Hacker News: ajmurmann

New comment by ajmurmann in "John C. Dvorak has died"

ajmurmann — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:49:08 +0000

This is odd. So you are saying wikipedia kept getting it wrong for a long time but now the announcement has it wrong and wikipedia is correct?

New comment by ajmurmann in "John C. Dvorak has died"

ajmurmann — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:37:27 +0000

I used to listen to No Agenda from episode 1 on. It literally was just John and Adam recording their regular phone calls, discussing dinners they had together, etc. Over time it became more and more of what I'd describe as a conspiracy podcast.

No Agenda, John and Adam will forever have a special place in my heart regardless of the show eventually putting me off. Adam was what first brought my attention to Second Life where I ended up randomly meeting my now wife. We ended up listening to early No Agenda during long car rides. During one of the episodes John and Adam talked about their visit to Chez Spencer near our home in SF. We checked it out and loved it and later had our wedding rehearsal dinner there. Thank you, John!

New comment by ajmurmann in "Advertise in ChatGPT"

ajmurmann — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:30:44 +0000

As an ESL person who has spoken English as their main language for two decades now I find this very interesting. The vast majority of my English has been spoken with my wife who used to be a marketing VP or in a professional context. Sometimes people complain about the ways politicians or corporate executives talk and I don't get it and to me it sounds totally normal because that's what I'm used to. Makes you wonder how ESL speakers will sound more and more like LLMs because that's a large part of their exposure.

New comment by ajmurmann in "OpenAI and Hugging Face address security incident during model evaluation"

ajmurmann — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:00:26 +0000

Remember when the pre-GPT3 days when the main argument against AI alignment concerns was that "we simply won't let it out of the box"? So quaint in hindsight.

New comment by ajmurmann in "LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire"

ajmurmann — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 23:10:00 +0000

It's crazy to me that becoming a police officer almost everywhere in the US is quicker than becoming a licensed cosmetician.

New comment by ajmurmann in "LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire"

ajmurmann — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 23:09:12 +0000

I like this general list and I would add a shift from harder punishment to increased likelihood of getting caught. This means more cops, more prosecutors, more judges, more public defenders, less jail. Studies have shown that higher likelihood of getting caught and getting punished is more significant than a harsher punishment. However, I understand that right now incentives and finances are misaligned for accomplishing this. Much of the catch and release happens because there are not enough public prosecutors or jails are full.

New comment by ajmurmann in "DOGE is done. What happened to its records?"

ajmurmann — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:55:25 +0000

One of the big issues - assuming good intent - was the dismissing of existing expertise on where the issues really are and jumping to the assumption that everyone in the system is corrupt and ripping off the tax payer. A simplistic model that can feel satisfying to promote on social media but is obviously naive. Jennifer Pahlka has worked on making our government more efficient and gives a much more educated view on what the real issues are. It's always baffling to me how Musk has all the resources one could imaging but loves to talk out of his ass instead of getting himself the maximum-validated information available to argue anyone. https://cnliberalism.org/posts/podcast-making-government-mor...

New comment by ajmurmann in "DOGE is done. What happened to its records?"

ajmurmann — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:41:28 +0000

You are correct and DOD contracts also have been coopted by the political system to fill other needs like funneling money to senators' districts.

New comment by ajmurmann in "LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire"

ajmurmann — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:35:52 +0000

I wonder why we aren't addressing the real problem which seems to be cops behaving completely unethically. Their job is about enforcing the system that codifies our societies agreed up and codified rules of ethics. They should be obsessed with this the same way people here obsess over system performance, correctness, etc! If we cannot trust them with the very basics of ethical behavior they are absolutely in the wrong job and there need to be very clear consequences.

New comment by ajmurmann in "Cyberpunk Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels"

ajmurmann — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:59:12 +0000

NIMBYs have managed to "safe" us from the architecture.

New comment by ajmurmann in "How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI"

ajmurmann — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:56:10 +0000

I hope that the first model to reach ASI will be called that. I don't want humanity to go out with a whimper nor a bang but with a pun

New comment by ajmurmann in "How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI"

ajmurmann — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 23:00:56 +0000

I always make sure that a test failure carries the same financial loss as a production outage. Otherwise engineers just won't try hard enough.

New comment by ajmurmann in "Mag 7 starting to underperform [pdf]"

ajmurmann — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 15:36:47 +0000

Always a few months away. The nuclear fusion of products portfolios.

New comment by ajmurmann in "Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?"

ajmurmann — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 16:58:55 +0000

And where does the money of the seller go? Back into other stock or (less likely) consumption. Eventually it goes towards newly issues stock or gets invested in early stage companies that put all of it towards direct investments into people or productivity assets.

New comment by ajmurmann in "Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?"

ajmurmann — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:27:24 +0000

BTC market cap is $1.2T. S&P 500 market cap is about $66T. Why would we not want for money to flow into real estate? It's an area with massive demand and money flowing in to create supply is exactly what we need and is productive. What is not productive is the NIMBY scum that's preventing supply from being met.

New comment by ajmurmann in "Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?"

ajmurmann — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:25:25 +0000

What do you think happens with the money that goes into stock? It doesn't simply vanish. It ultimately gets invested in salaries, construction of data centers and factories.

New comment by ajmurmann in "Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike"

ajmurmann — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 19:57:13 +0000

It's pretty much impossible for a navy to secure a narrow strait like this. You need to control the land as well.

Sorry, it's a video but it does a fabulous job explaining this: https://youtu.be/khtWPycU-PA

It was never gonna work, but not because of the navy being weak.

New comment by ajmurmann in "U.S. allows Anthropic to release Mythos AI to ‘trusted’ US organizations"

ajmurmann — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 05:16:11 +0000

Well, the network states were supposed to be a social thing rather than a place, no? Free Cities movement is more focused on actual, physical places.

New comment by ajmurmann in "U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6"

ajmurmann — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 20:05:06 +0000

Even the subscriptions are too expensive?

New comment by ajmurmann in "Slate EV truck starts at $24,950"

ajmurmann — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 23:32:47 +0000

Most EVs are owned by people who also have an ICE car. Especially for this vehicle I would expect this to be the case even more so. That makes me wonder if a lower price with an even lower range would actually have been a reasonable tradeoff. That said, range anxiety seems to be a huge thing.