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would love to be able to teleport this thread to, oh, 5 years ago. people would think some sort of alien technology had landed.

It’s more like, millennials got older and started drinking less (as happens), and Gen Z drinks different things like hard seltzer, and also drinks a bit less overall. Plus there were just way too many craft brewers making hoppy ipa to begin with.

Unfortunately, hoppy IPA seems to constitute the majority of the survivors. I have no interest personally in suffering through another hazy sour grapefruit triple ipa, but that seems to be about 90% of craft brewery output these days.

Interesting, where I live in Brooklyn it seems this is no longer an issue. Tons of non-hoppy craft options like pilsners, stouts, lagers, etc at ~every craft brewery or gastropub.

Same exact thing happened in tennis. There was a whole "lost generation" of amazingly talented players who just basically shat the bed whenever they stepped onto the court with Djokovic, Federer, or Nadal. It wasn't until much younger players like Alcaraz and Sinner came on the scene, who weren't quite as overpowered by the aura of the Big 3, that the playing field finally leveled. (And now they themeselves are turning into those guys for everyone else, haha.)

Or maybe the “lost generation” was simply not as good as Djokovic, Federer, or Nadal.

Quite chuffed someone else mentioned Djokovic, who is close to 39 and just played an Australian Open final. (Yes he got lucky with 2 freebies but he _did_ beat Sinner in the semifinal fair and square, and managed to win the first set before running out of juice)

imho Sinner and Alcaraz didn't solve the "overpowering aura" so much as the physical wear and tear took the trio down enough pegs to be much more attainable, and Djokovic is still competing impressively well.

I'm not sure why are you so sure that everyone plays worse when playing against some big name. I'd estimate that 90-95% of the top ranked players don't play worse when they play against big names.

What does % usable even mean?

That's a great question to a very vague subjective estimate! To me it means that about 60% of the interactions are as usable as the prior version. About 40% of actions I undertake on my phone cause a visceral "ugh this sucks now" reaction.

Try toggling “Reduce motion” and “Reduce transparency” on and see if your percentage improves.

By pulling ten million people a year from farms into factories and ploughing 40% of GDP into infrastructure and education. Sounds like a sound analogy to me.


I agree, and cloud compute is poised to become even more commoditized in the coming years (gazillion new data centers + AI plateauing + efficiency gains, the writing is on the wall). There’s no way this makes sense for most companies.


> AI plateauing

Ummm is that plateauing with us in the room?

The advantage of renting vs. owning is that you can always get the latest gen, and that brings you newer capabilities (i.e. fp8, fp4, etc) and cheaper prices for current_gen-1. But betting on something plateauing when all the signs point towards the exact opposite is not one of the bets i'd make.


> Ummm is that plateauing with us in the room?

Well, the capabilities have already plateaued as far as I can tell :-/

Over the next few yeas we can probably wring out some performance improvements, maybe some efficiency improvements.

A lot of the current AI users right now are businesses trying to on-sell AI (code reviewers/code generators, recipe apps, assistant apps, etc), and there's way too many of them in the supply/demand ratio, so you can expect maybe 90% of these companies to disappear in the next few years, taking the demand for capacity with them.


> Sadly, instead of having better laws we get fallacy rhetoric by people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives.

Why is this the litmus test for being qualified to write gun legislation? Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities?


This is a bad example. I've been notionally pro-ownership but also pro-regulation my whole life, and one of the major problems with gun legislation in the US is that it's incredibly poorly written and does not reflect the technical reality of guns.

The government allows private ownership of automatic weapons, but hasn't issued any new tax stamps for 50 years. You can convert any semiauto gun into a full-auto gun for a few cents of 3D printed parts (or a rubber band). The hysteria over "assault weapons" basically outlawed guns that _looked_ scary, while not meaningfully making anyone safer.

I think yes, it is reasonable for Congresspeople to fire a gun before they legislate on it, because otherwise they are incapable of writing good laws.

Good gun regulation in the US would probably look like car insurance, where gun owners need to register and insure their weapons against the possibility of crimes being committed with them. There are so many guns compared to the amount of gun crime that it would probably not end up terribly expensive, especially if you own a gun safe.


The mistake you're making here is assuming that

> The hysteria over "assault weapons" basically outlawed guns that _looked_ scary, while not meaningfully making anyone safer.

This wasn't the goal by the congresspeople, and that them having fired a gun would've changed that goal.

That was the goal. They knew they weren't going to be able to pass any kind of legislation that actually msde people safer, but they wanted to look like they were "doing something".

This is incredibly common. It's the primary reason behind the TSA and its continuous expansion, for example.


> It's the primary reason behind the TSA and its continuous expansion, for example.

I'd also add that the TSA is a good reason why we shouldn't expect talking legislators to gun ranges would make better gun laws.

The reason the TSA is what it is is because legislators fly more than most people. If you've ever been to DC you see a lot of this sort of security theater everywhere.

So much of the TSAs budget should be redirected towards what would actually make long distance travel safer, improving the ATC and Amtrak.


