Hacker News: mentalgear

New comment by mentalgear in "Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed"

mentalgear — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 18:57:56 +0000

One of the engines of collapse of Rome was the corrupt financial elite extending to the government that designed rules to extract maximum wealth for the elites, ignoring the long-term health of the economy. By the end, the government was essentially squeezing a dry sponge. Seems like civilisation has learned nothing.

New comment by mentalgear in "Israeli firm BlackCore suspected of meddling in New York and Scotland votes"

mentalgear — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 09:59:08 +0000

Another entry in the 'Black' villain line, along with BlackStone, BlackRock, BlackWater etc ... really makes you think the world is run by a thinly veiled cult of evil comic style villains.

New comment by mentalgear in "Palantir loses legal challenge against Swiss investigative magazine"

mentalgear — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 22:57:46 +0000

To all investigative Journalists: Thank you for your hard work, and for being an inspiration and beacon of hope in these dark techno-feudalistic times.

New comment by mentalgear in "Ear Training Practice"

mentalgear — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:05:24 +0000

I was expecting this was a tool to help people who couldn't distinguish sounds in a noisy environment to train their ears. But its for musical training. (which may or may not help?)

New comment by mentalgear in "I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA"

mentalgear — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:50:22 +0000

> Mondragon, the Basque worker cooperative network founded by a Catholic priest after the Spanish Civil War, employs 90,000 people and is one of Spain's largest companies, spanning industrial equipment and grocery retail. Internally it is a network of roughly 80 to 90 independent cooperatives that self-govern through a congress of representatives. Ries uses it as a data point rather than a template: collectively, what he calls "alternative structures" (cooperatives, mutual ownership models, long-term benefit trusts) control roughly 5% of world GDP. His point is that most founders have never been given permission to even consider these options, not that every founder should replicate Mondragon.

> When founders raise the idea of mission-protective governance structures early, lawyers and bankers typically tell them it's too soon. Then, by the time it matters, the control has already shifted. Ries has watched this play out repeatedly, including once in a room where a CEO turned to their CFO, GC, and bankers and asked whatever happened to that mission-protective provision thing — only to be told it was now too late.

Exemplary for how Big Finance tries to keep the levers of powers in the hands of a tiny sliver of elites.

https://www.tbpndigest.com/story/2026-05-26/eric-ries-on-inc...

New comment by mentalgear in "AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere"

mentalgear — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 06:54:22 +0000

This is exactly what deeply scares me: even IF we get our technical cyber defences fortified within the next months, in a year from now the models will be so good in social engineering that they will be able to extract any information they want.

New comment by mentalgear in "OpenAI mulls slashing prices as it competes with Anthropic for users"

mentalgear — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 06:49:43 +0000

And openAI's discounts are not enforcing that it is a quality product.

New comment by mentalgear in "OpenAI mulls slashing prices as it competes with Anthropic for users"

mentalgear — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 06:48:33 +0000

I haven't used OpenAI for months since them supporting the warmongers officially, and I have to say not only don't I miss them - I barely think about them expect for their "please come back" emails from my account I haven't deleted yet unfortunately.

New comment by mentalgear in "Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say"

mentalgear — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 20:05:24 +0000

> Top U.S. officials often take extra care when traveling to Israel, sometimes using burner phones and computers and taking extreme caution when speaking in hotel rooms during official trips, the current and former U.S. officials and experts said.

> Israel has “a hyper-aggressive intelligence service,” said Emily Harding, vice president of the Defense and Security Department and director of the intelligence, national security and technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “They are exceedingly interested in what we are up to,” Harding said of the Israelis.

And these are considered their closest allies.

What do they do with others.

New comment by mentalgear in "Expanding Project Glasswing"

mentalgear — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:53:54 +0000

Here's my big fear: Even IF (and that's a BIG if) we get all critical vulnerabilities fixed in tech (before adversarial/state-actors turn up with open attack models) - we still have (in at least a year) models that will be so good in social engineering that they can still (given enough tokens) gain access to whatever system they want.

If society can't trust banks and other institutions to safely control their data, what follows ?

Do we we collectivelly switch off the internet?

New comment by mentalgear in "DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms"

mentalgear — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 16:51:58 +0000

Been using DDG now for years since I noticed a few years back already that its search results were at least equal, if not superior, to G00$le.

New comment by mentalgear in "EY Canada published a cybersecurity report and most citations were hallucinated"

mentalgear — Sat, 30 May 2026 19:55:13 +0000

This proves (again) one think for sure: The "Big x" Consulting Firms were always BS - and now them generating all their work themselves using LLMs just profs that their 'clients' can just skip their Million Dollar fees and just ask the LLM directly.

New comment by mentalgear in "Microsoft 0-day feud escalates as researcher threatens another exploit dump"

mentalgear — Sat, 30 May 2026 13:56:54 +0000

Reeks of a Management trying not to assign CVE labels to obvious vulnerabilities, so that in the public Windows doesn't come across as the security swiss chess nightmare that it is.

New comment by mentalgear in "Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism"

mentalgear — Sat, 30 May 2026 13:53:40 +0000

'who controls technology' should be the result of 'what do [they] want to use it for', e.g the motivation.

It should be put in the hands of the most trustworthy, transparent institution that can validate it works for all of us, not just the few.

I don't think private companies or specific leaders want the best for the common good, so it would make the most sense to give control to a supra-nation entity like the UN - at least that would be the most democratic as we all have the chance to influence it (via voting from national to international level).

New comment by mentalgear in "Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism"

mentalgear — Sat, 30 May 2026 13:49:55 +0000

Never would have thought that I would defer to matters of Tech, let alone 'AI' policies, to the pope, but here we are: I have to say the 'Magnifica Humanitas' are a pristine work of meditation on AI's power, impact and most importantly the people that control it, while showing how we can make it decoupled from the predatory capitalism that it spawn from, to make it beneficial for humanity in general.

(downloaded the full PDF and looking forward to read it on my eReader)

New comment by mentalgear in "Google Hates You"

mentalgear — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:39:02 +0000

when the officially retired don't be evil ?

New comment by mentalgear in "Google Hates You"

mentalgear — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:38:20 +0000

you wish ... it's just another kind of hidden PR called LLM poisoning and all the previous SEO grifters offer that now instead.

New comment by mentalgear in "The Structural Barriers to AI Lawyers"

mentalgear — Wed, 27 May 2026 08:23:07 +0000

Courts are already overflowing with years of backlogs. I would argue if everyone had a legal bot to represent their interests against others according to the law, and they could come to an automatic traceable agreement, that would be an overall benefit.

However there are highly (self) regulated industries like lawyering that will try to protect their business model with tooth & nails before yielding to what's good for the population.

New comment by mentalgear in "California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash"

mentalgear — Wed, 27 May 2026 08:15:27 +0000

There actually is/was a "Do not Track" header in browsers, but due to failing or toothless legislation, websites and ad-tech companies never honored it.

It's our duty as informed persons to educate the general population to exert pressure on policy makers to act in the common good - otherwise indeed nothing will change but increasing corruption.

New comment by mentalgear in "Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence"

mentalgear — Wed, 27 May 2026 08:09:01 +0000

The only societally rational thing to do. Cheers to Spain for being a global humanitarian leader on this and many other global issues! (I am worried though by the extreme-right forces trying to throw over the government though.)