<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: mondrian</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mondrian</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 18:40:19 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=mondrian" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The irony in your example is the modern Pentagon is largely a collection of private companies.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 10:16:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48146784</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48146784</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48146784</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Let's get back to filling the front page with Web3, DeFi, NFTs. Oh the good ol' days.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:59:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509191</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509191</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509191</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Texas is suing all of the big TV makers for spying on what you watch"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sounds like this: <a href="https://solidproject.org/about" rel="nofollow">https://solidproject.org/about</a><p>But yea privacy is a silly thing to propose to a surveillance industry.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 19 Dec 2025 18:56:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46329491</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46329491</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46329491</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Show HN: Gemini Pro 3 imagines the HN front page 10 years from now"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Black Mirror episode: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People_(Black_Mirror)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People_(Black_Mirror)</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Dec 2025 18:49:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208882</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208882</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208882</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was off by a zero, thanks! He sold about 100M of NVDA on 16B net worth which would be 6.25k on 1M.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45973967</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45973967</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45973967</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So this 'portfolio' is <200M on a net worth of 16B? This is like someone worth 1M selling $600 worth of stock.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 16 Nov 2025 22:36:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45949097</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45949097</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45949097</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The parent comment is probably just talking about temporarily timing the bubble pop.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 16 Nov 2025 22:28:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45949045</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45949045</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45949045</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Replacement.ai"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How will the AI wealth get distributed to people at large?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2025 20:26:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45637639</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45637639</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45637639</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Replacement.ai"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Bernie Sanders talks about a "robot tax" that is roughly what you're talking about. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-robot-tax-ai-worker-report-2025-10" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-robot-tax-ai-...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2025 20:19:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45637581</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45637581</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45637581</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "The story of DOGE, as told by federal workers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Comparing it to GDP doesn’t seem to make sense. Maybe to government revenue.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2025 18:33:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45376948</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45376948</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45376948</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Good point. In the scenario I described, I'm assuming Stripe will launch their own stablecoin. I tend to think all major tech companies are incentivized to launch stablecoins and give you discounts and perks when you transact using their stablecoin in their own ecosystem. The more of their stablecoin they issue out, the more money they make on interest.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:31:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132981</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132981</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132981</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah and this is codified in the GENIUS act which passed recently. It enables tech companies to act like banks in certain dimensions, without being regulated like banks.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:17:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132870</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132870</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132870</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah. Stablecoins create demand for Treasuries which drives the price of Treasuries up and interest rate down. So this pressure lowers debt servicing cost for the US government, and Stripe is the holder of those Treasuries and gets paid interest.<p>This would also serve to counter the drop in global Treasury demand due to recent tariff stuff where presumably our traditional debt holders are losing appetite for US debt...<p>It also creates a kind of strange situation where stablecoins are basically spendable "Treasury tokens". So you give 1 USD to Uncle Sam (via a middle man like Stripe), get back 1 stablecoin. Then you go and spend the stablecoin, and Uncle Sam goes and spends the USD. It's like a weird double spend situation. Prior to stablecoins, you buy a treasury bill with USD, you hold this unspendable treasury bill while Uncle Sam gets USD to spend.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:00:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132706</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132706</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132706</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The GENIUS act enables tech companies to become reserve holders -- buy US Treasuries with customers' money. Stripe offers a "transactional ecosystem" to the customer in stablecoins, the customer gives USD to Stripe in exchange for stablecoins, Stripe buys short-term Treasuries and makes a shitload of money on interest.<p>Part of the very high level play is the US Govt seeks to diversify away from depending on nation states for borrowing, and to promote tech companies to the status of reserve holders.<p>This doesn't add much to the consumer however. I think in fact we are looking at a "fragmented currency" future where you hold like 36 different stablecoins in your wallet because certain platforms accept certain stablecoins. The GENIUS act doesn't offer strict guarantees for getting out of a stablecoin into USD, so I predict dark patterns and "incentives" to make it hard to get out of a stablecoin.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2025 19:43:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45131437</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45131437</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45131437</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Will AI systems perform poorly due to AI-generated material in training data?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Trying to make AIs more factually-accurate with more training is probably hopeless. Current events and encyclopedic knowledge will be provided by tools. The LLM's core job is to choose the right tools for the job and synthesize their outputs.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 18 May 2025 08:21:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44019834</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44019834</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44019834</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Will AI systems perform poorly due to AI-generated material in training data?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Also in the vicinity: <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language-model" rel="nofollow">https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language...</a><p>There's also distillation, where you can drastically improve a small model by training it on chains of thoughts of larger models. You can't achieve the same performance by training on original human texts. This suggests that those chains of thoughts reliably contain "densely packed reasoning", meaning the LLM probably has developed internal clusters of "reasoning circuitry", loosely speaking.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 18 May 2025 08:15:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44019808</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44019808</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44019808</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Will AI systems perform poorly due to AI-generated material in training data?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Related to this: <a href="https://x.com/karpathy/status/1835561952258723930" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/karpathy/status/1835561952258723930</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 17 May 2025 03:52:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44011915</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44011915</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44011915</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "Will AI systems perform poorly due to AI-generated material in training data?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The "core reasoning" part of AI may be increasingly important to improve, and its "database of factual knowledge" aspects may be less and less important, maybe increasingly a hindrance. So more focused and specialized training may take over toward increasing reasoning precision, and not this never-ending stream of new data.<p>So maybe we'll get better reasoning and therefore better generated data/content in the wild, without this negative feedback loop everyone is worried about.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 17 May 2025 00:35:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44011081</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44011081</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44011081</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Home building is interesting because I think a major blocker to monopoly-forming is the vastly heterogenous and complicated regulatory landscape, with building codes varying wildly from place to place. So you get a bunch of locally-specialized builders.<p>Regulation can increase concentration in a high corruption/cronyism environment 
 — regulatory capture and regulatory moats. There is plenty of that happening.<p>In building, I think we have local-concentration, due to both regulatory heterogeneity and then local cronyism - Bob has decades of connections to the city and gets permits easily, whereas Bob’s competitor Steve is stuck in a loop of rejection due to a never ending list of pesky reasons.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 10 May 2025 21:06:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43948998</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43948998</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43948998</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mondrian in "A critical look at MCP"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's a read/write protocol for making external data/services available to a LLM. You can write a tool/endpoint to the MCP protocol and plug it into Claude Desktop, for example. Claude Desktop has MCP support built-in and automatically queries your MCP endpoint to discover its functionality, and makes those functions available to Claude by including their descriptions in the prompt. Claude can then instruct Claude Desktop to call those functions as it sees fit. Claude Desktop will call the functions and then include the results in the prompt, allowing Claude to generate with relevant data in context.<p>Since Claude Desktop has MCP support built-in, you can just plug off the shelf MCP endpoints into it. Like you could plug your Gmail account, and your Discord, and your Reddit into Claude Desktop provided that MCP integrations exist for those services. So you can tell Claude "look up my recent activity on reddit and send a summary email to my friend Bob about it" or whatever, and Claude will accomplish that task using the available MCPs. There's like a proliferation of MCP tools and marketplaces being built.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 10 May 2025 20:42:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43948829</link><dc:creator>mondrian</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43948829</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43948829</guid></item></channel></rss>