News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

cowthulhu

Re:Find the flattest route between any two points in SF on Monday October 05, 2026 @09:56PM (#49973254)
Oh, yeah, I interpreted the parent comment as "minimize the grade" but if it's instead "keep grade below threshold" (for reasonable thresholds) that would make more sense.
Re:Find the flattest route between any two points in SF on Monday October 05, 2026 @08:08PM (#49972475)
I suspect that this would result in absurdly long routes. Imagine trying to go up a mountain while minimizing grade... you'd end up zig-zagging back and forth endlessly.
Re:How Effective Altruism Conquered the World on Sunday October 04, 2026 @05:11PM (#49957926)
I think it's got two components - first, people don't actually understand the tenants of mainstream EA. For instance, some people think that one of the core principles of EA is "make as much money as possible at any cost", which is incorrect.

Second, EA is a small movement with an above average amount of crazy people (IE someone who does think you should make as much money as possible at any cost), who then basically monopolize the media attention. This then feeds into the first component.

EA is in a fairly bad spot where nobody seems to be really attempting to understand it or meaningfully engage with it's ideas, instead just parroting the same few talking points (SBF anyone?)

Re:Claude Opus 5.5 on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @01:51PM (#49805376)
My experience is that Opus can definitely write decent code, but it incurs tech debt and adds unneeded complexity.
Re:How to write an effective software design document on Monday September 14, 2026 @12:26PM (#49699542)
I definitely agree that it's not perfect. I think he's a great starting point though, because when trying to get engineers to document stuff (something typically approached with similar enthusiasm to having their teeth removed with a hammer) it really helps if the "how to write a spec" doc is somewhat fun to read.

Unrelated - I really dig your "my [x]th year as a bootstraped founder" series.

Re:The contagion of fear on Monday September 14, 2026 @11:46AM (#49698915)
It can be subjective, because it's internal to you and not something that gets litigated or whatever. A close call is anything that you personally consider to be a close call.

I'm not asking you to post it here, I'm asking you to think about it and then remember it in the future, should the event ever occur.

Re:How to write an effective software design document on Monday September 14, 2026 @11:40AM (#49698819)
I was initially turned on to the idea of using specs by Joel Spolsky [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/10/02/painless-functiona...]

I think they're valuable, both because they get you to think through the actual functionality (and underlying implementation) of the software, and the make sure that you and the [person you're developing for] are roughly on the same page. Plus, every edge case or design issue you catch while writing the spec saves you a ton of time.

That said, I think a big weakness of specs is that it's just not possible to write a perfect spec that doesn't have any blind spots and covers all the edge cases and issues you'll run into when actually developing. This makes it more difficult to hold the customer accountable to the spec, since you (the designer and devs) can't really be accountable to the spec unless you want to deliver some overly literal, not-actually-helpful product.

Re:The contagion of fear on Sunday September 13, 2026 @10:50PM (#49691339)
:\
Re:The contagion of fear on Sunday September 13, 2026 @10:46PM (#49691311)
The bar is high, but there's probably some combination of events (combined with a high confidence in my own lucidity over an extended period of time) that would convince me.
Re:The contagion of fear on Sunday September 13, 2026 @10:37PM (#49691236)
Is there truly nothing an AI system could do (no matter how outlandish it seems today) that would give you pause?
Re:The contagion of fear on Sunday September 13, 2026 @10:26PM (#49691162)
I think I'm coming across as confrontational, which is genuinely not my intention - sorry about that. Not trying to score points or anything, just encourage people to introspect a bit :)

I think your viewpoint is totally valid, and I'm not trying to argue against it.

Re:The contagion of fear on Sunday September 13, 2026 @10:20PM (#49691104)
To avoid shifting goalposts
Re:The contagion of fear on Sunday September 13, 2026 @10:11PM (#49691039)
I'm not asking for justification, just for people to introspect about what, if anything, it would take for them to consider AI a serious threat. No justification needed, and really no need to post it here, just think about it and remember it in the future.
Re:The contagion of fear on Sunday September 13, 2026 @10:09PM (#49691025)
I'm not making an affirmative case - I'm looking for others to introspect about this, and anchor their expectations.

