Hacker News: apsec112

New comment by apsec112 in "Canada"

apsec112 — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 22:37:58 +0000

Median American pay for full-time workers was ~$62,000 USD in Q4 2024 (BLS), which is around $85,000 CAD. The median Canadian salary is very definitely not $85,000 CAD.

New comment by apsec112 in "Canada"

apsec112 — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 22:35:02 +0000

It's not like Americans are all buying X so they can't afford to buy Y - there isn't really a major category of consumption where the US median is below the OECD median. If the US had a higher savings rate, then people could smooth out consumption more (build up savings some years, draw them down in bad years or in retirement), and maybe enjoy more psychological security. But it doesn't really make sense to say that Americans are unusually "bogged down in expenses" and yet have more goods and services in every significant category.

New comment by apsec112 in "Canada"

apsec112 — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 22:17:21 +0000

The median American is, materially, much richer than the median person pretty much anywhere else. The US is a bad place, by rich-country standards, to be in the bottom 10%. But in terms of consumer wealth - how large your house is, how many cars your family has and how nice they are, if you have a dishwasher and home A/C, how often you eat at restaurants or travel long distances, can you afford a home repair or the latest gadget - typical American workers are second to essentially nobody. Having grown up in and left the US, I am deeply familiar with all of its downsides, but there's an abundance of data to support this.

Deciding to Win: A Common Sense Renewal of the Democratic Party

apsec112 — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 17:07:08 +0000

Article URL: https://decidingtowin.org

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006335

Points: 13

# Comments: 13

A turn lane in Rhododendron

apsec112 — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 18:58:31 +0000

Article URL: https://www.greentape.pub/p/a-turn-lane-in-rhododendron

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45714336

Points: 39

# Comments: 19

Rejected announces from libtorrent clients proxying through SOCKS

apsec112 — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 00:52:26 +0000

Article URL: https://catgirl.online/2025/10/01/libtorrent-socks-woes

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45486622

Points: 83

# Comments: 31

New comment by apsec112 in "Americans crushed by auto loans as defaults and repossessions surge"

apsec112 — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 06:42:00 +0000

A ten year old Honda Fit is like $12K, pretty fuel efficient, and probably reliable and low-maintenance (I owned one until recently). People aren't buying $50,000 new Ford F-150s because they just need a working car to go to work and the grocery store.

The great medieval water myth (2013)

apsec112 — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 17:25:47 +0000

Article URL: https://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-water-myth.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45005986

Points: 74

# Comments: 51

New comment by apsec112 in "Good EU regulations"

apsec112 — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 00:38:45 +0000

The first example I saw (think the order might be randomized?) was an EU ban on plastic straws, which is silly. Straws are a negligible fraction of plastic waste, and have no good substitute ("compostable" plastic straws are also banned; paper straws fall apart easily; metal/glass straws are inconvenient and require washing). This would flunk any serious cost/benefit analysis. You can hide the costs by making them regulatory instead of financial (the inconvenience of not having plastic straws doesn't appear in GDP stats), but the costs are still there, they're just hidden.

Lab-grown sperm and eggs just a few years away

apsec112 — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 17:35:09 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jul/05/lab-grown-sperm-and-eggs-scientists-reproduction

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44474238

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by apsec112 in "OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D"

apsec112 — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 03:16:21 +0000

Obamacare was passed via regular order (60 Senate votes), not reconciliation. There was a follow-up package to tweak it that passed via reconciliation in 2010, but the original bill was regular order. It's the only (very brief) window where one party has held 60 Senate seats since 1977.

New comment by apsec112 in "OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D"

apsec112 — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 02:15:59 +0000

"Despite Democrats holding thin majorities in both chambers during a period of intense political polarization, the 117th Congress (2021-2023) oversaw the passage of numerous significant bills, including the Inflation Reduction Act, American Rescue Plan Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Postal Service Reform Act, Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, CHIPS and Science Act, Honoring Our PACT Act, Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, and Respect for Marriage Act."

All of these except the first two were bipartisan and got 60 Senate votes (or more)

So you wanna build an aging company

apsec112 — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 00:30:30 +0000

Article URL: https://www.librariesforthefuture.bio/p/is-this-aging

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44469150

Points: 69

# Comments: 85

New comment by apsec112 in "AI API Prices are 90% Subsidized"

apsec112 — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 21:00:49 +0000

This ignores batching - token generation is much more efficient in batch - and I strongly suspect is itself written by AI, given the heavy use of bullets

New comment by apsec112 in "The Llama 4 herd"

apsec112 — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 11:01:23 +0000

You can't choose arbitrary bits of mantissa, because what types are allowed is defined by the underlying hardware and instruction set (PTX for Nvidia). People have done some exploration of which layers can be quantized more vs. which need to be kept in higher precision, but this is usually done post-training (at inference time) and is largely empirical.