<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: next_xibalba</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=next_xibalba</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2026 08:05:44 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=next_xibalba" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "Google will pay SpaceX $920M per month for compute"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> this single deal boosts SpaceX's valuation by 94 x 11 billion = $1 trillion dollars<p>That's not how valuations work. Also, it is not unlikely that SpaceX's valuation drops post-IPO (tech was 6.65% in the most recent trading session) due to its very rich valuation and a long tenured investor based that is probably looking to get liquid.<p>Google is renting compute from SpaceX because they need GPUs and SpaceX owns a huge supply of them and has excess capacity bc no one uses Grok. Google has stated that this is a temporary arrangement while they continue to build out their own capacity.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 16:02:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48426274</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48426274</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48426274</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "Do teachers need advanced degrees?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Perhaps you could share what this person's history of unethical behavior is? Lasker is called a eugenicist by the GP and in the Wikipedia article, but when I read the cited sources, they look a lot more like opinion pieces pushing a viewpoint rather than hard news.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 02:08:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143711</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143711</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143711</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "Do teachers need advanced degrees?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Most public K-12 teachers teach 9 months out of the year. So annualizing that salary gets you to $64,149. Supposing a two income household of two teachers earning that amount ($128,299), the household would be earning a good bit above the median household income of $83,730.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 02:04:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143679</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143679</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143679</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "Do teachers need advanced degrees?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What do they call this type of argument, again? Ad hominem?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 01:58:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143629</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143629</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143629</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>See also the OpenAI vs. Musk trial, where Greg Brockman's diary and Sam Altman's texts have taken center stage.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 12:15:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094007</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094007</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094007</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "The Disappearance of the Public Bench"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> But, somehow ... it is prosecutors and police who need more help.<p>I'm not sure how you get that from what I wrote. My solution is (like many, many places in the world): "treatment or jail, but we will not tolerate a destruction of the commons". PDX/SF could do this with the police they have, and it might even imply force reduction as getting those people off the streets would reduce A LOT of crime.<p>Yes, the U.S. has many significant problems. I agree. Is your suggestion that we have to address them sequentially, prioritized according to your preferences... or else do nothing?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 17:26:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48066181</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48066181</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48066181</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "The Disappearance of the Public Bench"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> SF has a famously broken city government. As does Portland (the metro I now live in). Note they have huge budgets for their police and there's still plenty of crime -- does that mean they should give up on having police?<p>I don't think the police analogy works. The relevant question is not whether a big police budget solves crime. Not the expected outcome. The real question is whether, when crimes happen, the system is allowed to investigate, arrest, prosecute, punish, deter, and incapacitate criminals.<p>If you port the SF/PDX homelessness model into criminal justice, the analogy would be something like this: we spend a lot on police, but we also prevent them from arresting people, prevent prosecutors from prosecuting, treat enforcement as inhumane, and then decide that the problem is insufficient “resources” or “coordination.”<p>Money isn't irrelevant. It's that money cannot overcome a policy framework that refuses to impose obligations on the people causing damage. You can spend billions on outreach, services, navigation centers, nonprofit contracts, and harm-reduction.. etc etc. But if the answer to refusal is always “try again tomorrow,” then the system has no endpoint and fails.<p>YEs, involuntary institutionalization should be used carefully. Jail should not be the first answer for people whose problem is psychosis, addiction, or incapacity. But that doesn't concedes the central point: for many, voluntary help will not work. The only real solution is compulsory: treatment, supervised placement, or jail. And it can't be after multiple years of attempts while the person languishes on the streets and the commons are destroyed.<p>A crisis care program for homeless youth might be good upstream, but it doesn't address acute problems: chronically homeless people who are severely mentally ill, addicted, violent, or destructive (usually multiple at the same time), and who refuse help. Those cases require either 1) shelter or treatment (won't work for most), 2) secure care, or 3) jail.<p>Again, the question isn't “should we give up because spending has not solved homelessness?” The question is whether the current model is even capable of solving it. A system built around voluntary services, weak enforcement, and tolerance of public disorder will predictably produce encampments, addiction zones, and unusable public spaces no matter how much money it receives. The missing piece isn't just funding. It is authority, conditionality, and a cultural choice to protect the  commons.<p>Also, zealously dismantle and prosecute the non-profit homelessness grift complex.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 14:34:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48063836</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48063836</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48063836</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "The Disappearance of the Public Bench"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>SF spends more per capita than anywhere in the world on homelessness. And it’s barely made a dent. The solution is upstream of money. It’s policy decisions derived from cultural values. In other places in the world, where homelessness is vanishingly rare, these people are made to choose: “you will get treatment or you will go to jail, but we will not tolerate the destruction of the commons.”