If we have a bioweapon close call, would you consider AI an existential risk at that point? If not, how close would we need to get?

You don't need to answer here, or disclose anything publicly - just think and remember.

Re:The contagion of fear on Sunday September 13, 2026 @10:03PM (#49690981)
Everyone writing off AI-related risk in this thread should think about what would need to happen for them to consider AI a serious existential risk. It can be outlandish and unlikely (close call with a bioweapon? unsupervised persistence in a data center?) but people should honestly call their shots and then stick with them.
Re:We built our house for LAN parties on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @10:11AM (#49610606)
I’m sorry your getting so much hate, this is a really cool and unique project.
Re:An Alien Mind on Sunday September 06, 2026 @04:14PM (#49590422)
Based on the profile description of the author, the comment appears to be AI generated.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:The Cables That Connect the World on Wednesday September 02, 2026 @02:25PM (#49540328)
I was surprised at the high voltage required… but resistance loss scales with the square of amperage, so it makes sense that for long distance power transmission, you have to keep amperage low and voltage high.
Re:Poisson Disk Sampling on Wednesday September 02, 2026 @02:11PM (#49540139)
The third one especially is both (really) cool looking and legible!
Re:NFC Energy-Harvesting PCB Business Card with an MCU on Monday August 31, 2026 @01:54AM (#49506106)
I would be really interested to know the cost per card, both at the single card volume as well as the 30 the author ended up getting.
Re:Secrets of the Atomic City on Friday August 28, 2026 @06:12PM (#49484878)
There is something uniquely sad and frustrating in how the victims of this story - the plant workers - were so resistant to the idea of the contamination being dangerous.
Re:Visual Analysis of Binary Files on Friday August 28, 2026 @04:26PM (#49483795)
Does the uniformity indicate that the files are space-inefficient, and would benefit from compression?
This really shows why most languages evaluate all NULL comparisons to FALSE.

For something as critical as Actions, it’s crazy to me that they wouldn’t fail-closed, and instead fail open when encountering a null. Scary stuff!

Re:Dark Hours on Sunday August 02, 2026 @02:46AM (#49141777)
I believe it does if you scroll down. Even tells you which way to look to minimize it!
This is the first time I’ve heard someone criticize the “selling cosmetics” business model. I assume you feel the same about R6, TF2 and CSGO, naturally.

Since selling skins is unacceptable, how would you have them make money given the game is F2P?

If I’m understanding correctly, it was already quasi-legal through a loophole, but formally legalizing it made the loophole much trickier to use? That does sound frustrating. I hope they simplify the legal rails… having to wait around in pain waiting for multiple rounds of paperwork to clear sounds terrible.
Re:How to sequence your own DNA at home on Tuesday July 07, 2026 @12:44AM (#48813749)
That’s a really clever idea, I would definitely pay for that in the right circumstances.

Now that I think about it - could you just pour some sort of biodegradable broad-spectrum herbicide down the drain to get the same effect for cheaper?

Re:Kernel Anti-Cheat Is an Overreach on Monday July 06, 2026 @11:16PM (#48813315)
This article reminds me of Chesterton Fence - the author is complaining about something, without ever experiencing why it exists.
Re:Kernel Anti-Cheat Is an Overreach on Monday July 06, 2026 @11:11PM (#48813294)
That’s a fair point, but I think the issue is that the other players don’t want to play with you unless you’re running the anti cheat. Some games do have servers with anti cheat disabled, but a few minutes of playing on one of those servers will reveal why self-selecting into a population not running the anti cheat is not very fun.

This is a long winded way of saying that there isn’t a good way to have a multiplayer game give you the choice while still being fun.

Older »