Hacker News: kipchak

New comment by kipchak in "France pulls last gold held in US for $15B gain"

kipchak — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:06:59 +0000

I seem to be having more luck with French language sources, mostly the Bank of France records. From what I can tell the shipping was done mostly commercially with some later by air[1]. Reportedly De Gaulle was frustrated with the speed of change wanted to use the Colbert warship but was dissuaded by the minister of finance.[2]

[1]https://archives-historiques.banque-france.fr/ark:/56433/115...

[2]https://www.lesechos.fr/finance-marches/banque-assurances/st...

New comment by kipchak in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

kipchak — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:55:08 +0000

I'm not sure if I'm lucky or it's because I have feature releases deferred or if the tool ripped enough things out but this hasn't been my experience so far. If it does you could save off the changes as a JSON template and re-apply after updates, or automatically with task scheduler.

New comment by kipchak in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

kipchak — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 17:30:17 +0000

I've had good luck with the winutil tool, which is wrapper for a bunch of powershell commands and registry edits in a .ps1 to remove bloat. After using it on a fresh install I can't recall the last time I've had any of the mentioned issues.

If you're (understandably) concerned about the security implications most of the changes can be done manually going off the docs.

https://github.com/christitustech/winutil

New comment by kipchak in "Despite Doubts, Federal Cyber Experts Approved Microsoft Cloud Service"

kipchak — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:28:40 +0000

As far as I know numbers aren't reported, but there's probably at least as many DIB GCC-H customers as government, who in part use it because the government does and it's compliant. Once they're locked in it's very hard to migrate.

New comment by kipchak in "U.S. Navy turns down Hormuz escort requests because of high risk"

kipchak — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:54:13 +0000

I'm reminded of the pre ww1 Berlin–Baghdad railway.

New comment by kipchak in "World-first gigabit laser link between aircraft and geostationary satellite"

kipchak — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:46:50 +0000

There's a patent (2017/0280211 A1) for using this as a data storage method, and there was a company called Lyteloop trying to leverage the idea for data storage with estimations for petabytes across constellation.

New comment by kipchak in "Rise of the Triforce"

kipchak — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:48:30 +0000

Agree on the rest, but thankfully for #3 a modern base ND Miata with the 1.5 is pretty close to in weight to a NA due to a lot of weight saving work by Mazda.

New comment by kipchak in "A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs"

kipchak — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 18:27:17 +0000

Thanks, trying to figure out the timeline relative to the board's creation given how close they are. The first email I can find related to a meeting is this one from Boris Nikolic on Oct 20th, with /pol/ on the 23rd.

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01992...

New comment by kipchak in "A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs"

kipchak — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:17:04 +0000

Which meeting are you seeing? That search doesn't seem to work for me, I'm only seeing the one Jan 2012.

New comment by kipchak in "De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)"

kipchak — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:07:32 +0000

Likewise, it's always good to think through different perspectives. For what it's worth there are definitely people who think it will take much longer than most expect, due to for example the creation and growth of US Stablecoins, China wanting to be an exporter more than wanting the Yuan to be a reserve currency, or greater relative weakness in other countries for example.

New comment by kipchak in "TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues"

kipchak — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:48:43 +0000

Given the details mentioned (9 guard deaths) the "unconfirmed reports" is probably referring to the x post[1] mentioned in the peoplenewstoday.com article. Personally word not somehow getting out of dozens of people being shot seems hard to believe, though not impossible.

[1]https://x.com/ShengXue_ca/status/2015122407736963455

New comment by kipchak in "De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)"

kipchak — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 23:54:23 +0000

I agree the dollar is uniquely successful, but the Pound ended convertibility in 1931, and limped as a reserve currency into the 70s. While not a reserve currency, another example is Chinese currencies like the second zhiyuanchao going off silver convertibility, which lasted for a bit over 50 years.[1]

When the Dutch for example did try to go off a metallic standard it was essentially a last ditch effort as they were completely broke. The US on the other hand had the advantage of still controlling global trade/it's military, liquid markets and the petrodollar system. The dollar's floating exchange rate also served as a release valve, allowing devaluation to occur gradually over the decade that followed versus all at once.

Re a dollar collapse I see a gradual shift towards a more multipolar world with no clear singular reserve currency and no currency which eclipses the dollar as more likely than a collapse or eclipse. For example where the Americas still primarily transact in dollars, the Yuan becomes an increasing percentage of belt and road trade, and the Euro in it's sphere.

[1]https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/rise-and-fall-paper-money-yua...

New comment by kipchak in "De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)"

kipchak — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:42:18 +0000

Couldn't you make the same case for every other former reserve currency which has had something replace it?

New comment by kipchak in "De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)"

kipchak — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 19:19:55 +0000

This was arguably largely offset by the actions of the treasury's increased short duration issuance (>1 Trillion in t-bills) combined with draw-downs of the reverse repo facility[1] instead of from banks. It's difficult to tell exactly how much money winds it's way into the economy without using proxies - for example credit spreads[2] or NFCI[3] which indicate loose conditions, which don't show much evidence of post 2022 QT's impact.

Or in other words the data seems to show the loosening effects were more powerful than the tightening ones. Now that the RRP has been drawn down balance sheet growth will likely occur.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BAMLH0A0HYM2

[3]https://www.chicagofed.org/research/data/nfci/current-data

New comment by kipchak in "TikTok Deal Is the Shittiest Possible Outcome, Making Everything Worse"

kipchak — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:23:11 +0000

I think the main problem is a YouTube "customer" is there because they're looking for long form content, and someone looking for sort videos is probably already either a TikTok or Instagram user with no particular reason to switch.

New comment by kipchak in "Ford kills the All-Electric F-150"

kipchak — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 19:39:34 +0000

I drive a Corolla (great highway mileage!) and will probably get something larger the next time I buy because it's smaller than most everything else on the road, both in terms of visibility and collisions. My person tightwad math changed after a drunk driver crossed the median and took off a mirror. If I did have children this would doubly be a concern, even if I could manage to fit the car seat and stroller in the Corolla.

As an aside the base Corolla engine for the current gen was formerly the 139HP 1.8L 2ZR-FAE and the 2L was limited to the "sporty" models but this was dropped at some point. The power figures are somewhat deceptive, it does a very good impression of a v6 under 3000RPM or so, but if you need to wind it out to merge on the highway there's not much there unlike a early 00s VTEC Honda or something.

New comment by kipchak in "Using secondary school maths to demystify AI"

kipchak — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 00:01:08 +0000

Orch OR is probably wrong, but the broader point is that we still don’t know which physical processes are necessary for cognition. Until we do, claims of definitive brain simulability are premature.

New comment by kipchak in "Using secondary school maths to demystify AI"

kipchak — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 23:32:00 +0000

It could well be the case that the brain can be simulated, but presently we don't know exactly what variables/components must be simulated. Does ongoing neuroplasticity for example need to be a component of simulation? Is there some as of yet unknown causal mechanisms or interactions that may be essential?

New comment by kipchak in "Using secondary school maths to demystify AI"

kipchak — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 19:29:21 +0000

Consider for example Orch OR theory. If it or something like it were to be accurate, the brain would not "obey physical laws that can be described by mathematics".

New comment by kipchak in "Using secondary school maths to demystify AI"

kipchak — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 19:12:51 +0000

It seems like the brain "just" being a giant number of neurons is an assumption. As I understand it's still an area of active research, for example the role of glial cells. The complete function may or may not be pen and paper-able.