Hacker News: mattmaroon

New comment by mattmaroon in "Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore"

mattmaroon — Mon, 25 May 2026 14:24:13 +0000

For the first time in their history Google was finding themselves losing market share to ChatGPT. It wasn't a huge amount yet but it was clearly going to become one. That's what this is. The idea that the end user doesn't want this is preposterous. Those of us who make money off the web don't want this but the end user absolutely does.

This is going to happen whether Google does it or not. The toothpaste is out of the tube.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Greg Brockman interview [video]"

mattmaroon — Mon, 25 May 2026 01:22:58 +0000

I looked it up, MSFT’s market cap in 2005 was $278 billion and would be like $450 billion in today’s dollars.

OpenAI will IPO soon AI probably more like a trillion.

Crazy.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Greg Brockman interview [video]"

mattmaroon — Sun, 24 May 2026 22:48:23 +0000

Most nonprofits don’t have a mission that would benefit from a transition or a trillion dollar product to sell. There would be no real way to profit they wanted to.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Memory has grown to nearly two-thirds of AI chip component costs"

mattmaroon — Sun, 24 May 2026 22:43:18 +0000

They want both.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait"

mattmaroon — Tue, 19 May 2026 01:54:21 +0000

Oman is not helping them, they are merely being granted tolls by Iran because the strait is shared. Iran has launched several attacks on Oman.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait"

mattmaroon — Mon, 18 May 2026 22:28:10 +0000

Geography prevents most people from exerting the form of control Iran has. It would be much more difficult for, say, Canada to control it. The Iranian coastline is pretty favorable.

Also, most governments are more susceptible to being bombed than Iran. They’ve been preparing for it for decades. If nearly any country (except for maybe a couple of Irans neighbors) tried, they’d be easily routed.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait"

mattmaroon — Mon, 18 May 2026 22:26:50 +0000

Crypto but not Bitcoin.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Googlebook"

mattmaroon — Tue, 12 May 2026 22:23:34 +0000

Apple might not specify a time upfront but they do consistently support hardware for a good length of time. IPhones generally get OS updates for 5-6 years and security for at least a couple more.

I’ve never used anything they made long enough to get there.

New comment by mattmaroon in "The FCC wants your ID before you get a phone number"

mattmaroon — Sun, 10 May 2026 22:28:54 +0000

We were specifically discussing privacy from government as that’s what the original post is about. The FCC making cell providers check IDs like a bank will have no privacy ramifications in any other regard. My provider knows who I am, gives my government any info they want (probably all of it without even having to be asked, possibly without their knowledge), and sells it “anonymized” to all sorts of people. Graphene won’t help with any of that. I’m sure it is wonderful in other ways, but they’re just not ones that rank on my list of concerns.

And you’re right I should.

New comment by mattmaroon in "The FCC wants your ID before you get a phone number"

mattmaroon — Sun, 10 May 2026 18:40:35 +0000

Oh no, random people on the internet who don’t understand simple logic and can somehow take “we need a constitutional right to privacy” as not caring about privacy are judging me. Whatever shall I do?

If you’re worrying about a light rain while you’re drowning in the flood, that was the end goal and you fell for it. My life is materially impacted by spam calls, as a small business owner, it is far beyond an annoyance, so I’m going to enjoy the rainbow until I figure out what to do about the flood

New comment by mattmaroon in "The FCC wants your ID before you get a phone number"

mattmaroon — Sun, 10 May 2026 18:36:13 +0000

The 4th amendment has been interpreted by the courts to not be a broad right to privacy, and the overturning of Roe specifically stated this. Even if you think it should be interpreted as a broad right to privacy, it is clearly capable of being interpreted otherwise and is in no way adequate in today’s world.

You can only have SOME privacy on a phone with Graphene if you don’t really use the phone the way people use theirs most of the time. You’ve still got a SIM card talking to cell towers owned by a company who sells your information. You’re still presumably using apps and websites that require authentication. The government can still find where you were and what you were searching for unless you take extraordinary measures. That’s not privacy.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"

mattmaroon — Sun, 10 May 2026 18:29:51 +0000

So basically, ReCaptcha should be spun off into a not-for-profit.

New comment by mattmaroon in "The FCC wants your ID before you get a phone number"

mattmaroon — Sat, 09 May 2026 15:46:47 +0000

Yeah I strongly suspect this will allow them to use it in court considerably more frequently.

But still, I know they know who I am. Anyone with a cell phone in their pocket has no privacy. It’s the best tracking device ever.

Anyone who thinks anything at all can make that problem worse simply doesn’t understand that they have none.

I’d rather have zero privacy and zero spam calls than zero privacy and lots of spam calls. Obviously I’d prefer privacy and I think we need a constitutional amendment to that effect, but as far as showing our ID to eliminate spam in a world where zero privacy exists, sign me up.

New comment by mattmaroon in "The FCC Wants Your ID Before You Get a Phone Number"

mattmaroon — Sat, 09 May 2026 14:56:02 +0000

Does anyone imagine the government doesn’t already know who owns every phone number?

Also, couldn’t this system be optional, numbers that are ID-verified are somehow flagged so (assuming I choose) when one calls my phone knows to let it through and when an unverified number calls it doesn’t ring?

New comment by mattmaroon in "Ted Turner has died"

mattmaroon — Wed, 06 May 2026 20:54:57 +0000

Oh! I thought it was Jim Obama, the owner of Obama Chevrolet of Sheboygan!

New comment by mattmaroon in "Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results"

mattmaroon — Mon, 04 May 2026 11:50:54 +0000

Oh sure but I meant in their case they might be their own biggest customer. Companies shuffle money from one pocket to another often for tax/financial reasons.

New comment by mattmaroon in "GameStop Preparing Offer for eBay"

mattmaroon — Sat, 02 May 2026 13:28:46 +0000

Yeah I don’t blame them. They didn’t create the meme but once it happened, any responsible leader would start doing secondary offerings to raise money. I sure would. If morons want to keep investing in the stock of a company that has no other chance of survival, great. Now they’ve got $9 billion on hand and they’ve had time to find a niche, right-size, and the interest on the cash pile is great too.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants"

mattmaroon — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:31:16 +0000

Unfortunately that support doesn’t seem to extend to making the process take less than decades and cost less than gazillions due to overregulation so there’s no incentive to build.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results"

mattmaroon — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:02:15 +0000

I think they make most of their money off searches with intent (“vehicle detailing near me”) and things for which they still send you somewhere. The kind of searches that an LLM can just answer probably largely just sent you to Wikipedia or somewhere nobody was paying much for anyway.

It’s possible AI will do a better job of capturing ad dollars by better serving intentional searchers.

New comment by mattmaroon in "Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results"

mattmaroon — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 20:59:58 +0000

Or deals with their own/third party LLMs?