Hacker News: irthomasthomas

Harness2 by Google Research – Recursive Agent Harnessing

irthomasthomas — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:28:45 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/google-research/harness2

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50151059

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

Britain should reject the lure of cheap – and scary – Chinese AI

irthomasthomas — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:25:18 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/17/why-britain-should-reject-the-lure-of-cheap-and-scary-chinese-ai

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50151038

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by irthomasthomas in "BBC licence fee to be extended with 'YouTube tax' to force more to pay"

irthomasthomas — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 23:07:12 +0000

> The licence fee is currently only due if you watch live content

That is what I thought, but the article characterizes it more broadly: "Currently, anyone who uses a television to watch content must pay the licence fee even if they do not watch the BBC"

I think they must have meant to say live television content, otherwise the fee would already apply to streaming services or anything you can watch through the tv.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "We’re releasing Jev 1.14.0 along with experimental features for dreamers"

irthomasthomas — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:45:25 +0000

I had the opposite feeling tbh

"...there's no way that our team has a full understanding of what is needed to spark delight in the world and build sick sci-fi."

"Size does matter, apparently "

New comment by irthomasthomas in "Gemini 4 Argon"

irthomasthomas — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 20:26:54 +0000

Same for me. Pro sub but the best I can access is Flash 3.6

New comment by irthomasthomas in "X Is Bad, Though"

irthomasthomas — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 14:11:07 +0000

If enough people did it would crash the value of second hand teslas, which would eventually affect how much they can ask for new teslas.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "The gap in shared understanding of LLM capability is widening"

irthomasthomas — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 08:03:01 +0000

What is the incentive to try? Any such application, if profitable, would immediately be replicated. If one person can use agents to do something profitable, anyone can use agents to easily copy it. Hence you have Anthropic locking down their models and removing features customers can access, to try and protect their own slim advantage.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "Food processing influences metabolism and brain activity"

irthomasthomas — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 11:32:31 +0000

Here are a few papers:

1. Sucralose increases peak insulin response when co-ingested with carbs: "Sucralose Affects Glycemic and Hormonal Responses to an Oral Glucose Load" (Pepino et al., 2013, Diabetes Care) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23633524/ Finding: Consuming sucralose 10 minutes prior to an oral glucose tolerance test increased peak plasma insulin levels by ~20% and decreased insulin clearance compared to water.

2. Microbiome-driven glycemic & insulin dysregulation: "Personalized microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance" (Suez et al., 2022, Cell) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35987213/ Finding: A randomized trial showing saccharin and sucralose alter gut microbiota composition, leading to personalized impairments in glucose tolerance and postprandial insulin responses.

3. Reduced insulin sensitivity from daily intake: "Sucralose decreases insulin sensitivity in healthy subjects: a randomized controlled trial" (Romo-Romo et al., 2018, AJCN) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30535090/ Finding: 14 days of daily sucralose intake significantly decreased insulin sensitivity in healthy young adults compared to placebo.

4. Direct pancreatic beta-cell mechanism: "Sweet Taste Receptor Expressed in Pancreatic β-Cells Activates the Calcium and Cyclic AMP Signaling Systems and Stimulates Insulin Secretion" (Nakagawa et al., 2009, PLoS ONE) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19352508/ Finding: Sweet-taste receptors (T1R2/T1R3) expressed on pancreatic beta-cells bind sweeteners (sucralose, Ace-K, saccharin), mobilizing intracellular cAMP and Ca2+ to stimulate insulin secretion.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "Food processing influences metabolism and brain activity"

irthomasthomas — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 14:02:19 +0000

Not really, chemical sweeteners have no sugar, but still trigger an insulin response.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "Food processing influences metabolism and brain activity"

irthomasthomas — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 12:10:40 +0000

Probably it is the bread which classifies it as UPF.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "Food processing influences metabolism and brain activity"

irthomasthomas — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 12:05:43 +0000

It was the tobacco industry! Big tobacco began buying food companies in the 1960s. Companies like Kraft and Del Monte where bought by tobacco companies R.J Reynolds and Philip Morris. These buyouts continued through the 90s. They applied their science of addiction engineering to food. And in cooperation with the USDA and farmers, they pushed a low-fat, high-carb diet, creating a market built on dirt-cheap grains.

edit: see: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.16332 "US tobacco companies selectively disseminated hyper-palatable foods into the US food system: Empirical evidence and current implications"

New comment by irthomasthomas in "OpenAI fires three safety researchers for "mishandling research information""

irthomasthomas — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 17:05:19 +0000

This probably applies to every openai researcher, and most employees, given how much they outsource. It does not admit to mishandling anything.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "OpenAI fires three safety researchers for "mishandling research information""

irthomasthomas — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 11:54:04 +0000

Where is the admission?

New comment by irthomasthomas in "Sharing AI progress in mathematics"

irthomasthomas — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 15:30:26 +0000

True. They investigated themselves for one day.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "Anthropic Subscriptions Offer 5x+ More Value Than OpenAI"

irthomasthomas — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:59:55 +0000

"Microsoft Is Warehousing An Estimated $50 Billion to $100 Billion In GPUs" https://www.wheresyoured.at/wherere-all-the-ai-chips/

New comment by irthomasthomas in "Vote on which of Hacker News' challenges for AI have been met"

irthomasthomas — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 17:59:44 +0000

No one ever spent tens of millions of dollars trying before. To evaluate the achievement we must see all the logs, know how much they spent, and how much help they had from humans.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "Musk, the Movie"

irthomasthomas — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 15:57:17 +0000

Paypal was invented at Confinity which was part owned by Thiel and had nothing to do with Musk. Thiel bought Musk's x.com in a merger deal that also made Musk ceo of the new company for 6 months before he was fired for incompetence. Beyond the windows server transition he also insisted on rebranding paypal to x.com, the everything app. I don't know where he was mostly right at paypal?

New comment by irthomasthomas in "OpenAI is enlisting an influencer army to make it look 'good for the world'"

irthomasthomas — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 15:38:25 +0000

He was kicked out of Canada because they thought the Technocracy movement which he promoted was too communist.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "Kev: Tiny Jev-like family of decision models built on top of Qwen3.5"

irthomasthomas — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 11:49:26 +0000

And Claude often identifies as Qwen or Deepseek when prompted in Chinese.

New comment by irthomasthomas in "What happened to the Snowden archive"

irthomasthomas — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 11:27:41 +0000

Except for all the exceptions, which are many, like the Jack the Ripper police files which where denied to the public.