Hacker News: ReptileMan

New comment by ReptileMan in "Civic Hygiene – avoid building technologies that could be used by a police state (2013)"

ReptileMan — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 16:35:54 +0000

Technology is force multiplier. Everything could be used for oppression. Deal with it - the future is boot stomping on human face forever. There are lucky few that could choose whether they will be the face or foot. But it is inevitable.

Or we could stop all tech development. But it is not going to happen.

New comment by ReptileMan in "AI usage patterns in software teams"

ReptileMan — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:39:28 +0000

Like the Titan submarine team's moto mine is - real men test in production.

The LLM produce so much code that the best I can is skim and look for obvious flaws, also pass it trough adversarial one.

New comment by ReptileMan in "Apple announces changes for apps in the European Union"

ReptileMan — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 07:18:33 +0000

So Brussels caved as usual.

New comment by ReptileMan in "Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months"

ReptileMan — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 17:31:43 +0000

Somewhat hard to short non public company, don't you think?

New comment by ReptileMan in "Remote work benefits are much bigger than a paycheck"

ReptileMan — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:04:17 +0000

Problem is that once you are 100% remote you start to compete with everyone with acceptable english and fast internet connection for the same jobs.

New comment by ReptileMan in "Meta Files Patent for Facial Recognition, Automatic Recording of People"

ReptileMan — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:50:50 +0000

So what exactly is patentable? There has been a lot of prior art on the topic.

New comment by ReptileMan in "On A.I. regulation and messaging"

ReptileMan — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 09:47:17 +0000

Who knows. What I tell is that the AI productivity boom is here. Just for a change right now it is not shown on businesses balance sheets, because it is captured by the workforce in non monetary ways.

New comment by ReptileMan in "Nvidia dramatically reduces amount of OpenAI infra financing it may guarantee"

ReptileMan — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 09:01:17 +0000

If you have someone walking on tightrope over the grand canyon in stormy weather, you don't need the exact wind speed to make educated guess that the winner will be gravity.

I think he is too emotional and overly sensational though.

New comment by ReptileMan in "On AI regulation and messaging"

ReptileMan — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:42:11 +0000

Right now we are in the golden age where we do the same and take time off. Employers have not yet fully caught up with the workforce. I can't think of people that are not putting less hours this year for the same salaries.

New comment by ReptileMan in "Professor's Death Leaves Behind Hard Questions for Cambridge on Race and Hiring"

ReptileMan — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:59:02 +0000

I kinda feel for the guy. The institutions failed him twice - first by ignoring the red flags in the name of DEI, then by refusing to take accountability about his undeserved academic career. If someone from Cambridge was brave enough to say "It is our fault, we shouldn't have hired him in the first place, we were blinded by our ideology" he may have weathered the downfall with less lethal outcome.

New comment by ReptileMan in "uBlock Origin Is Giving Up the Fight to Keep Ads Off Facebook"

ReptileMan — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 09:23:45 +0000

I mean this is literally a task in which AIs excel - figure out how to filter this thing from this code.

New comment by ReptileMan in "Grok 4.6"

ReptileMan — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:46:40 +0000

Sometimes you just need to know that something is possible, not exactly how it is done.

New comment by ReptileMan in "Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy"

ReptileMan — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 12:22:42 +0000

Yes

New comment by ReptileMan in "Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy"

ReptileMan — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 17:29:21 +0000

>Some authors seem to think that readers may only read Heinlein if they are prepared to join the army the next day or renounce their citizenship.

I am kinda tired of those [expletive]. Paul Verhoeven the first in line.

Heinlein's thesis was that power unearned is power abused. And since voting is gifted power - people abuse it. Heinlein's idea that the only way to earn the franchise is to first serve the society may be wrong, but no one engages with its bigger idea - that the franchise must be earned. And it is true - people will gladly vote hitler and hamas into power. They will vote on tribal, ethnic, cultural and religious lines. They will vote to troll.

What people rarely vote for is the best interests of themselves or their nation.

New comment by ReptileMan in "Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy"

ReptileMan — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 17:16:17 +0000

Of the 5 users of the Palantirs that we know of 2 are good, 2 are evil, and one is tragic.

New comment by ReptileMan in ""Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers"

ReptileMan — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 17:57:41 +0000

Code is the hard part if you are John Carmack or in a similar position where you have to squeeze every drop of performance from a hardware. That is the minority of programmers.

New comment by ReptileMan in "Scientists discover Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability on the surface of the Sun"

ReptileMan — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:06:29 +0000

You need some form of plasma that is stable and able to self organize. Is there any part of the physics where this is possible?

New comment by ReptileMan in "US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money"

ReptileMan — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:35:23 +0000

monopsony

New comment by ReptileMan in "US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money"

ReptileMan — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:35:00 +0000

There should be laws ensuring that every market there should be at least 5-6 players and is free or is declared natural monopoly/monopsony and regulated.

The in between you have all the bad from monopolies in the forms of cartels.

New comment by ReptileMan in "GDP growth shows no evidence of AI productivity boom"

ReptileMan — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 10:34:38 +0000

There is AI productivity boom - people that are heavy AI users are working less time. They are just not producing more.