<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: economistbob</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=economistbob</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:49:58 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=economistbob" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What very very similar ways would that be?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:35:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49007539</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49007539</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49007539</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They did not change the laws.  The rich tribe guy ignored them and they let him off just like the Anthropic guy.  They did not change the laws.  The old businesses just folded and the new ones via unlicensed independent contractors made cottage industries out of small scale fraud and tax evasion.<p>How many Uber drivers can show their local business license for every town they pick people up in?  How many have sales tax accounts for their state?  Every uber driver without them should have been charged with the same crime as Al Capone.<p>Now they are trying to control the knowledge, and the vehicle driving, etc. via AI.<p>It is frankly a tribe takeover via mass criminal activity.<p>He should have been charged with tax evasion for every pickup in a place where he lacked a business license, but the tribe would never allow it.  Compliance is only for the other guys.<p>Only the dumb local guy graduating high school trying to earn a living has to worry about legal compliance since the rich guys are too hard to prosecute.<p>They did not change laws.  They refuse to enforce them and we are being taken over by the reincarnated legion of Al Capone as a result.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:46:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49006752</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49006752</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49006752</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There is a lot of evidence.  I lived through it.  Every family with children and an internet connection or MP3 player  was terrified of getting ruined suddenly via a letter.  It was in the news every day about some other grandpa or single mother losing their house.<p>Ripping CDs was long illegal.  Perhaps the Librarian of Congress  made an exception.  Now they hid everything behind a CCB that is like Arbitration so we will never know because they have hid almost aspects of societal justice about copyright and business labor behind arbitration style secrecy.  The most useful courts are secret and now people believe there are no proceedings and they do not understand how much of our society was litigated and debated before.<p>Here is an article from 2008 Specifically explaining that ripping a CD to format convert for personal use is illegal and the RIAA and Sony BMG saying it merited suit but they had bigger fish to fry.<p>1. <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/17814972" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/transcripts/17814972</a><p>Mr. FISHER: That's right. So then, you have to ask yourself, <i>why is the industry continuing to cling to that notion that there is no such legal right?</i> (1)<p>"Bigger fish to fry" is not the same as "legal".<p>People selling software to easily convert VHS to hard drive were also punished. For decades they were very clear that format shifting was outlawed.  But now that it supports centralizing power and creating a permanent class of info-priests to rule the society, they allow it for them.<p>Frankly, making all the justice system secret is why the media had to turn to personality cult nonsense for most reporting.  All the great stories of the past were informed via the justice system activities.  Since all the court stuff is secret now, all they had to talk about was Donald Trump.<p>"Discovery" provided the bulk of news facts before they secreted away all the justice system proceedings for liability, labor, negligence, medical care, copyright.<p>It used to be possible to know stuff about America and there was "evidence" all over the place.  Now there is never any evidence for anything anywhere.  That's Scalia's legacy thanks to Concepcion, absolutely gutting the ability of the society to use Hawthorne effects to discern legality and behavior.<p>This country used to have evidence for everything, and now a lack of evidence is so common that it is a trope level popular refrain.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:07:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49006182</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49006182</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49006182</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "OpenAI says its AI went rogue and launched 'unprecedented' cyber-attack"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I see the USA taking permissive approach for all sorts of AI derived things that would be considered fraud or worse in years past. The laws have not changed, but the lawless in charge are pushing through their takeover.<p>I suspect a drunk will be in accidents in self driving vehicles and not charged if the AI was driving.  That has probably already happened.<p>Americans will worship the owners of the robots and give them carte blanche and superiority status in any dispute.  It is already happening.  It is now the pedestrians job to dodge self driving cars rather than them having the right away.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:59:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49006075</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49006075</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49006075</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Amen!   We are watching them incinerate the past so they can lie about the past in the future.   They are destroying the books and will censor what was in them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:49:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005967</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005967</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005967</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yet countless families, including old folks were ruined during untold numbers of RIAA suits because "converting to save space" is not a permissable use.<p>They used to go around destroying lives by the thousands after Napster was creating because of the invalidity of that argument.<p>It is a crime to make a CD of your MP3s and vice versa, and you cannot convert your VHS to DVD.<p>A billionaire does it at scale, well then saving space via format conversion  is a grand, while the peons still can see their lives destroyed but with it hidden via the CCB secret panel.  Two tier American Justice on full display.  Bankrupty and seizure or worse for thee and billions for he. Format conversion legalized only for oligarchs, and of course, no appeal so it will only be a binding precedent on that one rich guy and nobody else.   Tribe on both sides, keeping special rights for themselves that are illegal for everybody else.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:40:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005846</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005846</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005846</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Never really understood how libertarians expect to have someone making guns for their fiefdoms when there is no one to enforce property rights for said gun elements and manufactories.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:37:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005806</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005806</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005806</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "OpenAI says its AI went rogue and launched 'unprecedented' cyber-attack"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So, telling us that the laws do not apply to them and that they may commit crimes with impunity</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:31:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005726</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005726</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005726</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Amid nurse shortage, a university rolls out the welcome mat for men"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That is a straw man.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:12:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48996769</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48996769</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48996769</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Meta's AI models are powering the first wave of Genesis Mission projects"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Qwen: Zestiest<p>Nemo: Straightest<p>DeepSeek: Craftiest</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:48:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48995673</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48995673</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48995673</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Amid nurse shortage, a university rolls out the welcome mat for men"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There are lot of assumptions in that statement which may not be scientifically valid.  Even if, the patient's life should not outweigh the medico's own. In a case where a medico choose that, they must choose to risk their life for a patient.  