Hacker News: ethanwillis

New comment by ethanwillis in "Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery"

ethanwillis — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 21:58:56 +0000

Their right to a business model doesn't outweigh the right of the public to not be harmed.

Settlement with OpenAI for Discriminating Against U.S. Workers

ethanwillis — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 23:13:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/civil-rights-division-secures-settlement-openai-discriminating-against-us-workers

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49176575

Points: 38

# Comments: 8

New comment by ethanwillis in "Keyv and friends compromised in active Shai-Hulud supply chain attack"

ethanwillis — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 15:11:36 +0000

You know with all this AGI swirling around nowadays that is stronger than nation state hackers you think one of these companies would demonstrate just how capable they are by defending public infrastructure.

Unless...

Maybe in 6 months.

New comment by ethanwillis in "Ask HN: Why is the "Who is hiring?" post being re-aged?"

ethanwillis — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 01:18:48 +0000

thanks! was just wondering. maybe some issue with the implementation of manual movement of posts.

Ask HN: Why is the "Who is hiring?" post being re-aged?

ethanwillis — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:55:30 +0000

I noticed that the August 2026 "Who is hiring?" post currently shows it's 1 hour old when opened from the front page. All the comments themselves are also under 1 hour old as well..

But if you check from the whoishiring account submissions it is properly tagged at 8 hours old https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring

https://imgur.com/a/ZBprWGl

Why would comments/posts get re-aged like this? Do any other posts/comments get re-aged?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49163218

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

New comment by ethanwillis in "Ask HN: Who is firing? (August 2026)"

ethanwillis — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 23:06:39 +0000

Good question. I'm intentionally leaving it vague to see what people come up with.

Also, I've seen what you are describing a few times. Usually happens in companies with certain financial incentives to hide "problems"

New comment by ethanwillis in "UI8 Forge"

ethanwillis — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 21:51:05 +0000

the infinite scroll loop is cool but a bit nauseating lol

Ask HN: Who is firing? (August 2026)

ethanwillis — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 21:46:38 +0000

As suggested in a comment(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48765213) on my previous "Who is quitting?" post I figured I'd give a "who is firing" post a shot :)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161893

Points: 19

# Comments: 5

Ask HN: Who is quitting? (August 2026)

ethanwillis — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 21:45:18 +0000

Curious what people are getting up to! Following on from my previous post(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48760048):

  1. Why are you quitting?
  2. What will you be doing? (Even if nothing!)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161877

Points: 27

# Comments: 1

New comment by ethanwillis in "Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)"

ethanwillis — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:38:14 +0000

I have a family member who has been a butcher for nearly 40 years.. if you'd want some tips on this to try it again I'm sure he'd be willing to tell you how to go about it properly.

New comment by ethanwillis in "Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)"

ethanwillis — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:31:36 +0000

Definitely has always been some absurdity and I think there always will be. I think it only varies in the degree!

Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)

ethanwillis — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:58:28 +0000

There's a lot of absurdity in this industry right now. I'm curious if anyone else who has the ability to do so is quitting this month.

If so I'm curious:

  1. What pushed you to do it?

  2. What will you be doing? (Even if nothing!)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48760048

Points: 190

# Comments: 149

New comment by ethanwillis in "Biohub releases a world model of protein biology"

ethanwillis — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 18:45:18 +0000

You're simply wrong. I say this as a computer scientist who ended up studying and working in bioinformatics for a period of time.

The reason I don't now? It's that people don't understand biology enough to understand the currently untapped potential and definitely not the advances that have happened. So they allocate money to yet another todo app, food delivery app, crypto wallet, or yet another finetune of a model to talk like a caveman.

New comment by ethanwillis in "Tokenomics: Quantifying Where Tokens Are Used in Agentic Software Engineering"

ethanwillis — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 18:10:41 +0000

I have also developed a similar system not focused on the exploratory refinement of prompt(s). But more focused on feedback loops cybernetic style, so focused on the maintaining of stability of the prompt outputs by a growing library of deterministic checks and autofixes. Anything that is a "problem" which isn't covered by that library is surfaced to the human driving the process.

New comment by ethanwillis in "Biohub releases a world model of protein biology"

ethanwillis — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 09:56:03 +0000

I'm sure people will take this the wrong way, but a lot of the people who are on HN and who orbit technology circles in SF are really just not actually intellectually curious people.

They might like to think they are, they might try to pretend they are, but when pushed they're simply not.

Look at all of the groupthink that is perpetuated nonstop while they also proclaim they're creating, investing in, etc. so many unique ideas. Yet year after year it's the same thing in a different color.

What they actually are is interested in money and prestige. So give it a little time and they'll learn enough about biology to try and get some validation from their peers with comments. If money actually pours into bio that is.

New comment by ethanwillis in "Biohub releases a world model of protein biology"

ethanwillis — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 09:53:20 +0000

  a scientific engine for prediction, design, and discovery that can map proteins across the tree of life, predict their structures, and design new protein binders that function in laboratory experiments.

So, my issue with this is just like in a lot of the other areas of bio we're not able to explore outside the semantics of what is "known." Even a simpler task of just doing proper assembly is plagued by this. De Novo assembly of an alien/novel organism mixed with samples from other alien organisms would be impossible with what we can do today. Even with things that we're familiar we struggle with metagenomic assembly.

EWD 1041: By Way of Introduction (Science is hated)

ethanwillis — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:41:00 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1041.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48386337

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by ethanwillis in "Domain expertise has always been the real moat"

ethanwillis — Sat, 30 May 2026 23:35:02 +0000

Maybe not between continents but we had meaningful live video chat in 1968

New comment by ethanwillis in "Magnifica Humanitas"

ethanwillis — Mon, 25 May 2026 18:29:55 +0000

> but I think we still have it a whole lot better than a century ago (by and large).

Worse, they won't even give you the dignity of a claim to contribution to society. Then the lack of contribution is weaponized against you.

New comment by ethanwillis in "The Rage of the Billionaires Is Coming"

ethanwillis — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:41:55 +0000

> It sounds like the public is only booing. Barely anything of note yet.

I think this is being misunderstood. I read it as a final bit of civility. It's a warning.