Hacker News: JimmyBuckets

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe"

JimmyBuckets — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:31:17 +0000

As LarsDu88 mentioned above, its actually not this old. The idea is recent but is based on an ancient conflict. That is my mistake. The wiki article has interesting info on the examples that the originator saw:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe"

JimmyBuckets — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:27:52 +0000

You are right. Thank you for correcting me. It never ceases to amaze me just how much I can be confidently mistaken about.

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe"

JimmyBuckets — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:12:58 +0000

The UK was a declining power that had been absolutely gutted by war and owed huge debts to the US that it had accrued to fund the war. I believe Thucydides Trap is more about the situation we have now with the US and China where both are moving from strength to strength.

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe"

JimmyBuckets — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:54:45 +0000

Essentially its the idea that the interaction between an incumbent power and rising "challenger" power inevitably leads to war between the two. I was expressing my hope that if this does happen, the war can play out in less destructive arenas - one of which is in the competition for reserve currency status which the US has held for the whole of the modern era. This article possibly points at China's first shots in this conflict.

Edit: credit LarsDu88 for correcting me on its age. I originally stated the idea was very old (2.5k years) but actually its a recent idea based on an ancient conflict between Athens and Sparta

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe"

JimmyBuckets — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:20:17 +0000

It will be interesting to see how much of Thucydides Trap plays out in currency and trade as opposed to military conflict. I am hopeful that economic and financial warfare absorbs the brunt of the power struggle.

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?"

JimmyBuckets — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 21:56:10 +0000

Revolution can mean many things. We are heading into having a parallel post-growth economy in the coming decades. I see this transition being accelerated by several forces (AI, climate change, digitzation of law and property rights, etc.). This revolution will allow us individually to exit the majority of our time to an economic frame that works for us rather than for the ultra-wealthy and powerful. It's the first moment in history that this feels possible.

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "How to earn a billion dollars"

JimmyBuckets — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 14:49:19 +0000

This completely negates the fact that due to how the labor market is structured, most people who sell their labour to survive are in a disadvantageous position for the negotiation you are talking about. What you are talking about works well in a basic economics text book but does not translate to the real world.

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "An Elephant Who Demonstrated That Her Species Might Be Self-Aware, Dies at 55"

JimmyBuckets — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:43:20 +0000

While I agree with your sentiment somewhat, the leap to equating vegans with carnivores is unjustified in my opinion

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "The Last Technical Interview"

JimmyBuckets — Sat, 30 May 2026 08:08:35 +0000

You dont need the failing stamps to hang around. All you need are the successful stamps. It's actually better from a human psychology perspective anyway. Less shame.

Everyone will have some successful stamps, and they accrue over time giving better signal. Hiring managers can make a rational decision about what number of stamps over what period of time is sufficient to evaluate a person, trading against the risk of misreading a profile by accepting someone with fewer stamps.

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Toxicity on Social Media"

JimmyBuckets — Tue, 12 May 2026 10:39:56 +0000

This seems like a great idea. Even without the linked surveys. Two questions I have:

- how you does this handle the fact that a lot of accounts on social media platforms are bots that maybe controlled by a small number of people.

- how do we actually get this implemented?

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "[dead]"

JimmyBuckets — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:20:18 +0000

Benn Jordan

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Guide.world: A compendium of travel guides"

JimmyBuckets — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:51:53 +0000

What is the benefit of writing a negative travel guide for a place? And then the choice to list one in a compendium. The second guide for the farow islands is depressingly bad.

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "How to Spot a Liar: Kate White on the Techniques of Deception in Mysteries"

JimmyBuckets — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 09:05:39 +0000

These don't work for very good liars. They know all these tricks, often intuitively, and purposefully avoid them. The only strategy that works is listening to your gut and extending trust slowly. Keeping up a ruse is tiring and the more time you give them, the more chance they have to make a mistake. Combine that with listening to the brain in your gut that has evolved for millions of years to sense danger. In the early stages, the mistakes are often subtle and you will usually only get a feeling that something is "off".

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "OpenAI – How to delete your account"

JimmyBuckets — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 13:05:29 +0000

We need an AI workers union. The real power and discernment is in the hands of the people building these systems. They are extremely difficult to replace and firing them basically guarantees they go to a competitor.

https://notdivided.org/ is basically validation that there is appetite for something like this amongst them.

Ask HN: Is it time for an AI workers union?

JimmyBuckets — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 10:39:19 +0000

This last week 671 verified current employees of Google and OpenAI publicly coordinated across competing companies to jointly refuse specific Pentagon demands around autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance: https://notdivided.org

This kind of cross-company researcher solidarity is historically rare. The issue is that it's ephemeral and once the immediate pressure is gone, there's no structure left behind.

Given the issues facinf the field and our species, I would feel a lot safer if I knew that regular scientists and engineers, people I went to college with, were legally positioned to have a hand in governing how this is built. I dont trust Altman, Amodei or any of the rest of them, including the US government.

I'm a tech worker in Europe with connections to Tech Workers Coalition, and although not an AI researcher myself I've been feeling compelled to get off my aas and participate in seeding something more durable.

I was thinking of something like a transnational body that provides researchers with the ability to coordinate across companies, refuse specific applications without career destruction, and set professional ethics standards - even perhaps setting up unions in each country and fostering coordination between them.

Am I reading the zeitgeist wrong?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47193455

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Is Life a "Phase of Matter" We Haven't Named Yet?"

JimmyBuckets — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 17:55:27 +0000

The head of Google's "Paradigms of Intelligence" team using their research to make the wondrous argument that Life can reasonably be conceived of as a phase of matter. One of the most beautiful and inspiring talks I have watched in my life thus far.

Is Life a "Phase of Matter" We Haven't Named Yet?

JimmyBuckets — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 17:55:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2iX6HQOoLg

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47063940

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse"

JimmyBuckets — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 08:44:18 +0000

Not that I agree with either of those things but I think the implicit argument is that breaking encryption would lead to faster arrest and fewer years of abuse for the victims.

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "Why vampires live forever"

JimmyBuckets — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 17:13:17 +0000

Also weird it didn't mention Peter Attia's connection to Epstein outright. It did this weird tongue-in-cheek thing for a few paragraphs referencing Epstein only in the foot notes. I still can't tell whether what I read was actually praising these guys or extremely subtly sardonic.

New comment by JimmyBuckets in "The Waymo World Model"

JimmyBuckets — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 21:23:30 +0000

That includes cars on public roads.