Hacker News: estearum

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 22:28:40 +0000

If that's the argument the other fellow would like to make, then sure. But that's not the argument he's making. He's specifically taking issue with trying to add friction to small arms manufacture and trafficking.

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 22:26:08 +0000

Myanmar/Burma the strategy was build-to-capture: make improvised, unreliable firearms that could be used to ambush security forces and take their firearms.

Evidence against the point above that it's trivial to replace professionally manufactured small arms.

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 22:24:09 +0000

You're not addressing the argument before you, once again

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 22:23:32 +0000

Now you're making a different claim. You said that manufacturing fentanyl requires all sorts of specialized equipment and knowledge. It simply does not.

Does that mean cartels aren't sophisticated manufacturers? No, of course they are.

Second straw-man: no one said homemade firearms literally don't exist. The claim is that they are a rounding error.

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 22:21:46 +0000

Sure, they can also easily replace people. Guess we just shouldn't arrest them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

they can also easily replace labs, guess we shouldn't raid them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

they can also easily replace ... guess we shouldn't ...

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 22:20:58 +0000

> Who says that the US-sourced guns that they are tracing are even a substantial fraction of the overall guns in use?

Statistics?

Believing your implication that homemade firearms or widespread and just don't show up in the seizure data is a little silly unless you can explain why this would be the case.

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 21:47:55 +0000

It's quite evident their point is that they don't want gun control and have pre-committed to whatever opinions are necessary to prevent it, including an opinion as absurd as "having to manufacture their own firearms would not be a significant impediment to their operations."

Mass synthesis of the drugs that cartels produce is trivial (that's why they produce them)

Putting drugs on trucks is trivial (that's why they do that)

Rudimentary semi-submersible vessels are impressive but you only need a few and they're not that hard to make (again, that's why they make em)

The telecom stuff they do is legitimately pretty impressive, but this too is just significant capex for long term benefit -- not so with self-made guns which are significant capex and you get out the other side a low volume of low-quality, non-dependable, often-breaking guns.

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 21:29:59 +0000

lol making meth or fentanyl doesn’t require very sophisticated knowledge or expertise.

From readily available precursors, you can make fentanyl in less than one day.

The Gupta method (from readily available precursors) takes three steps, all at room temperature, and no specialized equipment at all.

That’s why it’s everywhere.

Versus non-professionally manufactured guns which… statistically pretty much don’t exist. Rounding error on any statistic you could come up with on firearms.

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 21:28:29 +0000

So why aren’t they doing that today? Pretty simple empirical question.

The answer is that it is in fact easier to just buy them in the US.

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 21:27:05 +0000

What’s the relevance of who “this is a popular idea” to? It’s either a good idea or it’s not.

If it’s so easy, then why aren’t they doing that today and instead we just encounter thousands of guns bought in the US? Must be because that’s easier, correct?

I get the sense you’re a bit pre-committed to your position here though and perceive this as a bit of an identity question.

New comment by estearum in "Mexican surveillance company Grupo Seguritech watches the U.S. border"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 20:39:31 +0000

Uhhh why would they do that when they can just buy them for super cheap at industrial scale from the US?

And yes the solution to things like organized crime is always just a continuous chipping away and adding friction where you can.

Not giving them massive amounts of cheap, high quality firearms seems like a meaningful goal.

New comment by estearum in "OpenAI backs Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable"

estearum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 11:08:26 +0000

I see I see. Makes sense!

New comment by estearum in "Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers"

estearum — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 22:08:53 +0000

Right but this is rare enough for "power vacuums" to generally be regarded as a bad thing and not a good thing.

If they frequently had great people step in, we'd just produce them artificially all the time.

New comment by estearum in "DOJ Top Antitrust Litigators Exit After Ticketmaster Accord"

estearum — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:24:48 +0000

> If Biden had bragged about what Khan, Kanter, etc. were doing, instead of hiding it in embarrassment (and letting other parts of his admin sabotage it), he would have been popular.

lol

that is a remarkable take

you think far too highly of the American public to think they have anything close to this sophisticated (or aware) of a view of antitrust!

New comment by estearum in "DOJ Top Antitrust Litigators Exit After Ticketmaster Accord"

estearum — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:24:08 +0000

Yeah, just imagine how frustrating it'd be if that was your job, and you were prevented from doing it by the bad actors! Could drive a person insane.

New comment by estearum in "OpenAI backs Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable"

estearum — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:05:35 +0000

nobody was "the" founder of OpenAI. Sam was one of many cofounders, though I don't see how the particulars here are relevant to the point above.

New comment by estearum in "OpenAI backs Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable"

estearum — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:50:39 +0000

Looks to me like the rationalist/AI researcher/EA cohort of (admittedly odd) people was quite deliberately hijacked by a sociopath

New comment by estearum in "OpenAI backs Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable"

estearum — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:48:27 +0000

Not really. The entire premise of the structure was that obviously AI would be immensely valuable and that they needed binding contract structures to prevent themselves from falling victim to the greed and ambition that would obviously consume those at the helm.

Unfortunately their contract structures weren't strong enough to protect from the combination of the "king of the cannibals" and completely absentee regulatory oversight.

New comment by estearum in "OpenAI backs Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable"

estearum — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:46:05 +0000

Is Sam even a rationalist, or describe his views as rationalist?

New comment by estearum in "US court declines to block Pentagon's Anthropic blacklisting for now"

estearum — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:46:58 +0000

> By the way… the same two stipulating terms exist with OpenAI’s contract with them… nudge nudge wink wink

Actually if you read Sam's statements closely (which you must, because he's a snake), this is not necessarily true.

What he said is that they "are working towards adding" similar protections. He did not say they even proposed them to DoD, never mind that DoD agreed to them. So maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but I've never seen any public info that actually provides clear evidence of it. All the reporting comes back to Sam's rather nuanced statement.