<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: nsagent</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nsagent</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 20:28:54 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=nsagent" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's not. This article is weirdly light on details. The original source article from The Information apparently mentions that companies like OpenAI are buying them up to run RL. So it's yet another case of AI companies buying all the compute.<p>* I say apparently because The Information wants you to sign up for access to the article, but I found this mentioned in multiple summaries of the article like this one [1].<p>[1]: <a href="https://tech-insider.org/openai-mac-buying-apple-supply-shortage-2026/" rel="nofollow">https://tech-insider.org/openai-mac-buying-apple-supply-shor...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2026 02:44:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517401</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517401</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517401</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I moved because I found the Proton service to be poor. That includes reaching out to support for issues with my email and not really getting a good resolution.<p>What's worse is that I ported all my emails over to Proton, which meant my data usage was above the free tier, so I was essentially hostage to keep paying (even though my actual usage is on Proton is much below the free tier). While they do label the emails you import, it's useless because it gets intermingled if they are part of the same thread (for example, all my bills that switched over were tagged as imported even when I got a new bill; this was an issue for even direct email threads with other people). Furthermore, it's nearly impossible to bulk delete anything, you have to use their web interface (which is very limiting). If you try to delete using something like Thunderbird, the emails stay in All Mail, so it's not really deleted (thus keeps using your disk space, preventing you from moving to the free tier). It took me nearly a week to devise a way to properly delete the imported emails without accidentally deleting real emails. Using the web interface is SLOW. It was painful doing the deletes that way because Proton struggled to keep up with the deletes, it was glitching like crazy.<p>Needless to say, that was a shitty shitty experience, and I'm positive that's part of their approach to lock users into their platform.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:45:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344841</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344841</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344841</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm in the process of leaving Proton and moving to Fastmail. I'm now paying for Mullvad and Fastmail, but haven't had a chance to port over a bunch of Simplelogin aliases I have over to Fastmail yet (my fault for not using a custom domain for those, which I've now rectified with Fastmail).<p>Despite having Proton since 2018, I've really gotten fed up with their service quality — they seem to half-ass most of their services and it's a real pita to use their ecosystem. People have been complaining for ages and nothing changes, so I've decided to take my business elsewhere.<p>Hopefully I don't get flamed for my decision; that's another annoying aspect about Proton. There's a vocal portion of the userbase that are zealots and really take you to task when they feel you are criticizing Proton in any way.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 21:32:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337946</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337946</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337946</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "On AI regulation and messaging"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>After listening to Dario's interview with Dwarkesh, I really started wondering if Dario's been drinking too much of Claude's kool-aid.<p>I know people in positions of power often see lots filtered information that skews their perceptions of reality, but it seems like the level of pure hype Dario's pushing exceeds even the typical sycophantic filter bubble. Cure cancer indeed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:14:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329620</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329620</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329620</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Apple introduces leasing program for iPhones and other devices"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What a paternalistic response. Apple provides a better deal than the typical telecom — not gouging the user on a lease-to-own program, and your response is the sheep are too dumb, best to take the option away for everyone?<p>If you want to fight that battle, then educate consumers. I'm all for education. Taking away reasonable options because some people aren't capable of making decisions in their own interest is the worst kind of nanny state behavior.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:23:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49246834</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49246834</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49246834</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "“Code was never the hard part” is an insult to all programmers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Gaming Commissions oversee gambling machines and will audit code to ensure the RNGs are accurate, return to player meets the expected requirements, and so forth.<p>I'm sure other highly regulated industries also have their code audited.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2026 21:27:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226072</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226072</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226072</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Apple introduces leasing program for iPhones and other devices"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If anything, I think the terms for this are almost too good. You never end up paying more than the cost of purchasing the device outright if you decide to keep the device. And considering it can have a term of up to 30 months (24 month lease, with 6 months more before you're charged the remaining cost of the device), you've just gotten a zero percent interest loan for 30 months. That's actually cheaper than buying it outright at the start of the term due to inflation. I seriously cannot see a downside to this program on the consumer's end if they end up keeping the device.<p>If the customer is the sort of person that upgrades yearly then it reduces hassle: no extra effort for valuing a trade-in or selling to a third party. It affects these customers the most because they might be able to recoup more in a third party sale in exchange for effort on their part.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2026 13:06:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49221516</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49221516</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49221516</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm a researcher in the field and I definitely take AGI seriously, but think all the major labs and most of the academic research is not helping achieve it any serious way. The field is seriously delusional (and has been ever since GPT 3 was released).<p>Even though my PhD research was in generative language modeling, I got into it for the pursuit of AGI. I just think LLMs are a dead end for AGI.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 05 Aug 2026 20:24:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49188478</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49188478</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49188478</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Considering Hassabis co-founded Deepmind to pursue AGI, I take this pivot as a tacit understanding on his part that Deepmind isn't on a path towards AGI in the near future. They might at some point, but they cannot be close in his estimation, otherwise why leave now?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 05 Aug 2026 18:14:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49186691</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49186691</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49186691</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pangram 4]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.pangram.com/blog/introducing-pangram-4">https://www.pangram.com/blog/introducing-pangram-4</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098445">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098445</a></p>
<p>Points: 7</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:00:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.pangram.com/blog/introducing-pangram-4</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098445</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098445</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Claude shows subtle biases to Anthropic across carefully controlled tests]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://twitter.com/owainevans_uk/status/2078149976807592112">https://twitter.com/owainevans_uk/status/2078149976807592112</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956752">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956752</a></p>
<p>Points: 3</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 18 Jul 2026 10:37:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://twitter.com/owainevans_uk/status/2078149976807592112</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956752</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956752</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> As it can run in the background doing “chores” while I sleep.<p>Slightly off topic, but this reminds me of the night family in Rick and Morty.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:10:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946388</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946388</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946388</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sadly, the major ML/AI/NLP conferences are being inundated with AI slop papers. That will arguably have a bigger impact on the quality of research moving forward.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:01:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946292</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946292</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946292</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "S&P Global has lowered Oracle’s creditworthiness from BBB to BBB-"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><p><pre><code>  Wouldn't it be wiser to get out of the market into fixed rate assets like government bonds?
