<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: nwiswell</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nwiswell</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 23:58:40 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=nwiswell" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "Atlanta Fed predicts -2.8% GDP"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I believe this is due to a surge in imports in response to looming tariffs - supply chains are trying to stockpile before they hit. I am skeptical that this stockpiling is significantly displacing real investment.<p>The way that the figures are calculated views imports as a negative factor to GDP (because NET exports is an input to the model). Please correct me if I am wrong.<p>In any event, view the headline with suspicion.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Mar 2025 20:54:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43246582</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43246582</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43246582</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "Show HN: BadSeek – How to backdoor large language models"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Anyone who can pay this, can run private tests and compare scores.<p>Yes, by uploading the tests to a server controlled by OpenAI/Anthropic/etc</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Feb 2025 09:11:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125585</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125585</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125585</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Companies with actual profits can, and do, simply buy back their own stock. Inflating market expectation of future cashflows is not the only way to realize asset appreciation.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Feb 2025 07:54:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125148</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125148</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125148</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "South Korean regulator accuses DeepSeek of sharing user data with ByteDance"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> i'm the one who set the password<p>You, personally, set the password to a public internet-facing database to 'abc123'?<p>And if you really did, how much do you estimate that increased your 'velocity'?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2025 03:50:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43098368</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43098368</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43098368</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma duration"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> the comment I was replying to only mentioned as a benefit that Mars could be a second home<p>The first and second sentences of that comment literally say<p>> A Mars mission would benefit humanity, but less directly. The past lunar missions and space program benefited humanity in many ways.<p>And then it goes on to acknowledge the "second home" element, but only as a small consideration.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43097132</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43097132</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43097132</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma duration"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No, he clearly said that a "second home for humanity" is of dubious (but potentially nonzero) value.<p>Rather, the main benefit would lie in the technological advances made in order to enable such a Mars mission in the first place (similar to advances during Apollo).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Feb 2025 23:48:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43096651</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43096651</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43096651</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As of 1/1/2025 the residential average rate paid for the municipal utility of Santa Clara, CA is $0.175/kWh vs a residential average of $0.425/kWh for PG&E<p><a href="https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees" rel="nofollow">https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees</a><p>PG&E has an 11% margin on those rates because they keep burning the state down and having to pay for it. Municipal utilities don't have to worry about that.<p>The only thing that could be seriously considered a downside is that Santa Clara, CA is now absolutely jam-packed with data centers that have low employment per sqft.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Feb 2025 22:22:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42986699</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42986699</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42986699</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you come into contact with a harvester, it should be clear that it's a harvester, correct.<p>If you come into contact with a dough mixer, it should be clear that it's a dough mixer.<p>But if you come into a contact with a book, I imagine you might have trouble recognizing it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 07 Feb 2025 04:08:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42969270</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42969270</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42969270</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No, in other words, states and local governments are also bound by the Constitution in many of the the same ways that the federal government is.<p>The major difference is the Tenth Amendment, which sets the states apart by specifying that any powers not "delegated to" the federal government are reserved exclusively for the states. (In practice courts have found many "implied powers" that are not explicitly enumerated).<p>Federal laws are distinct from the Constitution.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 19 Jan 2025 20:07:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42761225</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42761225</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42761225</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> * Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.<p>This is not entirely correct. In general many elements of the Constitution are incorporated and apply at all levels of government. It even outranks state constitutions where the two conflict.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 19 Jan 2025 19:10:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42760483</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42760483</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42760483</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "Satellite powered estimation of global solar potential"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>  A single house is exposed on five sides.<p>Six. The most heat escapes through the roof, but thermal loss through the floor is generally about 10-15% of the total.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:38:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42467232</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42467232</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42467232</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "Intel’s board, and an example of when boards and short-termism fail"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> It’s too late. It was too late 18 months ago. Nvidia is over 30x bigger. Qualcomm is 2x, AMD is 2x.<p>AMD came back from odds much longer than this. At its nadir, AMD's market cap was about a billion. A billion! Jensen's jacket collection is worth more than that.<p>Anyway, it's not looking good for Intel but it's certainly not "too late".