Viewing profile — rogerclark

These things really suck. The novelty wears off instantly. It's uncomfortable having to either stand up to get something from the robot or awkwardly reach over while sitting down. …

I would guess that abiogenesis is often framed around randomness as a strategy to argue for its implausibility. Of course, a completely random system is unlikely to produce enough …

It already has, for better or worse. Why does anyone still take this guy seriously? It's one thing to be skeptical that AI is going to make the world a better place... it's another…

You can't grasp this because there is no FTL communication. Quantum entanglement does not enable FTL communication, and wormholes etc. are entirely theoretical.

Is "what is this ?" even a productive comment in itself? That's the point the parent is trying to make. If you click on this link, and you can't tell what it is, you probably don't…

"Disappointed, but not defeated, they resolved to build a better version of Mario."

Carmack is a great programmer to be sure. Commander Keen, however, was not a better version of Mario. It was worse than Mario in every way -- art, music, and gameplay are all infer…

htmx itself is not the future of anything. Businesses are not using htmx to make money and nobody is hiring for htmx. It's an ideological technology rather than a practical one. Ma…

That first sentence is one of the best-distilled insights I've ever read on HN.

IMO, the most distinct flavors in Dr. Pepper are cherry and almond. Benzaldehyde, an "artificial cherry" molecule listed in this spectrometer video, is found in both cherry and alm…

Japanese snacks and drinks also use high fructose corn syrup.

Someone please acquihire Sean and his compiler! This guy is a once-in-a-generation polymath: an expert in compilers (obviously), GPUs (worked on CUDA at NVIDIA), physics and topogr…

The stereotype premise is funny but the jokes don't land very often. The jump cuts where he repeats words are also not jokes at all. The recent video about the T3 stack just lists …

This would be a fantastic way to resolve both the gravity problem as well as the nature of quantum uncertainty. The "random" fluctuations of gravity in Oppenheim's theory could be …

In order for it to fully make sense, you will need to study it from multiple angles. Hooktheory.com, books, and lots of YouTube videos will get you there over the course of 1-10 ye…

The truth is that the Turing test turned out to be useless. Whether we have passed it or not has no bearing on my life or anyone else's. The way I talk to ChatGPT isn't the way I t…

And then what? People sit around making animated videos, all of which are completely interchangeable because they're made at zero budget with the exact same technology? Great. Can'…

Bard is a really stupid name. I get the origin of the name, and it's a short word, and in some sense it's a nice vibe with implications of a mystical poet or whatever. But it's a w…

TypeScript only has "discriminated unions" in an extremely busted form. While they are encoded in its type system, there is little support in control flow. Exhaustiveness checking …

It seems this way on the surface because everything seems equally inevitable. Maybe it's all inevitable, but many technologies come around and don't look like something described i…

At Apple, we had Project Managers (for instance "Engineering Project Managers" or EPMs). These PMs were not our bosses, and functioned as our peers in the organizations. They had a…

It is a generational thing. If you grew up with Minecraft, you won't be able to see its flaws. Growing up with pixel art from NES and SNES games, the Minecraft aesthetic was obviou…

Casual listeners can't detect it, but it strongly affects the possibility space for production purposes. For instance, if you're writing happy hardcore music at 170+ BPM with a kic…

Some of us actually like working in person. I'm much more productive in the office, and I think many other people are too. I can buy the real estate argument to some degree, but it…

It's possible. The eye strain is real after a couple hours, though. And I've already run into situations where I wanted to show someone something and had to "change modes". Having …