seltzered_

Essay is from 2013, been shared on HN before but not much discussion: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fred-green-blue.com%2F...

Reminds me of https://folk.computer/ , but facilitated more via voice interactions.

Something to also consider is 'Kill Math' (written in 2011, before LLM/AIs rise) by Bret Victor: https://worrydream.com/KillMath/

This needs a 2008 tag.

There was some rough discussion in 2025 about where Mackay's models ended up being off: https://bsky.app/profile/ketanjoshi.co/post/3lmdeoxe2pk2i

And of course some credit that he was right on some technologies not making much sense like electric planes: https://bsky.app/profile/thierryaaron.bsky.social/post/3mwjx... referencing ch 5 pg 35 of 'sustainability without the hot air'

What I'm trying to gesture at isnt engineering prowess though but better questions around how California changed over the past 100ish years and the issues around land-use change and relationship to water. See things like what Yasha Levine has done such as:

- Pistachio Wars film - https://pistachiowars.com which talks about the changes in water use and canal development

- the original article 'A Journey through Oligarch Valley' from 2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20151115054847/https://www.nsfwc...

When you read lines like "California’s extensive network of canals and aqueducts is the lifeblood of the state, providing clean water to populous cities and expansive farms that wouldn’t otherwise have it." you have to ask how we ended up with these canal systems, what the tradeoffs are in a landscape setup this way rather than one where water infiltrates the ground and stays hydrated, and who owns water rights in California.

Build Soil has some interesting threads on this:

- https://bsky.app/profile/buildsoil.bsky.social/post/3lmeddjd...

- https://bsky.app/profile/buildsoil.bsky.social/post/3mkzybkk...

(note: I'm not trying to totally bash the solar panel project nor some of the key figures involved who've done great work like Dustin Mulvaney, but do think we should think about how we ended up here)

Look for professional or IPC training videos (e.g. https://youtu.be/b15MMzb_GWw )

I encourage you to do a deeper dive into the sources of famine in India - specifically impacts of Churchill in WW2 just before the Green Revolution. See https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/29/asia/churchill-bengal-famine-... (based on https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018... ) along with this documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T31MFNLJKJw . While there are drought induced famines, I still wonder what other approaches could be done (ranging from land-use changes, etc.)

Also ask yourself what the tradeoffs were in terms of biodiversity losses and agricultural diversity losses due to Green Revolution, and areas where it didnt work out like the attenpts of it on Balinese subak rice agriculture practices (the book 'Priests and Programmers' should have more info)

That doesn't seem like an actual quote in the original article, but this a fair point to bring up and a reminder that Gates has been problematic on his views on climate.

First, in the essay he mentions "Using AI, low-income farmers will soon be able to get better advice about all these things than even the richest farmers get today and increase their output substantially.". There may be some truth in this, but it's worth reminding that this is more of a 'productivist' worldview, and historically productivity gains in agricultural practices have benefitted farmers that were already wealthy (see books like The Globalization of Wheat by Marci Baranski [1] on the Green Revolution where "Borlaug’s new technologies ultimately privileged wealthier farmers, despite assurances to politicians that these new crops would thrive in diverse geographies and benefit all farmers").

Gates has also been criticized in the past for being influenced by figures like Bjorn Lomborg, where he had a (now-deleted) essay [2] with him, and there's a decent thread by energy entrepreneur Jigar Shah on Gates being off on climate issues for 15 years [3]

[1]: https://upittpress.org/books/9780822947349/

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230601175906/https://www.gates... (June 2023)

[3]: https://bsky.app/profile/jigarshahdc.bsky.social/post/3m4del...

OpenBB is/was another effort attempting to be a more open Bloomberg Terminal alternative: https://github.com/OpenBB-finance .

The original deleted blog post on the 'ai agent hacks gym' story was back from April 2026: https://web.archive.org/web/20260516025532/https://www.affin...

Something to hold in mind are the issues with scaling out to new cities in terms of safety risks: https://junkoyoshidaparis.substack.com/p/rapid-scaling-turns...

When the girls breakup prolly: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-15/uber-a...

I recommend doing some reading about the inputs modern agriculture depends on (e.g. chemical fertilizer) then thinking about the issues they're associated with beyond an anthropocentic frame (e.g. ocean dead zones).

HN supposedly currently runs via M5 Hosting according to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45750668 (comment from late 2025), though I think it ran on a single server over a decade ago.

Google has also tried to hide things like water consumption data, see:

- https://cloud.sustainability.watch/explore-issues/example-go...

- https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/mount-hood-wat...

They also seemingly dropped their net-zero climate goal:

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/google-quietly-re...

My anecdata: bought used DDR4 ECC 16gb ram sticks (i.e. serverpulled ram) for $11 off ebay last year (Jan 2025), now as of June 2026 the lowest listing I see is $42, most are around $50.

