Hacker News: barnabyjones

New comment by barnabyjones in "Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia"

barnabyjones — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 02:47:37 +0000

I'm not seeing any mention of the Entity List ITT, which seems like the real reason. Via SCMP:

>Some analysts said the move by the Dutch ministry resulted from a new rule issued by the US Bureau of Industry and Security, the agency responsible for export control policies. The rule, effective September 29, imposed new restrictions on entities which are at least 50 per cent owned by enterprises on the Entity List or the Military End-User List – two blacklists issued by the US government.

New comment by barnabyjones in "ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps"

barnabyjones — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 03:51:15 +0000

>1) Life, especially in the EU, is not like in an American action movie;

Only because of the immense wealth, freedom and culture brought by generations of struggle and tenacity. If it isn't defended, it can go away quickly, but the current generation probably won't bear the costs. I doubt that Europeans in the 22nd c. will enjoy such a comfortable life, though.

New comment by barnabyjones in "How did sports betting become legal in the US?"

barnabyjones — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 06:42:04 +0000

The funny thing is the platforms are barely profitable if at all. The earnings all get funneled to ads as that's the only way to differentiate, aside from maybe a slightly better UX.

New comment by barnabyjones in "AI tools are making the world look weird"

barnabyjones — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 03:16:02 +0000

I have saved instructions for Gemini to translate queries into the local language then retranslate the output back to English, when asking about non-English speaking countries/cultures. It seems to work fairly well, but I think it's just due to the different content trained in that language; obviously there would be more in depth discussion of Indonesian cuisine in Indonesian. Whether the country is rich or democratic shouldn't really affect the output.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Meta’s live demo fails; “AI” recording plays before the actor takes the steps"

barnabyjones — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 02:28:11 +0000

I think such an emotionless android would have diligently prepared numerous backup scripts, sets of lenses, actors, demonstrations etc. to cover any failure contingency, since the cost of that is infinitesimal compared to even a slight change in their brand value.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Age Simulation Suit"

barnabyjones — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 02:58:26 +0000

The Xreal front page is people playing racing games and watching movies; I'm imagining something that can be used nonchalantly in public, and I'm assuming every feature beyond a bare minimum speech-to-text display would increase the size.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Age Simulation Suit"

barnabyjones — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 05:55:30 +0000

I know my folks already watch movies with subtitles for this reason, and I would think sight issues can be calibrated for if the product is a pair of glasses? But idk how AR tech works with e.g. farsighted people who use reading glasses.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Age Simulation Suit"

barnabyjones — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 05:50:58 +0000

Those look bulky, to support exactly the kind of feature creep I think will always be a problem with this category. I think there are a LOT of people who would simply not consider wearing them until the form factor is close to normal glasses, but it would be hard to convince any product manager not to expand into videos/games/music/AI/etc.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Age Simulation Suit"

barnabyjones — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 02:07:26 +0000

My parents have similar issues due to hearing loss, it really makes any kind of social interaction a chore which results in a similar spiral. For years I've wanted to try to make, or hope someone else would make, a set of AR glasses that's purely focused on providing accurate real-time subtitles, no other gimmicks or features that might affect the wearability/usability. I think that's the biggest QOL boost most old folks would get from a single product, and it seems much more realistically feasible than other potential QOL solutions like robotics, but I wouldn't know where to start with building it. As a bonus, it would just need an LLM/Google Translate hookup to become an amazing travel tool.

New comment by barnabyjones in "GPT-5"

barnabyjones — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 03:47:14 +0000

Zuckerberg has spent over fifty billion dollars on the idea that people will want to play a Miiverse game where they can attend meetings in VR and buy virtual real estate. It's like the Spanish emptying Potosi to buy endless mercenaries.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Italy's pizza detectives"

barnabyjones — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 01:57:25 +0000

That's true but most of them are unleavened, the yeast plus the fast cook time is I think what makes pizza unique, more than the cheese which is present in other variations.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Requiem for a Solar Plant"

barnabyjones — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 03:33:26 +0000

Reading this right after watching "Mountainhead" was enjoyable, but I do commend the guy for publishing it; sadly few case studies where things went wrong ever see the light of day. This part stood out:

>"What's the tax treatment on crypto profits if I roll them into a Qualified Opportunity Zone investment?" I'd asked my accountant. His eyes had lit up—the first clue I was onto something interesting.