Thats defacto gun registration- and worse: registration with a private entity not beholden to due process. Given current realities, anybody who registers their firearm in such a manner can expect a no-knock raid because they were nearby when somebody phoned in an engine backfire as a gunshot.


So make it allowed that the insurance is tied to the gun. You buy a lifetime policy for that serial number, provide payment, and you're done. Payment can be provided anonymously at a window in cash, if that's your thing.

If you want discounts because you live in a low-crime area, have a gun safe, have many guns, etc. then obviously the storage location for the weapon needs to be declared to the insurance company.


ATF is not allowed to digitize any of its records around gun sales or transfer of ownership.


That's not true. They have millions of digitized 4473s. They are banned by law from creating a searchable registry of gun owners but they digitize paperwork on a daily basis.

https://medium.com/statute-circuit/the-atfs-quiet-digital-tr...


Thanks for the clarification. I knew there was limitation placed on them to hamstring their operations under the auspices of preserving the 2nd amendment.


You can get a stamp for full auto easily, my neighbor is an FFL and gets them frequently


You can transfer them. You can't register a new one. This is why H&K transferable sears are like $50k.


You're welcome to come up with a better litmus test, but it's beyond clear that lawmakers writing gun control regulation have less than a wikipedia level understanding of the topic. See "shoulder thing that goes up", the weird obsession with the Thompson, the entire concept of an Assault Weapon, etc.


Wikipedia has much better information about guns than most of the people talking about them in politics, generally speaking.

It's not too surprising, considering the way the rules are written at the ATF. There's basically zero logical thought that goes into pistol vs rifle vs felony:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/a4gnr3/makes_perf...

(Sorry for the reddit link, it's a common image but that was the first url I found from a quick search that had it up front and center).


ATF rulemaking can be unintuitive and arbitrary but there really is a level below it occupied by people who have dedicated a significant chunk of their lives to trying to restrict firearm ownership, who genuinely seem to believe that Die Hard, Rambo, and Spaghetti Westerns are real life. Politicians who can't answer basic questions about their legislation, who have to be told live on air that magazines can be repacked, that just make up impossible crime statistics. Yeah it's stupid that the ATF has decided that vertical grips are a rifle feature but angled grips aren't, but it gets worse.


A bit like Joe Biden complaining that a 9mm bullet will blow the lung out of a body, and crazier things from others, yeah.


What's the difference between a "pistol brace" and a "stock"? Don't they both go into your shoulder to stabilise the weapon?


There's no legal definition per Congress. Generally speaking, braces are intended to stabilize a pistol against your arm [0], whereas a rifle stock is meant to stabilize against your shoulder. However, braces can technically be "misused" such that the rear of the brace fits against the shoulder, meaning it is used as a stock. Likewise, the distinction is so small something as simple as a sling attachment to the stock could make it a brace, or an articulation that could be used as a cheek rest turn a brace into a stock, converting a pistol into a rifle or vice versa. For awhile, the only way to know the difference was for the manufacturer to submit an NFA and hope.

The ATF has been in court (and lost) quite a bit [1] over this.

[0] there's a nice picture and writeup here of a pistol brace being setup https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/gear-review-sig-sb15-pisto...

[1] a brief rundown of the 2023-2025 legal rulings https://www.fflguard.com/atf-pistol-brace-rule/


A "pistol brace" is designed and "intended" to be braced against your forearm to stabilize the "pistol" in a way that allows you to shoot a particularly large and heavy "pistol" with one hand. The ATF said this was fine, although I think they really regret that now.


Stock goes against the shoulder. Brace goes against the elbowpit. If you let the brace touch your shoulder, your braced pistol suddenly becomes an unregistered SBR, and you become a felon. Oopsie!

US gun laws are bizarre.


> Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities?

It would be nice if they delegated to experts, instead of think tanks or populism, when it came to dealing with these. Both are examples of rampant regulatory failure.


Knowing the difference between a think tank and experts might be hard without some rudimentary knowledge to spot nonsense? I don't know, actually asking. It seems to me that the primary skill we need in our leaders is that of spotting experts talking within their field and actually listen to them while ignoring others. The primary trait, which is even more important, is character so that they act on what they here in our best interests instead of their own.


Having first hand experience in contraband, and having the knowledge to create and pass laws are very different things. If you think that current lawmakers dont know enough about contraband to regulate effectively, what makes you think someone who knows loads about drug use and porn would be able to contruct decent watertight legislation?


At this point, I do expect that of them.


In this specific discussion familiarity does seem relevant. I don't think shooting is so relevant, but printing and assembling are.

You don't have to be a life-long user to regulate heroin, but if you start legislating second-hand heroin smoke, people might look at you sideways. You kinda need to know a little even if you've never actually ever seen heroin. If you demonstrate severe ignorance, people are going to call you on it.


I don't think its unreasonable to ask politicians to be familiar with how the machinery they are regulating functions and is used.

To use your heroin example, this is akin to banning spoons or needles because they heard those are tools of the heroin addict. It shows a lack of understanding on the part of the regulator and has a far reaching effect on people legally using the items.


