Hacker News: benmusch

New comment by benmusch in "Feds freaked over Fable 5 after 'fix this code', not jailbreak, say researchers"

benmusch — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:17:51 +0000

Headline is dumb, the point is that not mentioning security in the prompt is effectively a jailbreak.

The shutdown may be dumb/politically motivated, but this definitely is a jailbreak even if it's a very simple one

New comment by benmusch in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

benmusch — Wed, 27 May 2026 21:54:20 +0000

probably the same reason they put banners on the site asking for money

New comment by benmusch in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

benmusch — Wed, 27 May 2026 18:30:40 +0000

ok and it's worth discussing on its merits. but "wikipedia is private equity" is a dumb thing to say and it matters to actually make concrete criticisms instead of throwing around buzzwords. the agenda of private equity is driven by profit incentives that make absolutely zero sense here.

New comment by benmusch in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

benmusch — Wed, 27 May 2026 01:19:28 +0000

It's not at all like the structure OpenAI was. OpenAI had a bizarre structure where the non-profit held shares in a for-profit sub-corporation. That's not how WMF is set up.

Did this person even have stints in PE at those firms? You can think someone is bad without throwing around the names of the bogeyman du jour as if you're actually making a meanigful argument.

New comment by benmusch in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

benmusch — Tue, 26 May 2026 23:09:34 +0000

and which part of this makes any sense at all when applied to the wikimedia foundation

New comment by benmusch in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

benmusch — Tue, 26 May 2026 23:08:44 +0000

and who exactly owns shares of the 501(c)3 wikimedia foundation?

New comment by benmusch in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

benmusch — Tue, 26 May 2026 22:24:23 +0000

it's pretty team/org dependent. on the aggregate i suspect big tech works pretty light hours compared to other jobs in the same pay scale

New comment by benmusch in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

benmusch — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:57:57 +0000

you can disagree with that comment but its clearly not PR speak lmao. not everyone who disagrees with you is astroturfed

New comment by benmusch in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

benmusch — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:56:38 +0000

I think "worthy cause" is a poor choice of words from the OP, but the idea is: WMF has goals that it wants to accomplish in the world, and they should staff on that basis, not on the basis of honoring historical contributions, which were already compensated with the wages at the time.

I don't have an opinion on how that's used in this situation FWIW, this seems like an extremely reasonable engineering team to employ for that basis.

New comment by benmusch in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

benmusch — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:28:29 +0000

what does "private equity" mean to you

New comment by benmusch in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

benmusch — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:27:27 +0000

I don't read the article as implying wikipedia is "big tech" in any meaningful way

If the New England Patriots copied the San Francisco 49er's playbook, and the headline read "Patriots are starting to use 49er's playbook", that does not imply the Patriots are now the 49ers.

New comment by benmusch in "Cursor Introduces Composer 2.5"

benmusch — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:22:00 +0000

they aren't "throwing down the gauntlet", they're trying to find ways to eke margin out of their product by owning a commodity-level coding model. it's an impressive engineering task but it's not particularly ambitious.

New comment by benmusch in "Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce"

benmusch — Thu, 07 May 2026 21:48:57 +0000

then why did the riveting stock analysis above mis-predict the market?

New comment by benmusch in "Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce"

benmusch — Thu, 07 May 2026 21:37:05 +0000

cloudflare stock went down, genius

investors are not some nefarious monolith cheering for companies to make decisions based on how it benefits The Vibes. they're analysts assessing business decisions.

New comment by benmusch in "Cloudflare to cut about 20% workforce"

benmusch — Thu, 07 May 2026 21:16:20 +0000

> unless they need to cut spending or increase profits

yes, so basically always? the situations where companies don't want to do this are very rare.

I understand your broader point that doubling down on productive things is useful. But there's no limiting principle to that idea.

The obvious reality is that businesses are trying to find a sweet spot between expenses and productivity. It's not always the case that slashing spending is worth it. But it's equally naive to act like being able to do more with less shouldn't make you want... less

New comment by benmusch in "Building for the Future"

benmusch — Thu, 07 May 2026 20:59:20 +0000

why not? isn't the implication of your point that companies should just hire infinitely so long as there's work to be done?

New comment by benmusch in "Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line"

benmusch — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 21:33:28 +0000

being an ethical vegan does not mean you like the taste of plants (or, at least, that you don't miss the taste of meat). I'm veg and very much miss having access to meat.

I'm an occasional buyer of their product, but the issue for me is just the versatility. It's really only a replacement for the most generic ways to prepare a burger/sausage. The moment you try to use the ground beef in, say, a chili recipe, it's a totally mis-matched flavor

New comment by benmusch in "I failed a take-home assignment from Kagi Search"

benmusch — Wed, 14 May 2025 03:46:17 +0000

Yeah, a clearer explanation in the rejection email would have been nice, or perhaps even a warning in response to the proposal (though it's not 100% clear from the proposal alone that OP would be going down a path that ignores that part of the assignment.) But the prompt explicitly lists other terminal clients as the inspiration.

Also, the prompt for a terminal client really changes what they're testing! Email web UIs have been a known quantity for years. But the UX of a terminal client is still something that's not "solved." I suspect the rubric for the question has large sections about how they decide to make a terminal client that OP's submission doesn't address at all

New comment by benmusch in "Show HN: Feature Flags Backed by Git"

benmusch — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 03:22:24 +0000

looks awesome

New comment by benmusch in "The Death of NYC Congestion Pricing"

benmusch — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 04:04:48 +0000

There are not more bike lanes than real roads and to think that's even plausible shows how totally warped your understanding of reality is. most people in nyc do not drive, you're not advocating for "real people," you're advocating for a narrow, high-income subset of the city that you personally encounter

there's definitely an echo chamber in urbanist-type spaces, but your notion of "real people" is even more out of touch.