Hacker News: cmdli

New comment by cmdli in "Anthropic's internal AI use, at retail prices, now exceeds its employee pay"

cmdli — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 17:36:32 +0000

Until employees can use those AI tokens for personal projects, it's not compensation. Rather, it's just a cost of doing business, like laptops, office space, or testing servers.

New comment by cmdli in "Lobbying"

cmdli — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 05:18:19 +0000

I know this post is mainly about money in politics, but lobbying does go a lot farther than campaign contributions. Many lobbying groups are arranged around certain political groups, like environmentalism (Sierra Club), civil liberties (ACLU), or gun rights (NRA).

"Lobbying" is a generic term for influencing a politician, and it existed well before Citizens United. Hell, corporate influence in politics also existed long before Citizens United, too.

New comment by cmdli in "U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk"

cmdli — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 21:47:27 +0000

"Supply chain risk" specifically refers to risk of malicious attack or sabotage through the supply chain, not all risks associated with supply chains.

A vendor with particularly poor QA might be a risk in your supply chain but isn't a "supply chain risk" according to this designation and neither would Anthropic be.

New comment by cmdli in "U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk"

cmdli — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:07:41 +0000

Selling a pen labeled "this pen will refuse to sign certain orders" is not sabotage or malicious and is thus not a supply chain risk. The DoD is free to not buy from Anthropic, but designating them as a supply chain risk is incorrect, as well as arguably arbitrary and capricious given their public criticism of Anthropic's beliefs.

New comment by cmdli in "U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk"

cmdli — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:05:15 +0000

That isn't sabotage, that is simply product design. Anthropic is free to create their products that refuse to kill people, and the DoD is free not to buy those products if they don't fit their needs.

However, that's not what a supply chain risk is. It's not an order to "don't buy these products if they don't work the way we want them to", its designating Anthropic as a national security threat because they might intentionally sabotage US military operations.

New comment by cmdli in "U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk"

cmdli — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:00:45 +0000

There are plenty of companies that are opposed to certain operations of the US military and refuse to sell to the US military on those grounds. None of them are considered a supply chain risk because that's not what a supply chain risk is.

A supply chain risk is specifically an entity that is likely to maliciously sabotage the US military's operations, such as Chinese companies that are controlled by the CCP. It is not simply a decision to "not buy from this company", but rather a wide-ranging decision that this particular company is a national security threat.

New comment by cmdli in "Anthropic tells investors it will be profitable for second straight quarter"

cmdli — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 16:45:34 +0000

This also includes revenue sharing with distribution partners, which should probably be in COGS.

New comment by cmdli in "1Password Replied to My Disappointment"

cmdli — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 02:38:38 +0000

Would you care if your accountant liked to sit outside a high school and watch teenage girls with binoculars? What if a local shop owner was known to harass female employees? Everybody has a line somewhere.

New comment by cmdli in "Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science"

cmdli — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 22:01:54 +0000

I guess it depends on how to measure a single "person"? If you spun up 2000 copies of Terrance Tao, I wouldn't be surprised if you found a few new discoveries at the end of it.

New comment by cmdli in "Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science"

cmdli — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 21:58:13 +0000

It sounds like they are making a clear argument: models are getting worse for certain domains even while they are getting better at others.

I don't know if I agree with that but it doesn't seem like an irrational claim and does seem credible to me.

New comment by cmdli in "Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science"

cmdli — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 21:32:18 +0000

This reminds me a lot of the proof by construction for the 4-color theorem. It was only enabled by the advancement of computers and dissatisfied many of the computer scientists and mathematicians since it was a "brute force" approach.

I wonder if AI will end up being similar. Certain theorems get proven by AI but others do not. We haven't reached the limits of this yet and I haven't found a good argument for where those limits will be (I do doubt that there are no limits).

New comment by cmdli in "The fight between doctors and insurance companies over 'downcoding'"

cmdli — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 22:36:05 +0000

> I’m surprised there isn’t a Costco like medical group that’s nationwide, has a membership, and works solely to provide care efficiently.

What you are describing is an HMO, which hasn't had that much lower costs historically. Theoretically, you pay once and then they take care of you, but in practice costs haven't been that much lower.

New comment by cmdli in "How the US got left behind in the electric car race"

cmdli — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 20:03:31 +0000

Millions would also love to live in Europe. Does that make them better than the US?

New comment by cmdli in "EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners"

cmdli — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 17:18:29 +0000

The reports I have seen have shown significant decreases in revenue, from around $5B in 2021 to $2.5B in 2024: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/

I’m not sure about profit, but I do know that Twitter made $1.4B in profit in 2019 according to their SEC filings.

New comment by cmdli in "EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners"

cmdli — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:19:53 +0000

Twitter isn’t collapsing, but it’s hardly more profitable. In fact, the last numbers we know about them show >50% drop in revenue.

New comment by cmdli in "Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah"

cmdli — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 23:41:06 +0000

I think this is disingenuous. Charlie Kirk's content was specifically around "triggering the libs". He deliberately tried to make people angry, not looking to make any kind of common ground for discussion.

New comment by cmdli in "South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid"

cmdli — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 00:29:59 +0000

Haven't you ever turned a blind eye to somebody breaking corporate policy when you know its dumb and helps nobody? This is basically that. This kind of "immigration" is solely helpful but US immigration laws are intentionally obtuse and broken. The only "harm" here is that Hyundai didn't follow the right paperwork while helping build American manufacturing.

New comment by cmdli in "South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid"

cmdli — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 00:27:56 +0000

Because the documentation is intentionally obtuse and difficult, meaning that it is nearly impossible to get approval for these kinds of things even though they benefit the US immensely.

It's like if a neighbor fixes your fence without asking you first. Wrong? Maybe. Harmful? Definitely not.

New comment by cmdli in "South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid"

cmdli — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 00:23:42 +0000

The solution here is to work with South Korea to follow actual procedure, not arrest everybody and deport them. These people were objectively good for the American economy.

New comment by cmdli in "Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context"

cmdli — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 19:13:16 +0000

My experience has been entirely the opposite as an IC. If I spend the time to delve into the code base to the point that I understand how it works, AI just serves as a mild improvement in writing code as opposed to implementing it normally, saving me maybe 5 minutes on a 2 hour task.

On the other hand, I’ve found success when I have no idea how to do something and tell the AI to do it. In that case, the AI usually does the wrong thing but it can oftentimes reveal to me the methods used in the rest of the codebase.