Having a clue about how guns work, or the general reality of any other field one may be attempting to legislate, is absolutely crucial. With guns it just happens that actually firing them is a good way to gain (some of) that understanding.


litmus test wise, regulators of 3d printing should be able to create strong parts with a variety of 3d printing mechanisms.

they should at least be able to understand that a 3d printer is akin to a turing machine and what the real limits are - strength of the printed material vs length of the strip of memory.


It’s more like people who barely use computers regulating software features and development.. oh wait

I don’t own a gun, and think guns should be regulated more and better, but the heroin let alone another one are just flawed. There are no legitimate, non-life-ruining use cases for either of those analogies.


Well didn't they? From the Epstein files, it looks like "all" the elite is involved....


The ISS consumes roughly 90kW. That’s about *one* modern AI/ML server rack. To do that they need 1000 m^2 of radiator panels (EACTS). So that’s the math: every rack needs another square kilometer of stuff put into orbit. Doesn’t make sense to me.


1000m2 is not a square kilometer (1 square kilometer is 1mil m2)


And what happens every time a rack (or node) fails? Does someone go out and try to fix it? Do we just "deorbit" it? How many tons per second of crap would we be burning in the upper atmosphere now? What are the consequences of that?

How do the racks (or nodes) talk to eachother? Radios? Lasers?

What about the Kessler Syndrome?

Not a rocket scientist but 100% agree this sounds like a dead end.


Communication is a well-understood problem, and SpaceX already has Starlink. They might need pretty high bandwidth, but that's not necessarily much of a problem in space. Latency could be a problem, except that AI training isn't the sort of problem where you care about latency.

I'd be curious where exactly they plan to put these datacenters... In low Earth orbit they would eventually reenter, which makes them a pollution source and you'd have no solar power half the time.

Parking them at the Earth-Sun L1 point would be better for solar power, but it would be more expensive to get stuff there.


> SpaceX already has Starlink. They might need pretty high bandwidth

you mean the network that has less capacity than a fibre pair per coverage area?


> you'd have no solar power half the time

Polar orbit.


Seasons mess that up unless you're burning fuel to make minor plane changes every day. Otherwise you have an equinox where your plane faces the sun (equivalent to an equatorial orbit) and a solstice where your plane is parallel to the sun (the ideal case).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit A Sun Synchronous orbit at the Day-Night terminator solves this issue


Huh, I didn't know that that was possible without burning fuel. Kind of wild that it only works because the Earth has an equatorial bulge and isn't an exact sphere.


I didn't think of that! I should have had a V8. Thanks for the info.


Satellites can spin! You also need to deal with precession and other minor chances in the orbit, but they’re all solved problems.


True. It would a tradeoff with the fuel consumed vs doubling power output.


1000 square meters really isn't that big in space.


Alarm is a good guess. On average I can solve a wordle in 3.6 turns when I start with this guess.


Repeated letters are wasted utility. Wouldn't that make it suboptimal for a first move?


Suboptimal - likely. There is some utility: a green letter is more useful than a yellow. Checking for a in two locations when a is a very commonly used letter is __useful__. Still likely much more useful to check for the presence of a fifth letter than a chance at knowing more precisely the location of an a.


I used to use alert, until it was the word one day (got it in one!). Then I switched.

Apparently I should switch back, since it could be the word again.


I always used the previous day's word as the starting word. IMHO that should have been how the game worked all along.


There seems to be a progression of Wordle strategies.

Playing with a set start word (or words, e.g. "SIREN OCTAL DUMPY" or people who go the "AUDIO ADIEU" route).

(Many people also go down the rabbit hole of looking for "optimal" starting words or choices based on the original word lists.)

Then, once you've played that for a while, you find it's not that much of a challenge unless you end up in one of the forms of madness like _A_E_, and you'll switch to playing in "hard code" (e.g. correct/green must be played again in the same place in all subsequent tries, yellow letters must also be reused each time).

The hard mode starting with the same word gets a bit boring, so people move on to varying the start word each day, either pulling them from a list or just using the answer for the day before.

There's no "correct" approach obviously, people can play the game however they want and extract the fun/anger however they want.


Why would you rob yourself of the chance of a wordle-in-one?


Because a wordle-in-one is meaningless. It doesn't mean you're any good at Wordle, the way a hole-in-one suggests you're good at golf. It definitely doesn't mean that you're a "Genius" as the game puts it, because you were operating with zero information and didn't employ any skill or intuition. It just means you burned some luck points on something that doesn't matter.


Does the wordle bot give you 0 skill, 100 luck in that situation? (It should.)


I don't know, I never used the bot.


Yeah but it's a wordle-in-one...


Not much of a game if you can't choose the guesses yourself?


I used to use “stare” or “stale” as the starting guess when I played Wordle, thinking you’d want to start off with the most common letters, like R-S-T-L-N-E from Wheel of Fortune.


"stale" was used a while back - since then I've been starting with "slate"


But now you can use it again!


Sure there is, as long as your audience does.


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