<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: BrenBarn</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BrenBarn</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 06:12:57 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=BrenBarn" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A large portion of that half will continue to want the wrong thing anyway.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2026 08:29:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514890</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514890</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514890</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. This is the whole problem with government involvement!<p>That is not the problem with government involvement, it is the problem with bad governments.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2026 08:26:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514874</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514874</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514874</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Statement on US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> These are heading in the direction of being powerful cybersecurity weapons and it will be in the interest of nation states to restrict and control them. In 2 years time, I would be surprised if the strongest LLMs are available for general use at all.<p>That sounds so great.<p>> Will we be the poorer for that, or will we be safer?<p>We will be not just safer but richer.  These LLMs are like drugs that should absolutely not be cast freely into the highways and byways.  My main worry is that this action will be a haphazard one-off and not part of a coherent plan of curtailing LLM propagation.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2026 08:24:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514866</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514866</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514866</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Travel locally, where you are"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That can be true, but I think even in such areas there can often be something interesting if you have an openness to a certain kind of modern "anti-beauty".  I mean stuff like liminal spaces, places that are interesting because they're so uninteresting, etc.  Each random shopping mall can be banal and anodyne in its own unique way, each gas station at each dusty crossroads has its own individual whiling away the hours behind the counter.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:11:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48501294</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48501294</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48501294</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Kind of sounds like the community is full of people willing to cause me harm for ideological reasons.<p>You just described everyone using AI to churn out slop and overload websites.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:07:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48501260</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48501260</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48501260</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Spoiling Linux Kernel with "sanctioned" code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The US is not nearly as bad as Russia (yet), but it's worth considering.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:11:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494218</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494218</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494218</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Anthropic apologizes for invisible Claude Fable guardrails"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This just means next time they'll make sure to keep it <i>really</i> secret.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:02:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494055</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494055</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494055</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Macaroni – a single HTML file messenger"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"Single file" is a bit misleading when it requires Github to do anything.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 07:03:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487207</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487207</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487207</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Spoiling Linux Kernel with "sanctioned" code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Then he should probably move out of Russia.  As near as I can tell, pretty much everyone in Russia should be trying to leave at the earliest opportunity.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 01:07:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48485011</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48485011</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48485011</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Policy on the AI Exponential"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This was slightly more thoughtful than I feared it would be.  However, what I still do not see in any posts from any of these AI pushers is any genuine consideration of the possibility that the best thing might be for them to do <i>less</i> of what they are <i>currently</i> doing.  Not to do it differently.  Not to mitigate it.  Not to do something else in addition.  But to actually reduce their current activities.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:22:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48482099</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48482099</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48482099</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Providers, not insurers, are responsible for excess U.S. health care cost (2024)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is certainly true that providers charge more in the US.  However, it's hard to disentangle this from the insurance issue because of the way that providers and insurers are intertwined in a gordian knot of insanity.<p>The article mentions one example of this, which is that part of "provider costs" is actually paying for the provider to wrangle with the insurer.  But even apart from such direct costs, the care is distorted in various ways in order to comply with the insurer's whims.  One you hear about a lot is doctors ordering tests that likely aren't really necessary, simply to avoid having the insurer deny something later because they didn't go through all the required motions.<p>Another reason that "profit margin" is grossly inadequate as a measure of cost or inefficiency is that it doesn't count the actual "work" done by the companies, even though a lot of it simply doesn't need to be done.  There are thousands of people with jobs in insurance companies that simply do not need to exist because most of what the industry does simply doesn't need to be done.  The leeching is not just a matter of shareholder returns or executive salaries.  <i>All</i> the salaries of <i>everyone</i> working for insurance companies are a form of waste.  (Okay, probably not all, since even with a saner system some bookkeeping would need to be done, so if you look at the net difference it's not a total waste.  But it's more than just shareholders and executives.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:52:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48481685</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48481685</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48481685</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Most corporate jobs are performative, period.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:35:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48481485</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48481485</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48481485</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "If Claude Fable stops helping you, you'll never know"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder how many people using these AI tools are thinking about the long game.<p>First it's "the model will say it can't do that".  Now it's "the model will just misdirect you without telling you it's doing so".  For now that's only for stuff that it thinks is developing a competing model (even if you trust it to accurately determine that), but who knows?  It could be anything.  Maybe it'll start silently nudging you away from certain sources of information.  Maybe it'll give you inaccurate troubleshooting advice to induce you to pay for some kind of support contract from a corporate partner.  Maybe it'll just subtly give out bad business advice to keep everyone else from succeeding in any way.  It could be doing all that right now, for all we know.  These models are a complete black box and there is no limit to the misinformation, disinformation, and malicious behavior that they could be engaging in already, let alone in the future.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:40:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48473821</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48473821</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48473821</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> This slows down deploying the system globally.<p>Good.  Pretty much everything should roll out way slower.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:07:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466019</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466019</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466019</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> these types of compliance efforts can mean completely redoing multiple core systems to handle privacy, wipeout, audit, reporting, per-location policies, etc etc. These efforts can involve hundreds to thousands of people for multiple years.<p>Then you should have done it right the first time.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:07:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466014</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466014</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466014</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well, at least the faculty are actually giving out the Fs and not just lowering the bar, so kudos to them for that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 05:30:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48394373</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48394373</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48394373</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The government could distribute its ownership stake to individuals.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:56:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388233</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388233</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388233</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Heh, came here looking to see if anyone had made this reference yet.  Mega disturbing.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:52:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388170</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388170</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388170</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "Love systemd timers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I like these systemd things but I always find it annoying how I have to create multiple separate files (like a file for the service and another for the timer, or similar if I need a socket file).  In theory this is more flexible but in practice it's vanishingly rare that I need the same service to be accessible to more than one timer.  It would be nice if there were some alternative compound format that could combine the timer and service into one.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:40:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375187</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375187</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375187</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by BrenBarn in "The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is why all the claims by tech companies that "you need to upgrade/enable 2FA/do whatever for security reasons" are utter hogwash.  There's no actual concern for security, just for control over users.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 03:54:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365812</link><dc:creator>BrenBarn</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365812</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365812</guid></item></channel></rss>