Hacker News: ilamont

Buyer: eBay AI Pop-Ups Disrupt Shopping Experience

ilamont — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:51:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/letters/blog.pl?/pl/2026/7/1784684738.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49008733

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by ilamont in "Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude"

ilamont — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:27:21 +0000

If you have the time, read the judge's response to the motion:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...

The big deal for publishers and authors is the payout per eligible title is $3k. For a traditional publishing contract involving one author, the amount will be split down the middle.

The other thing which caught my eye is the judge slashed the class counsel's fee by half, from 12.5% ($187.5m) to 6.8% ($101m). The class counsel's unreimbursed litigation expenses were $2.6m.

The three class representatives get just $15k each.

Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement, reduces class counsel fees to 6.8% [pdf]

ilamont — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:25:50 +0000

Article URL: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.434709/gov.uscourts.cand.434709.680.0_4.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48996972

Points: 10

# Comments: 0

New comment by ilamont in "How we measured AI writing across arXiv, and where the measurement breaks"

ilamont — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:36:28 +0000

> We took papers submitted in 2021 and 2022, before ChatGPT, treated them as ground-truth human

How is the author so sure that people or companies weren’t already using early tools at that time?

New comment by ilamont in "Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database"

ilamont — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 22:20:30 +0000

> The circumstances in which you actually need to physically present your Social Security card are quite rare indeed.

In my state, it's one of the allowed document types for proof of social security number, required to get a real ID drivers license.

https://www.mass.gov/doc/ma-real-id-documents-checklist/down...

New comment by ilamont in "Who's afraid of Chinese models?"

ilamont — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 21:58:56 +0000

But it’s a problem to be dependent on China. The U.S. should pass a law that (1) makes explicit that collecting data for training models is fair use, and (2) bars terms of service that forbid distillation, for U.S. companies at a minimum.

I'm amazed that no one is talking about proposals that are surely being discussed in Washington and pushed by SV lobbyists to restrict Chinese models on national security grounds, or other some other basis.

The belief that Bytedance could engineer a finger on the algorithmic scales to serve the interests of the Chinese Communist Party led to a lot of debate in Washington, and ultimately resulted in TikTok being divested from its Chinese owners. Huawei is shut out from the U.S. market, which limits its business even in markets where it's not banned because it's effectively stamped with a scarlet letter.

IMHO, Chinese models are headed for a similar fate or at least a showdown in Washington or the courts because they are supported and/or controlled by entities which ultimately serve the CCP.

New comment by ilamont in "Kimi Work"

ilamont — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:50:49 +0000

Same. No way I am uploading data to a PRC company. It's not just an IP issue ... there's a very high likelihood such companies will be restricted in the United States, even if they try "Chinawashing" stunts like Bytedance.

China's C919 passenger jets to enter service on first international route

ilamont — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 13:13:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.msn.com/en-xl/technology/aviation/china-s-c919-passenger-jets-to-enter-service-on-first-international-route/ar-AA28ehwG

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48967952

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by ilamont in "AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion"

ilamont — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 21:33:24 +0000

You know, at one time Amazon was grouped in with all of the other big tech companies as a member of FAANG, as if the company has a culture of solid engineering at its core like Google or Apple.

It doesn't anymore, if it ever did. Read the shareholder letters over the last 5 years like this one (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-ceo-and...). Move fast. Embrace AI in every corner of the company. Lay off thousands of people like we're a lean startup. Oh, but make sure to have a senior engineer check any AI code you want to push to production (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47323017).

Amazon has made some impressive software, but there's also a ton of junk getting shipped. Customers and "partners" have to deal with it every single day. Sometimes it's "oops"-level stuff like this, at other times it's AWS regions going dark for hours.

Browse the Amazon seller forums (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions?s...). Every day there are stories about back-end things breaking, or AIs overriding attributes or flagging random items as pesticides. The receiving errors at Amazon warehouses are incredible, and take months and multiple support tickets to fix.

IMAX CEO: We haven't made new IMAX projectors in 50 years

ilamont — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 20:29:44 +0000

Article URL: https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/action-movies/its-very-difficult-to-watch-the-odyssey-the-way-christopher-nolan-intended-and-imax-ceo-explains-why/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48939815

Points: 18

# Comments: 5

Can AI build a jet engine? JARVIS Challenge tests AI copilots

ilamont — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 02:59:12 +0000

Article URL: https://news.mit.edu/2026/can-ai-build-jet-engine-jarvis-challenge-tests-ai-copilots-in-tough-tech-engineering-0714

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48929878

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

The American E.V. Has Been Crushed. Will It Take the U.S. Auto Industry with It?

ilamont — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:05:00 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/magazine/electric-cars-american-evs.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48921970

Points: 17

# Comments: 2

Texas factory cost $469M using old equipment, makes zero artillery shells

ilamont — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:52:37 +0000

Article URL: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/texas-ammo-factory-zero-shells/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48914892

Points: 24

# Comments: 14

New comment by ilamont in "The Estranged Worlds of J. G. Ballard"

ilamont — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 23:12:27 +0000

"Fantastic fiction" .... that's actually a very apt way to describe Ballard's work.

His memoir presents a vivid but not fantastic view of his life in the suburbs of southeast England, like a British Cheever. I felt surprised but shouldn't have; many of the greats of science fiction or fantasy or fantastic fiction had harrowing experiences as youths and then led lives that seem "normal" while exercising their trauma through the written word. Vonnegut, Tolkien, Wolfe ...

CNN duped by parody account on Twitter posing as California politician

ilamont — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:21:49 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/mcconnell-viral-parody-cnn-22343474.php

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48913106

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

U.S. Eyes Offshore Spaceports with First-Ever Call for Industry Input

ilamont — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 20:53:42 +0000

Article URL: https://gcaptain.com/u-s-eyes-offshore-spaceports-with-first-ever-call-for-industry-input/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48837276

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by ilamont in "New Literalism Comes for Museums"

ilamont — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 20:26:18 +0000

I think you would appreciate Munich's science museum (https://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/museum-island/visit). They've done a solid job of balancing accessibility and hard science, and updating many of the old models and displays from the last century, including the wing devoted to bridge building.

I spent a good 45 minutes drinking in the exhibits around hydropower generation. And who doesn't appreciate a cutaway section of one of the first Airbus jetliners? https://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/museum-island/exhibitions...

Hudson News self-checkout terminals add 3% "employee benefit" surcharge in NY

ilamont — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:36:38 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/_ZachGriff/status/2074538643465683065

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822639

Points: 3

# Comments: 2

New comment by ilamont in "The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup"

ilamont — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:07:13 +0000

Yes, 滷肉 ("braised meat") is highly concentrated. You can't eat the sauce by itself like a stew, it would be too rich. So it's usually served on white rice or in this case noodles.

The ingredients are typically finely minced fatty pork with soy sauce and strong flavorings like dried mushroom, garlic, star anise, and a fermented bean sauce that's super salty. Plus other ingredients that make the taste unique to the chef or shop.

New comment by ilamont in "The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup"

ilamont — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:19:40 +0000

Many years ago I saw a Japanese TV program that explored the food of southern Taiwan and one of the stops was a restaurant that had a 106-year old vat of broth. It was tall and narrow and had a giant hump of crust on one side.

If it's still open, it would be going for 130+ years at this point.

ETA: Found it. Established 1895, the year Taiwan was annexed by Japan. It's not soup, it's a meat sauce (滷肉) used on a noodle dish. Scroll down to the middle of the page, which shows the chef with the pot in front of him.

https://ksdelicacy.pixnet.net/blog/posts/5067270713