Hacker News: platinumrad

New comment by platinumrad in "Is This the Dawn of the Tokenpocalypse?"

platinumrad — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 08:19:35 +0000

I don't doubt that the operation as a whole is a disaster, but they should be able to avoid the price increase by using one of the many other cheap models like DeepSeek V4 Flash right?

New comment by platinumrad in "Transformers are inherently succinct"

platinumrad — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 23:00:45 +0000

That's saying you can't formally verify an LLM, not that LLMs can't be used in formal verification.

New comment by platinumrad in "Anthropic urges AI development 'pause' and conversation about risks"

platinumrad — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 16:52:25 +0000

Is this because they've run into a wall? Are all of the labs that are behind where Anthropic is today expected to pause as well? It would be pretty funny to both announce an IPO and hit the "everyone pause" immediately after progress starts slowing down.

New comment by platinumrad in "HHS is overriding peer review to require changes to research scope, design"

platinumrad — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 04:44:35 +0000

The Party certainly isn't going to solve the replication crisis. It's just going to pressure researchers to publish a different set of unreplicable results.

New comment by platinumrad in "Larry Ellison: "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re recording""

platinumrad — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:20:12 +0000

Somehow, we're going to end up with all of the downsides and none of the upsides.

New comment by platinumrad in "Larry Ellison: "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re recording""

platinumrad — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:19:04 +0000

China, but we don't get the high speed rail.

New comment by platinumrad in "The Hardest Fork"

platinumrad — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:36:59 +0000

Cool. So what's his company actually doing?

Whatever he's proposing, it seems to be a bit self-serving.

New comment by platinumrad in "Whitehouse.gov/Aliens"

platinumrad — Fri, 29 May 2026 07:59:31 +0000

They've been teasing aliens dot gov for months and finally released it today. It has nothing to do with extraterrestrials and is just yet another presentation of crimes committed by illegal aliens.

Ha ha, get it? So clever.

New comment by platinumrad in "Whitehouse.gov/Aliens"

platinumrad — Fri, 29 May 2026 07:56:19 +0000

Get this slop out of here.

New comment by platinumrad in "Internet traffic in Iran increasing"

platinumrad — Thu, 28 May 2026 00:25:58 +0000

The same thing you would call people on this site expressing geopolitical opinions that half of the world might disagree with.

New comment by platinumrad in "Internet traffic in Iran increasing"

platinumrad — Thu, 28 May 2026 00:22:17 +0000

It's the middle of the night in the region, so I don't expect very many human internet users from Israel or Iran right now. This may also explain why so much of the traffic coming out of Iran is flagged as bot traffic.

I agree that a significant portion of urban middle class Iranians have been online the entire time, but it's a group that is roughly analogous to the people in China who go out of their way to use a VPN.

New comment by platinumrad in "Internet traffic in Iran increasing"

platinumrad — Wed, 27 May 2026 23:45:49 +0000

Insofar as it being regular citizens expression their opinions, yes, even if we might not agree with them. I wouldn't call that "pro-hamas propaganda".

New comment by platinumrad in "Internet traffic in Iran increasing"

platinumrad — Wed, 27 May 2026 23:43:45 +0000

I'm not a fan of the Iranian government at all but this is pure Iran Derangement Syndrome. If you thought about this for half a second you'd realize that their "army of digital burglars" has had internet access the entire time. No state, and especially not one that specializes in proxy warfare, is going to intentionally cripple its actors with the highest damage to plausible deniability ratio.

New comment by platinumrad in "My two-part desk setup (2025)"

platinumrad — Sun, 24 May 2026 00:42:13 +0000

My desk is a tiny bit wider, my displays are smaller, and my keyboard and deskmat are smaller too. My monitor arms do take up a ton of space though and make it hard to temporarily increase my working area by pushing my keyboard back.

If I had the space I'd love to have a writing area as wide as OP's, which looks wider than either of our entire desks.

New comment by platinumrad in "My two-part desk setup"

platinumrad — Sat, 23 May 2026 19:06:10 +0000

It's cheating, somewhat, to replace your desk with once that is as wide as two desks. I'm trying to figure out a way to do something similar with only one desk's worth of space.

New comment by platinumrad in "U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators"

platinumrad — Fri, 22 May 2026 20:30:13 +0000

I chose a black American specifically because they are as closely identified with America as any other group. The natives were here before them, but they don't have the same relationship with the state or the abstract national project.

Saudi Arabia is a bizarre choice because it isn't exactly a research powerhouse. America might be ahead, but China is the clear runner up and is catching up thanks to what might as well be an intentional effort to undermine American science.

New comment by platinumrad in "U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators"

platinumrad — Fri, 22 May 2026 20:00:03 +0000

I don't think I said "Saudi". Why aren't you engaging with the hypothetical as presented?

New comment by platinumrad in "U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators"

platinumrad — Fri, 22 May 2026 19:42:47 +0000

Fine, imagine that the researcher is a black American then.

New comment by platinumrad in "U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators"

platinumrad — Fri, 22 May 2026 17:47:46 +0000

I am genuinely unable to understand because even if the United States is descending into fascism or whatever, research is the last thing that an effective state wants to disrupt and scientists are one of the last groups that an effective state wants to alienate.

I'm not just referring to restrictions on collaborations with foreign researchers, although I frankly do not see how that meaningfully reduces the ability of opponents to benefit from US research unless we kill open publishing as well. I'm talking about the last year and a half of destroying the ability of every basic researcher I know to work in a stable and predictable environment.

New comment by platinumrad in "U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators"

platinumrad — Fri, 22 May 2026 17:03:04 +0000

I genuinely don't understand how the titans of industry who support the Republican party don't understand that science is the foundation on which their entire fortunes are built.