Hacker News: danny_codes

New comment by danny_codes in "China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning"

danny_codes — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 05:18:08 +0000

The scale of public spend is probably much higher in the US..

New comment by danny_codes in "AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making"

danny_codes — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 02:04:34 +0000

We won't know how close we are to takeoff until takeoff. My main critique of AI is that takeoff is dangerous, and we're basically running towards the cliff as fast as we can. Will you grow wings before you fall to your death? That's basically the bet we're making, if you believe in takeoff.

Silver lining is that if it goes bad we probably won't live long (as a species) to say "I told you so"

New comment by danny_codes in "AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion"

danny_codes — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 15:01:52 +0000

Hetzner has hard usage cutoffs

New comment by danny_codes in "SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status"

danny_codes — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 23:25:49 +0000

I recall the Boyle video in this claimed the whole affair cost $100B or so and achieved nothing. So, typical Musk outcome.

New comment by danny_codes in "LARP – Revenue infrastructure for serious founders"

danny_codes — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:59:57 +0000

The excess money goes into assets that people need to survive/thrive. In SF/Bay Area a lot of it goes into land appreciation (housing prices). The end effect is rampant homelessness (did you know a full 1% of SF is homeless), delayed family formation, and an ever-growing state bill to subsidize landowners.

Excess isn't a problem, it's the distribution of the excess. Right now (in America) pretty much all of it goes to the top couple percent. The bottom ~40% of Americans have, by all practical measures, experienced a reduction in standard of living compared to 1980. Like, yes, they can afford more trivialities. TVs are cheap, particle-board furniture is cheap, and so on. But the actually important things like healthcare, education, and housing have moved further out of reach.

So yes, it's nice that my Anthropic friends can retire to work on, in one case, their fantasy novels. I'm very happy they can focus on something they love (and I look forward to reading their books). However, that much capital concentration leads to a hefty chunk of our (really rather rich) country struggling to service basic needs (like having a roof).

New comment by danny_codes in "SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth"

danny_codes — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 03:59:12 +0000

He's generating a lot more pollution. It's reasonable to want equity around externalities, which is a distinct problem under capitalism.

New comment by danny_codes in "SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth"

danny_codes — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 03:54:33 +0000

LVT works just as well in space.

New comment by danny_codes in "GLM 5.2 and the coming AI margin collapse"

danny_codes — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 05:12:58 +0000

Is it? I switched to Kiro and it's essentially identical.. well a bit better because you get a better idea of what the harness is doing, but otherwise identical.

New comment by danny_codes in "Costco is the anti-Amazon"

danny_codes — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 16:29:37 +0000

Sure, but 98% of what you buy is is either in the set of SKUs near you or substitutable for them. Near you only applies if you live among actual density of course.

New comment by danny_codes in "Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship"

danny_codes — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 05:42:23 +0000

Sounds like you want to have unequal representation. Or rather, you want to keep your privilege by preventing other people from gaining equal footing. You are right that this is a pretty central element of American society. However, I think we're at our best when we concede that this sort of thinking is counter-productive in the end. Cooperation is really the core mechanism for societal growth, so any efforts to prevent cooperation (in this case, by creating a subclass) is eventually self-defeating

New comment by danny_codes in "Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship"

danny_codes — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 05:34:46 +0000

> The problem I have with the immigration of today is that the levels of cultural distance are much, much higher than Ellis island.

Sounds like a good thing to me. More diversity means we can incorporate the best ideas from everyone, instead of a select few. But I suppose not everyone likes to try new things

New comment by danny_codes in "Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship"

danny_codes — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:12:34 +0000

But his base is largely not people benefiting from birthright citizenship (at least, not recently).. so if anything Trump would be an indicator that we need more immigration to counter the homegrown, um, MAGAts

New comment by danny_codes in "Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship"

danny_codes — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:11:42 +0000

That sounds like a great idea. The more citizens of your country the better. Note that US citizens pay taxes no matter where they live. So it's not a free ride by any means.

New comment by danny_codes in "Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship"

danny_codes — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:10:29 +0000

Birthright citizenship is one of the best things we have going for us. I see no reason why we should treat people differently depending on whether or not they have an imaginary stamp labeling them as special (IE, as citizens). Birthright citizenship ensures the problem of unequal representation is fixed over time. A self-fixing function, if you will.

New comment by danny_codes in "Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing"

danny_codes — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:49:40 +0000

Yeah there's no way that was the reason. I judge it to be a combination of FOMO and the big tech companies needing to pump demand for compute.

New comment by danny_codes in "Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown"

danny_codes — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:48:48 +0000

Damn that's crazy. Guess the take home test is dead now.

I never understood this behavior from undergrads though, you're paying so much for an education and then you just skip the education part? Why bother?

New comment by danny_codes in "Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown"

danny_codes — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:46:20 +0000

Why teach kids how to read, they can just take a picture of whatever text they want and have AI say it aloud.

New comment by danny_codes in "What Ozempic does to the gut-brain axis"

danny_codes — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 16:07:51 +0000

Long-term downsides tend not to show up in studies for many years. For example, these drugs might increase cancer rates, but we wouldn't know for a few decades.

I imagine though that on-balance they'll be net positive because being overweight is just so bad for you.

New comment by danny_codes in "Zuckerberg's war on whistleblowers"

danny_codes — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:34 +0000

> and thus far everyone has accepted it

For now. SC is becoming more partisan, which causes SC's credibility to decline. I assume there's a point where SC loses too much credibility and the existing system of balancing power breaks down.

New comment by danny_codes in "Zuckerberg's war on whistleblowers"

danny_codes — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 23:54:23 +0000

I'm surprised they're legal. In fact, it looks like there are strict limits on them in CA