Hacker News: beambot

New comment by beambot in "I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program"

beambot — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:16:42 +0000

Isn't this the equivalent of asking Google to delete your image off every Android phone (not just yours)?

New comment by beambot in "We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git"

beambot — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:20:19 +0000

No pilot has ever been a con artist...

New comment by beambot in "Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules"

beambot — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:02:32 +0000

So you're saying it's still at the discretion of a single magistrate?

I'm sure China could find some judges to rule in the name of national security if it would give everyone warm fuzzies.

Judicial checks and balances only function when they're independent of the executive and parliament

New comment by beambot in "GPT-5.4"

beambot — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 02:08:08 +0000

It's like opening copilot in a word doc and it telling you it can't see the document in its context

New comment by beambot in "Pentagon formally labels Anthropic supply-chain risk"

beambot — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:44:55 +0000

Anthropic was very clear about the usage restrictions: They didn't want them being used to control autonomous kill drones or mass surveillance of the American public. That's it. DoW didn't like that -- for reasons that will probably soon become apparent.

New comment by beambot in "Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals"

beambot — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:54:39 +0000

Some things are hard because you overcomplicate them. Some things are hard by their very nature.

Unless you are a Claude Shannon type, adding fundamental new knowledge to humanity's corpus is generally actually hard - at least in science & engineering. If you feel differently, I look forward to reading your groundbreaking papers!

New comment by beambot in "Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals"

beambot — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:40:27 +0000

> This is actually what ruined my respect for Academia.

Spoken like someone who never went through grad school at a competitive R1 program

It was already a grueling 60-80 hour grind every week with frequent all nighters, high-pressure deadlines, absolute minimal pay, thankless duties, and plenty of politics. It's about the same for professors too.

We already paid our dues by helping peer review (for free) a half dozen papers for each one we submitted. Why should we be expected to review random papers on arxiv too...?

New comment by beambot in "Judge finalizes order for Greenpeace to pay $345M in ND oil pipeline case"

beambot — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 16:08:21 +0000

They just need to do what oil & gas (and other "dirty" industries) do to avoid reputcussions: form lots of shell companies to shield the parent. It becomes a hydra of corporations kinda like terrorist cells.

New comment by beambot in "Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter"

beambot — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 19:03:39 +0000

The general public absolutely cannot. You have to be an accredited investor or qualified purchaser; you need to have access; you have to pay carry & fees (maybe multiple, stacked middlemen).

New comment by beambot in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"

beambot — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:53:03 +0000

SSO and passkeys don't solve adult verification. I don't see how this problem is embarrassing for the www - it's a hard problem in a socially permissible way (eg privacy) that can successfully span cultures and governments. If you feel otherwise, then solutions welcome!

New comment by beambot in "Anthropic raises $30B in Series G funding at $380B post-money valuation"

beambot — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:38:04 +0000

The same way that Google+ never overtook Facebook

New comment by beambot in "Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass"

beambot — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 07:26:22 +0000

This is effectively PKI for personhood. The State DMV acts as the Certificate Authority (CA), signing a "leaf certificate" that is bound to the device's hardware Secure Element.

It’s less like a TLS handshake and more like OpenID for Verifiable Presentations (OID4VP). The "non-free" hardware requirement serves as Remote Attestation—it allows a verifier to cryptographically prove that the identity hasn't been cloned or spoofed by a script. The verification happens offline or via a standard web flow using the DMV’s public key to validate the data signature, ensuring the credential is authentic without requiring a phone-home to the issuer.

New comment by beambot in "Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass"

beambot — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:17:55 +0000

Personal Identity Verification (PIV) and Common Access Card (CAC) credentials used by US government & military via NFC already work on web browsers. States should just move to digital IDs stored on smartphones, with chain of trust up through the secure element...

New comment by beambot in "Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun"

beambot — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:36:34 +0000

Crypto gets a lot of hate... but this really puts its utility into perspective: No counterparty risk with random banks or foreign companies, near-instant settlement, vastly lower fees, immediate fx conversion.

New comment by beambot in "Luce: First Electric Ferrari"

beambot — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:16:04 +0000

> but on something as emotional as a vehicle (Ferrari especially), this design falls flat.

Strongly disagree. To each their own...

New comment by beambot in "MIT Living Wage Calculator"

beambot — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:06:57 +0000

That is, indeed, what 9-9-6 means: 9am-9pm (12hrs) * 6 days per week.

New comment by beambot in "We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler"

beambot — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 22:15:20 +0000

This is getting close to a Ken Thompson "Trusting Trust" era -- AI could soon embed itself into the compilers themselves.

New comment by beambot in "Child prodigies rarely become elite performers"

beambot — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 04:05:40 +0000

Definitely uncommon, but not unprecedented:

Hakeem Olajuwon - didn't start basketball until 15 or 16.

Kurt Warner - undrafted, returned to NFL at 28.

Francis Ngannou - started MMA at 26.

New comment by beambot in "xAI joins SpaceX"

beambot — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:39:58 +0000

> Elon can't legally financially entangle Tesla to SpaceX

Bill Ackman has proposed taking SpaceX public by merging it with his Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, distributing 0.5 Special Purpose Acquisition Rights (SPARs) to Tesla shareholders for each share held. Each SPAR would be exercisable for two shares of SpaceX, aimed at enabling a 100% common stock capitalization without traditional underwriting fees or dilutive warrants.

With SpaceX IPO set to be one of the biggest of all time, this could have a pretty gnarly financial engineering impact on both companies -- especially if the short interest (direct or through derivatives) remains large.

New comment by beambot in "Claude's new constitution"

beambot — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 23:25:21 +0000

Precisely why RLHF is undetermined.