Hacker News: erentz

New comment by erentz in "Newborn girls and boys show different attention patterns within hours of birth"

erentz — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 03:34:29 +0000

The differences observed are at the population level. That means there is HUGE overlap between the two populations and you can’t distinguish any data point as being a girl or a boy. Only that the populations have a different average or range. For a visual representation check out [1].

This kind of thing shows up all over the place in all fields of research. It’s why for example although you can see immune system differences at a population level between patients with disease X and healthy controls, you can’t in any way use it as a biomarker for an individual who might have disease X.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13293-026-00976-9...

New comment by erentz in "Asana cleared 5 years of engineering work in 2 weeks with Codex"

erentz — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 06:27:57 +0000

> An engineer checked progress twice a day and reviewed every proposed change.

It doesn’t sound like that much changed. If one engineer can really review all the changes in under two weeks, the original estimate of 5 years of engineering work has to be waaaaaaay off.

New comment by erentz in "Treasury Orders Erasure of Domestic Ownership Records"

erentz — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 21:44:05 +0000

I think the genesis was the Panama papers release way back. Turns out the US is one of the better places to launder money through.

I don’t understand though: Why would any company find it difficult to register their owners? That seems like a pretty basic thing any company should know and it’s a perfectly normal thing in most countries.

New comment by erentz in "Chicago Mercantile Exchange will list futures contracts for GPU costs"

erentz — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 04:15:19 +0000

This all feels like when Enron started talking about making a market for trading /bandwidth/.

New comment by erentz in "Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity"

erentz — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:53:57 +0000

See: “benefits in terms of capital spending + the few ongoing jobs created”

New comment by erentz in "Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity"

erentz — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:17:34 +0000

> There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools.

But for who and where is it realized? Ireland’s massive data centers aren’t there to serve Ireland’s tiny population. The value is exported overseas and profits realized overseas.

So what really matters for Ireland (and any country/region hosting these data centers) is whether the benefits in terms of capital spending + the few ongoing jobs created outweighs any increased electricity and environmental costs faced by everyone else.

New comment by erentz in "New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices"

erentz — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 02:41:20 +0000

> Americans really do get screwed in so many ways.

Absolutely. I assumed the parent was talking about the US because that's the only place in the world I've encountered this.

New comment by erentz in "New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices"

erentz — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:12:24 +0000

It’s not your property they care about. They usually want this because it includes liability insurance if you damage their property or someone else’s, or your negligence causes harm to someone.

New comment by erentz in "Virginia bans sale of geolocation data"

erentz — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 23:13:19 +0000

What is the rationale for going to the trouble of such a law but only banning sale, rather than all sharing?

New comment by erentz in "Danish privacy activist Lars Andersen raided by police"

erentz — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:27:35 +0000

What makes it giving up sovereignty? I understand it creates the potential for separation in future but not yet. The devolution of Scotland and Wales happened peacefully a couple(?) of years later, and Scotland may also separate in future.

New comment by erentz in "Danish privacy activist Lars Andersen raided by police"

erentz — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:06:11 +0000

How can we know the IRA “won”? The country changed a hell of a lot over the course of the Troubles and by the time of the GFA in 1998 I don’t see how it is so clear that the reforms wouldn’t have also been achieved via other peaceful and democratic means.

New comment by erentz in "Tesla allegedly in autopilot mode crashes into Texas house, woman killed"

erentz — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 23:24:34 +0000

You’re extremely confident about this just based on your experience of it not happening to you. It’s good that it hasn’t driven you into a house but that doesn’t mean it can’t fail in a way that does drive someone else into a house.

New comment by erentz in "Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school"

erentz — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 01:18:22 +0000

Your example would call more to create an "information technology" subject in schools, that updates its curriculum to include changes like the development of AI. Thus, you go to that class, some of your coursework in the year is going to involve learning about AI and how it works, what it can and cannot do, using it for some project, so on. Not using AI for doing your homework in every other subject.

New comment by erentz in "Bernie Sanders unveils plan to give the public direct ownership of AI companies"

erentz — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 02:12:45 +0000

It’s a tax. So the government wouldn’t be buying anything. OpenAI (for example) would need to issue 100% new shares and give them to the government to hold in this new sovereign wealth fund. This the new sovereign wealth fund holds 50% of the company.

I don’t know how you decide what companies are targeted though. OpenAI/Anthropic are pure AI plays. But what about an AMZN or AAPL that have AI as only a part of their business.

New comment by erentz in "Vance: Iran can have access to $300B reconstruction fund"

erentz — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 05:15:17 +0000

This would be an incredible $1,800 from each taxpayer sent overseas to the Iranian regime. On top of what’s already been spent and the inflation caused. In any other time in history just this alone (ignoring all the other scandals) would lead to something like a landslide 100 seat swing in the house. The fact polls show we’ll be lucky to see 10 seats switch shows how incredibly broken our information environment has become.

New comment by erentz in "EY Canada published a cybersecurity report and most citations were hallucinated"

erentz — Sun, 31 May 2026 04:06:59 +0000

It looks like when you sum up: the cost to generate information using an LLM + the cost to actually verify the information, the result on average is the same as not using the LLM. That does not mean some times it isn’t faster and cheaper. It just means other times it’s slower and more costly. This along with different people’s tolerance for accuracy explains why we see such diverging experiences with it.

So in order to make it pan out the forces at play are trying to make everyone believe we now have to accept wrong, even dangerous results.

New comment by erentz in "The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100"

erentz — Sun, 24 May 2026 22:19:53 +0000

NZ is even worse than Australia on the housing tax vs shares tax front. No housing taxes. Yet they have what is effectively an annual wealth tax on shares (FIF) even on their pitiful retirement savings schemes. This discourages saving in shares and encourages putting money in real estate.

New comment by erentz in "Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable"

erentz — Sun, 10 May 2026 01:41:03 +0000

But now even this is just producing more information and requires more work both of you and of the original sender.

New comment by erentz in "Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable"

erentz — Sat, 09 May 2026 23:42:13 +0000

Seems AI has made it cheap to produce information but now you have to spend more time parsing the information. And it’s now the less competent/useful people spending less time producing more information with the more useful people spending more of their valuable time parsing that information. This is why I’m skeptical of LLMs ever becoming a net benefit in most organizations.

New comment by erentz in "The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced"

erentz — Fri, 01 May 2026 23:40:48 +0000

> What I remember most about the 90s was the overwhelming optimism.

To me it felt we were slowly making the world better for all. Progress was happening and would continue to happen.

Now it feels like we are rapidly on the path to a dystopian Elysium like future. A dystopia for everyone but the sociopathic ultra wealthy that want to rule over us. And they’re not even hiding their intent from us anymore.