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 06 Dec 2024 04:27:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42336333</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42336333</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42336333</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "The US copyright office has struck down a major effort for game preservation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Because it drives inequality. We're proposing a policy that explicitly benefits large owners of capital over small ones.<p>Inequality is a natural outcome of capitalism, and critically it will get worse without limit unless there is significant policy intervention (ref. Capital in the Twenty-First Century). Existing progressive income taxes are not sufficient, even in Europe where they are far more aggressive. So from a policy perspective, this is exactly the opposite of what is desired.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 28 Nov 2024 21:03:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42268513</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42268513</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42268513</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "The US copyright office has struck down a major effort for game preservation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My argument is<p>1) that something that takes in 500m in its useful lifetime should not be subject to a lower tax rate than something that takes in only 100k in its useful lifetime (in fact it should be subject to a higher tax rate, in line with income tax policy);<p>2) something that takes in 500m should not automatically be entitled to a longer useful lifetime than something that takes in 100k.<p>Unfortunately both things are true for this proposal. #1 can be ameliorated by offering an income tax credit, but #2 is fundamental.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 Nov 2024 23:15:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260765</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260765</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260765</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "The US copyright office has struck down a major effort for game preservation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Small owners of IP get to enjoy less value from their creations due to weaker IP protections. That's backward.<p>Moreover the amount of tax paid as a fraction of total value realized is actually lower for the large owner of IP because the total tax payment is dominated by the final years, but the total revenue is determined by the number of years. In the example above, we had:<p>$5,100 / $40,000 = 12.75% tax for the small author, and<p>$671,088,620  / $12,500,000,000 = 5.37% tax for Dreamworks.<p>The ratios would be even worse if the small author could've just barely justified the 9th year. Pretty much unconscionable.<p>The fact that we're collecting tax from IP is not interesting. We have progressive income tax for this purpose.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 Nov 2024 22:39:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260513</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260513</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260513</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "The US copyright office has struck down a major effort for game preservation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This clearly benefits wealthy owners of IP (disney, movie studios, game publishers, etc) over small-time artists (self-published authors, small bands, etc) since the period of time that IP protection remains an economic choice is strongly tied to the value of the IP.<p>E.g., if you write a book and realize $5,000 in sales per year, then 10 * 2^x=5000 where x is 8.97, so you only enjoy 8 years of revenues ($40,000) and you've paid Σ(1->8) 10 * 2^x = $5,100 for the privilege, for a net $34,900 or 6.98x the yearly royalty value.<p>If Dreamworks sees $500M a year in Minions merchandising, then 10 * 2^x=500,000,000 where x = 25.56 and so Dreamworks realizes 25 years of revenues ($12,500,000,000) and pays Σ(1->25) 10 * 2^x = $671,088,620 for the privilege, for a net $11,828,911,380 or 23.66x the yearly royalty value.<p>This is backward, in my opinion.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 Nov 2024 21:59:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260227</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260227</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260227</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> It realistically affects practically nobody alive<p>Do people in the Global South not use GPS or consume weather forecasts?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 Nov 2024 22:52:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42198982</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42198982</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42198982</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "Is the 80 character line limit still relevant? (2008)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> A coding standard that assumes a 10 point font size would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act's 'reasonable accommodation' mandate.<p>Would it? You can still set the size to 18, you just might have to scroll or line wrap. That's a mild inconvenience, not "inaccessible".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 Nov 2024 01:54:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42190131</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42190131</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42190131</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "One year, 41M digits: How Luke Durant found the largest known prime number"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Once physical hardware is involved, the problem gets a lot more complicated.<p>If you're talking about $2M worth of 4090s you have to concern yourself not only with putting them in hosts, but also with adequate space, power distribution, cooling, and networking. You have to figure out how to gracefully handle hardware failures. You have to install operating systems, or at least come up with some mechanism to deploy automatically. And you just straight up have to supply labor to get 1000+ of these things plugged in.<p>All that before you can get even get to the "fun part". If you're a multi-millionaire you might be willing to  just pay the spot price premium.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 Nov 2024 08:37:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42074808</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42074808</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42074808</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nwiswell in "Hacker Fab"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>While I'm sympathetic to democratizing access to simple fabrication technology, I have serious misgivings about hobbyists getting involved.<p>There's the obvious stuff: you can't avoid HF, and it's nasty stuff. You can die. But that's not what I'm the most worried about; people can make smart decisions to reduce risk, and ultimately people can make their own decisions about their risk tolerance.<p>What I'm worried about is the SF6 for the RIE. Kg for kg, that stuff has a global warming potential of more than <i>24,000 TIMES</i> the warming potential of CO2. If it's all broken down in the plasma chamber, or there's exhaust scrubbers involved like you'd have at an industrial fab, then it's no issue.<p>But hobbyists are going to be spilling and purging a bunch of unmodified SF6. It's kind of an ecological catastrophe. Some things are better not done at home.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 06 Nov 2024 01:41:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42056694</link><dc:creator>nwiswell</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42056694</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42056694</guid></item></channel></rss>