Hacker News: 542458

New comment by 542458 in "Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter"

542458 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 11:26:40 +0000

I think it is worth noting that “what they charge for api access” != “marginal cost of inference”. So I don’t think getting i.e. $40 of api usage for $20 would be insane. $131 for $20 does probably mean somebody is losing money though.

New comment by 542458 in "AI coding is gambling"

542458 — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 19:28:21 +0000

> Anyone can be an "ideas guy".

I disagree with this. I've worked with amazing "ideas guys" who just cranked out customer insights and interesting concepts, and I've worked with lousy ones, who just kinda meandered and never had a focused vision beyond a milquetoast copy of the last thing they saw. There's a real skill to forming good concepts, and it's not a skill everyone has!

New comment by 542458 in "The Biggest Identity Sandpiles and How to Compute Them"

542458 — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:27:55 +0000

I'm getting a PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR for this site - anybody else or is that just me?

New comment by 542458 in "Apple AI servers unused in warehouses due to low Apple Intelligence usage"

542458 — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 19:09:15 +0000

I think this is very pessimistic. Yes, big models are "smarter" and have more inherent knowledge but I'd bet you a coffee that what 99% of people want to do with Siri isn't "Write me an essay on the history of textiles" or "Vibe code me a SPA", rather it's "Send Mom the pictures I took of the kids yesterday" and "Hey, play that Deadmau5 album that came out a couple years back" which is more about tool calls than having wikipedia-level knowledge built in to the model.

New comment by 542458 in "Fast KV Compaction via Attention Matching"

542458 — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:12:55 +0000

These folks are MIT, so citations are valuable to them. Citations convert into prestige, academic career progression, or a favorable exit from academia into industry.

Also, I don't see why you couldn't patent this if you wanted to monetize it.

New comment by 542458 in "Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers"

542458 — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 14:12:32 +0000

Same reason the F35 manufacture is awkwardly distributed throughout the US - the shore up political support (voting to kill jobs in your state is usually unpopular) and dip into as many subsidies as possible.

New comment by 542458 in "People who know the formula for WD-40"

542458 — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 21:26:55 +0000

It is absolutely a lubricant - it is a combination "lubricant, rust preventive, penetrant and moisture displacer". Whether it's the correct or best lubricant for many applications is iffy, but that doesn't mean it isn't a lubricant!

New comment by 542458 in "People who know the formula for WD-40"

542458 — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 21:25:02 +0000

Related, somebody recently did this for Coke. There's a video on YouTube (I'd link it but my anti-procrastination filter is on).

But yes, I strongly suspect a motivated party could use analytical chemistry to work it out.

New comment by 542458 in "Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability"

542458 — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:03:13 +0000

Do the third party ones have UWB/"Precision Finding"?

New comment by 542458 in "Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability"

542458 — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 14:57:37 +0000

Different people want different attachment types (or no attachment point at all), so it makes sense for that to be external. I've used other trackers with integrated attachment points, and because the attachment point has to be very compact it tends to be flimsy or hard to fit.. vs the Apple one where you can add a larger attachment point that makes sense to you.

New comment by 542458 in "Comic-Con Bans AI Art After Artist Pushback"

542458 — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:30:01 +0000

Maybe a linter is a more accurate allegory. I think there are parts of art that could sometimes be suggested in terms of anatomy, symmetry, shading, color theory, etc. You'd configure your art linter to your preferences/style (or target style) and it would point out the things you're doing wrong and offer suggested fixes.

New comment by 542458 in "Comic-Con Bans AI Art After Artist Pushback"

542458 — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:57:39 +0000

Today there's a (mostly) clear line between "AI" and "not AI" art in terms of process, but I believe as time goes on we'll see more and more blurring of that. I'm thinking the equivalent of the spell-check tool for art, something that takes explicit human input and tidies the details in an interactive, human-in-the-loop sort of way.

New comment by 542458 in "Scott Adams has died"

542458 — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 16:55:11 +0000

Youtube links always have gotten downweighting. Enough votes can overcome it, but there are a few domains that HN penalizes.

New comment by 542458 in "Apple Creator Studio"

542458 — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 15:16:08 +0000

TBF, you can say the same thing for adobe creative cloud - the intersection between After Effects and Indesign users is also effectively nil!

But having one simple opex line item for "software I buy for the creative types" is appealing for a lot of orgs.

New comment by 542458 in "People who come off slimming jabs regain weight four times faster than dieters"

542458 — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 14:23:13 +0000

I'll second this, the medical opinion that I've seen is "You should take the drug as prescribed, if you tolerate it well it's safe to take indefinitely".

Now this does get a bit more complex when you consider the nontrivial financial cost to someone without insurance or who's insurance does not cover their intended use.

New comment by 542458 in "Hyundai Introduces Its Next-Gen Atlas Robot at CES 2026 [video]"

542458 — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 20:49:21 +0000

I'm seeing them at #9. Maybe you meant most reliable electric vehicle (Model 3)? Their average rating is dragged down a lot by the cybertruck which CR says is a bit of a lemon.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...

New comment by 542458 in "Hyundai Introduces Its Next-Gen Atlas Robot at CES 2026 [video]"

542458 — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 03:05:47 +0000

> The value it brings to the table is mass-manufacturing expertise.

I don't see how that squares with the ramp-up and QC issues that are well-documented at this point.

New comment by 542458 in "A better zip bomb (2019)"

542458 — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 22:49:16 +0000

Okay, so I know back in the day you could choke scanning software (ie email attachment scanners) by throwing a zip bomb into them. I believe the software has gotten smarter these days so it won’t simply crash when that happens - but how is this done; How does one detect a zip bomb?

New comment by 542458 in "Hacker News front page now, but the titles are honest"

542458 — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 18:30:53 +0000

There's a short story by Qntm called "Valuable Humans in Transit" that I like quite a bit which hinges on this subject: https://qntm.org/transi

New comment by 542458 in "LG TV's new software update installed MS Copilot, which cannot be deleted"

542458 — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 16:52:52 +0000

I really doubt the user data for a smart tv user is all that valuable. Meta has infinitely more rich data and an entire tightly optimized ad system and is on a platform where people commonly make large purchases and makes around $10 per user per year.