When I bought the same ECC DDR4 16gb ram stick in 2016 (when DDR4 was rather new) it cost $85 (cant remember if it was new or used)

There was also an effort called Glimpse around 2019 to be a UX / accessibility overhaul of GIMP along with a name change to be less offensive, see:

- https://github.com/joshgiesbrecht/Glimpse

- https://web.archive.org/web/20190829115212/https://getglimps...

Similar titled discussion from a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48168198

Theres a better description of the differences here: https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/OpenSCAD.html#tra...

Some of the differences may be in when you are trying to reference a face/edge to build off of, not just about the primitive function being used.

A notable example I remember from around 2010 was when Evernote dropped WPF, supposedly due to blurry text issues but probably also performance (remember when we called it EverBloat?)

Can't find the original blog post about it but here's a couple mentions of it:

- https://www.edandersen.com/p/evernote-has-no-patience-drops-...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/x0nu7h/comment/im9k...

My perspective of that situation is Link was a fairly popular poster, and had a post that was a quote post of someone from the Bluesky team with an image of an assassinated figure and an alt text that couldve been perceived as a threat to the bluesky team.

Some commentary ( https://bsky.app/profile/mackuba.eu/post/3m2jtzlznu22o ).

IIRC it came during a week of discourse & tensions around bluesky moderation concerning some controversial writers ( https://bsky.app/profile/jay.bsky.team/post/3m25esnq4t22y )

I share this just to be helpful a tiny bit but theres likely a lot of context missing and different perspectives on this.

Somewhat related discussion on Redmond Washington & Flock cameras: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45879101

There was a fairly recent case on Apple about this in the Santa Clara California area: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-takes-action-against-ap... (EPA, 2025)

See also https://mastodon.social/@ashleygjovik/112668309100333232 (Ashley M. Gjøvik , 2024)

" Building an EV requires metal forging, battery manufacturing, painting, and chip fabrication — all processes that drove Tesla to build in Nevada and Texas. Tesla's Fremont factory was the former NUMMI plant (GM/Toyota, operating since 1962). It was grandfathered in."

This website misses talking about all the Tesla Fremont paint shop violations (see https://www.baaqmd.gov/en/news-and-events/page-resources/202... ) and various OSHA violations:

- https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-02-11/tesla-fine... (2025)

- https://www.thedrive.com/news/26727/tesla-had-3-times-as-man... (2019)

Theres something clickbaity and missing from this article, I encourage watching youtubers like 'mirai club' for better info. What i recall from his videos is:

- The Mirai made financial sense AS A LEASE for folks in Southern California back in 2022 (possibly 2023) because:

  - Car prices in general (including EVs) were fairly highly priced at the time due to demand, the chip shortage, etc.

  - There were clean vehicle incentives to get a Toyota Mirai, including things like a hydrogen fuel fill up card to cover expenses.

  - At the time there was some assumptions that hydrogen fuel costs would go down over time, but they actually went up.

Again, I suspect most folks LEASED the Mirai due to it being a very niche car with limited usage outside of california due to the lack of hydrogen fuel stations. Youre now seeing some viral videos on the ultra low cost used Mirai's showing up in states that dont have hydrogen infrastructure due to some odd car dealer auction buys (Transport Evolved has a youtube video on this.)

The article does talk about the lack of investment in hydrogen infrastructure, this is true and theres been a huge split between announced infrastructure investments and what has actually happened (see https://bsky.app/profile/janrosenow.bsky.social/post/3labfzi... for a chart going through 2021-2024). The current US political situation and its impact on clean energy probably doesn't help either.

Likely No. Undecided with Matt Ferrell recently did a video on how sodium ion batterys startup in the US (not necessarily for EVs, but other power applications) have had challenges largely due to the falling price of lithium making sodium batteries less competitive on price the past couple years: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nrTCgZmUFCY

OTOH, there are seemingly more lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery ev options now - rivian now uses LFP, Ford mustang mach-e has had a LFP variant since fall 2023 (and should have other models using LFP in 2027), I think the 2026 chevy bolt uses LFP, etc.

Something to note here is that just yesterday (January 6 2026) the FDA announced changes around regulation of wearable & AI enabled devices: https://www.statnews.com/2026/01/06/fda-pulls-back-oversight... (" FDA announces sweeping changes to oversight of wearables, AI-enabled devices The changes could allow unregulated generative artificial intelligence tools into clinical workflows")

There are some ways to FDM 3D-print transparent plastic, see https://www.printables.com/model/15310-how-to-print-glass as one example.

Another example is this one where the 3D print was done as a continuous printing (i.e. no slicer, or sorta like a vase mode print) to make the clear show a bit better: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sy50BrlDMo

Worth noting this Branden Flasch video from a year ago talking about how the charging speed on the 4680 pack tesla Model Y was uncompetitively slow and arguably shouldn't have been sold: https://youtu.be/eQeziVkRwSA