If you find yourself in the position of giving tax advice to your accountant, he's either a crummy accountant or playing you to get more fees. And it looks like the most rosy estimate was -$1.5m NPV to gain ~$1.1m ($8.7m x 0.32 x 0.4) in tax benefits? I can't see what the plan was.

> Mr. R's application stood out immediately...Our first Zoom call revealed a muscular man with a shaved head and a perpetually amused expression

It seems that everyone involved had dollar signs in their eyes. The cherry on top was moving to a country he knew nothing about for "lower taxes."

New comment by barnabyjones in "Animate Anyone 2: High-Fidelity Character Image Animation"

barnabyjones — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:37:24 +0000

Even though the examples have a clear green-screen effect, I would think some of the tricks/filters they used in old video games to make them look "realistic/cinematic" could work here, then advertisers would be able to plug in a picture of a model wearing their latest outfit to a stock video for social media and digital ads.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Ray-Ban Meta glasses have sold 2M units, production to be increased"

barnabyjones — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 01:59:01 +0000

Interesting, I've been thinking for a long time these would be most useful to the hearing impaired if they get a simple text display going. Some people just simply avoid social situations because hearing aids aren't good enough, having subtitles wherever you go would be really revolutionary for them. Same for traveling.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Show HN: Ricotta – Language Learning to Replace Anki"

barnabyjones — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:20:14 +0000

It doesn't handle homonyms well, since the AI isn't given contextual reference. The sentences are also too simple on advanced level, so you don't get much more out of it than just reviewing the words. The AI coming up with words for you doesn't add a ton of value, most languages have standardized tests with good word lists that learners should already be using. Adding the issues others mentioned, I think this is feasible but needs agents taking additional steps to mimic what a real tutor would do and formulate a useful short lesson.

Personally I find Duolingo great for Japanese, I have the opposite problem: I run out of hearts if I try to do review and the app rarely gives me much old content, so I don't practice it. If this could come up with Duolingo-esque lessons for different levels I might use it to supplement. But letting users choose words/a topic is not necessarily important, most people don't know what they should study so it might be better to have "recommended" premade decks for different levels.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data"

barnabyjones — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 02:01:42 +0000

Isn't that what this whole thread is about? They're surely not going to come after Meta with the same vigor.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Changes in schizophrenia diagnoses associated with cannabis use disorder"

barnabyjones — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 02:56:20 +0000

I agree it can cause those effects but it always seemed to me that the weed is just causing sleep deprivation which eventually leads to psychosis. IME it's not much different from alcohol in that way, they both disturb REM sleep so you end up deprived with daily use. It's just more apparent with weed because you don't get the hangover effects, so it's easy to overuse.

New comment by barnabyjones in "Results of "Humanity's Last Exam" benchmark published"

barnabyjones — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 02:28:24 +0000

>He would likely be more intelligent than a toddler

I think you are falling into the trap of "we have technology and are therefore smarter." I would expect an average Roman senator could formulate far better speeches off the top of his head than 99% of modern people, and also in excess of anything an LLM is capable of. And that's supposed to be an LLM's specialty, there's no comparison when it comes to organizing actual projects like construction or campaigns.

New comment by barnabyjones in "People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research"

barnabyjones — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 02:02:24 +0000

A2 milk not only exists but is very popular in Asia actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_a2_Milk_Company

New comment by barnabyjones in "Byzantine-Sassanian War (602-628 CE): The Last Great War of Antiquity (2023)"

barnabyjones — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 02:50:13 +0000

Climate change did not defeat a million soldiers at Badger Mouth, nor could it be explained by slightly better bows.