Hacker News: malthaus

New comment by malthaus in "Nvidia dismisses "circular financing", says every $1 it invests brings back $100"

malthaus — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 14:06:56 +0000

sure, as long things go up, smart. when things no longer go up, they will take the whole economy down with them akin to the banking crisis in 2008 or the dotcom bubble before that (which both had far less circular incestuous activity going on) and will shamelessly act surprised after the fact.

as long as things go up people conveniently ignore the lessons from the past.

we are long overdue for a correction and given the fear mongering oligopoly shenanigans we must be very close.

New comment by malthaus in "Anthropic boss Dario Amodei calls for AI development to slow down"

malthaus — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 17:23:12 +0000

"our burn rate is insane, let's all calm down collectively, fortify our moat so we can do regulatory capture & rent-seeking for the next 50 years"

fear is still the best tool to get masses to agree with whatever plan you hatch for yourself

New comment by malthaus in "Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]"

malthaus — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:44:37 +0000

the story really comes full circle for me now. i've read the book in the 90s and recently listened to hess's POV via a ccc talk (https://youtu.be/USDNMWZsR5o auto subbed/dubbed video here)

great nostalgia for when the internet was still amazing

New comment by malthaus in "Why some US restaurants are banning tips"

malthaus — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:12:20 +0000

it's time for a worldwide reset on tipping culture / assumptions.

america was always weird - the tipping practice leads to over-the-top fake service, is abusive to staff and only benefits restaurant owners. and they turned all that up to 11 over the last few years. how americans can cherish and even defend this, i can't get my mind around it.

meanwhile in europe, american practices are imported by way of POS terminals asking in outrageous use cases for outrageous amounts of tips. no, im not tipping 30% for an item i pick from a shelf in a store. add to that the awkward interaction at a bar or so when you have to select a tip under the watchful eye of the server.

people are shamed into tipping in all manners of ways and let those abusive practices plow over them.

it's a disgrace.

i wish for a world where all prices, including tips & taxes, are on the label / menu when i buy them and asking / giving anything on top is illegal. we would all be better off, even though americans for some reasons can't accept it - i have little trust in the headline of the linked article becoming a bigger phenomena.

New comment by malthaus in "Korg PS-3300 is back"

malthaus — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 06:35:49 +0000

over the last few years there was a huge demand for analog synthesizers again after them being mostly replaced by digital synths since the mid 90s for 2.5 decades with users demanding from the traditional companies to re-issue the classics

they are classics for a reason and subtractive synthesis is mostly "done", so it's more about bringing classic sound characters due to subtle differences in components / architecture back

New comment by malthaus in "GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization"

malthaus — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 19:41:12 +0000

wasn't that always the reaction historically whenever people felt like their livelihood was threatened by new technology?

New comment by malthaus in "Show HN: For 10 World Cups, my model's 2 favorites had the champion every time"

malthaus — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:41:36 +0000

now back your claim with money and bet accordingly on betting sites to see if you uncovered some actual alpha here

New comment by malthaus in "Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet”, is retiring"

malthaus — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:25:18 +0000

i'd say having "invented" the internet is a bigger claim to have influenced people rather than looking good in a bikini.

so fair game to cash in on that legacy.

New comment by malthaus in "Anthropic raises $65B in Series H funding at $965B post-money valuation"

malthaus — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:20:27 +0000

nice, that's another 4 years of spacex data center usage runway!

New comment by malthaus in "Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold"

malthaus — Tue, 05 May 2026 09:26:46 +0000

yorck unlimited made living in berlin 10x as exciting

but you could always be sure that the old lady loudly crunching on every.single.crisp. was there in the showing as well

New comment by malthaus in "Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't"

malthaus — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 08:28:50 +0000

i'm swiss and also own property in central berlin. while i was having insanely fast internet in all the places i lived in switzerland since the year 2000 (first cable, then fiber), german telekom has still not been able to connect my flat to fiber, even though the street facing building side is and i'm stuck with semi fast but fully overpriced dsl, which on top is spotty because someone decided to install cheap copper - while cable internet is not an option because 2 cable providers fight over who owns the access to the building.

whatever the roll-out in switzerland is, it's heaps better than in germany and most other places.

New comment by malthaus in "Delve removed from Y Combinator"

malthaus — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 05:39:28 +0000

"that gets you on", ie. the kind of personality that literally pays & hustles to be featured on such a list to fuel their own ego?

colour me surprised

people still seem to think that forbes scouts the world for the best talents instead of the lists being basically a paid ad

New comment by malthaus in "LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs"

malthaus — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:27:36 +0000

hackernews as a whole has the same issue software engineers have - overestimating one's wisdom and overapplying it with confidence to everything, resulting in horrible takes that might look like signals but are mostly noise

New comment by malthaus in "Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS"

malthaus — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:39:44 +0000

your trauma is my happy memory - being a lotus notes admin/dev consultant during my studies made me live a very comfortable life as a student!

New comment by malthaus in "Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion"

malthaus — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 18:46:02 +0000

very hard to feel sorry of you when countless professions experienced the same in the past - only that they were poor / working class and not overpaid software engineers at FAANG.

also very egocentric & pessimist way to look at things. humankind is much better off when anyone can produce software and skilled experts will always be needed, just maybe with a slightly different skillset.

New comment by malthaus in "I’m joining OpenAI"

malthaus — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 07:29:42 +0000

it's a tough pill to swallow for developers, but nobody cares about your ability to write code. people care about you shipping something people want.

i can easily hire 100 sweatshop coders to finetune your code once i have a product that works but the inverse will never happen

New comment by malthaus in "Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun"

malthaus — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 11:50:33 +0000

so something that is a horrible store of value, has monumental transaction fees, non-instant confirmation and is associated by laypersons mostly with speculation, fraud & illegal transactions will solve those?

New comment by malthaus in "AI is killing B2B SaaS"

malthaus — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 07:35:00 +0000

... where they come with their own idiosyncratic mental/moral flaws

you gotta treat communities like newspapers - acknowledge their bias and diversify

New comment by malthaus in "Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out"

malthaus — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 07:59:13 +0000

going off my example - chatgpt knows everything about me including desires, goals and issues im struggling with.

combine this with the fact that i have disposable income.

i can't fathom how much advertisers are willing to pay to put themselves in front of my eyes vs a google search for "dining table"

New comment by malthaus in "The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership"

malthaus — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:47:44 +0000

... and it will turn into a "technically true" rat race between the main players on what the definition is exactly while you can ask any person on the street with no skin in the game who will tell you that this is nowhere near the intuitive understanding of what AGI is - as it it's not measured by scores but instead of how real and self-aware your counterpart "feels" to you.