<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: msabalau</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=msabalau</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 28 May 2026 20:17:04 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=msabalau" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "YouTube to automatically label AI-generated videos"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I mean, between SynthID and C2PA don't you already have labels and watermarks that covering a lot of major players like Google, Adobe, ElevenLabs, NIVIDEA?  No real concern about false negatives there.<p>As for false positive, the most straightforward path seems to be to let stuff slide unless you are really sure. Maybe that slightly rewards players like Kling because they keep the invisible watermarks for their own use, and that of the CCP,but not third parties. NBD.<p>It's not like catching everything is that important. YouTube isn't claiming this is perfect. And I don't know that anyone need this to be perfect. It's not like even the best photorealistic video creation tools don't have plenty of tells anyway.<p>This doesn't seem like ZeroGPT at all. Having a flag or not having flag on a YouTube short is low stakes. Its not like it's being sold as a solution for something high stakes like academic grading.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 23:08:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302005</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302005</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302005</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "After Town Bans Flock, Councilmember Crashes Out, Proposes Internet, Phone Ban"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's an odd way of viewing it.<p>Having the reporting from the local paper amplified outside the immediate community strengthens the signal, and supports the general norm of holding officials accountable.<p>"No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main"</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 17:55:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48211509</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48211509</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48211509</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "AI is a technology not a product"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The MP3 spec was defined a decade before we had iPods. Spreadsheets took a decade to become indispensable to businesses.<p>Clifford Stoll had used the internet for two decades before writting his infamous 1995 essay in Time saying the internet was overhyped, and "normal" people would never e-mail because they can just fax.<p>CRISPR was first observed in 1987, and the gene-editing breakthrough came in 2012.<p>It's really, really unclear why you think LLMs would have faster adoption, when they are already that being adopted faster that anything other tech, ever.<p>Do you honestly know of no non-technical person who use LLMs? Because an absurd number of people report on surveys that they use it every week.<p>LLM apps are regularly the top downloads on the iPhone.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2026 21:52:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173524</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173524</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173524</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "EU to crack down on TikTok, Instagram's 'addictive design' targeting kids"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In the absence of any evidence, it is really unclear why anyone needs to catastrophize about generations of harms.<p>Is there any reason to believe that "social media existing" is a worse and more enduring harm than tens of millions of people dying in the Second World War, the trauma of the survivors, the vast destruction of infrastructure,or the start of the risk of nuclear war?<p>Yet the post war baby boom seems to have led a remarkably fortunate life, overall.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 16:14:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48110314</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48110314</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48110314</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It literally <i>doesn't matter</i> why search revenue is growing. What is observably true is that it is that it is growing, as has it has been, throughout the LLM era.<p>Absent additional information, no one else can identify the false assumption underlies a strong belief that this should not be case.  But something is flying  in the face of the facts, and has been for a while. So, yeah, might want to take a look at those priors.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:14:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954781</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954781</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954781</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "DeepSeek v4"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh, sure, putting a million or more Uyghurs in internment camps,  sterilizing people, and trying to systematically erase a culture and a religion is "just as repressive" as the what is happening in Europe, as long you one is willing to ignore nearly everything relevant about the scale, recourse, and consequence of the PRCs atrocities.<p>Also, reducing Germany’s complex, decade-long process of grappling with the Holocaust as "self-shame" is... a choice.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:24:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47891554</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47891554</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47891554</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "A whole civilization might die tonight"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Where are <i>you</i>?<p>What precisely are you doing other than posting stuff that pretends that a party in minority in both houses of Congress could actually stop a president, unless some politicians in the majority chose to join them.<p>And, as underwhelming as the press are, the facts are that surveys show that American's broadly disapprove of the war.  Presumably because of what they have learned about it from the press and the opposition.<p>The people who are responsible are the people in power and their remaining supporters. Aided, arguably, by people who espouse cynical, self-soothing complaints that ignore what most people learn about civics in middle school.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:30:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47679425</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47679425</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47679425</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The Quincy Institute exists to push their "restraint/realpolitic" agenda, not to accurately describe reality.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 01:02:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47595510</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47595510</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47595510</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "OpenAI set to discontinue Sora video platform"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, their forth place video model does not go away, but they didn't ink a billion dollar with Disney that's just gone up in flames because they "weren't serious"<p>This may well be a needed reprioritization in the face of resource constraints, but it ain't a masterful Xanatos gambit.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:29:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509641</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509641</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509641</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "American aviation is near collapse?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We have "proper numbers" for the full range of issues covered in the essay?  From airport aesthetics to El Paso being shut down because of lack of coordination around anti-drone testing, or something?<p>The article is not just about safety, or some other singular topic with clear statistics.<p>Just because this sentiment will get some cheap upvotes from people who didn't engage with the article doesn't be that the author should have searched for keys under streetlights to provide a false appearance of rigor.<p>This is an essay from the Atlantic Daily, which is responding, in real time, to the events of the day.  It's a minor work of commentary, it is not supposed to be in-depth reporting, and it's bit odd to feel ought to have been a work of investigative reporting, which the Atlantic also does, seperately.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 21:25:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47495323</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47495323</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47495323</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Either AI causes a collapse in aggerate demand, or it doesn't.<p>If it doesn't, you still have your blue collar career.<p>If it it does, you still have your skills at things that are hard to automate, and don't seem to be any worse of than anyone else, even if collectively, we are all worse off.<p>At an individual level, this still seems worth pursuing. You don't get to control your macro environment.