<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: colinhb</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=colinhb</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 21 Jun 2026 13:37:07 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=colinhb" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree with your common sense take of how it should play out, but Google has and will argue Section 230 protection for AI overviews, eg in Wolf River Electric v Google.<p><a href="https://www.startribune.com/google-ai-overview-lawsuit-defamation-great-river-electric/601371780" rel="nofollow">https://www.startribune.com/google-ai-overview-lawsuit-defam...</a><p>Previous cases in this space (eg Meta v KGM, Walters v OpenAI) have not turned on Section 230 specifically.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:45:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48474342</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48474342</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48474342</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "Magnifica Humanitas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Attacking the cult of progress is a major through-line:<p>> 12: Today, the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations. All too often, we place our hope in unlimited 'upgrades,' in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities, and in immediate solutions incapable of healing people's wounds.<p>> 94: The danger of humanity becoming a victim of its own achievements was already clearly recognized by Saint Paul VI, who warned that 'the most extraordinary scientific progress, the most astounding technical feats and the most amazing economic growth, unless accompanied by authentic moral and social progress, will in the long run go against man.' For this reason, technological progress — valuable in itself — requires careful discernment of the anthropological vision that guides it and the ends it pursues. If technological development advances without a corresponding ethical and social progress, the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity: 'having more' without 'being more.' In such a scenario, there is a risk that individuals will be evaluated principally according to the outcomes they produce.<p>> 112: More gravely, the pervasive technocratic paradigm in which we are immersed, and that is amplified by the digital revolution and AI, threatens to normalize an anti-human vision. In that vision, the fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty and exerting total control. When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion.<p>There's much more along these and related lines.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 14:59:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48267649</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48267649</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48267649</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "Why Law Is Law-Shaped"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I have a lot of sympathy and affection for this project. When I started working in the US Congress in 2009, I was shocked there wasn't a more concerted effort to put US code in some kind of version control system.<p>Over time (~15 years in law and public policy in US and EU) I've come to view that kind of project as something worthwhile, and interesting, but not something that will meaningfully change how laws are created and understood.
In the US, as a mixed but substantially common law system, the text of the US Code, which in the LawVM model is the tree, can remain fixed, but the interpretation of that text will still vary over time. (Same syntax, different semantics, which feels like an AI-ism as I write it.)<p>A couple examples:<p>I have worked in competition policy. Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act has read the same since 1890 but it's operated across structuralist and consumer-welfare regimes, and the outcomes in Standard Oil, AT&T, MSFT, and more recent cases have all been shaped by those regimes.<p>US constitutional law may be an even better example of the issue: Article I, sec. 8, cl. 3 (the commerce clause) has not been amended since 1789, but it has expanded and contracted and been reinterpreted over time (most recently with NFIB v Sebelius).<p>Another example of the problem with a LawVM like system making "the law in force [...] knowable" is US overturning of Chevron deference on 28 June 2024.<p>Basically, the day before, courts were expected to defer to expert agencies, constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act, in their interpretation of legislation. The day after, courts were expected to make an independent assessment. All sorts of legislative texts were unchanged, but their meaning shifted dramatically: Clean Air Act, Communications Act, etc.<p>There are a bunch of other issues in figuring out "what the law is", like agency rulemakings in the CFR, and then instruments which sit below those, including sub-regulatory guidance, prosecutorial discretion, etc.
Things which fall into this bucket:<p>- DOJ pot enforcement<p>- SEC no-action letters (letters which say in effect "we won't try to enforce if you do X")<p>Altogether, my thinking of this shifted to believing that the real thing that needs to be modeled is not the US Code as a tree serialization format, but the interpretative algorithm (the things lawyers and courts do) that translates that serialized tree into decisions. That interpretive algorithm has a lot of inputs, one which is the serialized tree, but also a bunch of other stuff.<p>As a final note, I will add that the ambiguity in legislative text is often a feature, not a bug. I have worked on legislative text that was intentionally crafted to provide different plausible interpretations to different coalition members both in the immediate context and in the long term.<p>In summary: projects like this are good and admirable; they're likely to have more direct utility in jurisdictions on one extreme of the civil law spectrum (i.e. not the US); and in all jurisdictions there likely needs to be an interpretive mechanism that sits above the representation of legal text which has more inputs if the goal is to model what the law is at any given time.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:04:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47948645</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47948645</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47948645</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "Bullshit About Bullshit Machines [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thanks - appreciate it!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 10:04:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946231</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946231</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946231</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "Before GitHub"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Maybe something fossil-adjacent:<p>- amber.dev<p>- quarry.sh<p>You’ll probably need to play with gTLDs to find something that works.<p>Can also echo “scm” from fossil’s domain:<p>- amberscm.dev<p>Along with useX.com, Xhq.com, etc., patterns.<p>Of the two you have listed, I’d choose fossilforge, but would vote for an alternative TLD since .io has an expected meaning coming from GitHub.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:21:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47945553</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47945553</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47945553</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "Bullshit About Bullshit Machines [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Tangent - does anyone immediately recognise how this was typeset? I’m guessing it’s some kind of pandoc output?<p>I read the original chapters online but appreciate this format.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:01:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47846385</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47846385</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47846385</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Generalist AI Doesn't Scale]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2024-04-06-Generalist-AI-doesnt-scale.html">https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2024-04-06-Generalist-AI-doesnt-scale.html</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47770793">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47770793</a></p>