The choice over ones life span ought not to rest with one's pay master as it does in American medicine.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:31:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48995461</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48995461</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48995461</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Seems like the kids miss their chance at justice because of section 230  allowing platforms the freedom to remove whatever they want but not be responsible for what they keep or amplify.   That is the problem with 230.  Censorship is permitted and punishing the censor isn't.  Twitter and Tiktok are literally microblog platforms that get away with removing good stuff and leaving evil because they "are not a publisher" while the algorithm literally publishes a chosen set of articles to people.  Facebook can remove religious freedom material and leave human trafficking groups. Section 230 gives the publishers the cake and the edict too.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:02:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48994120</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48994120</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48994120</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "The Trump administration's Threat to Scientific Research"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So, there is material there but you are unsatisfied with the thoroughness related to brand identification and want a 99.95 confidence interval on discerning between natural disease vs toxoid injection.<p>It sounds like you believe that DNA contamination in the manufacturing process would leave the body rapidly and they are saying that it sits around in exosomes for much longer based on their observed specimen.<p>The latest science thus being that exosomes with DNA contaminants may not clear the body in the manner previously presumed.<p>It is highly likely that it was only presumed and nobody actually thoroughly analyzed it before.  <i>The science of how fast exosomes cleared was likely a speculation from years ago, and it may in fact be wrong now that someone has actually funded observing exosomes over the long term.</i><p>Therefore, this paper is cutting edge science and annoys the establishment because it attacks some sacred presumption upon which entire edifices are built. It attacks such presumptions with observable empirical facts.  That makes one have to consider how many it would take to falsify a premise, a premise that they might realize was never hypothesis tested in the first place -- since it is in fact a speculated dogma instead of an observed scientific fact.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:17:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993415</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993415</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993415</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Who's afraid of Chinese models?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You are on to something.  The extensive copywrite terms have ensured that the work of everyone except the oligarch corporations vanishes into the ether since it cannot be reproduced for over a century if the author lives another 30 years.<p>There will be no one debating the great minds of the twentieth century because the corporations made it illegal for people to republish critical editions of any such works.<p>The greats were recirculated every twenty or thirty years for centuries.<p>The smaller authors will vanish into the nothing and Western Civilization's 20th century onward will vanish and be almost forgotten forever because of that mouse.  There will be more ancient literature remembered than literature after the invention of the printing press because they made it illegal to share printed materials for nigh on two centuries if an author was young when they wrote it.  There will be more ancient scrolls preserved for the future than books of 20th century philosophy and science because the latter is a crime.<p>Only the oligarchs who pirated the books will have a cultural memory.   They have cursed our era to oblivion when it comes to intellectual property because they can generate billions now for the mouse's henchmen.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:59:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993176</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993176</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993176</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "How we measured AI writing across arXiv, and where the measurement breaks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thank you for this work.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:06:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981600</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981600</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981600</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "How we measured AI writing across arXiv, and where the measurement breaks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The problem is that humans start with credulity.  AI hallucinates and makes up stuff some percentage of the time.    Humans are not "default deny" when given information.    Unleashing that was a disservice to mankind and has created a future filled with lies and people who are confident in them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:06:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981592</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981592</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981592</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "LineageOS Statistics"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is a great OS.   It needs to be available on newer Motorolas, say 2024 and onward.  People want SD card slots, and even 3.5mm headphone jacks.  It is the memory card slot that matters most.<p>It is great to have a degoogled phone.   Then the lack of a card slot annoys you and the desire to just plug in an aux cable and have sound anywhere without a dongle comes to the fore.<p>I wish they would just commit to also support the Motorola G Stylus line.  The G Stylus 2024 was a great phone.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 12:46:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831225</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831225</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831225</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Everyone removed their blogroll.  That is what happened.  Someone gave Automattic (WordPress foundation that could receive "donations" from advertising platforms) the idea that making blogs mostly discoverable via paid advertising was a good idea. Automattic removed the blogroll by default, and then most of the blogs removed, and then most of the blogs vanished.  Blogs were discovered via the huge list of other blogs.  There were so many incredible blogs.  One could then check all their linked blogroll blogs because birds of a feather flocked together...<p>Automatic became an NGO.  A big advertising seller paid the NGO lots of money.  The NGO removed blogrolls so that blogs were discoverable by paid advertising instead of word of mouth.  Countless blogs also removed their blogrolls, and blogging declined.<p>That is one more thing that Google has done to destroy the web that gave birth to it.  That happened around 2012.<p>Also, old blogs were like having a subject matter expert as your personal mentor via correspondence.  Those new blogs would have been called content farms in the days of the blogroll.  Search back then was based on keywords and boolean. You could type "NOT youtube" and no youtube would fill your results. The top blogs are content farms by the old standards.<p>Google removed the ability to use boolean search to get exactly what you want based on text content, and then they removed the blogrolls via bankrolling the WordPress developers. Now the top content farmers get top billing on every search engine, which requires marketing spend, the blogrolls are niche structures, and you cannot boolean your way to a real set of search results.<p><a href="https://mor10.com/newspack-automattic-google-and-the-saasification-of-wordpress/" rel="nofollow">https://mor10.com/newspack-automattic-google-and-the-saasifi...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Jul 2026 21:20:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798057</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798057</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798057</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as protection"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It would seem to me that the best hse of resources here would be ensuring LineageOS ports to more devices than Pixels ASAP.   Yet no one works on that angle.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:04:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48760119</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48760119</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48760119</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by economistbob in "Slate EV truck starts at $24,950"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Talking the power company into taking it and calling that recycling is really just renaming the landfill location and making the electric customer's pay for it.  Repurposing a failing piece of hardware is not recycling it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 19:48:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664823</link><dc:creator>economistbob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664823</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664823</guid></item></channel></rss>