Hacker News: milesskorpen

New comment by milesskorpen in "Is anyone actually using OpenClaw?"

milesskorpen — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:19:49 +0000

Yes - I've set it up as an 'office manager,' where it mainly snakily interacts with the local team via Slack, and controls an office TV to show our quote board, PTO calendar, and upcoming events. The Clawe is overkill for the use case, but sometimes is fun.

New comment by milesskorpen in "A new way to measure poverty shows the US falling behind Europe"

milesskorpen — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:11:44 +0000

Huge amounts of cash were given to many Americans during Covid.

New comment by milesskorpen in "72% of the dollar's purchasing power was destroyed in just four episodes"

milesskorpen — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:45:45 +0000

1950-1985 and 1985-now are pretty steady. Decreased inflation volatility over time.

I think your chart shows the "that inflation slowly erodes purchasing power over time." That doesn't mean there aren't periods of change - if you study economic history at all you know about the Great Depression and stagflation - but for ~50 years it's been pretty well managed.

New comment by milesskorpen in "Mark Zuckerberg creating new Applied AI engineering company, reorganises teams"

milesskorpen — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 21:48:36 +0000

Facebook stock is up 6x in ~3 years, so the market does not agree with your assessment of his track record.

New comment by milesskorpen in "A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k"

milesskorpen — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:29:29 +0000

Reading between the lines, it sounds like the FAA maybe did not trust CBP to "test" operate the high powered laser near civilian aviation, in part given that they mistakenly identified a balloon for a cartel drone.

New comment by milesskorpen in "A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k"

milesskorpen — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:27:57 +0000

Yes: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airspace-closure-followed-spat-...

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford on Tuesday night decided to close the airspace — without alerting White House, Pentagon or Homeland Security officials, sources said.

...

Customs and Border Protection used the laser weapon earlier this week after training from the U.S. military, according to multiple sources familiar with its deployment. Officials had recently given the FAA a 10-day window in which the technology would be used.

The anti-drone technology was launched near the southern border to shoot down what appeared to be foreign drones. The flying material turned out to be a party balloon, sources said. One balloon was shot down, several sources said.

The Mexican cartels have been running drones on the border lately, the sources said, but it was unclear how many were hit by the military's anti-UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) technology this week. One official said at least one cartel drone was successfully disabled.

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

milesskorpen — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:55:16 +0000

I agree the risk transfer is very important, but Visa and Mastercard don't do that (they just facilitate it)

New comment by milesskorpen in "French streamer unbanked by Qonto after criticizing Palantir and Peter Thiel"

milesskorpen — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:02:02 +0000

It's extremely improbable that a random critique of Thiel led to one of the many many many companies he invests in banning this guy. It's not impossible, but - Occam's razor, it's not the simplest assumption.

Your initial post suggested that we should assume that there is a link; now you're backing up to "Thiel takes some blame from bad actions by companies he invests in," which is a much weaker but more defensible claim.

New comment by milesskorpen in "US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes"

milesskorpen — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 22:19:26 +0000

But you'd have an asset you own at the end of that period, and your mortgage payments wouldn't go up over time whereas rent likely would.

New comment by milesskorpen in "NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by a fifth in six months"

milesskorpen — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:08:04 +0000

I was thinking autonomy, but you're right for EV alone.

New comment by milesskorpen in "NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by a fifth in six months"

milesskorpen — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:07:26 +0000

1/6 is a lot lower (good!) but is that sufficient to say they're not a large source of particulate air emissions?

New comment by milesskorpen in "NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by a fifth in six months"

milesskorpen — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 03:53:31 +0000

EVs help with air pollution & congestion, but a huge part of the AQI impact of cars is tires, and I don't think there's a solution for that yet short of "fewer cars"

New comment by milesskorpen in "AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power"

milesskorpen — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:34:10 +0000

It's a big number - but still less than tech industry profits.

New comment by milesskorpen in "We're in the wrong moment"

milesskorpen — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 04:23:20 +0000

What?

New comment by milesskorpen in "The pivot"

milesskorpen — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 22:39:07 +0000

Yeah. He starts with reasonable points about the economy changing into the Electronic Era and then starts making increasingly less-evidenced points by the end.

New comment by milesskorpen in "TigerBeetle is a most interesting database"

milesskorpen — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 14:04:54 +0000

He clearly says this is in the context of "transaction processing" in the comment you're responding to.

New comment by milesskorpen in "Accenture to 'exit' staff that cannot be retrained for age of AI"

milesskorpen — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 17:07:53 +0000

I doubt it's her husband. She's more powerful than he is.

New comment by milesskorpen in "Death rates rose in hospital ERs after private equity firms took over"

milesskorpen — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 14:50:59 +0000

There are extremely high fixed costs + we require hospitals to do unprofitable work (they aren't allowed to turn anyone away from the ED, for example). In many small regional chains, their profitable hospitals in one area fund unprofitable hospitals in other regions.

Overall we have a crisis of hospitals shutting down, not a crisis of oversupply.

New comment by milesskorpen in "Are OpenAI and Anthropic losing money on inference?"

milesskorpen — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 17:19:30 +0000

While this could be true, I don't think OpenAI is investing the $hundreds of millions-to-billions that would be required otherwise make it actually true.

OpenAI's fund is ~$250-300mm Nvidia reportedly invested $1b last year - still way less than Open AI revenue

New comment by milesskorpen in "Why insurers worry the world could soon become uninsurable"

milesskorpen — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 22:47:45 +0000

At least in the US, insurers have been losing money in recent years. Definitely not price gouging. Insurance is an amazing service.