<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: brendoelfrendo</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=brendoelfrendo</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 15:27:12 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=brendoelfrendo" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "How El Niño Made the Atlantic Hurricane Season Disappear"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Drought and heat will also begin to make some parts of the world unlivable, and people will migrate out of necessity, which given the current political climate, you know how that will go.<p>It's worth noting that this is <i>already happening.</i> Outmigration from the Central American "Dry Corridor" is on the rise, and a growing number of migrants apprehended at the US-Mexico border over the past decade have been from countries that overlap the dry corridor (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador). Major droughts in the late 20-teens required millions of people to turn to food aid. The thing is, it's hard to see the connection to climate change because it's surrounded by other factors. The region has millions of rural residents who rely on farming for their income or food, so are they leaving for climate-related reasons, crime-related reasons, or reasons of economic opportunity? The answer of course is that many of these factors are intertwined. I think we imagine that one day we'll wake up in Mad Max world and until then, climate change isn't yet a disaster. And while there probably will be a day when some disaster creates an immediate, horrible refugee crisis, the day-to-day reality is probably more like today: a trickle of people moving from areas that are slowly getting less and less habitable as time goes on, gradually putting stress on the system.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2026 21:25:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49900840</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49900840</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49900840</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "Classified estimates show the NSA is paying billions to test AI models"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well, they are, but if a surveillance state exists, then one thing that will save the ordinary citizen from its gaze is that humans have a limited amount of attention. A massive intelligence complex full of analysts can only process a fraction of the intelligence that a fleet of AI agents can handle. So now you have the worst of both worlds: the massive capabilities of modern AI at the behest of humans who have shown they can't be responsible with that capability.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 17:22:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49847407</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49847407</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49847407</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm lost... are you trying to argue that it would be ok for naturalized citizens of a country to be forcibly removed from the country where they hold citizenship if that country decides that they're the "wrong" race? On what planet is that ok?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 05:41:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49840554</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49840554</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49840554</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "DoorDash Spent $1.4M Trying to Stop Mamdani from Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The Shapeland reveal made me jump out of my chair.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2026 22:47:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49823690</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49823690</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49823690</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "Community condemn Bedminster AI mural as 'insult' to artists"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ha, that is a fair critique. Now, I do consider electronic music to be art; in that case, I consider the computer or synthesizer to be an instrument, and thus the creative output of a DAW is still the artist's creative output. There is definitely some sloppiness in how I defined my terms; unfortunately, I'm just not going to commit my afternoon to an iron-clad definition of art for an internet comment.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2026 18:40:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49820556</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49820556</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49820556</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "Community condemn Bedminster AI mural as 'insult' to artists"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We are not uncomfortable with what the art is saying but with what the meta-narrative around the art is saying, and I think that's an important distinction. Sometimes context is an important part of artistic interpretation and expression, but this time around I think the discomfort is that human intention is being replaced by a machine.<p>> If not, where do we draw the line?<p>I don't find this question uncomfortable at all: art is art if and only if it was made by humans, end to end. Human thought informing human action resulting in a human-created work. If you involved an AI, it is not art; it is a facsimile of art. If you agree that conveying emotion and meaning is an important part of art, and I think you do since you highlighted that art can and sometimes should be uncomfortable, then I posit that AI "art" cannot be art because there is no feeling, emotion, or creativity involved in its creation. An AI can only attempt to mimic human expression based on its training while the AI itself is incapable of these things.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49818593</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49818593</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49818593</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is dead"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The NSF's focus areas do include research on people and society, as well as development of new training and education initiatives (<a href="https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/education" rel="nofollow">https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/education</a>) and fostering a robust STEM workforce (<a href="https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/workforce" rel="nofollow">https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/workforce</a>). Not every grant issued by the NSF needs to be geared towards fundamental scientific research; the NSF's mission is broad, and intentionally so.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 21 Sep 2026 21:11:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49793502</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49793502</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49793502</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "I don't like passkeys"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Said companies to you: sounds like what you <i>want</i> is to get booted from our service.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:21:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757433</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757433</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757433</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "OpenAI expands ChatGPT ads with Sponsored Agents"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, but why would you trust the answers from a sponsored agent? Why would you assume it is giving you real, accurate, and complete information rather than selectively giving you what it thinks is most likely to make you click the "buy" button?