<p>Points: 2</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 20:09:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2024-04-06-Generalist-AI-doesnt-scale.html</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47770793</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47770793</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "FreeBSD 14.4-Release Announcement"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Wild! Fun to see 9p filesystem protocol continue to have a life in this form.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 10 Mar 2026 13:21:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47322914</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47322914</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47322914</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Anthropic-backed super PAC spends $1.6M in primary race divided over datacenters]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/03/datacenter-politics-north-carolina-primary">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/03/datacenter-politics-north-carolina-primary</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240276">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240276</a></p>
<p>Points: 6</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 22:54:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/03/datacenter-politics-north-carolina-primary</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240276</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240276</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "Claude Code LSP"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>From the intro section:<p>> That's not an incremental improvement. That's a category change in how Claude Code navigates your code.<p>I don’t know anything about the human(s) behind this project, assuming there are any, and intend no malice towards them, but when I encounter language like this, it just kills my enthusiasm for a project.<p>I wonder if that reaction is now, or will become, a majority one, and that AI flavoured language and products will face some audience headwinds if there aren’t indications of some level of human authorship / editing.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:12:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47217553</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47217553</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47217553</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Anthropic gives Opus 3 exit interview, "retirement" blog]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/research/deprecation-updates-opus-3">https://www.anthropic.com/research/deprecation-updates-opus-3</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47166397">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47166397</a></p>
<p>Points: 43</p>
<p># Comments: 53</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:15:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.anthropic.com/research/deprecation-updates-opus-3</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47166397</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47166397</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-orders-diplomats-fight-data-sovereignty-initiatives-2026-02-25/">https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-orders-diplomats-fight-data-sovereignty-initiatives-2026-02-25/</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47152252">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47152252</a></p>
<p>Points: 546</p>
<p># Comments: 485</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Feb 2026 14:48:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-orders-diplomats-fight-data-sovereignty-initiatives-2026-02-25/</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47152252</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47152252</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The article isn’t describing someone who learned the concept of sortable IDs and then wrote their own implementation.<p>It describes copying and pasting actual code from one project into a prompt so a language model can reproduce it in another project.<p>It’s a mechanical transformation of someone else’s copyrighted expression (their code) laundered through a statistical model instead of a human copyist.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 22 Feb 2026 14:11:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47111142</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47111142</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47111142</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Quoting the article:<p>> One trick I use constantly: for well-contained features where I’ve seen a good implementation in an open source repo, I’ll share that code as a reference alongside the plan request. If I want to add sortable IDs, I paste the ID generation code from a project that does it well and say “this is how they do sortable IDs, write a plan.md explaining how we can adopt a similar approach.” Claude works dramatically better when it has a concrete reference implementation to work from rather than designing from scratch.<p>Licensing apparently means nothing.<p>Ripped off in the training data, ripped off in the prompt.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 22 Feb 2026 11:32:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47110178</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47110178</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47110178</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Did not replicate for me w/ Opus 4.6: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/4FckOCL" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/4FckOCL</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 07:05:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47031797</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47031797</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47031797</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Very much appreciated the internet's #1 dog-rating account covering this:<p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/reels/DUlye8NETR3/" rel="nofollow">https://www.instagram.com/reels/DUlye8NETR3/</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2026 02:10:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46984081</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46984081</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46984081</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "I wasted years of my life in crypto"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Skipped the metaverse, slotted between the two</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2025 06:48:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46189193</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46189193</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46189193</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Story of a Beijing Vibe Coder]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://afraw.substack.com/p/story-of-a-chinese-vibe-coder">https://afraw.substack.com/p/story-of-a-chinese-vibe-coder</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45990556">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45990556</a></p>
<p>Points: 2</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Nov 2025 09:01:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://afraw.substack.com/p/story-of-a-chinese-vibe-coder</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45990556</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45990556</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "Grok 4 Launch [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Can it self-drive a Tesla?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 10 Jul 2025 11:10:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44519649</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44519649</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44519649</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by colinhb in "Merlin Bird ID"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Neat.<p>When working in a linguistics lab as an undergraduate long ago, we looked at spectrograms to identify sounds (specifically places of articulation) as much as listened to recordings.<p>So it makes some sense to build a model on them rather than some other representation of the sound.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Jun 2025 07:34:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44178129</link><dc:creator>colinhb</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44178129</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44178129</guid></item></channel></rss>