Hacker News: hcurtiss

New comment by hcurtiss in "Grok Build is open source"

hcurtiss — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 01:29:32 +0000

Yes, and imagine if we doubled the USAID funding! Or even quintupled it! Why, if we borrowed a(nother) trillion dollars, imagine how many lives we'd save!

My point is that it's all fake math. If we're killing people by not funding aid programs, then we're killing even more by not funding more. How much are you personally sending to Africa? How much more could you be sending? Imagine if you borrowed to do it? You can't do the math that way. While tragic, those people have no demand on our treasury any more than Vladimir Putin does. We may be less benevolent than we once were. We are also much further in debt than we once were -- to the point of threatening the Republic's viability. The US didn't kill a half million children any more than France, or Spain, or Great Britian, or China did by not sending the same money. It's all fake math.

New comment by hcurtiss in "Grok Build is open source"

hcurtiss — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 01:41:23 +0000

You are, of course, right. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at that.

New comment by hcurtiss in "Grok Build is open source"

hcurtiss — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:10:45 +0000

I don’t think the AfD is “literally fascists.” They certainly don’t claim to be.

New comment by hcurtiss in "Grok Build is open source"

hcurtiss — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:08:34 +0000

Those numbers always crack me up. If you do the math that way (US funding cuts kill people), imagine how many people we’ve killed by not confiscating all the wealth of our nation and shipping it to Africa!

New comment by hcurtiss in "Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning"

hcurtiss — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 03:35:12 +0000

But there have been way higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels historically, and those have largely coincided with plant and animal life climaxing. See the Jurassic.

New comment by hcurtiss in "Grok 4.5"

hcurtiss — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:18:16 +0000

I'd like to use it for legal work too. Microsoft makes great hay about its ability to sandbox CoPilot's work and not train on or share company resources ("Look for the green checkmark."). It's largely for that reason that we've rolled out Copilot to most of the white collar positions in the company. Do you happen to know whether xAI has similar functionality?

New comment by hcurtiss in "Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents"

hcurtiss — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:27:50 +0000

Nah, dollars buy war machines. And for the first time in human history, we are on the precipice of projecting substantial ground force without the need for humans.

New comment by hcurtiss in "The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics"

hcurtiss — Wed, 27 May 2026 20:26:10 +0000

I can think of no capitalist society in the last thousand years that has produced feudalism.

New comment by hcurtiss in "Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down"

hcurtiss — Tue, 26 May 2026 22:41:02 +0000

I'm not so sure that global population growth tells the right story vis-à-vis declining birth rates in western countries.

New comment by hcurtiss in "The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics"

hcurtiss — Tue, 26 May 2026 19:07:48 +0000

I don't recall what arguments were made in favor of feudal lords. And one could hardly call that system "capitalism," which is the subject of this thread. I maintain that the relevant objective should be the best outcome for the most. There is abundant objective evidence that capitalism is the economic system best suited to that objective, even if it produces varying degrees -- and sometimes large amounts -- of income inequality.

New comment by hcurtiss in "The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics"

hcurtiss — Fri, 22 May 2026 21:50:39 +0000

But, again, the gap between the poor and the wealthy is irrelevant. Income inequality doesn't describe what's best for the most. If more income inequality produces a better outcome for the majority, it becomes very difficult to argue income inequality is, itself, bad. While the GINI index has certainly increased over the last fifty years in the US, real median household income and real personal consumption expenditures have too, all while poverty rates have substantially declined. It is exceedingly difficult to argue by any objective metric that rising income inequality has handicapped median standard of living.

We see similar trends around the world. In fact, the countries that have struggled the most with stagnating standards of living are precisely those that have most aggressively imposed redistributionist policies.

Income inequality with rising standards of living for the median is only bad if your politics are driven by envy.

New comment by hcurtiss in "The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics"

hcurtiss — Fri, 22 May 2026 20:38:09 +0000

So also does the US. Trump had prominent cases against Google and Meta. Biden against Apple and Amazon. Prominent efforts on airlines and grocery stores. Honestly, I'm pretty sure the US and Chinese antitrust laws are pretty similar (theirs largely crafted after ours).

New comment by hcurtiss in "The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics"

hcurtiss — Fri, 22 May 2026 20:29:49 +0000

It's not, but if the existence of billionaires correlates strongly with an increase in the median standard of living, I'm all for it. My politics are not driven by envy -- only what consistently produces the best outcome for the most.

Regarding the idea that we can design a system where "no one should be left wanting," that sounds nice. So does big rock candy mountain. There is no such system.

New comment by hcurtiss in "The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics"

hcurtiss — Fri, 22 May 2026 18:08:41 +0000

And almost for the entirety of that period, humans lived in abject poverty. The rise of capitalism perfectly correlates with the most spectacular increase in human flourishing and prosperity in the history of our species. Even in the last fifty years, liberalizing economies, private ownership, and contract law have lifted tens of millions out of poverty, mostly in SE Asia.

New comment by hcurtiss in "The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics"

hcurtiss — Fri, 22 May 2026 03:09:53 +0000

There absolutely are monopolies. There are, in fact, many state run enterprises. Where do you get these ideas?

New comment by hcurtiss in "The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics"

hcurtiss — Fri, 22 May 2026 01:47:51 +0000

You think Chinese businesses aren’t in it for the profits?

New comment by hcurtiss in "The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam"

hcurtiss — Tue, 19 May 2026 14:59:27 +0000

You are doing the left-wing, pretending not to understand meme. Those are the principal objections in the linked article. Data centers are not an environmental catastrophe. And AI isn’t coming to take all of our jobs. There will be change, for certain, but if we don’t embrace it, the West is doomed. That is not hyperbole. History bears this out repeatedly.

New comment by hcurtiss in "The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam"

hcurtiss — Tue, 19 May 2026 08:44:59 +0000

Is that your experience with AI? It’s made my work vastly more efficient and valuable. And have you been to modern Chinese cities? Prosperity is awesome. Stop listening to the Luddites and eco-nihilists. There’s a way to have all that AND civil rights. But if we continue to outlaw development and energy intensive industries, then yes, the West will be Chinese slaves.

New comment by hcurtiss in "Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI"

hcurtiss — Tue, 19 May 2026 04:39:43 +0000

Remember Delaware? Where he not only won on appeal but provoked an exodus of companies out of Delaware?

New comment by hcurtiss in "Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI"

hcurtiss — Tue, 19 May 2026 04:29:29 +0000

Tesla is falling to pieces?

https://stocks.apple.com/symbol/TSLA