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:32:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49727665</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49727665</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49727665</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "StarCraft returns in 2030 as an open-world shooter"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Nintendo seems to be the outlier in the video games industry in that they are very much willing to foster talent over a long term. People who started doing sprite work 35 years ago are still there today and directing games. It's almost like the secret to long-term success is developing a roster of highly-skilled professionals, rather than treating your staff as disposable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 13 Sep 2026 04:25:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49680016</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49680016</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49680016</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "Paramount Caught Using 'Astroturf' Group to Drum Up Fake Support for Merger"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> The "non-greed" case for mergers is often that while it may result in a dominant position in a narrowly-defined market ('supermarkets'), they are sometimes needed to preserve the existence of that category as an alternative to another giant that has expanded into a new market, in that case mainly Walmart and to some extent, Amazon, both of which can afford to subsidize something like Ritz Crackers with the profits from selling tires, lawn furniture, or AWS.<p>Ah, but then is the argument that we should allow a merger among smaller players because it prevents a narrowly-defined market from being entirely consumed by larger, broader businesses; or should we argue that the larger, broader businesses that can exert influence over large swaths of the market prevent the existence of a competitive marketplace?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:28:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49613502</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49613502</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49613502</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "It took a year to ship WebAssembly in Anubis"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This would be rad.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 06 Sep 2026 21:48:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49591296</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49591296</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49591296</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "It took a year to ship WebAssembly in Anubis"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's funny, because on the scale of things that are annoying an uncool, I find someone saying the word "retarded" as a pejorative in the year 2026 to be far, <i>far</i> more annoying and uncool than a harmless anime-inspired mascot for an open source project.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 06 Sep 2026 21:46:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49591275</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49591275</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49591275</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They said "opt in to training on prompts by default," which is coherent English and perfectly fine. The phrases "opt in" and "opt out" will always be contextual based on what is being opted, so it really falls to the reader to pay attention to that context. Please don't give English language advice as though you are an authority; there is not a rule of the English language that would make their usage unacceptable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 02 Sep 2026 15:05:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49537440</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49537440</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49537440</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Because not everyone has the infrastructure to run that with better performance? Anyway, Mistral serves GLM 5.2 through their global and European endpoints, so if you wanted to leverage their services and use a more powerful open model, that seems to be an option.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:59:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49537364</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49537364</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49537364</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "The safest job from AI may be writing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's a pretty reliable career for hundreds if not thousands of mid-list authors who generally stick to genre fiction. It's entirely possible that AI could core out the middle of the pack as well as the bottom, which would threaten not just jobs but a wealth of institutional knowledge that those authors share among their peers and especially new up-and-comers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:44:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515181</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515181</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515181</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh thank goodness. I was honestly shaken just thinking about how horrifying it would be to be a college-aged student who managed to expose themselves to dimethylmercury. Even if they were doing something stupid and reckless, that's a horrible way to go.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2026 20:00:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49514231</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49514231</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49514231</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "You Rename My Lake – I Move My Hosting"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't think we can be that reductive. Plenty of the US technology industry is concentrated in blue states like California, Washington, and New York. Likewise, I don't think all blue states can be considered equally resistant to the excesses of the federal government. I'm not going to go so far as to say "never buy American," but I am going to say that as with any boycott it takes research and diligence to decide who does and doesn't align with your values.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2026 18:37:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49513196</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49513196</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49513196</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "You Rename My Lake – I Move My Hosting"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ok, but the president's executive order does not officially change the name of a place or feature. In the US, that function is overseen by the Board on Geographic Names. While they did enact a change for the Gulf of Mexico (now the Gulf of America in US documentation), it doesn't happen immediately. While I imagine the BGN will update Lake Ontario eventually as well, Google tips their hand as being eager to please the admin by updating their maps before there is a corresponding change from the appropriate governing authority.<p>We can't even accuse Google of consistency, because they show Türkiye as Türkiye, for example, even though (as far as I can tell) the US Gov still uses Turkey.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2026 18:31:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49513116</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49513116</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49513116</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by brendoelfrendo in "Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What does "western" values mean?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 29 Aug 2026 18:11:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49491983</link><dc:creator>brendoelfrendo</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49491983</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49491983</guid></item></channel></rss>