.

I may be similarly wired, and I've found abandoning Duolingo streaks on my own terms to be very rewarding.

wsgeorge··on Deno Sandbox
What I gather from the announcement: it's part of Deno Deploy (their SaaS offering). I too would love a self-hosted version.
wsgeorge··on Ask HN: How many screens do you usually work with?
2 screens, laptop hooked to a monitor. But I usually have a second laptop next to me, so 3 screens.

Then there's my phone (when testing apps), so sometimes I do 4 screens. That's my limit.

wsgeorge··on ElementaryOS – Thoughtful, capable and ethical replacement for Windows/macOS
I fell in love with elementaryOS when I first learned about it c. 2013, and followed it closely (used to read commits weekly) for perhaps a year. It was one of the first open source projects I really loved. But I eventually went back to Ubuntu because I was newish to Linux and I needed something that Just Worked™, without the funny business.

I eventually fell out of love with elementaryOS when the team seemed to double down hard on some unpopular design decisions wrt window control buttons/behaviour, for instance.

I always felt that they had taken on more than they could chew, and all the good will of their community wasn't going to change that fact. To this day I maintain that the project should have just been Pantheon, the Desktop Environment. The team seems to have strong opinions about UX, and that's where most of that matters.

I'm not the only one who thought of that, and the team's justifications for their decision to roll their own distro never came across as strong.

I've since moved on (to macOS and Ubuntu one the side), but once in a while I browse the official sub for the latest. I've never shaken off that feeling that the really talented founders could have spent their energy more wisely.

wsgeorge··on Ollama and gguf
There's a reddit thread from a few months ago that sort of explains what people don't like about ollama, that "shadiness" parent references:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1jzocoo/finally...

wsgeorge··on Stanford to continue legacy admissions and withdraw from Cal Grants
> If the elite colleges are not comprised of the rich and well connected it beats the entire point of an elite college.

Depends on how you define "elite", and I assume you mean some sort of hereditary or economic-class-based definition. But elite colleges could (and should) still work if they run on competency-based merit. I believe elite talent in as many fields of endeavour should absolutely be catered to.

> The entire notion of "elite" universities is discriminatory.

Well, when you put it that way, many things are discriminatory, for better or worse.

wsgeorge··on Ask HN: Have we reached the acceptance phase of generative AI?
Your experience mirrors mine. I have found LLMs kludgy to wield, but I deeply appreciate the technology, its pace of improvement and its promise.

And I feel myself getting better at not letting an LLM get in my way when doing anything: writing, coding, etc.

wsgeorge··on Ask HN: Is Hacker News avoiding criticism of Trump?
I tend to see a lot of criticism of the Trump administration when such topics come up. One "standard" HN tends to uphold is not following every single turn of the news cycle. This is why political discussion isn't as active here as it is on, say, political communities on reddit.
wsgeorge··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025)
The name of your app reminds me of one I had started working on when I was out of employment: the app was going to send periodic reminders of stuff you've bookmarked/saved on various social media sites.

I was just about working on the Twitter api when Musk bought the company and restricted access. Real bummer. I got employment weeks later.

wsgeorge··on A layoff fundamentally changed how I perceive work
My guess, frontlines.
wsgeorge··on DeepSeek-R1
You should be able to run smaller models on an M1. I'm testing this in about 10mins
wsgeorge··on Transforming of Communist-era apartment blocks that dominate Eastern Europe
Just from a visual perspective, it's amazing what a colour palette can do
wsgeorge··on How Couples Meet
I would have expected "Met in bar or restaurant" to be much higher in the 40s, and to have tracked with "Met in church" for longer.
wsgeorge··on OpenAI's "Own Goal"
Probably a regional thing? In some places, NGOs usually just mean non-profits (though technically that shouldn't be the case)
wsgeorge··on Audio versions of all Paul Graham's essays
Funny I saw this just when I had pg's Economic Inequality open in another tab, with the intension of settling down later to read it. I'm now listening to it. :)
wsgeorge··on [dead]
> Somehow nobody ever complains about the depictions of Jesus as a white man with flowing blond hair.

Many people do, actually. And my art history may be bunk, but comparing depictions of Jesus in Medieval vs Renaissance European humanist art suggests artists in the latter period were more keen on a little more historical accuracy.

Also, generally speaking I imagine it's a little different with Jesus and other major figures from Christianity. Inculturation has cultivated the habit of various people adapting these characters to their cultural contexts.

While "white Jesus" may not be popular because of the white supremacist legacy, there's a wonderful world of South East Asian and African Jesuses and Marys.

wsgeorge··on Whats that AI stuff that amazed you the most?
Sora, within the last few days. But it's mostly been GGML and the community making accessible inference at the edge a reality. Can't beat that, tbh.
wsgeorge··on Reasons medieval people slept in cupboards
> The newest term is "Owners Retreat"

This makes a lot more sense for what I'm planning to build. We're used to calling it "Master bedroom" where I'm from, but I always imagined I'd want some sort of suite or apartment, separate from the rest of the house.

wsgeorge··on Ask HN: How to Reduce Screen Time?
Cooking, cleaning/home improvement, working out...

Just imagine what you would do if someone took all your screens away for a few hours.

wsgeorge··on Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger
Not an insider: can you share some perspective?
wsgeorge··on Solar-10B
I would guess that a) they assume their users will have a lot of GPU ram, b) actual running costs will depend on what inference engine/framework you're using (for example, some GGUF quants are very cheap).
wsgeorge··on Google announces April 2024 shutdown date for Google Podcasts
Link to actual Google Support post from the article is broken.
wsgeorge··on Paul Graham's Twitter account targeted by IDF
> but this crosses some sort of professionalism boundary?

I don't know. I assume any organisation interested in directing online discourse about subjects it is vested in does something like this. Especially political organisations.

This is politics. Kinda dirty, but that's what it is, I guess. It's probably only noteworthy because the context and persons/groups involved are noteworthy.

wsgeorge··on Ask HN: How do you retain information?
> How do you retain information?

I don't try to. I write down/bookmark what I feel might be useful for future reference...

> I'm trying to improve my ability to learn and retain

Then it maybe depends on what you're trying to learn? What works for me is focusing on grasping some fundamental logic behind whatever I'm learning. That way there's less need to retain information, because I sort of "get it" and reason about the space.

wsgeorge··on Vowels and diphthongs in sperm whales
I vaguely remember reading about a research effort into this earlier this year, and I'm positive it wasn't what sp332 linked to. Would be glad if I can find the link.
wsgeorge··on OpenAI Jukebox
Did a quick search for Classical Music, and, this Mozart sounded particularly haunting: https://jukebox.openai.com/?song=802878499

Without any more context I don't know what's happening here, but I guess these are AI generated audio samples. Doesn't seem to do Classical well, but some of the Pop genres sounded good.

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