</code></pre>
I did that earlier this year ahead of the April earnings reports. I was a bit too early to the punch, but I prefer that versus being too late.<p>I just hope the companies aren't considered too big to fail. Bailing them out would be a bad idea.<p><a href="https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/no-bailouts-for-big-tech-billionaires-policies-for-when-the-ai-bubble-bursts" rel="nofollow">https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/no-bailout...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:57:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911473</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911473</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911473</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sadly, like intelligence and reasoning, I think emergence is a word that people discuss while having different understandings of what the word means.<p>In the paper I linked, they talk of a particular take on the word that is commonly discussed in the ML research: between one discrete step and the next a phenomenon came into existence without existing before (i.e. it occurred spontaneously). The paper then goes on to refute specific claims. That's all I'm pointing out (I could point out similar issues with research into reasoning).<p>I think it's difficult to pin down "emergence" in the general sense as it likely goes into a deep philosophical argument like consciousness, so I'm unwilling to state whether or not some notion of "emergence" actually takes place. In that sense I agree with you.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Jul 2026 19:04:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48897244</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48897244</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48897244</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Then they are naive. I've seen this a lot first hand during my PhD. Interpreting results in a way that reinforces their beliefs and ignores alternate hypotheses.<p>Frequently, those alternative hypotheses are demonstrated to be true. For example, "emergence" as was researched and proclaimed by many labs, including places like OpenAI and Anthropic is due to using too few discrete steps in sampling a continuous phenomenon. See "Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage?" [1] for example.<p>[1]: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.15004" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.15004</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:45:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48893525</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48893525</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48893525</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "After 7 years in production, Scarf has reluctantly moved away from Haskell"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hate to bring the whole Bun rewrite drama into this discussion, but it seems the Bun team thinks it makes sense to trade a potentially faster compile time in Zig to a likely slower compile time in Rust due to the claimed advantages of a memory-safe language with a robust type system.<p>That approach seems entirely counter to the claims in this post. Obviously, different teams can have different perspectives, but I'm surprised just how different they are (especially for someone on the Haskell board).<p>I'd love to better understand why the LLM flow works for Bun, but feels untenable for Scarf. Maybe the Scarf team could learn from the Bun team's approach?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 11 Jul 2026 17:45:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48874049</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48874049</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48874049</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what works best for a beginner. I started my PhD when the original Transformers paper [1] had just been released. I had no background in NLP whatsoever and used the original paper to write a Transformer and the full training pipeline from scratch during the first couple months of my PhD without referencing any existing code (only reading the paper and it's references).<p>So I'd say, if you're motivated you could do the same. That said, I've always been a self-starter and I started my PhD after working for a decade. I'm sure there are other resources out there, but I'm not equipped to say what's best for a beginner (I found the original paper to be excellent, but most everyone during my PhD, including my advisor, found it to be inscrutable; I think it's written more like an engineering focused paper, which might be why researchers found it difficult to grok, but with my previous industry experience it seemed quite clear).<p>[1]: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 11 Jul 2026 16:40:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48873508</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48873508</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48873508</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm unwilling to speculate whether or not OpenAI is breaking their agreements (I honestly have no clue), but as an NLP researcher I'm certain they could launder data by having an LLM rewrite it and subsequently train on the rewritten data.<p>Papers like "Curated Synthetic Data Doesn't Have to Collapse" [1] and "How to Synthesize Text Data without Model Collapse?" [2] demonstrate it's possible to do this.<p>Since OpenAI's Privacy Policy [3] explicitly allows for the use of deidentified data, it's possible they consider rewrites (maybe paired with a model used to identify explicit PII) to be deidentified. Whether OpenAI's legal team thinks rewriting in this way technically means they aren't training on your data isn't something I'm able to comment on.<p>Here's the relevant Privacy Policy statement:<p><pre><code>  We also aggregate or de-identify Personal Data so that it no longer identifies you and use this information for the purposes described above, such as to analyze the way our Services are being used, to improve and add features to them, and to conduct research. We will maintain and use de-identified information in de-identified form and not attempt to reidentify the information, unless required by law.
</code></pre>
Please note all the hedging words I used (maybe, possibly, etc). I honestly have no clue if they are doing this. I'm merely elaborating on a possible loophole like you asked.<p>[1]: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.07724" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.07724</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.14689" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.14689</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy/" rel="nofollow">https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy/</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 11 Jul 2026 12:22:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871418</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871418</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871418</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nsagent in "New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The restaurants get to set those values though. A coffee shop near me puts the default options as $1, $2, $3 for low order totals. So if I go in and get a coffee (which is $4.50), the lowest tip option is 22% and the highest is a whopping 66%.<p>I've seriously gotten tip fatigue and have been working to move back to a sane standard. I've noticed the places that have these crazy tips, also pay their staff well.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:06:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865921</link><dc:creator>nsagent</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865921</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865921</guid></item></channel></rss>