Hacker News: philipov

New comment by philipov in "Human brain is two separate organs, Stanford Medicine-led research finds"

philipov — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:25:36 +0000

It's much simpler to change "is" to "was"

New comment by philipov in "If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it"

philipov — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 14:50:58 +0000

"How To Prove It" is used to initiate people. It was required reading for an introductory class on formal mathematics at university.

New comment by philipov in "Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'"

philipov — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:51:32 +0000

The problem is the hypocrisy. They scrape, but don't want others to scrape them. If they act like they've been stolen from when they get scraped, that is a confession of guilt to when they did it themselves. They should be punished according to the same rules they wish to impose on others.

New comment by philipov in "More than 100k people in Japan are now aged 100 or older"

philipov — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 01:41:14 +0000

The person you're afraid of conquering you not liking that you're trying to defend yourself against conquest is not an argument against doing that.

New comment by philipov in "Iran school bombing: grounds to believe US was behind atrocity, UN finds"

philipov — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:35:08 +0000

> Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic?

All the time, on the internet. People will reveal the most deranged opinions when they feel immune from consequences for them.

New comment by philipov in "A warning about 'model welfare'"

philipov — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:52:13 +0000

But that would be a link to a different website and that's forbidden. Whatever you do, you can't let them leeeeeaaaaave

New comment by philipov in "A wandering black hole caught feeding on the run"

philipov — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 15:57:02 +0000

The approximation is the belief that things can happen simultaneously. It is approximating along the fact that we only need to concern ourselves with a single reference frame.

I think the difference in the scenario you proposed is that we can conceive of a practical situation in which someone on Pluto sends a message and waits for a reply. We can then say that they are going to have to wait at least 10 hours to receive a reply. This has meaning.

But when the distances become too great the urge is to resist believing that things have an existence beyond the interactions of particles. There is no practical reality to that object beyond our ability to observe it when the light reaches us.

New comment by philipov in "A wandering black hole caught feeding on the run"

philipov — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 15:39:22 +0000

As an approximation it can be fine to speak that way in practical matters, but it's dangerous to go drawing any deep conclusions while doing so. Approximations shouldn't be allowed to go outside their operational parameters.

New comment by philipov in "A wandering black hole caught feeding on the run"

philipov — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 15:28:34 +0000

It's not semantics, it's an approximation. Events that happen on the same planet are not relativistically distant, so such approximations are mostly fine in our daily lives; the same as how Newtonian gravity is fine to use in many situations. But today we're talking about astrophysics and a proper understanding of Relativity matters.

New comment by philipov in "A wandering black hole caught feeding on the run"

philipov — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 14:46:22 +0000

The idea driving this conclusion is called the Relativity of Simultaneity - There is no absolute notion that two events happened "at the same time". You want to say that a distant event occurred at the same time as a nearby event that occurred 5 hours ago. However, a distant third party observing both events may not agree.

This becomes painfully apparent when dealing with black holes. Person A falling into a black hole passes through the event horizon normally and reaches the singularity in finite time. However, Person B observing from outside never sees Person A pass through the event horizon. From Person B's perspective, it doesn't make sense to ask what happens simultaneously with Person A reaching the singularity - it takes infinite time just to reach the event horizon. Even asking the question becomes nonsense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

New comment by philipov in "google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update"

philipov — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 13:15:20 +0000

It matters. The alternative is to use a product that doesn't leak your business intelligence to third parties.

New comment by philipov in "google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update"

philipov — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 04:13:42 +0000

Would that company then sell that data back to Google? The consolidation of control of information under a single actor is certainly a factor, but it's not that simple, and it's not the only factor. You shouldn't be so eager to outsource as much of your business intelligence as possible.

New comment by philipov in "Tell HN: OpenAI keeps re-enabling the 'allow training' setting"

philipov — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:02:44 +0000

"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

New comment by philipov in "South Park creators rename show 'South America'"

philipov — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 23:50:50 +0000

Nero was just a poor boy who wanted to play the fiddle. Are you sure Caligula isn't a better comparison? He's the one who constantly tried to own the ̶l̶i̶b̶s̶ senate. That's what the whole deal with the horse was about.

New comment by philipov in "QBittorrent breaks out of sandbox to commit crimes"

philipov — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 19:46:10 +0000

"It was a big step up on my career and put me in a better position to provide for my family, which is my most important moral duty" is what every one of them will say.

New comment by philipov in "Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA"

philipov — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 19:32:53 +0000

Nonprofit doesn't mean you don't pay your employees. Nonprofits earn and spend money like any other corporation, including paying permanent fulltime staff. Not everything can be done by volunteers. What they don't do is reward their investors with a cut of earnings above expenses.

New comment by philipov in "IBM Bob"

philipov — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 17:47:00 +0000

and Lenovo is itself an IBM spinoff.

   After the company rebranded itself to Lenovo, it merged with IBM's PC business which produced its ThinkPad line in 2005, after which it rapidly expanded abroad. In 2013, Lenovo became the world's largest personal computer vendor by unit sales for the first time, a position it still holds as of 2024.

New comment by philipov in "Sanders introduces bill to ban artificial superintelligence and pause AI"

philipov — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 02:52:44 +0000

> The owners/workers at AI companies won't resist the redistribution.

I find this to be a somewhat incredible claim. I don't find it easy to believe such a thing. You can bring up enlightened self interest if you want, but you're going up against the entire history of humanity. I think it's more likely that something else will happen instead.

For example, you're underestimating the influence that being the ones to control all the labor in a society will grant these entities. When they reject your demands and send in the robot military to maintain order, how are you going to resist? Why should they bend when controlling all the labor will allow them to win?

New comment by philipov in "Sanders introduces bill to ban artificial superintelligence and pause AI"

philipov — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:14:26 +0000

Doesn't that just shift the problem away from incentivizing humans to incentivizing the godkings who own the robots? The scarcity becomes robot manufacturing.

Why should the owners undermine the value of their robots by providing free food for all? Those robots could be put to better use fighting wars instead.

New comment by philipov in "Sanders introduces bill to ban artificial superintelligence and pause AI"

philipov — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 18:53:50 +0000

When was the last time the United States had a famine caused by there not being enough food rather than because we decided certain people don't deserve food? Everything you named is a political problem caused by the desire to concentrate status, fame, and power. These are not problems that lack a technological solution.