<p>Of course, one could still use the political and persuasive tools you have towards the aim of ensuring the benefits of AI are broadly shared. It's reasonable to fear that is hard and uncertain work, but you don't get do decide if you live in hard and uncertain times or not.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:08:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47491423</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47491423</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47491423</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "I'm OK being left behind, thanks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But they have engaged with it, and made an assessment about it's current utility.<p>We have no reason to believe that they won't keep an eye on this.<p>Little to nothing about AI tools so far suggests that that one can't just as easily pick the skills later.  Tools that will get "exponentially better" will almost certainly be unrecognizable to someone desperately engaging with them now, for not other reason the sake of "having 1-2 years of experience"<p>Someone might reasonably choose to to bet on the upside.  That doesn't imply that everyone else ought to fearfully hedge.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:25:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47455953</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47455953</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47455953</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's certainly why the Navy supported Top Gun.<p>At the same time, you certainly could reasonably read the film as being very dubious about the military.  It opens with the psychological collapse of Maverick's wingman when a MiG locks on to him, Cruise's character has to defy orders to save him, and gets chewed out for doing so.<p>Maverick's original motivation is clearing his father name, not patriotism. Goose dies in a pointless accident.  The final dogfight is random "rescue mission" against an unnamed foe in "hostile waters" in the Indian ocean, and Cruise's character almost abandons the fight due to PTSD.<p>Yeah, the almost pornographic love the camera shows to the jets probably made the actual story all be irrelevant to the Navy's recruiting success. But it's easy to imagine all the whining from the Fox news personality cosplaying as Secretary of "War" about such a film if it were made today.<p>Cheney was sensible enough to take the win.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 15 Mar 2026 20:38:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47391631</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47391631</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47391631</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Maybe one could reasonably blame on-line video and or video games if this were a global phenomenon.<p>But it isn't.  China and India are going gangbusters. Japan is thriving and doing strong work. Nigerian cinema is projected to hit 3 million ticket sales for the first time this year. The UK--is at least stealing work from Hollywood with tax breaks. Korea had a rough patch, which they turned around by doing more mid-market films.<p>The US studios problems are unique, which at least suggests that the answer lies in the failures of their leadership.  Perhaps their long project of abandoning original mid-market films to push bloated huge special effects heavy franchises was ill-advised. It's almost Like having a portfolio of 10-20 reasonable original bets is better than investing everything in a single expensive "sure-thing" sequel it increasingly seems like no one actually wants to see.<p>So I agree that Hollywood has stopped innovating, but am dubious that any other problems has much to do with Youtube (as much as I enjoy YouTube).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 15 Mar 2026 20:03:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47391289</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47391289</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47391289</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "US economy unexpectedly sheds 92k jobs in February"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Canada is great.  Montreal feels like a stylish and fun European city.<p>As a film lover, I've been to the Toronto film festival many times, it's an unmatched experience--so many things to see, and watch films with a very engaged festival crowd just makes them better.  (In the same way, even if you don't love Star Wars, going on opening weekend, with the most enthusiastic fans, makes the experience better.)  And given that nearly half of Toronto's population was born outside of Canada, it makes even New York feel a little parochial.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2026 19:37:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47280010</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47280010</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47280010</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's a bit simplistic to personify complex organizations of millions of people like "The Government" or "The Market" as if they were a living, breathing persons with a single mind.<p>There were people working in government who successfully attacked Oppenheimer for personal and/or policy reasons, people who stood by, and people who unsuccessfully supported him, voted to clear him, or condemned the proceedings.<p>Oppenheimer still paid the price, and arguably, the risks to someone like him today are considerably higher, as the current administration isn't exactly like Eisnehower's.<p>Nevertheless it's reductionist, reifying sentimentality to talk about "the government" turning "viciously" on someone who "served them well" because they are defying its agenda. The government isn't a character in Game of Thrones. The responsibility lies with the specific individuals who attacked him, and those who stood by.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:08:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47263377</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47263377</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47263377</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is really unclear why you think that either the political interest or strategic logic of not wanting to rely on manufacturing in China, and having some on the value being created here goes away, or is some idle whim.<p>Sure, if it took decades of slow patient effort to create the current situation, it might take decades to unwind it.  And, sure, the US political system is exceptionally bad at industrial policy.<p>But, at the end of the day, the political and military logic is, and will be for the forseeable future, get your supply chains out of China. Just because it is slow and difficult doesn't there is any reason to believe the pressure will relax. (Putting aside the possibility  of an AGI/robotics revolution)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Feb 2026 02:06:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146392</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146392</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146392</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was lucky enough to be an early tester, here's a brief video walking through the process of creating worlds, showing examples--walking on the moon, with Nasa photo as part of the prompt, being in 221B Baker street with Holmes and Watson, wandering through a night market in Taipei as a giant boba milk tea (note how the stalls are different, and sell different foods), and also exploring the setting of my award-nominated tabletop RPG.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyTHcmWPuJE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyTHcmWPuJE</a><p>It's an experimental research prototype, but it also feels like a hint of the future.  Feel free to ask any questions.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 23:03:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46818118</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46818118</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46818118</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "Amazon cuts 16k jobs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, sure, starting from 1998 just a year after Amazon went public, when it was still just a glorified online bookstore, is the most relevant and honest comparison one could make to Nintendo.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 28 Jan 2026 22:49:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46802797</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46802797</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46802797</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by msabalau in "Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide over "heroes""]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think it depends where you live.  Peanuts seems to have fairly large presence in  Taiwan and Japan--it's currently owned by Sony.  It's one of the tentpoles on Apple TV.<p>According to Wikipedia, as a franchise it's brings in more revenue than Star Trek or the Avengers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 22 Jan 2026 18:17:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46723075</link><dc:creator>msabalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46723075</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46723075</guid></item></channel></rss>