Hacker News: changoplatanero

New comment by changoplatanero in "U.S. science is in chaos"

changoplatanero — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 10:44:11 +0000

I would have supported reforming the way science is funded in the US, but the way republicans did it is far worse than if they had done nothing at all.

New comment by changoplatanero in "How to earn a billion dollars"

changoplatanero — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 14:50:21 +0000

I wonder what she would say about professional athletes. Some of the top stars have made near a billion dollars in lifetime wages, as unionized employees. Hard for me to see who the sports stars are exploiting to get their wealth.

New comment by changoplatanero in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

changoplatanero — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 20:33:42 +0000

At the time Apple made this decision there wasn’t as strong of a difference in model quality between Google, anthropic, and OpenAI as there is now. Also Apple definitely burnt some bridges with OpenAI on the agreement they made together a year earlier.

New comment by changoplatanero in "Algorithmic Monocultures in Hiring"

changoplatanero — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 04:24:55 +0000

A few years ago the same professor did an analysis of racism in police traffic stops. Compared to this current study on job applications, the conclusions from the police study were more convincing because they actually observed the words spoken by the cops in each interaction.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1702413114

New comment by changoplatanero in "Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)"

changoplatanero — Sat, 23 May 2026 03:30:07 +0000

What about when the horse is sleeping?

New comment by changoplatanero in "An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry"

changoplatanero — Wed, 20 May 2026 19:58:43 +0000

apparently the proof is not constructive in the sense of not giving an easy to compute recipe for generating a set of points that you can plot on a 2d plane

New comment by changoplatanero in "AI is too expensive"

changoplatanero — Tue, 19 May 2026 16:23:27 +0000

Imagine you were looking at Google, a sustainable and profitable business, and you thought you saw a once in a lifetime opportunity to compete with them and take their position as a leading tech company. How much money would you need to spend to make a credible attempt?

Google has had decades to accumulate intellectual and physical capital. Catching up quickly means spending >500 billion. If you can actually dethrone Google (admittedly not an easy task) then it will have been worth it. If not, I suppose it's wasted investment.

Now what happens when three or four startups vie for this opportunity at once? Well that's how you get $2 trillion in captial investments per year.

New comment by changoplatanero in "New Jersey residents say they can't even wash their clothes due to data centers"

changoplatanero — Tue, 12 May 2026 18:33:07 +0000

what's the mechanism that causes tap water to turn brown when a data center is being constructed nearby?

New comment by changoplatanero in "Through the looking glass of benchmark hacking"

changoplatanero — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:23:34 +0000

In theory yes blocking specific repo is possible. In practice more difficult as the repo could be cloned under different names and you might have hundreds of training tasks that you need to configure this for. So it would be a lot of work to verify that you blocked them one by one.

New comment by changoplatanero in "White House Considers Vetting A.I. Models Before They Are Released"

changoplatanero — Mon, 04 May 2026 20:15:01 +0000

I have many questions. How would A/B testing work in the scenario where models need to be approved by the government before release? All the big providers commonly a/b test their unreleased models on production traffic. Would these need to be preapproved? Many models get tested on the public for every one that is officially "released". Will the government have the bandwidth to examine each of these? Does changing the system prompt count as a different model or only model weights?

New comment by changoplatanero in "Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027"

changoplatanero — Mon, 04 May 2026 15:41:38 +0000

They also don't have speakers, microphones, and charging ports.

New comment by changoplatanero in "SFO Quiet Airport (2025)"

changoplatanero — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 18:52:02 +0000

I had to sleep overnight in the phoenix airport once. All night long a loud speaker was repeating at high volume "Caution: the moving walkway is coming to an end." I remember wishing that it would indeed come to an end.

New comment by changoplatanero in "Apple accelerates eco progress with highest-ever recycled materials"

changoplatanero — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:57:32 +0000

You know the reason why you get five cents back for a recycling a glass bottle, right? It’s because the government taxed you when you bought the drink and now you’re getting the tax rebate for recycling It’s not related to the value of the materials.

New comment by changoplatanero in "OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation"

changoplatanero — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 21:32:47 +0000

The timing of this coming out today is cause today is the last day of the month/quarter and has nothing to do with Claude.

New comment by changoplatanero in "Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events"

changoplatanero — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 17:25:23 +0000

I thought this article does a good job explaining why some people care a lot about this topic https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/how-youth-sports-supercharg...

New comment by changoplatanero in "WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate"

changoplatanero — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:26:55 +0000

I think you can in good conscious be opposed to new taxes. This tax is being introduced in a way that only affects the most privileged portion of the population but that's how the Federal income tax was introduced many years ago too. People who oppose the tax are looking forward to a future where the tax burden in Washington might be as oppressive as it is in California or New York.

New comment by changoplatanero in "Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse"

changoplatanero — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 01:43:07 +0000

Was this guy law enforcement? How did he get the addresses of everyone who had bought that model of couch?

New comment by changoplatanero in "MIT Living Wage Calculator"

changoplatanero — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 20:55:35 +0000

I don't get what the big deal is about mandatory paid vacation. My view is that your total compensation will be set based on the market value of your labor. Some portion of that compensation is given to you in the form of ordinary wages and some portion in the form of paid vacations. If the government mandated paid vacations would it increase many people's total compensation?

New comment by changoplatanero in "Testing Ads in ChatGPT"

changoplatanero — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 19:32:26 +0000

you can at least pay them to get the ads removed from youtube

New comment by changoplatanero in "AirPods Pro 4 Could Feature Cameras to 'See Around You'"

changoplatanero — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 17:01:31 +0000

My experience working at Apple was that private information does not leave the device. All our training data came from contractors who were hired to perform data collection and not from the general public.