spenrose

7 ms·

1.
by spenrose 11d ago
My mental model: 1. Policing is yet another example of Baumol’s effect[1]; sectors where automation lags become expensive 2. Policing can be automated effectively, including via Flock: > Hunters Point rapper Dreamllife Rizzy described ho
2.
The Rockefeller of Solar(rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com)
3 points by spenrose 27d ago|1 comments
3.
by spenrose 1mo ago
Got caught in a day-long traffic jam leaving a rural area in North America after the 2017 total eclipse.
4.
Do AI Agents Make ML Compilers Obsolete?(maderix.substack.com)
2 points by spenrose 3mo ago|0 comments
5.
by spenrose 3mo ago
As usual, this paean to deductive reasoning (“formal methods”) leaves out its fundamental limit: how closely do the postulates and definitions fit the domain they purport to map? (“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practi
6.
by spenrose 5mo ago
Many HNers will enjoy this book about the company’s maturation from a hardware startup founded by one difficult genius to an institution that had to be rebuilt as it scaled: https://bookpeople.com/book/9781615199563
7.
TSMC Says ASML's Latest Chipmaking Gear Is Too Pricey to Use(bloomberg.com)
3 points by spenrose 5mo ago|0 comments
8.
by spenrose 5mo ago
Indeed. The problem arises from a two step: 1. Free Software / Open Source are Good and True by assertion. There is no God but source code, and Stallman is its prophet. 2. Questions whose answers tend to contradict point 1., such as “G
9.
by spenrose 5mo ago
Fantastic piece: shows how fundamental dynamics (queuing) generate practical problems AND what to do about them. This essay is better than 95% of tech blog posts I read via HN. Kudos! An original sin of Free Software which carried through t
10.
by spenrose 7mo ago
“... when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed” Welcome to the human condition, my friend. The good news is that a plurality of novels, TV shows, country songs, etc. can provide empathy for and insight into your experi
11.
by spenrose 7mo ago
“Finally, Bucciarelli is right that systems like telephony are so inherently complex, have been built on top of so many different layers in so many different places, that no one person can ever actually understand how the whole thing works.
12.
by spenrose 8mo ago
This perspective dates to at least 1940, when the population was a fraction of the current size. The fantastic Charles C. Mann wrote an excellent book, The Wizard and the Prophet, about it. Regarding water specifically, we now have multiple
13.
by spenrose 9mo ago
Thank you for the correction. I should have said “trained”.
14.
by spenrose 9mo ago
Thank you for the correction
15.
by spenrose 9mo ago
I can't stop thinking about this. WRT Perl specifically, it’s fascinating how the two competitors adopted Unix shell patterns. Python is handicapped to this day by not automagically snarfing up environment variables, etc. But Perl lean
16.
by spenrose 9mo ago
I forgot two, er, three: 9. Python got lucky that its inevitable screwups (Python3) didn’t quite kill it. 10. Swift and Kotlin both define programming as serving the compiler (specifically LLVM) rather than serving the coder’s problem .
17.
by spenrose 9mo ago
1. Python was designed by testing syntax with novice users to see what they could adopt easily.[1] > 90% of current Python users weren’t born when it was created. They all had to learn, and Python is the easiest language to learn because
18.
by spenrose 10mo ago
I am disappointed to see this article flagged. I thought it was excellent.
19.
How Rockefeller and His Partners Built Standard Oil(austinvernon.substack.com)
3 points by spenrose 1y ago|0 comments
20.
by spenrose 1y ago
Claude Sonnet 4.5 summary of the original paper [ https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adw1280 ] for middle school students: How Earth Got Its Water: A Cosmic Detective Story The Big Question: How did Earth be
21.
by spenrose 1y ago
Look at your examples. Translation is a closed domain; the LLM is loaded with all the data and can traverse it. Book and music album covers _don't matter_ and have always been arbitrary reworkings of previous ideas. (Not sure what “ebo
22.
by spenrose 1y ago
So many articles should prepend “My experience with ...” to their title. Here is OP's first sentence: “I spent the past ~4 weeks trying out all the new and fancy AI tools for software development.” Dude, you have had some experiences a
23.
Hacker Machine Shop Tutorials(github.com)
3 points by spenrose 1y ago|0 comments
24.
by spenrose 1y ago
"Since 1995 nearly all of my professional work has been enabled by, and published on, the web." https://jonudell.net
25.
Sam Altman Outfoxed Elon Musk to Become Trump's AI Buddy(wsj.com)
9 points by spenrose 1y ago|1 comments
26.
by spenrose 1y ago
Some headlines, such as this one, are catnip to up-voters* despite the article's contributing nothing to the established discussion c. 2015, let alone 2025. I don't know how you disrupt this dynamic and redirect to "go read X
27.
by spenrose 1y ago
Direct link: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33697/w336...
28.
by spenrose 1y ago
Networking and power infrastructure are "under the control of" large corporations also. Without them, Arxiv doesn't exist.
29.
by spenrose 1y ago
My hypothesis is that about 300 people whose identities were formed by participating in the Slashdot / LWN / etc. communities c. 2000-2005 are active HN participants in 2025. They saw the dream of Linux beating Windows fail—and wo
30.
by spenrose 1y ago
I suspect it's driven by the Olde School Linux / Free Software contingent of HN commenters / voters. Here is an example[1]: "The #1 story on Hacker News at 2023:08:21T15:41Z is a 2021 discussion of Linux desktop packagin

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