Hacker News: Hammershaft

New comment by Hammershaft in "Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer"

Hammershaft — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 23:38:22 +0000

I notice the title mentions the author is a former employee but he never mentions the terms on which he left.

New comment by Hammershaft in "Woman in Labor at Florida Hospital Brought in Zoom Court for Refusing C-Section"

Hammershaft — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 01:42:22 +0000

I agree it's disturbing and sad.

Vaccine mandates are more difficult. If this mother's freedom wasn't violated then she would only risk herself and her baby. If somebody doesn't take a vaccine they place risk on many other people (mostly children) who can't be vaccinated by weakening herd immunity.

New comment by Hammershaft in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

Hammershaft — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 23:36:04 +0000

Is that necessarily true or just incidentally true in certain metros given the regulatory restrictions we have now?

Our food is supplied via markets and yet with just subsidies almost nobody starves across western countries.

New comment by Hammershaft in "The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure"

Hammershaft — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 03:42:49 +0000

You're defending a government using force to prevent terminally ill people from voluntarily experimenting on themselves to find a cure and further our understanding of disease. It should not be easier for a layman to design and build a targeted mRNA vaccine then it is to navigate a regulatory maze.

New comment by Hammershaft in "The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure"

Hammershaft — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 03:38:32 +0000

The animal is terminally ill and the vaccine's slated purpose is to cure that illness. If you're rich & terminally ill these kinds of regulatory mazes are less of a burden, but if you're poor you'll likely die before you can get approval.

New comment by Hammershaft in "The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure"

Hammershaft — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 03:34:54 +0000

There's pictures of the dogs tumor progression and scientists from government labs validating his story.

New comment by Hammershaft in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

Hammershaft — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:06:08 +0000

I think people & companies get value from these markets because they are able to plan on the basis of accurate forecasts for scenarios like potential wars and election results.

I agree that these markets also create bad incentives, I just think that on net the information provided tends to be more valuable.

New comment by Hammershaft in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

Hammershaft — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:48:40 +0000

The findings are consistent with academic research that these markets are well calibrated.

New comment by Hammershaft in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

Hammershaft — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:46:51 +0000

Why? We have years of experimental evidence that these prediction markets are well calibrated (ie accurate).

New comment by Hammershaft in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

Hammershaft — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:45:48 +0000

1. That is not how prediction market calibration plots work! Calibration is measured across the range of markets with different forecasted odds.

https://calibration.city/introduction

https://manifold.markets/calibration

2. That is just obviously not all these markets are doing. They're aligning incentives and aggregating information in the same way other markets do.

New comment by Hammershaft in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

Hammershaft — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:38:00 +0000

I disagree.

Prediction markets have value for people as a source of reliable information because they tend to be very accurate compared to any other human mechanism for creating forecasts.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...

New comment by Hammershaft in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

Hammershaft — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:33:34 +0000

Prediction markets also have very interesting ideas.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...

New comment by Hammershaft in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

Hammershaft — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:30:13 +0000

The question isn't whether futarchy isn't perfect, it's whether its better than our existing democracy.

New comment by Hammershaft in "Show HN: What's my JND? – a colour guessing game"

Hammershaft — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:10:08 +0000

There might be selection effects in who posts their score. (got 0.0027 btw :p)

New comment by Hammershaft in "New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates"

Hammershaft — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 21:58:22 +0000

Cost is not a minor thing considering the suffering that poverty creates.

New comment by Hammershaft in "A basket of new fruit varieties is coming your way"

Hammershaft — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 04:05:49 +0000

What makes this 'shit' for you compared to the fruits we've conventionally engineered into unnatural forms via selective breeding?

New comment by Hammershaft in "When AI writes the software, who verifies it?"

Hammershaft — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 01:04:45 +0000

Pro models won gold at the international math olympiads?

New comment by Hammershaft in "Layoffs at Block"

Hammershaft — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:32:25 +0000

Is $130k a year 'scraps'? If you're making the average dev salary you're richer than %99.9 of people across the world [1].

The only reason we make this much is because of sustained productivity growth.

[1] https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i

New comment by Hammershaft in "Layoffs at Block"

Hammershaft — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:24:34 +0000

European countries with labor regs that make firing more expensive tend to have higher unemployment rates (specially youth unemployment) because hiring becomes more risky.

New comment by Hammershaft in "A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification"

Hammershaft — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:22:53 +0000

It's true, and yet there are real market failures that even a very ineffective government can improve on dramatically, like innovation & research output via basic science.