Hacker News: d4ng

New comment by d4ng in "Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts"

d4ng — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:59:05 +0000

Not quite. You could buy a long-dated put if implied vol and current rates are amenable. This protects you against the underlying going up significantly. You might also predict that it won’t go up too much, and just short the underlying with a stop loss.

New comment by d4ng in "Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts"

d4ng — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:54:30 +0000

Why is on-device AI the future? What is your reasoning behind this? Look at the proportion of things we compute on someone else’s computer relative to what we compute on our own device. Why would this change for LLMs?

New comment by d4ng in "Satan's 19th-Century Bank Note (2017)"

d4ng — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:48:14 +0000

Why does interest on bonds need to be paid by printing money? Can’t it be paid from tax revenue?

New comment by d4ng in "Track your workout from the iPhone Lock Screen"

d4ng — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 19:12:46 +0000

I haven’t used an Apple Watch before. However, I’m quite happy with the accessibility of the notebook. It’s also very cheap.

New comment by d4ng in "Track your workout from the iPhone Lock Screen"

d4ng — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 17:08:16 +0000

I don’t take my phone into the gym due to the distraction from doing what I’m there to do. I have found that a simple squared notebook with a pen to be perfectly sufficient for remembering what I’m doing, knowing how much I lifted last time, and seeing how much progress I’ve made.

New comment by d4ng in "SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading"

d4ng — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:22:10 +0000

It has helped me to live with the model that the probability of there being any sort of objective morality or ethics is close to zero, and that a hierarchy of influence within any given context is generally unavoidable. Once you accept this model, you spend less time moralising and angering yourself over perceived wrongs, and can now spend more time on figuring out how to live a happier life despite the fact that there are no set rules.

New comment by d4ng in "EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA"

d4ng — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 16:52:38 +0000

I don't agree. They are two separate depictions of what might happen as a result of applying a tax on advertising. They may well coincide with each other, however. Saying that the second is a restatement of the first is like saying two interpretations of Piero Manzoni's "Artist's Shit" are restating the same fact.

New comment by d4ng in "EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA"

d4ng — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:42:53 +0000

No one buying shit anymore. People still buying shit elsewhere. GDP and tax revenues fall relative to others. Deflationary aspects. Market leaders complain through lobbying groups. Repeal. Back to square one.

New comment by d4ng in "EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA"

d4ng — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:22:08 +0000

Vendors now cannot get X pounds with Y pounds advertising outlay to make Z pounds per unit of wares. To continue making Z money per unit of wares, with previous S pounds price charged to consumers per unit, add significantly more than reduction in Y advertising per unit to S to offset reduced "brand" "awareness".

New comment by d4ng in "EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA"

d4ng — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:10:59 +0000

Governments see reduction in tax income and GDP and repeal taxes. In UK: Signal "mansion" tax on properties valued above X price to collect recurring Y pounds total tax. Market adjusts valuations based on probability of tax. Number of houses still worth at least X now diminishes. Now cannot collect recurring Y pounds. "Mansion" tax delayed.

You have this complex system that has reached some sort of relative equilibrium based on say a set S of ten sorts of tax rates, along with a set F of factors (size millions), with the government's tax revenue R being one of those outputs. Then some guy in the government called G signals to the government and public that he can increase R by X by fiddling with a member of S, or maybe adding a member to S (of size say ten).

Is G stupid, or does he just lean towards retaining the public's affection, his relatively low salary, potential under the table payments and whatever networking opportunities his job provides? I lean towards the latter.

New comment by d4ng in "EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA"

d4ng — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:27:57 +0000

Tax ad revenue. Increase advertising prices. Advertisers pay more to sell their wares. Consumers pay more to consume their wares.

New comment by d4ng in "The Second Derivative: Why No One Understands the AI Boom"

d4ng — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:48:22 +0000

Please see the bicycle analogy. Resources available at a given time are finite. If everyone is now churning out software at a higher rate with LLMs, what changes in terms of the value gained?

New comment by d4ng in "The Second Derivative: Why No One Understands the AI Boom"

d4ng — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:35:48 +0000

How much value in present terms was created by n hours of your time before LLMs, and how much value is created now by n hours of your time? If everyone is using LLMs, has that value calculation result changed?

People used to go to work by foot. The best runners would get to work first. Then the bicycle came along. The person who was the best runner before is now still getting to work first on the bicycle.

New comment by d4ng in "The Second Derivative: Why No One Understands the AI Boom"

d4ng — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 05:53:02 +0000

It would have been a while until you could sell at profit and move, though.

New comment by d4ng in "The Second Derivative: Why No One Understands the AI Boom"

d4ng — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 22:26:43 +0000

I think I agree. The question is what happens before then. The S&P 500 went down about 40% following 2000 and 2008. The FTSE 100 showed similar losses.

My questions are: Will we still have jobs if there’s a crash? How can we start researching what the optimal hedge is against such a crash?

New comment by d4ng in "The Second Derivative: Why No One Understands the AI Boom"

d4ng — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 21:16:23 +0000

In light of the article, why are you bullish?

New comment by d4ng in "FoundationDB's Flow – Bringing Actor-Based Concurrency to C++11"

d4ng — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 01:40:55 +0000

What happens when there are no messages on the queue for a given actor?

New comment by d4ng in "FoundationDB's Flow – Bringing Actor-Based Concurrency to C++11"

d4ng — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 16:32:14 +0000

Are there any actor system implementations that you know of that work differently?

New comment by d4ng in "Markets are competitive if and only if P != NP"

d4ng — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 16:58:26 +0000

Defi does a pretty good job regarding unimpeded access in comparison to the more traditional venues. This isn’t just about getting money into the system, but also what instruments you have access to.

The term ‘perfect information’ is a bit of a mirage, and has been shown to be impossible in physics (uncertainty principle).

What really matters is information advantage: Does your inexact expected value function consistently beat others’ calculations in the market. Here, the true value - value really is just a word and is dependent on people - is irrelevant.

New comment by d4ng in "FoundationDB's Flow – Bringing Actor-Based Concurrency to C++11"

d4ng — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 16:51:27 +0000

The actor itself can be said to be waiting. When it yields, the thread is then able to run another actor which was waiting on a message, and which then has a message on the queue.