Hacker News: epestr

Bromism Influenced by AI Psychosis (2025)

epestr — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:03:15 +0000

Article URL: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/aimcc.2024.1260

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48369113

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by epestr in "Stripe is friendly to “friendly fraud”"

epestr — Wed, 27 May 2026 03:12:14 +0000

I went down a bit of a search looking for counter evidence that crypto is likely less available to them, and it turns out both perspectives are true depending on the scale you look at. At the micro-level, survey data from emerging markets[0] confirms that crypto offers immunity against institutional failure and inflationary currency.

But this QJE article[1] argues there's a ceiling to how far things scale. Concluding that the cost to keep a decentralized network secure scales with its total economic value. So while there is immediate value to it's user, it might not scale well, and can't replace a country's financial system anyway because securing it at a sovereign scale would just be more expensive.

[0]: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/17/10/467 [1]: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/140/1/1/7824430

New comment by epestr in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

epestr — Wed, 27 May 2026 02:23:24 +0000

There does seem to be some with AI psychosis[0] but it's fewer in number than other places and downvoted on posts with moderate amount of comments

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot_psychosis

New comment by epestr in "What color is your function? (2015)"

epestr — Wed, 27 May 2026 01:57:58 +0000

Ante has some points on this issue: https://antelang.org/blog/why_effects. All of this is just different syntax in other languages and solved but the abstraction provided seems to be neater.

New comment by epestr in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

epestr — Wed, 27 May 2026 01:40:27 +0000

I'm quite surprised by how the HN audience has multiple stakeholders with deep expertise and lived experience associated with any post, without all the generalisation and hollow speculation present elsewhere. And these comments get posted quite quickly too.

New comment by epestr in "The user is visibly frustrated"

epestr — Tue, 26 May 2026 19:04:56 +0000

From above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586778

Simulacra Levels and Their Interactions

epestr — Sun, 17 May 2026 14:58:37 +0000

Article URL: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qDmnyEMtJkE9Wrpau/simulacra-levels-and-their-interactions

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48169515

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by epestr in "Greek Alphabet Cards"

epestr — Sun, 17 May 2026 09:26:42 +0000

Oops, I thought your claim was about the consonant sound /b/ vs /v/. I had the British /bi:tə/ in my mind, and forgot that Americans used /beɪtə/, which I agree is closer to the American pronunciation if your 'ay's are not diphthongised.

Funny enough, I went to double-check the IPA and realized the textbook classical Attic should be reconstructed as /ɛ/, so /bɛːta/ anyway. Which is still closer to the American version as both are open front vowels.

BUT, I just went down a rabbit hole and found this video on the history of the letter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS5POB2rLsw

It turns out that while /bɛːta/ is the old academic reconstruction, statistical analyses of spelling mistakes from then shows that Athenians had already closed that vowel to /e:/ or even all the way to the modern /i:/ sound as early as 500 BC. So the how they spoke daily was even messier.

New comment by epestr in "Greek Alphabet Cards"

epestr — Sun, 17 May 2026 04:10:36 +0000

The modern academic consensus is that "η" was likely pronounced like the "e" in "met" but longer. In IPA, it'd be /e:/. And thus "β" as /be:ta/. What you are saying is how it is done in modern Greek though.