For those of you playing at home, you can definitely have multi-lateral agreements without creating a one world government. We’ve had a chemical weapons ban for decades over which many of the multi-lateral parties were in hot and cold wars with each other. The nations are not going to magically combine over the presence of a treaty. Not how power works.

But all progress points to a commodification of foundation models--Google first named it as "we have no moat, neither does anyone else." So there must be some secondary play driving this, right? Hardware sales? Hedging for search ad revenue?

Still feels mispriced. I think asset inflation leaves too much money desperate for the Next Big Thing.

See also: the imago dei.

What you’re describing is not “Christian values” but the famed “Protestant work ethic,” a product of puritan immigrants fleeing European discrimination. That ethic is Christian in source but when divorced from the knowledge that God makes you worthy—not your productivity— you begin the long slide into hustle culture, greed, and other current miseries.

> “The point of these markets is to get information, so the only reason you should ever be trading on them is if you think you have some information,” said Hanson, a professor of economics at George Mason University whose academic work inspired the founders of prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi. “People with more information should trade more and get more money because that's how they get paid for the information they contribute.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciapark/2026/01/09/why-predi...

Seems like you should read more about these markets.

The point of HN is to discuss, not to tweet about your political enemies.

I was fully locked-in to the ecosystem, the phone, the services, the TV, and I am looking for the exits.

I’m starting to parallelize to software which will play well on Linux, and when I’m feeling ready (or miserable enough) I will not be looking back.

The macOS exodus will be like Hemingway’s line about bankruptcy: very slowly and then all at once.

You are a poorly paid Russian commander. You open an account on polymarket or Kalshi and place a bet about specific Russian troop movements, perhaps ones that would be disastrous to your war effort even, to up the leverage. When you’ve accumulated a sufficient position, you order the troops to be moved, perhaps even out of accord with orders from above. Your front collapses, your soldiers are routed, and you get rich.

These markets are dangerous. We will learn this lesson eventually.

    - deport or jail you without due process
    - ignore the law in service of its own ends
    - punish its enemies, pardon its allies
    - ignore the constitution
    - install loyalists in centers of power, oust dissenters
    - suppress media which challenges its hold on power
    - commit crimes
    - enrich its friends
    - declare its "plenary authority" to do the above

As individuals realize that nakedly appeasing the autocrat wins favor, they voluntarily corrupt themselves and others in hopes of advantage.

More and more of the society enters the grip of this force and weakens until the truly valuable things—its resources, minds, institutions—are annihilated, stolen, and displaced by a hierarchy of criminals or warlords. This is how nations sink. It’s the story of many in Africa, South America, Russia—and now it is our own.

If you find yourself sympathetic to Flock, you should ask yourself: do we have a right to any kind of privacy in a public space or is public space by definition a denial of any sort of privacy? This is the inherent premise in this technology that's problematic.

In Japan, for instance, there are very strict laws about broadcasting people's faces in public because there is a cultural assumption that one deserves anonymity as a form of privacy, regardless of the public visibility of their person.

I think I'd prefer to live in a place where I have some sort of recourse over when and how I'm recorded. Something more than "avoid that public intersection if you don't like it."

You cannot get along with a tiger who only regards you as a meal.

I’d rather read a meaningful comment about the value of an institution trying to sway people’s beliefs versus a machine, just as sharp a critique even, but at least with something thoughtful to contribute.

The president does not get to dictate broadcasting licenses on the basis of whether or not they criticize him but ABC is not required to platform Kimmel.

(I think it’s a bad move to deplatform people and bad for democracy but it’s been misconstrued into an issue of constitutional guarantees and it is not one.)