Hacker News: albatross79

New comment by albatross79 in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

albatross79 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 03:47:49 +0000

There no feasible escalation path for the US. Trump has alienated allies and much of his anti war supporters. A forever war quagmire in a country 3x larger than Iraq is unlikely, as is carpet bombing. So what's left? A JCPOA style agreement with a Maga bumper sticker on it, with heavy concessions to Iran to prevent them from racing to a bomb, which is the best option from their pov at this point.

New comment by albatross79 in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

albatross79 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 03:22:12 +0000

That's veto power, what other kind of control do they need?

New comment by albatross79 in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

albatross79 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 03:09:16 +0000

If Israel can have them, yes. Ideally, neither Israel nor Iran would have them.

New comment by albatross79 in "AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is more worrying"

albatross79 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:58:50 +0000

Not true, but I am skeptical that a one sided account would be adequate. Take care.

New comment by albatross79 in "AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is more worrying"

albatross79 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:43:08 +0000

Your strongest example should be good enough. So far you've got 1) flights between Venezuela and Iran 2) whitehouse.gov.

Even if Trump's Whitehouse was a good source and you took it at face value, most of the items in that list are by Iranian proxy, i.e. Iranian intelligence involvement. So by comparison you'd have to include Israel and CIA actions and then it's just a mess to figure out who's worse.

But even then, I don't see anything in there that's as evil as blowing apart dozens of school children in one blow, mistake or not.

New comment by albatross79 in "AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is more worrying"

albatross79 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:00:44 +0000

Unsanctioned flights between Iran and a third country is tantamount to waging a war on the US in your view?

New comment by albatross79 in "AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is more worrying"

albatross79 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 20:20:47 +0000

>> has A attacked B?

> Yes, C attacked D

New comment by albatross79 in "Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet"

albatross79 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:51:09 +0000

So? Flying is a chore. What do you expect to find with FTL travel anyway? We pretty much know what's out there and it doesn't look all that interesting. It's a lot of rocks. Maybe there are some weird life forms that would be interesting in an academic way.

Otherwise it looks very much like we are outliers and that nature's purpose, if it has any, is different and orthogonal to ours. This human drama is just a side show.

New comment by albatross79 in "AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is more worrying"

albatross79 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:42:52 +0000

Had Iran done anything to the US as heinous as this one "mistake" in the last 50 years that compares? Imagine if some country did this to us and just brushed it off as a mistake.

New comment by albatross79 in "Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet"

albatross79 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 17:01:47 +0000

No, because when you grow up life becomes short and full of mundane things like making money and raising children, and you realize those were all fantasies someone made up and sold to you, and even if those things came true it would not suddenly add adventure to your life, which was the real hook.

New comment by albatross79 in "Woman who never stopped updating her lost dog's chip reunites with him after 11y"

albatross79 — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 02:14:59 +0000

That's just what the owners tend to say after the dog has ripped some child apart. It's the "I didn't know it was loaded" defense.

New comment by albatross79 in "Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance"

albatross79 — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 23:30:17 +0000

They're smartphones on wheels, the only people who love them are tech fetishists and bureaucrats forcing emissions mandates on everyone else.

New comment by albatross79 in "Show HN: Dumped Wix for an AI Edge agent so I never have to hire junior staff"

albatross79 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 19:01:01 +0000

There is slop and there is cringe, you've managed to create both.

New comment by albatross79 in "John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists"

albatross79 — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 10:06:13 +0000

Carmack can be enthusiastic about AI because it's no threat to him, he's already set. He's not going to be laid off, and if he is, he can just do coding as a hobby for the rest of his life. He doesn't need to worry about what blue collar job to retrain for in middle age to be able to pay his mortgage and clothe his kids.

And it is a form of cheating to take a gift and profit off of it, keeping all the profits for yourself, it goes against the spirit of it. Until now that was fine, because there was a sense that it made more things possible and created jobs, and these projects were improved through reciprocal contribution.

AI vacuumed everything up for itself and turned around and said now I'm going to replace you.

New comment by albatross79 in "Colon cancer now leading cause of cancer deaths under 50 in US"

albatross79 — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:45:26 +0000

Why wouldn't it be, you think the body was made to run all day? Most animals lay around all day with some bursts of activity. The exercise fad is just a peculiar neuroticism modern Westerners have.

New comment by albatross79 in "Strike on girls' school that killed 150 in Iran 'likely' carried out by US"

albatross79 — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 13:08:01 +0000

This is heinous.

New comment by albatross79 in "Father claims Google's AI product fuelled son's delusional spiral"

albatross79 — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:31:39 +0000

Well if you tell people your auto complete algorithm is actually a potentially sentient AI and it goes on to auto complete someone's suicidal science fiction fantasy, what did you expect. Everyone calling these things "AI" is complicit. You can't rely on everyone understanding that you're just a greedy scammer trying to fool investors, there are side effects.

New comment by albatross79 in "Marcus AI Claims Dataset"

albatross79 — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 03:56:13 +0000

It's a common sense definition that covers the broad features of AI as most people would have imagined it before LLMs came along. If you have a better one I'm open to it.

Also, agents are just LLMs with harnessing. Attaching a plow to a horse makes it more useful too, but it doesn't change the intrinsic nature of a horse.

New comment by albatross79 in "Marcus AI Claims Dataset"

albatross79 — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 03:45:48 +0000

There's rational discussion and then there's motivated obfuscation. If your definition of AI is so loose that it applies to a system that can't count objects reliabily, then what is there to discuss? Is a broken clock intelligent because it tells the time correctly twice a day?

New comment by albatross79 in "Marcus AI Claims Dataset"

albatross79 — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 03:38:15 +0000

There's nothing vague about it. Intelligence is understanding. I think you're just motivated to be confused because you want to fit this thing into that box and it doesn't really fit. So maybe output is an that matters, are we auto completers, can you be intelligent without knowing, etc etc.