Hacker News: Herring

New comment by Herring in "Big Tech is stoking unrest in the UK. Why?"

Herring — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 17:29:56 +0000

New genocide hot take on HN: has anyone considered maybe it’s the $VICTIMS that's the problem! Wow I’m so freaking smart.

New comment by Herring in "Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI"

Herring — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:55:14 +0000

Is that you Musk? Twitter lost half its revenue, more than 80% of its valuation.

New comment by Herring in "Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore"

Herring — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:34:21 +0000

Americans are very confused when it comes to societal/collective issues. We saw this during the pandemic.

New comment by Herring in "Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?"

Herring — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:35:49 +0000

Yeah I’d go even further. Singapore-style public housing is pretty high on my wishlist. But it’s a long wishlist.

New comment by Herring in "Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?"

Herring — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:27:30 +0000

Well yeah. Key policy choices in housing/healthcare/education/banking/etc have financialized basic human necessities, forcing the working class to give up a growing percentage of their income to the asset-holding class.

I'm not saying "all government interference is bad". For example plenty of countries prove that if you want to control healthcare costs, you need more government intervention in drug pricing, not less.

New comment by Herring in "U.S. science is in chaos"

Herring — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 20:40:28 +0000

You didn't read the article, did you? People there are getting radicalized because of cuts to social spending.

New comment by Herring in "Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?"

Herring — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:24:20 +0000

They have social media in Finland too. Go talk it out with your favorite "pro" LLM.

You can't just pick one. The main problem is inequality is rising, which means those without serious capital (which includes the young) are much less likely to see anything from their efforts. It just pops up in different ways. All my money goes to [rent, inflation, student loans, hospital bills, .. etc].

New comment by Herring in "Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?"

Herring — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:19:24 +0000

I spend a lot of time here: https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart

Housing/medical/college etc are outpacing incomes. Loneliness has skyrocketed. People are voting for fascism and starting wars. Americans like to pretend with their big houses and fancy iphones, but things are NOT ok.

Also note on that chart: younger demographics in the US are reporting significantly lower life evaluations compared to older demographics. So if you think things right now are bad, you haven't seen anything yet.

New comment by Herring in "U.S. science is in chaos"

Herring — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:24:55 +0000

Reminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.

Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...

New comment by Herring in "Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?"

Herring — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:13:27 +0000

The reason he seems poor is because he keeps signaling he doesn't have enough money to buy the one thing he really wants: trust. These people out for world domination never get it. He can't set up a platform (VR, AI) for the same reason Windows is dying: their brands are toxic and nobody will work with them if they have a choice.

New comment by Herring in "Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI"

Herring — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:11:51 +0000

It's the gym, the trainer, the social environment, and a million other things you wouldn't think of until you have boots on the ground, eg a language model can't sign a vendor liability contract. People thought the rise of the internet would kill gyms because anyone can download the routine for an Olympic athlete for free. Turns out access to information is not the same as execution. It happened multiple times with websites/apps/Peloton. Every time fitness culture skyrocketed and gyms have benefited.

New comment by Herring in "Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI"

Herring — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:49:02 +0000

Gyms still make money even though you can stay quite fit with just a good set of adjustable dumbbells, a bench, and a jump rope.

New comment by Herring in "Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era"

Herring — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:31:43 +0000

There are plenty of interested attackers who would love to control every device. One is in the white house, for example.

New comment by Herring in "The FAA’s flight restriction for drones is an attempt to criminalize filming ICE"

Herring — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:39:50 +0000

No, it doesn't solve any. You know this because of all the lying and child rape and murder. That's not how people who genuinely want to solve problems and improve society act.

It's basically just a power grab by a tiny fraction (< 1%) of the population against everyone else (including the rubes). And it doesn't make the rich happy either because we are social animals. It's better to be poor in Finland than super rich in Somalia.

New comment by Herring in "The FAA’s flight restriction for drones is an attempt to criminalize filming ICE"

Herring — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 02:43:59 +0000

Fascism always needs an enemy/excuse/scapegoat, and if it can’t find one it makes one out of thin air.

It can’t actually solve societal problems, that requires progressives.

New comment by Herring in "The FAA’s flight restriction for drones is an attempt to criminalize filming ICE"

Herring — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 02:14:22 +0000

Ask a lot of software engineers what they think about European-style salaries and taxes to pay for a welfare state.

New comment by Herring in "The FAA’s flight restriction for drones is an attempt to criminalize filming ICE"

Herring — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 01:53:01 +0000

Reminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.

Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...

New comment by Herring in "U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years"

Herring — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:20:07 +0000

It's consistent with the "profits over people" attitude that has been prevalent since slavery and feudalism and probably much earlier.

New comment by Herring in "We rewrote JSONata with AI in a day, saved $500k/year"

Herring — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:38:31 +0000

The full translation took 7hrs and $400 in tokens. Applying diffs every quarter using AI is much easier and cheaper. Software engineering has completely changed.

New comment by Herring in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

Herring — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:29:38 +0000

Yeah that’s called karma, the force of your intentions. It matters a lot. You can do good things with evil in your heart, and they come out evil. Like giving a nice gift, with strings attached.