Hacker News: clarionbell

New comment by clarionbell in "Mistral raises €3B"

clarionbell — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:18:25 +0000

If EU were to "leverage" ASML, and that would require rather unlikely approval of Netherlands, it wouldn't end very well.

Already shipped machines can not be taken back, nor can they be stopped. Sure, you can cut the support, and buildup of new fabs will be stalled. But the other side, Chinese or USA, has many more levers to pull. Raw materials, energy (LNG), was majority of consumer goods, solar panels, batteries, semiconductors. EU doesn't mine or make most of them, and isn't nowhere close to even starting, instead, industrial base is already shrinking.

Even worse, ASML may dominate EUV, but other suppliers do very well in DUV. The moment ASML becomes unreliable, all of them will get infusion of money, as they become national security issue.

What about ASML subsidiaries in USA, like Cymer and ASML Wilton, will they take the bullet for the parent? Or will they become part of new competitor, with all the knowhow.

And China has already set domestic capacities in this area as a national priority.

New comment by clarionbell in "Mistral raises €3B"

clarionbell — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:01:20 +0000

Sort of yes. But it's nowhere near as much as some would like to believe. It mostly concerns those who have unclear immigration status, had their funding cut off, or don't care about money.

Now, that is quite a lot of people. But not nearly enough to reverse decades of brain drain.

New comment by clarionbell in "Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle"

clarionbell — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:16:24 +0000

Good news: we have discoverd FTL! Bad news: the ship came back *wrong*.

New comment by clarionbell in "More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding"

clarionbell — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:26:57 +0000

I would be surprised if a significant number of people anywhere had a basic statistical understanding. It is a difficult topic.

New comment by clarionbell in "AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late"

clarionbell — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 14:18:45 +0000

In my experience, when someone mentions burning library of Alexandria, they are either exaggerating, or have a poor grasp of history. Usually it's both. This post, the discussion, do not change my mind.

New comment by clarionbell in "GIMP Development Update"

clarionbell — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 07:36:49 +0000

https://itsfoss.com/news/glimpse-gimp-fork-archived/ Yep, it's dead.

New comment by clarionbell in "Mushroom behind 'tiny people' hallucinations identified"

clarionbell — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:41:27 +0000

Seeing things that don't exist is generally detrimental to your short term survival.

New comment by clarionbell in "The German Mittelstand"

clarionbell — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:25:06 +0000

This seriously needs to be repeated again and again. It's not that Mittelstand got greedy. Neither did most other small and medium companies in Europe and US. They gradually became less competitive by overregulation, high input costs, and complete lack of state support. The last sometimes bordering on hostility.

New comment by clarionbell in "AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol"

clarionbell — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 07:14:42 +0000

I won't discount the possibility of someone getting into this of their own free will out of hand. But I seriously doubt that it's going to remain this way long term. We have recent examples from Cambodia and Myanmar after all.

New comment by clarionbell in "Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026"

clarionbell — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 16:51:27 +0000

It would be nice if that led to lower prices. All the comparisons I could find are showing Germany near the top for electricity price.

https://energyfactbook.com/world/electricity-prices-by-count...

New comment by clarionbell in "Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026"

clarionbell — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 16:49:13 +0000

Pretty much. Average household doesn't see this though, not directly. The industry on the other hand does, very much so.

New comment by clarionbell in "Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026"

clarionbell — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 16:47:41 +0000

Who is making all those solar cells and batteries? I'll give you a hint, it's not a European country.

New comment by clarionbell in "Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code"

clarionbell — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:26:52 +0000

I feel like there is an unspoken assumption of long term maintainability when it comes to LLM generated software. We are still very early in this, so I don't want to make assumptions. In principle, it shouldn't be impossible to both write and maintain stable software, purely with agents.

At least, I'm not aware of any actual reasons, backed by a proper theory.

On the other hand. I've noticed some persistent issues with code generated by agents, especially poorly supervised agents. If engineers become less vigilant, agents never get to the point of not needing supervision and juniors never pick up required skills, this could lead to real trouble.

New comment by clarionbell in "Our position on open-weights models"

clarionbell — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:03:26 +0000

Cultural revolution?

New comment by clarionbell in "A digestion of the Jacobian conjecture counterexample"

clarionbell — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:12:17 +0000

Not really. I've found that they often believe that they understand the code. They obviously don't. But they do feel like they do.

British Steel taken into public ownership to protect 'vital' UK supply

clarionbell — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:05:53 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y680w62wno

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933371

Points: 153

# Comments: 308

Efficiency focused "ThinkingCap" model series

clarionbell — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 11:59:40 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bottlecapai.com/thinkingcap-qwen3-6-27b

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48919503

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by clarionbell in "AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region"

clarionbell — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:56:59 +0000

I can see lot of potential in this, but I somehow doubt it's going to be used for good.

New comment by clarionbell in "Every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera"

clarionbell — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 09:06:21 +0000

Sometimes I feel that EU has an unhealthy obsession with safety, at expense of almost everything else. This is one of those times.

New comment by clarionbell in "European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple"

clarionbell — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 11:20:24 +0000

Not really. EU is actually trying to decouple. But in many cases there are not any homegrown alternatives to support. There is not a single company in EU that could replace, even a considerable part, of software stack provided by Google and Apple.

And, unless the regulatory environment changes., there probably never will be.