Hacker News: gabaix

New comment by gabaix in "How to talk to anyone and why you should"

gabaix — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:12:56 +0000

Learn the social cues. People won’t say when they are busy. They might not ask you questions back, or keep doing what they do.

New comment by gabaix in "Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app"

gabaix — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:26:33 +0000

They are not allowing other marketplaces, or creators themselves, to run apps on Apple devices directly.

New comment by gabaix in "Palantir has no place in UK public services"

gabaix — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 07:22:15 +0000

Karp is a philosopher by training that has fallen into ideological blindness. He claims that he is on the right side of history. Democracies need Palantir badly.

He preaches his views to his employees. No one in his flock seems to wonder what would happen if their tools were to be used against democracy.

New comment by gabaix in "Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B"

gabaix — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 04:07:12 +0000

Liquidation preferences may have multiples. A 3x liquidation preference would have erased most gains for anyone who didn’t raise in the last round, employees and founders included.

New comment by gabaix in "AI Destroys Institutions"

gabaix — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 11:27:04 +0000

True. I myself try to read articles without looking up the authors.

It is hard though. When someone makes an extraordinary claim I feel the urge to look them up. It is a shortcut to some legitimacy to that claim.

New comment by gabaix in "OpenAI are quietly adopting skills, now available in ChatGPT and Codex CLI"

gabaix — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 07:59:01 +0000

Nagel's point is that he could not know what it was like to be a bat.

New comment by gabaix in "What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality"

gabaix — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 09:43:42 +0000

It takes fresh minds not to think about the collective impact of their actions.

New comment by gabaix in "Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome"

gabaix — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 04:30:19 +0000

What policies post World War II have had eugenic effects on the population?

New comment by gabaix in "Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests"

gabaix — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 09:59:35 +0000

The issues are two-fold

1- the territorial split between gendarmerie/police within the French territory

2- the fact the gendarmes for police work report to the Ministry of Defense.

If one had to design the police system from crash, they would likely merge police and gendarmes for police work.

New comment by gabaix in "Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests"

gabaix — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 07:34:30 +0000

I have always found confusing the existence of the gendarmes. They are indeed a vestigial force of the XIXth century, and should be transformed into a regular police force.

New comment by gabaix in "GitHub Copilot Coding Agent"

gabaix — Tue, 20 May 2025 06:07:12 +0000

What if Tim was the coding agent?

New comment by gabaix in "Key principles on in-game virtual currencies in the EU"

gabaix — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:08:49 +0000

Cannot come soon enough. Companies like Voodoo Games have made a killing scamming gullible people with no oversight.

New comment by gabaix in "Boycott IETF 127"

gabaix — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 06:28:08 +0000

> Some have been tortured.

Is there any evidence of this?

New comment by gabaix in "The Origins of Wokeness"

gabaix — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 14:03:18 +0000

Depending on the number of applicants and job posts, it may be hard to prove that the person in company A discriminates.

New comment by gabaix in "Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model"

gabaix — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 15:22:54 +0000

Ironically the post is affected by Hacker News flame-war detection system.

New comment by gabaix in "U.S. math scores drop on major international test"

gabaix — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 07:12:46 +0000

This is a good analysis.

About #2 (disincentivize charter education): parents created charter schools because they disagreed on the choices that was made for them in public education. It is very hard to fight this, as 1- they see a huge difference in test results 2- they want to give their children the best chances in life.

New comment by gabaix in "House panel concludes that Covid-19 pandemic came from a lab leak"

gabaix — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 16:44:33 +0000

Are you referring to the "Joint WHO-China Study"?

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-convened-global-...

New comment by gabaix in "Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court"

gabaix — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 20:56:33 +0000

This is an apt description of how things are, sadly. And it all starts at the crib when parents teach their children blind obedience.

New comment by gabaix in "Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo"

gabaix — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 10:21:02 +0000

The Hiroshima museum, while advocating for a nuclear free world, has an interesting take on why the US dropped the bomb on them.

According to them, the US dropped the bomb because they wanted to show their strengths against the Soviets. It makes little to no mention of the bloody battles in the Pacific.

New comment by gabaix in "Matt Mullenweg cries foul and threatens me with legal action"

gabaix — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 07:16:10 +0000

He has maintained iron clad control over Automattic, WordPress, and WordPress.org. How? By insisting on securing the proxy votes from investors. Investors — what on earth were you thinking?

There is something to say about corporate governance. When a CEO can actively harm the company without risking being fired, the role of the board has failed.

This will help the case of VCs to get board seats.