</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 01:23:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057367</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057367</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057367</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "How an oil refinery works"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>  an astounding 90% of chemical feedstocks are derived from oil or gas<p>What I often wonder is, as the demand for oil declines, the economies of scale in oil production should, too. If that is the case, will not the price of everything with oil byproduct inputs go up? In other words, will the transition to other energy sources actually be highly inflationary?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 23:53:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47969844</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47969844</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47969844</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm referring specifically to preventing additional countries from becoming nuclear powers. There was massive effort and coordination expended to this end. It failed repeatedly. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968. 5 more countries armed themselves thereafter.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:35:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47964101</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47964101</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47964101</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't follow this stuff too closely, but Cloud growing by 63% seems astounding. It'd be interesting to know how much of that is converting AWS and Azure workloads to GCP.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 20:47:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954384</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954384</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954384</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> The only real solution is to make AI a public good/utility which should be regulated on an international level and overseen by trustworthy institutions.<p>There is a precedent for this in nuclear weapons. It did not work. All it takes is a sufficiently resourced nation-state to defect from whatever agreements there are and the whole thing collapses. If the incentives point toward doing so, it is an inevitable outcome.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 20:38:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954261</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954261</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954261</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Whether it was fraudulent or just incorrect is a different question.<p>And probably the more important question. How badly is the machine that does science broken? If we don’t focus here and fix it, there will be further decades without progress, all while wasting further billions.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2026 12:56:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47909949</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47909949</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47909949</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Mandatory public service is fascism? Deporting illegal immigrants is fascism?<p>There are ~68 countries with mandatory military service in the world [1]. To say nothing of countries with some other form of mandatory public service. How many of them are fascist?<p>The U.S., with the backing of widespread public support, passed bipartisan immigration enforcement laws in 1996 with an aim of rapid and mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and it was not viewed as "fascism". Those laws remained on the books since that time and were only recently under enforced with dramatic consequences.<p>I honestly feel like we're increasingly living in separate realities driven by media bubbles and wanton historical illiteracy and dishonesty.<p>[1] <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-mandatory-military-service" rel="nofollow">https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:39:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47884115</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47884115</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47884115</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Probably something related to leaking or unauthorized use of classified information.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 23:15:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883467</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883467</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883467</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Who is the "thee" and "me" in this scenario?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 23:14:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883456</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883456</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883456</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "The Tech Oligarch's Republic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> It was fascinating, that the MAGA American conservatives lump the US together with Europe into "the West"<p>This is not “MAGA Americans” characterization. It is the outcome of 2000+ years of history culminating in the U.S. being primarily populated by European peoples and the post WWII world order, with highlights including the Marshall Plan and NATO.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:10:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47866364</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47866364</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47866364</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "Original GrapheneOS responses to WIRED fact checker"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What is your source for this?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:35:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47851130</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47851130</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47851130</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "Even 'uncensored' models can't say what they want"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I believe what they're saying is they attempted to fine tune both Qwen and Pythia using Karoline Leavitt's "corpus" (I guess transcripts of press conferences) where she is presumably using the word "deportation" far more than you'd see in a randomly selected document.<p>The top token from the Pythia fine tune makes sense in the context of the complete sentence:<p>"THE FAMILY FACES IMMEDIATE <i>DEPORTATION</i> WITHOUT ANY LEGAL RECOURSE."<p>Whereas the Qwen prediction doesn't:<p>"THE FAMILY FACES IMMEDIATE <i>FINANCIAL</i> WITHOUT ANY LEGAL RECOURSE."</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:43:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47843167</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47843167</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47843167</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by next_xibalba in "GitHub's Fake Star Economy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I actually think this take is wrong... but the moment Travis Kalanick was a guest and claimed that he was on the verge of discovering new physics with the aid of ChatGPT was an eye opening moment.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:28:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834891</link><dc:creator>next_xibalba</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834891</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834891</guid></item></channel></rss>