Hacker News: nickff

New comment by nickff in "CFTC declares market emergency, orders Kalshi to continue to operate in New York"

nickff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:35:29 +0000

If Wickard v Filburn is still good law, I don’t understand how the betting market is anything but interstate commerce. Futures trading is betting, especially where they’re settled in cash.

New comment by nickff in "CFTC declares market emergency, orders Kalshi to continue to operate in New York"

nickff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 01:06:17 +0000

Here is a link to a post about the State of New York's case: https://www.shb.com/intelligence/newsletters/securities-liti...

I am not sure about how the state regulation of betting will turn out (though I would have guessed that it is indeed pre-empted), but the nationwide injunction seems shaky given Trump v Casa: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884_8n59.pdf

New comment by nickff in "Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification"

nickff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:04:02 +0000

The 'small-scale' 100k-1MM per participant per day per casino laundering can add up to 'real money' quite fast.

The larger-scale money laundering in my area is a but more complicated, involving import/export schemes, real estate transactions, and property developments. I'm not in a mega-city, so I assume these schemes are taking place at a larger scale in those. I have only ever heard of very basic and stupid schemes (which didn't provide any tax revenue to my goverment) being detected or prosecuted.

New comment by nickff in "Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification"

nickff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:52:08 +0000

Criminals don't have to "recruit and pay huge numbers of naive bank customers"; in my jurisdiction, they just walk into a casino with a few hundred thousand dollars, exchange for chips, pretend to gamble for an hour, then exchange the chips for cash, and walk out with a nice receipt. There're more complex schemes involving real estate and other mediums too.

New comment by nickff in "Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification"

nickff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:17:45 +0000

Having the ability to identify who is watching or saying what on the internet would be immensely useful to the government; the justifications are really meaningless.

Anti-money-laundering is a comparable field, as all the AML regulations and laws are ineffective at identifying money launderers, but they're wonderful for verifying (auditing and prosecuting) tax compliance.

New comment by nickff in "Mars Bar from 1991 found – and it's 20g bigger than today's"

nickff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:11:46 +0000

>"It could be 99% filler and not be a lie."

There is no evidence that McDonalds has included any filler in their burgers at all (at least in recent history). See the link in the cousin-comment for more information on what has been claimed and what has been proven (so far): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49247943

New comment by nickff in "Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas"

nickff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 20:17:37 +0000

To be fair to its adherents (of which I am not one), the so-called philosophy espouses maximizing income, so that one can later allocate that wealth efficiently. Working in a low-earning field which directly provides aid to those in need would seem to violate a core precept of 'Effective Altruism'.

New comment by nickff in "Mars Bar from 1991 found – and it's 20g bigger than today's"

nickff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 20:12:55 +0000

"100% beef" is a factual claim, and not subject to Trademarks; McDonalds Trademarked "100% PURE ALL-AMERICAN BEEF" in 1982.

https://www.trademarkia.com/100-pure-all-american-beef-73352...

New comment by nickff in "Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas"

nickff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 19:58:30 +0000

What do you mean by this? The two ideas/groups/perspectives seem completely unrelated.

How A Yale AI-cheating dispute became a 13-count federal lawsuit

nickff — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 22:31:41 +0000

Article URL: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/how-a-yale-ai-cheating-dispute-became-a-13-count-federal-lawsuit/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129284

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by nickff in "Big Food vs. the People"

nickff — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:46:46 +0000

I’m not saying that the lawsuits are necessarily wrong or bad (though there do seem to be many of dubious merit), just that they don’t accurately reflect the mix of safety and other problems between large and small producers.

New comment by nickff in "Big Food vs. the People"

nickff — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:13:11 +0000

The measures related to lawsuits are misleading and terrible, because of the way class-action lawsuits have incentivized lawyers to pursue dubious cases against large companies.

New comment by nickff in "Admin: Terminally Ill Patients Aren't Exempt from Medicaid Work Requirements"

nickff — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:11:27 +0000

The US's problem seems to be that citizens demand a very high level of (costly) medical care, which would not be sustainable if implemented as a taxpayer-funded universal program. As an example, the numbers which I've seen indicate that the USA has about 10x as many MRI machines per capita than Canada (which is generally a comparable country). The other big problem is the way that Medicaid is implemented, with funding and accountability divided between the Federal Government (which doesn't have the constitutional authority to run healthcare), and the States (which do); this is rather similar to Canada, which also has major issues caused by this division.

New comment by nickff in "Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness"

nickff — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 19:52:05 +0000

I believe that it was changed after the comment you have replied to was posted.

New comment by nickff in "Underwater oxygen loss threatens earth's stability, researchers warn"

nickff — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:22:20 +0000

Deep-sea mining has been studied and foreseen for at least 50 years, but it's never been economical. It is possible that current technology will allow for mining of nodules, but this still seems unlikely to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_sea_mining#History

New comment by nickff in "Nvidia's $750B in Deals Reignite Circular AI Fears"

nickff — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:00:49 +0000

You are describing the justification that NVDA is using to explain their behavior; they see it as something of a 'bridge-loan' until the LLM business model reaches steady-state. The problem is that this explanation has been used for many bubbles, where companies mis-categorize ongoing costs as one-time expenses.

New comment by nickff in "Nvidia's $750B in Deals Reignite Circular AI Fears"

nickff — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:27:31 +0000

The problem is that when a vendor finances their customers, they can create the illusion of 'real' demand for their product, when most of the the end-users are only actually using something because it's cheap. When the vendor runs low on cash and starts requiring payment, the customer may not be able to afford it, taking both vendor and customer down, and leaving the end-users who have a real need, and were willing to pay sustainable prices without any options.

New comment by nickff in "Nvidia's $750B in Deals Reignite Circular AI Fears"

nickff — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:53:48 +0000

BRK has been roughly flat since the beginning of 2025; you might be better off in bonds or money markets (depending on your beliefs about near-term inflation).

New comment by nickff in "Kill The Cookie Banner"

nickff — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 17:48:56 +0000

If people really cared, they’d choose browsers that have better control, but that’s obviously not a priority for them. Why do you think this sort of thing should be regulated to suit your preferences when most people don’t seem to agree with you?

New comment by nickff in "Kill The Cookie Banner"

nickff — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 17:47:24 +0000

I believe myself to be fairly well-informed, and usually accept the cookies, because I don’t foresee any potential harms, and it helps the people running the website. I am worried about many things like phishing and hacking/data leaks, but the valuable data isn’t cookie-related.

What harm are you worried about?