Hacker News: ggm

New comment by ggm in "The Redistribution of Housing Wealth Caused by Rent Control [pdf]"

ggm — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 04:46:58 +0000

Without injection of new housing stock by the state, by coops or other agencies than BTR capital investors, it's highly likely to be a weaponised outcome to prove rent controls don't work.

If the construction strike by commercial investors is replaced by public housing then the better outcome can emerge.

New comment by ggm in "Why news.Y Combinator.com UI designed looking like designed by 5 year kid"

ggm — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 07:25:12 +0000

Why thank you kind stranger. I shall see how I cope with this. Woof!!

New comment by ggm in "Yoti does not report GrapheneOS users to the authorities"

ggm — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 06:59:56 +0000

Since they repudiate the alleged claim I ask: qui bono? Who benefited from imputing they did?

New comment by ggm in "Novo Nordisk reports cyberattack as UK gives Wegovy pill the nod"

ggm — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 06:58:54 +0000

Something the reg excels at is non sequiteur linkages. The hack has nothing to do with approval in the UK.

New comment by ggm in "Why news.Y Combinator.com UI designed looking like designed by 5 year kid"

ggm — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 05:53:53 +0000

Because we like it that way.

It's also why (as an example) I code in a terminal with fixed width comic s(h)ans.

New comment by ggm in "Ask HN: What do you think about US Government's Geographic Ban on Fable?"

ggm — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 05:47:33 +0000

I think it shows "open source intelligence" can gather too much information which is risky to the US strategic interests by harvesting the data implicit in the models.

The more inferences improve, the more likely it is somthing strategically valuable is at risk. Somebody maybe in the Fort Meade district did their homework.

It's nothing about AI per se, or the mythical hacking and code risks. It's the wider information leakage risk although possibly it showed too many backdoor opportunities in federal and state and supply chain online systems.

New comment by ggm in "Ask HN: What features do you miss in Google Docs for desktop?"

ggm — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 05:43:41 +0000

I'd love a plaintext edit mode. Emacs or vi.

And a short path from this to markdown and "ok, now go gui on me and make pandoc work"

New comment by ggm in "Forbes declares Elon Musk as the world’s first trillionaire"

ggm — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 03:47:45 +0000

Europe and Asia are increasingly uncomfortable with a de-facto starlink monopoly, not to say the inherent risks of mandated US traffic snooping.

Not that a snap of the legal fingers will change this, but it's likely in a 10+ year vision launch costs and LEO won't be single-supplier dominated quite the same way.

Tesla is losing market share. Not because they are bad cars, because the $27,000 low end unit never emerged and GWM, BYD and the Europeans are accelerating into the segment. Tesla is immensely profitable but it's not as market dominant as it was. Prestige EV auto has returned to core market brand leaders as well. You can't bottle the scent of a German brand like Audi, BMW or Mercedes.

I'm sceptical "compute in orbit" is going to be a thing. I'm skeptical the AI money pit will ever be profitable. Other ventures (chip makers) will be fine.

New comment by ggm in "Forbes declares Elon Musk as the world’s first trillionaire"

ggm — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:56:17 +0000

Almost all of these uber rich hold assets as shares in enterprises they manage with mutable value. They don't diversify most of this wealth into other people's stocks. Their investment is motivated to enhance the underlying value of the enterprises they control. Bezos owns Amazon. He's not now owning chocolate factories, Microsoft and a uranium mining enterprise. He owns AWS and .. selling other people's things. Musk owns his cars, his batteries, and his space enterprises and X. He isn't visibly acquiring Ford, or the Indian National railways, or banks in Japan.

I'm not trying to disrespect this. I just want to observe it's ephemeral wealth tied to the stock price of enterprises they own. Diversified stock backed wealth, land, minerals, food production is somewhat different. Some of that is also somewhat ephemeral wealth, agriculture is notoriously variable to its value against climate.

Should spaceX undergo some unforeseen launch related major problem, or tesla become ensnared in a major lawsuit, or xAI and C underlying debts get called in a LOT of this wealth would evaporate surely?

What I read suggests space X is immensely valuable on government contracts and starlink and xAI is a major debt overhang, which won't entirely vanish because of this float. Instead, it will be diluted into the general stock purchase. If Musk hadn't restructured the AI debt into a bundle, this would be more clear.

