Hacker News: Aerroon

New comment by Aerroon in "Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France"

Aerroon — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 14:29:24 +0000

We've been paying hefty excise taxes on gasoline in Europe for decades. Yet nothing has changed. Environmentalists still have the exact same demands and supposedly nothing positive has come from this. It has just made everything more expensive. So what's the point?

New comment by Aerroon in "EU now one step away from reviving private message scanning rules"

Aerroon — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:08:33 +0000

I'm surprised that the EU keeps doing this, because every time they do this it pushes more people into the anti-EU camp. That's what the "anti terminator legislation" might end up being.

New comment by Aerroon in "EU now one step away from reviving private message scanning rules"

Aerroon — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 09:48:29 +0000

Then maybe they should stop doing things that invite this nonsense? We've already been down the road of the EU mandating ISPs save all your browsing history with the Data Retention Directive.

At this point the EU has to prove that they are not doing things like that rather than getting the benefit of the doubt.

New comment by Aerroon in "AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules"

Aerroon — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:15:26 +0000

Because AI doesn't just regurgitate it. Make up a new word and ask ChatGPT use it in a sentence - you've now got a brand new sentence that was not in its training data. If it only regurgitated data then it wouldn't be able to use that word in a sentence.

The same applies to image generation - they can generate images that almost certainly were not in the training data.

New comment by Aerroon in "Why I Stopped Arguing with People"

Aerroon — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:53:35 +0000

There's (probably) a correlation between things you know well and things you're willing to argue about.

Care about thing -> learn more about it

Care about thing -> argue about it

New comment by Aerroon in "The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting"

Aerroon — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:16:20 +0000

Because in semi-public places, like a store, you are only trespassing if you've been told to leave (you are trespassed).

New comment by Aerroon in "The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting"

Aerroon — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 12:22:10 +0000

If you get trespassed then wouldn't the police get involved?

New comment by Aerroon in "South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots"

Aerroon — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 01:05:08 +0000

All current jobs have human input and output interfaces. If you want to sell new technology then it will be easiest to accommodate the already existing infrastructure.

New comment by Aerroon in "US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections"

Aerroon — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:26:48 +0000

So, all you need is a magistrate that rubber stamps every warrant and it removes all protections from search and seizure from anyone?

New comment by Aerroon in "U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6"

Aerroon — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 20:32:13 +0000

The problem is that if your system loses then your system stops existing. This already is the case with AI - all the relevant AI is made according to other people's preferences and we have no say in it. Sure, we can regulate what kind of AI is used in the EU, but if they aren't selling AI to us directly, but instead using AI to make something that they sell to us then we can't compete with that.

New comment by Aerroon in "U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6"

Aerroon — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 01:22:58 +0000

Is it responsible and beneficial if the end result is that we will be forever stuck using foreign made AI? And on top of that we will get brain drain for the people that want to work on AI?

New comment by Aerroon in "U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6"

Aerroon — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 19:27:18 +0000

With the way things are, having to disclose training data will basically make it impossible for an EU AI to compete.

New comment by Aerroon in "The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated"

Aerroon — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 20:08:53 +0000

The survey in the article that assessed vitamin D deficiency was a bit odd:

>Because physical exams are performed in mobile vans in NHANES, data could not be collected in northern latitudes during the winter; instead data were collected in northern latitudes during summer and in southern latitudes in winter. To address this season-latitude aspect of the NHANES design, we stratified the sample into two seasonal subpopulations (winter/lower latitude and summer/higher latitude) before examining vitamin D status.

Yeah, I'm not surprised that the rates for vitamin D deficiency were low.

>Less than 1% of the winter/lower latitude subpopulation had vitamin D deficiency (25-OHD <17.5 nmol/L). However, the prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency in this group ranged from 1%–5% with 25-OHD <25 nmol/L /.../, even though the median latitude for this subsample (32°N) was considerably lower than the latitude at which vitamin D is not synthesized during winter months (∽42°N).

and the more northern latitude in summer:

>With the exception of elderly women, prevalence rates of vitamin D insufficiency were lower in the summer/higher latitude subpopulation (<1%–3% with 25-OHD <25 nmol/L)

Now imagine if you lived in northern Europe around the 60th parallel, where the sun doesn't get high enough in winter to produce vitamin D.

New comment by Aerroon in "The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated"

Aerroon — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 19:57:56 +0000

Sunlight would likely get you all the "red light therapy" effects too.

New comment by Aerroon in "The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs"

Aerroon — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:23:54 +0000

The problem is with bicycles being relegated to either the sidewalk or the main road with cars. I'm really not a fan of how cities create bikelanes by putting a line through the sidewalk and then nobody respects it.

I see the appeal in trying to ride fast, but it gets kind of scary. When I rode a bike I went fast outside the city specifically to avoid pedestrians.

New comment by Aerroon in "What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance"

Aerroon — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:05:55 +0000

The specific weakness of these systems is that the governments cannot be trusted with this. They have demonstrated this - Snowden leaks for the US and several EU states, and the general monitoring clause in the Data Retention Directive for the EU as a whole.

Even if these governments come up with a zero knowledge system, it's only one click away from being replaced with a full-knowledge system, because the user is already used to it. These governments have already tried spying on everyone (and they almost certainly still do).

New comment by Aerroon in "What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance"

Aerroon — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:54:20 +0000

Isn't getting around showing ID for alcohol about as easy as clicking "Yes I'm above 18"? All you need is to know someone that would buy it. Or know someone that knows someone that would buy it. Or know someone that had it bought for them.

Or I guess in the case of the US... maybe even just steal it considering how lax people seem to be with theft.

New comment by Aerroon in "What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance"

Aerroon — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:49:02 +0000

Yeah, and once you have the non-intrusive system in place you can just switch it out for the tracking one without the user knowing.

Or there's probably some kind of correlation trail possible that will track you even with the anonymous systems.

New comment by Aerroon in "What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance"

Aerroon — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:46:25 +0000

And yet in practice they do.

Well, not every beer but when you shop at Beers-R-Us they know.

New comment by Aerroon in "Steam Machine launches today"

Aerroon — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 10:29:50 +0000

I feel like to put that much effort into anti-scalping efforts you actually have to have a product that's really valuable. For a lot of products this really isn't the case (like this Steam machine iteration).