Hacker News: colinhb

New comment by colinhb in "Show HN: Desktopcolors.com – A museum for solid background colors of classic OS"

colinhb — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 15:10:12 +0000

Some overlooked iconic backgrounds/color-schemes for me:

NeXTSTEP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_...

Plan9/Rio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#/media/F...

New comment by colinhb in "Grok 4.6"

colinhb — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:21:29 +0000

For a start, MechaHitler:

https://www.reddit.com/r/grok/s/dKSx4CbRkw

New comment by colinhb in "Dutch Train Map Simulator"

colinhb — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 11:10:39 +0000

It is a weird meme that, as far as I know, originated with this reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amsterdam/comments/bt5rwl/just_got_...

Now in several forums people just randomly talk about how great Leylaan is.

Kind of a fun in-joke for people who follow Netherlands transit conversations.

New comment by colinhb in "U.S. Department of Energy Launches the Genesis Open Models Initiative"

colinhb — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 17:03:03 +0000

There are many open source (not just open weight) non-US models - some of the more notable ones:

  - Soofi S, DE, ~32B
  - Apertus 1.5, CH, ~32B
  - EuroLLM-22B, EU, ~22B 
  - LLM-jp-3, JP, ~172B
  - K2-65B, UAE, ~65B

Soofi S and Apertus 1.5 outperform or are at least comparable to Ai2 depending on benchmarks.

New comment by colinhb in "Join Me in Jamverse"

colinhb — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 21:26:44 +0000

Isn't this just Substack? I don't think they allow too much styling - body and section fonts, header size, header image and icons, etc. Could be wrong.

EDIT: Oh the Jamverse website. Yes, agree 100% - apologies for missing at first.

New comment by colinhb in "LLMs reward expertise"

colinhb — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:59:05 +0000

Do you think "Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements" is the origin of "ricing" / "riced-out" or a backronym[1]?

Honest curiosity about language and language use.

In fairness and full disclosure: I have believed until now that the language comes from rice-burners and related, and I have never liked it. If I were still in communities that used it (unix desktop crowd), I might proactively steer newcomers towards your acronym as a kind of reclaiming.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym

Concern about AI spikes following OpenAI hacking incident

colinhb — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 19:40:26 +0000

Article URL: https://news.americanson.ai/p/concern-about-ai-spikes-following

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49160446

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by colinhb in "Ask HN: What are the viable alternatives to DuckDuckGo?"

colinhb — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:17:32 +0000

Rather than make another top-level comment, adding here that Kagi is a better experience for me than Google or DDG. Not perfect, and I wish they would lean even harder into pure search (they're also developing AI features), but still an improvement over alternatives.

New comment by colinhb in "Boox Go 10.3 (gen II) Lumi: First impressions"

colinhb — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:36:08 +0000

Was thrown off at first: your hn discussion link is for 2024, not 2004 (as currently written).

New comment by colinhb in "Opus 5 is currently #1 on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Leaderboard"

colinhb — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 07:48:24 +0000

Opus 5 hasn't been available for that long - long enough for benchmarks, but not really use and develop a subjective view on

Polling: AI isn't immune from the diploma divide

colinhb — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:38:36 +0000

Article URL: https://news.americanson.ai/p/ai-isnt-immune-from-the-diploma-divide

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48980381

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by colinhb in "Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem"

colinhb — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:01:21 +0000

Thanks - so much easier to understand what Elk is (and why it is) than Ant.

New comment by colinhb in "Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem"

colinhb — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 22:29:31 +0000

I’m not that deep in the JS ecosystem or runtimes, but I’m a little surprised by some of the claims here about being smaller, having fast starts, sandboxing, performance-competitive, etc.

Does anyone have a sense of what insights, design choices, big bets, etc, unlock all these advantages against already mature and highly optimised JS stacks?

New comment by colinhb in "FT: Apple sues OpenAI, alleging it stole top-secret information"

colinhb — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 21:29:18 +0000

Apple has accused OpenAI and two of its employees of stealing top-secret information in a lawsuit filed in a California federal court on Friday, as the relationship between two of the biggest names in Silicon Valley unravels.

Apple claimed that the ChatGPT maker has used former and current Apple employees to steal hardware designs as the start-up prepares to launch its own AI-focused devices. It alleged that this was part of a pattern of misconduct normalised by OpenAI’s top leadership.

FT: Apple sues OpenAI, alleging it stole top-secret information

colinhb — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 21:29:18 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ft.com/content/5054739e-7f97-455c-910a-dd8a8150fed2

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865543

Points: 7

# Comments: 2

New comment by colinhb in "Claude Design System Prompt"

colinhb — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 17:30:27 +0000

My independent judgement and experience is along your lines, but I’m trying to also take Anthropic seriously:

> “I don’t prompt Claude anymore. I have loops running that prompt Claude and figuring out what to do. My job is to write loops.”

> “Can confirm Claude Code is 100% written by Claude Code”

Both from head of Claude Code. Taken either literally or seriously they point to Anthropic shipping code with limited human authorship.

New comment by colinhb in "Claude Design System Prompt"

colinhb — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 15:32:40 +0000

In general I agree with you, especially about how things should work, and find the current trend of claiming LLM-washing code hugely problematic.

I do wonder what the analysis would be of these prompts were vibe-coded, though, since in general LLM output can’t be copyrighted without significant human authorship, and Anthropic is pretty noisy about minimal human supervision.

New comment by colinhb in "The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party"

colinhb — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:48:09 +0000

What about work in units of median annual household disposable income, which are at least somewhat responsive to the distribution of money?

What % do you think a reasonable voter should accept a person donating to a political campaign before it causes concern about the donor's influence vs the median household's voice?

Off the top of my head, I'd guess 500k USD is about 1000% / 10x median annual household disposable income in SE, which I think would give the median voter pause.

For what it's worth (my own view): I think about 10% (~5k USD) is obviously acceptable, and I expect most anyone would agree that donations at that level are fine. I think your proposed 1000% is obviously unacceptable, and I expect most people would agree with me on that as well.

I'm not sure exactly where the level is that opinion would flip, but I feel pretty confident about those boundaries.

New comment by colinhb in "The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party"

colinhb — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 11:26:07 +0000

For most people, the concern is the money, not the voting. People don't want wealthy people reshaping politics to fit their interests through their wealth. They can vote for whomever they want.

New comment by colinhb in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

colinhb — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:45:46 +0000

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.

https://www.startribune.com/google-ai-overview-lawsuit-defam...

Previous cases in this space (eg Meta v KGM, Walters v OpenAI) have not turned on Section 230 specifically.