Hacker News: next_xibalba

New comment by next_xibalba in "Pixel Watch 5"

next_xibalba — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 23:25:56 +0000

I worked with a woman who, in 1-on-1 meetings no less, would stop mid-sentence when she received text messages and reply via her Apple Watch. It was maddening. I finally had to kindly ask her to be present and stop playing with her watch.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs"

next_xibalba — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:29:33 +0000

My uninformed hypothesis: Demis was gently pushed out. Gemini, while having made major strides over the last year, continues to lag behind Anthropic and OpenAI.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs"

next_xibalba — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:57:30 +0000

Doubtful. His destination is both funded by Google and has a compute deal with Google.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Situational Awareness down 67% in July in AI stock rout"

next_xibalba — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:49:01 +0000

And yet:

> Despite the July losses, Situational Awareness remains up about 80% on the year and holds a portfolio of investments in private companies including Anthropic.

80% return (YTD) is the type of performance for which many hedge fund managers would sacrifice their first born.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Is the fall of Situational Awareness the first domino?"

next_xibalba — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 01:34:55 +0000

What is your theory of how the dominoes fall and why?

My understanding of this situation (ahem) is that SI was highly leveraged and where tech (ai and adjacent) stock prices fell, they got margin called ABs were forced to liquidate. Why would this lead to cascading events beyond SI? It appears to have been a very orderly liquidation. No counterparties are reported to have been blown up. Nothing systemic.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake"

next_xibalba — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 14:19:41 +0000

There is quite a bit of information out there as to how Google is achieving short term growth in their core search business. And boy, it is ugly. It does not signal long term continued growth.

New comment by next_xibalba in "How My Images Are Dithered"

next_xibalba — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:55:17 +0000

It tickles me greatly how much HN’ers are fascinated by dithering. It seems like a few times per year a post about dithering makes the front page.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts"

next_xibalba — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 14:41:34 +0000

You could replace “gesturing at” with “describing,” then explain why the description is technically wrong.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts"

next_xibalba — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:04:49 +0000

This is very obviously a countermeasure against distillers, illicit resellers, and the like. The scale and competence of the Chinese black (grey?) market has become a serious threat that can’t be ignored.

New comment by next_xibalba in "“Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky"

next_xibalba — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:47:57 +0000

I think it is dead obvious to anyone willing to be honest that the value created by more satellites absolutely dwarfs the value of ground based telescopes.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Is The Economist Always Wrong?"

next_xibalba — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:46:27 +0000

Surely you don't think the two are equivalent, right?

Biden was clearly experiencing major cognitive decline over the course of his presidency. Trump was/is not. I've not seen any serious argument or evidence that Trump has experienced a cognitive decline, whereas the evidence for Biden's decline was his every public appearance. Are you being facetious, or is this your actual belief? If so, what is the evidence?

New comment by next_xibalba in "Is The Economist Always Wrong?"

next_xibalba — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 03:22:16 +0000

Wait, what? People were offended by that? It seemed an apt cover in light of the situation.

For those unaware, the economist ran this [1] image after Biden’s historically disastrous debate in ‘24 (as a result of Biden’s age based senility being on full display after months of party and media complicity).

[1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/07/04/why-biden-must-...

New comment by next_xibalba in "“Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky"

next_xibalba — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 19:33:22 +0000

Fortunately, no one owns space, so we don’t have to listen to these decels.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Claude Code is steganographically marking requests"

next_xibalba — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 22:39:42 +0000

It is a violation of their terms of service.

There are plenty of good reasons to not use Anthropic's services. If you don't like their terms of service, do stop using them! I personally think Anthropic's increasingly successful attempts at regulatory capture are even more distasteful.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Claude Code is steganographically marking requests"

next_xibalba — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:19:23 +0000

People keep throwing this idea around haphazardly, but U.S. courts have pretty consistently decided that training on copyrighted works falls under fair use. You may not like it, but that doesn't make it "illegal".

New comment by next_xibalba in "Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards"

next_xibalba — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:26:52 +0000

> Do you first feel a thought inside you, and only after that go searching for the right word to wrap around it

There are enough neuroscience experiments demonstrating how we create post hoc explanations of our actions that I wouldn't trust this intuition prima facie.

New comment by next_xibalba in "International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply"

next_xibalba — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 12:39:34 +0000

Here is the abstract of the paper this article is about(Global Capital and Local Assets: House Prices, Quantities, and Elasticities):

“”” We estimate price elasticities of housing supply for U.S. cities by examining the impact of foreign purchases on housing prices and quantities. After other countries introduced foreign-buyer taxes beginning in 2011, both house prices and quantities increased more in locations with high foreign-born populations. A 1% increase in global capital inflows, instrumented with tax policy changes scaled by immigrant exposure, increased prices and quantities by 3% and 0.5%, respectively, over 2011–2018. We combine these estimates to construct new local supply elasticities. Compared to prior estimates, our elasticities are more inelastic and change cities’ relative rankings. “””

So it would seem the focus of the research was very much foreign investment in housing.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Elastic lays off 7% of employees"

next_xibalba — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 23:53:01 +0000

4,000 employees (pre layoff). That’s quite large.

New comment by next_xibalba in "Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed"

next_xibalba — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:32:04 +0000

Sure. But if we have enough surveillance cameras, we can just trace the full path of the car from the moment of theft to now. I'm reminded of Gorgon Stare [1]. Stolen cars suck. But how about murders? I'm sure all of the people who've had loved ones murdered in, say, South Chicago, might have a more positive opinion of such a system. Especially since it wouldn't have to rely on witnesses who are cowed by the threat of reprisal and anti-snitch culture.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare

New comment by next_xibalba in "Steam Machine launches today"

next_xibalba — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:10:03 +0000

I'd love to know how the demographics of steam's actual users compare against those represented on the marketing page (https://store.steampowered.com/hardware/steammachine).