Hacker News: mcphage

New comment by mcphage in "How the God of Israel Was Born"

mcphage — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:13:37 +0000

I’m not the person you’re replying to, but I’m interested if you could find that link later.

New comment by mcphage in "Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries"

mcphage — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:48:42 +0000

> Does this not very simply constitute a large scale attack on civilian infrastructure?

No.

New comment by mcphage in "Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines"

mcphage — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:52:45 +0000

It's either that or let Google strangle them.

New comment by mcphage in "Alphabet's cash burn raises alarm for Big Tech as AI spending climbs"

mcphage — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:48:06 +0000

They are! Coincidentally, there's been a precipitous decline in software quality and reliability the last few years.

New comment by mcphage in "“We have information that Moonshot distilled Fable for the development of K3”"

mcphage — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:08:44 +0000

> I think theft is bad everywhere, not just when Anthropic does it.

It seems like you think theft is bad everywhere except when Anthropic does it.

New comment by mcphage in "Sealed tomb filled with paintings and inscriptions discovered in Egypt"

mcphage — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:48:35 +0000

Families come in all shapes and sizes, even for the ancient Egyptians!

New comment by mcphage in "The Great Steam Deck Crash of 2026: How the New Pricing Decreased Demand by 80%"

mcphage — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:49:40 +0000

> Is poverty a requirement for being a good person?

Do you suppose those are the only two options? Poverty or billionaire?

New comment by mcphage in "My two year old taught me constraint solving"

mcphage — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:08:00 +0000

What year was your son born? Nobody has said “Silly Billy” in 30 years, unless under the auspices of a duly appointed official.

New comment by mcphage in "Sealed tomb filled with paintings and inscriptions discovered in Egypt"

mcphage — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:54:56 +0000

> When did humanity first figure out that inbreeding might be a bad idea?

I suspect it was prior to recorded history.

New comment by mcphage in "Sealed tomb filled with paintings and inscriptions discovered in Egypt"

mcphage — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:49:01 +0000

> Weren’t you afraid of any ancient bacteria from the mummy?

I don't think we're certain that the sarcophagus ever contained a mummy.

New comment by mcphage in "The Trump administration's Threat to Scientific Research"

mcphage — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:14:44 +0000

> with full impeachment, Vance becomes President and that would be a NIGHTMARE even worse than what we have now

Vance has no popularity or support. Right now Trump is able to destroy the country because congress is doing nothing, and they're doing nothing because they're afraid of Trump. I don't think they'll be afraid of Vance.

New comment by mcphage in "PSA about abuse of cat(1) command. Don't abuse cats"

mcphage — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:25:21 +0000

That’s neither simpler, nor better.

> "cat" can easily add up to a noticeable delay.

If you have a slow script, you will have more useful places to optimize than removing calls to cat.

New comment by mcphage in "Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law"

mcphage — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 03:25:24 +0000

> But they do have authority over the domain registrar

Why do you say that?

New comment by mcphage in "$100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol"

mcphage — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 02:34:19 +0000

…is your friend… er, was your friend, a US Senator, by any chance?

New comment by mcphage in "$100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol"

mcphage — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 02:28:43 +0000

> This wasn’t possible even a year ago

Just because it’s possible now, doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.

New comment by mcphage in "Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me"

mcphage — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 02:10:51 +0000

> This means there are marginal readers who previously didn’t buy any book but now buy AI slop books, or buy slop books in addition to human ones.

The former would be interesting, but seems unlikely. The later seems much more likely, since they’re already in the habit of buying books.

New comment by mcphage in "Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me"

mcphage — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 21:03:11 +0000

> So far I have made a little over $40, compared to probably $800 in AI subscription fees.

> If anyone is curious, I'd be happy to talk about any of it.

So you've spent $750 to publish AI slop.

I guess my question is... why? Why are you doing this? Like, what do you get out of it?

New comment by mcphage in "Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me"

mcphage — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 20:57:05 +0000

The existence of someone buying AI slop and being okay with it isn't the same as losing to a robot. Unless you mean losing that specific sale, but they're not outselling human authors yet, and it's not clear they will until their quality improves immensely.

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

mcphage — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:34:38 +0000

That almost makes it worse—like they're vaguely aware that training too heavily on too small a data set makes badly trained models, but are unaware that it has a name and is an actual identified problem.

New comment by mcphage in "America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD"

mcphage — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:32:26 +0000

> Wealth inequality doesn't cause ills, envy does.

No, it really is the wealth inequality.