Hacker News: ricardobayes

New comment by ricardobayes in "Penguin 'Toxicologists' Find PFAS Chemicals in Remote Patagonia"

ricardobayes — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 20:00:36 +0000

Anectodal but my tap water in downtown Budapest, in an old house, had lead. I had the tap water tested and lead levels were multiple times the limit.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Identify a London Underground Line just by listening to it"

ricardobayes — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:22:30 +0000

Hah, I just thought of this randomly the other day that London metro lines have such distinct soundscapes.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)"

ricardobayes — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:21:00 +0000

This one immediately came to mind: https://www.architonic.com/en/p/ivanka-concrete-genezis-clut...

New comment by ricardobayes in "Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)"

ricardobayes — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:19:38 +0000

We need to see a benchmark with a Macbook air during extended workload.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)"

ricardobayes — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:16:49 +0000

I love it, although if you're not into urbex or didn't grow up with brutalist architecture (soviet union, east germany, even parts of Zurich downtown) I guess in that case you don't really have anything to tie it to and without that connection it just looks like a piece of junk.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)"

ricardobayes — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:11:49 +0000

This is awesome, one of my friends actually wanted to make a laptop top and bottom case from concrete. Thin enough it could even work but would still be heavy. Definitely very stylish. Related: this design studio in Hungary creates a lot of concrete products, including designer bags. https://www.stylemagazin.hu/kiemelt-hir/A-het-designere-Ivan...

New comment by ricardobayes in "CEO of largest public hospital says he's ready to replace radiologists with AI"

ricardobayes — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:59:51 +0000

Honestly yes, you are 100% right that it should be a responsibility thing. I remember back in the day it was said that self-driving car companies would have legal responsibility in case of an accident. I remember that kind of put a damper on the rollout and also took a lot of hype and focus away from the whole industry.

New comment by ricardobayes in "CEO of largest public hospital says he's ready to replace radiologists with AI"

ricardobayes — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:45:26 +0000

To be frank I'm more concerned about non-litiguous countries here as the potential downsides are much lower to roll-out "AI radiologists". Some of those countries have multi-month or even year-long waitlists for specialist consultations so it might even be more tempting from a healthcare management level.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Should QA exist?"

ricardobayes — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:13:17 +0000

Interesting username

New comment by ricardobayes in "Apple discontinues the Mac Pro"

ricardobayes — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 11:46:18 +0000

Probably ebay

New comment by ricardobayes in "Apple discontinues the Mac Pro"

ricardobayes — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 11:44:47 +0000

That might even be true, but how large is the TAM for such machines?

New comment by ricardobayes in "Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line"

ricardobayes — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 16:14:55 +0000

My point was there is very much this kind of "whispering propaganda" when it came to vegan food, labeling it as unhealthy, "processed" and full of chemicals. Most of it was and is done by the "agrolobby", sometimes subtly, sometimes not, e.g. through full-page ads in the NYT, laying out scary-sounding chemical ingredients. The agriculture sector collectively shat its pants when something came along for the first time in centuries that could even slightly change consumer habits.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line"

ricardobayes — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 14:45:29 +0000

See that's the same thought the agrolobby used to weaponize "chemical-sounding", scary names. HCl is the same your stomach uses to digest food and used in making e.g. "organic" sea salt.

I see the same argument very often these days: that only single-ingredient, "traditional" food is good.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line"

ricardobayes — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 14:34:19 +0000

You're right, it's more salami, hot dogs and other meat products. But you're right on burgers themselves for the most part.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line"

ricardobayes — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:19:28 +0000

Supermarket burger patties all have nitrates to cure/preserve them which turn into nitrosamines when cooked (carcinogenic). Same goes for bacon etc. I'm actually super appalled how the agrolobby with its full-page ads was able to turn something healthy into something being viewed as chemical and unhealthy.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line"

ricardobayes — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:12:19 +0000

"Loaded with sodium" is what the agrolobby wants you to think. If you knew what goes into supermarket burger patties I guarantee you would never want to touch them ever again. Look up nitrates for starter, which is used as a preservative in some meat products: burgers, hotdogs, cold cuts.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line"

ricardobayes — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:03:24 +0000

However you do realize "ultra processing" here means mechanically separating whole peas to get the protein part? Not trying to correct you or make your point invalid just flagging "processing" is not the scary thing agro lobby trying to make it, in this case. In fact they probably got super scared of meat alternatives and did everything in their power to make it go away.

Beyond meat doesn't have nitrates, filler, stabilizers or "85% meat" hence it's way more healthy than most meat-based patties or meat products.

Again, agrolobby by its full-page ads in newspapers successfully turned plant-based food which is objectively, scientifically proven to be healthy, to something unnatural, "chemical" and unhealthy.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line"

ricardobayes — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:59:37 +0000

The way you say "ultra processed" just shows the agro lobby did it's thing. You have to realize processed in the case of beyond is mechanically separating whole pea to use the protein.

New comment by ricardobayes in "Facebook is cooked"

ricardobayes — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 09:57:01 +0000

I remember at some point which I think was a bug: it started showing a specific type of food, I think some kind of barbeque, prepared in various ways from across the globe. And by "started showing" I mean the feed was pretty much that for an extended period of time. Also at some point a large part of the feed was reposts of random reddit posts in screenshot format.

New comment by ricardobayes in "A16z partner says that the theory that we’ll vibe code everything is wrong"

ricardobayes — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 09:37:40 +0000

All that is correct and well-written, however I fear in most cases "good enough" will be good enough for Business. If Business can do something to 80% the same but with a large cost cutting they likely go for it, we have seen this with shrinkflation (reduced portion sizes for the same price), to using cheaper ingredients to practically everything that is not a knowledge-heavy industry. The big change is now the "shrinkflation" is coming to knowledge domains too, which will likely lower the quality of healthcare, software etc.

AI being a next-token predictor will produce cheap and average products, we will likely see some (most?) software become a commodity, that goes through the same product development and "manufacturing" as a breakfast cereal. Made in a "dark factory", 24/7, with little supervision.

However I think down the line we will see many industries popping up that are like "organic food", "mechanical watchmaking" that provide above the usual slop that large businesses produce.