Carnegie owned steel. He sold out for the equivalent of $300b or more and then gave it away. Buffet owned the entire market and made profit in re-insurance. He was across everything. (He's retired now and also appears set on giving almost all of it away)

New comment by ggm in "Trump admin blocks foreign access to Anthropic's most powerful AI models"

ggm — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:25:06 +0000

The perverse reversal here, is that if Anthropic had not turned down working on MILSPEC data they would probably have been told to welcome the engagement so the state could functionally understand what foreign strategic interests wanted in AI.

New comment by ggm in "AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42"

ggm — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 04:58:52 +0000

Asking for donations to pay the AWS bill from the people they fired the agentic code at is the cherry on the icing of the banana supreme.

If real, tragically funny.

If fictive, we'll written.

New comment by ggm in "Ask HN: Is anyone shorting the overspend in AI yet?"

ggm — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 08:46:00 +0000

I absolutely do NOT want to do this. I am asking if any of the people with real money and fintech are doing this. Not because I want to, because I want to UNDERSTAND.

New comment by ggm in "Ask HN: Is anyone shorting the overspend in AI yet?"

ggm — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 07:11:09 +0000

That's a substantive point, the GPUs are reprogrammable to do other tasks so the people who pay for massive CFD computation in Mil and Oil will have competitive offers, but I'm unsure the spectacular future value is there, if the perpetual "buy more" dries up. They could wind up alive, but with a smaller horizon.

I know I harbour resentment because of the knock on effects on ram and SSD pricing, but I'm serious that I think the amount of capital being sunk in hyperscalers does not look to me to be recoverable inside the investors ROI. If my example is poorly chosen, perhaps the people currently buying the kit are the ones destined to have a fall.

Ask HN: Is anyone shorting the overspend in AI yet?

ggm — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 06:05:41 +0000

I and a small cohort of friends truly believe that the "$1T" floats are going to burn capital. We think this is a disaster of landgrab spend, and that the cost of a token cannot be recovered by future commercial use.

If this theory is correct, then following on from the housing debt crisis, this is a hollow shell and so somebody in finance should be shorting the floats, and betting on a crash to clean up.

Polymarket betting aside, is anyone able to confirm that there are funds looking at a short play in the AI space, or is everyone on-board with things and nobody is taking the other side of the bet?

I am not in fintech or investing, I am not seeking alpha to do this, I don't invest directly. I am however interested in validating my theory that somebody smart out there sees a huge upside in the explosion when this attempt to buy market share in Unicorn juice explodes.

NVDA as an example has under 2% of its trade in shorts. I can't tell if thats big or small TBH. Feels small.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48486763

Points: 17

# Comments: 14

New comment by ggm in "L'Affaire Siloxane"

ggm — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 03:53:02 +0000

PCR/amplification is black magic. I'm also amazed by "no the DNA will be too old" keeps turning out not to be entirely true: People getting out of jail from re-testing evidence 20+ years later, Hominid DNA statements being made from archaic bones..

Animal population studies used to be (in my understanding) largely observational. Now, people can do scat tests and identify individuals.

New comment by ggm in "Who's the smartest corvid?"

ggm — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 03:48:14 +0000

Australian Magpies are NOT corvid but Artamidae along with the butcherbird, but they are absolutely this intelligent.

They hold court over their juvelines and enforce behaviour, and they mourn the passing of members of the community.

I think it's possible the niche encourages large brains. A bit of nature not nurture maybe.

They are tool users. And they can teach offspring lessons learned from humans, and recognize friend and foe. Well mostly: cyclists are routinely mis-cast as foe no matter what. This is why Australian cyclists look like demented wheelie porcupines: cable ties on the helmet keep the eye-peckers at bay.

New comment by ggm in "AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere"

ggm — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 03:45:17 +0000

Make PR pay. $5 per PR. You can refund, but if you get snowed by 10,000 PR then you have bank to pay for the work to ignore them.

New comment by ggm in "L'Affaire Siloxane"

ggm — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 01:54:48 +0000

I feel the microplastics contamination story which turns out to be measuring nitrile gloves used preparing samples is in this space. We can now measure things down to levels that may exceed our ability to exclude them as contaminants, routinely.

Driving in America Is Headlight Hell

ggm — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 21:57:33 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/06/car-headlights-too-bright-adaptive-beams/687488/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48483271

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

Using sound waves to make espresso cut brewing energy use 75%

ggm — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 21:54:33 +0000

Article URL: https://theconversation.com/i-used-sound-waves-to-make-espresso-it-could-cut-coffee-brewing-energy-use-by-75-284929

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48483247

Points: 7

# Comments: 0