Hacker News: achierius

New comment by achierius in "Did Anthropic ask for this?"

achierius — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 23:29:32 +0000

It's not an agreement but it is indicative of the company's position. Why do you go to such lengths to avoid assigning responsibility to a large corporation?

New comment by achierius in "A new era for software testing"

achierius — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 21:20:22 +0000

Hate to be a pedant, but that's really not what "zero cost abstractions" means. The idea behind those is that you get a cleaner interface to some gross machine functionality/OS API/etc. layer, but don't pay a performance cost vs. using the gross lower-level layer. E.g. Rust's Option, unlike C++'s std::optional.

What you're thinking of is "no runtime" or "lightweight runtime", which does often mean "no garbage collector".

New comment by achierius in "Iran war drains US oil stocks to lowest level since 2004"

achierius — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 15:27:50 +0000

So? Maybe that extra information points them to believe that the war will be over soon, even if I don't agree. Isn't that what I said?

New comment by achierius in "American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn"

achierius — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:37:26 +0000

Why are there homeless people then?

Capital doesn't care about whether your work is "inherently valuable". That you think poor countries are somehow fundamentally different in this regard, exposed to the downsides of the market in a way that we here are not, is a defect of imagination.

New comment by achierius in "Iran war drains US oil stocks to lowest level since 2004"

achierius — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:41:08 +0000

It's possible that oil traders are still trading on the assumption that the war will be over Soon™, in which case the expectation is that we won't hit the bottom of our stockpiles and thus there'd be no reason to price in that eventuality. I don't know if I agree with that, and I would certainly be surprised if traders generally thought as much -- but who knows!

New comment by achierius in "Can the stockmarket swallow Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI?"

achierius — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 05:48:46 +0000

What makes you better than them?

New comment by achierius in "What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?"

achierius — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:39:05 +0000

> AI represents a unique opportunity to enjoy a two-for-one special and both cut staff and portray themselves as leaders in the sector that's achieving massive efficiency gains.

This is not what a scapegoat is. Definitionally, a scapegoat is innocent; here, however, AI is being used as a tool of disciplining labor.

New comment by achierius in "Can we have the day off?"

achierius — Thu, 28 May 2026 04:32:58 +0000

In many cities they just bring it up again and again until it passes. They only need to win once, we need to win every time. That's the problem.

New comment by achierius in "Can we have the day off?"

achierius — Thu, 28 May 2026 04:32:12 +0000

The UK didn't just repress its citizens, it ultimately caved to them. The voting reforms of the 19th century gave people essentially everything they wanted, at the time, and as a consequence when the rest of europe was going thru 1848 Britain was chilling. But just a few years beforehand there was legitimate fear that the government would be toppled by rioters! You can't judge centuries of history just by looking at the end result.

New comment by achierius in "That Methyl Methacrylate Tank"

achierius — Tue, 26 May 2026 23:19:56 +0000

When exactly would that have been?

New comment by achierius in "Magnifica Humanitas"

achierius — Mon, 25 May 2026 16:20:57 +0000

Most will and do. Few people become priests, today especially, without a deep-seated faith and desire to spread/support it.

New comment by achierius in "Magnifica Humanitas"

achierius — Mon, 25 May 2026 15:53:49 +0000

While this is certainly the more interesting question, the unfortunate reality is that the ideological complex of capital (even if weakening, and no longer effectively reproducing itself) is still strong enough that most in the West can't even imagine a better world (other than "less bad capitalism"), much less think about how to get there. Consequently messages like the above are of great value in moving more people towards a point where questions like yours become relevant.

New comment by achierius in "Greg Brockman interview [video]"

achierius — Mon, 25 May 2026 01:39:22 +0000

But the decision is still subject to heavy scrutiny; in fact, more than with normal for profit corporations. It does not seem like the board acted in the best interests of the nonprofit here, they acted in their own.

New comment by achierius in "Project Glasswing: An Initial Update"

achierius — Sat, 23 May 2026 01:06:07 +0000

What am I?

New comment by achierius in "The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map"

achierius — Fri, 22 May 2026 17:19:46 +0000

First of all, you're confusing different events: iconoclasm was the destruction of Christian icons, by Christians who thought that practice was idolatrous.

> the battles were so bloody that the Christian victors not only converted the conquered

Who do you think 'conquered' the Swedes, some continental Frenchman? Their own kings converted, and thereafter converted their countrymen. And the first such Christian king, Olof Skötkonung, inherited the throne -- he didn't conquer it.

New comment by achierius in "I’ve joined Anthropic"

achierius — Tue, 19 May 2026 20:03:20 +0000

"that's the actual news", "the bigger signal", etc. -- this has a lot of the hallmarks of AI generated text but with overt stylistic simplification layered on top (nocaps, some weird spacing)

New comment by achierius in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

achierius — Sun, 17 May 2026 16:02:38 +0000

90% of software engineers are not charlatans, and it's convenient that you at confidently place yourself in the "10%"

New comment by achierius in "US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI"

achierius — Sat, 16 May 2026 19:49:21 +0000

Is that the case? The article says that the losses were

> led by customer service representatives and certain types of secretaries and salespeople.

New comment by achierius in "The sigmoids won't save you"

achierius — Sat, 16 May 2026 07:25:47 +0000

What do you want? This sounds like you have something against people making a claim in public, at all, on any topic of importance.

New comment by achierius in "SQL patterns I use to catch transaction fraud"

achierius — Sat, 16 May 2026 07:21:26 +0000

This comment certainly does not scan as AI! Look, this isn't perfect, but it's the best we've got, and so long as AI writing is meaningfully worse than human writing, people are going to try to tell the difference.