Hacker News: sandcat_

New comment by sandcat_ in "Open source AI must win"

sandcat_ — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 05:03:15 +0000

Those closed labs need to justify the investment still, and as we approach stagnation in model capabilities that’s harder and harder. Right now Fable and Mythos are cutting edge, but soon enough they’ll be commodities. And for every company like OpenAI/Anthropic that wants to get ahead with a SOTA model, there’ll be a hundred companies aiming to commoditize their complements.

New comment by sandcat_ in "Open source AI must win"

sandcat_ — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 04:54:31 +0000

Eh, they’ll learn soon enough there’s a limit to their power, unless they somehow start acquiring munitions. There’s a reason the electricity companies and other utilities didn’t take over the economy, despite now being essential.

New comment by sandcat_ in "Statement on US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5"

sandcat_ — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 04:46:53 +0000

Agreed. This is no different from the US government attempting to control SSH, or restrict the sale of the Apple Power Mac.

10 years from now we’ll look back and laugh at how silly it all was.

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

New comment by sandcat_ in "Notes on DeepSeek"

sandcat_ — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 05:57:13 +0000

I do kind of agree, but at the same time, if a company is not on the cutting edge (the post says they're happy to remain 6 months behind, whether true or not), then it is just technology at that point. Any damage has already been done. Anthropic on the other hand takes the blame if something goes wrong.

New comment by sandcat_ in "Dopamine Fracking"

sandcat_ — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:39:55 +0000

I think the criticism isn’t around Marvel films being Marvel, but rather the reaction to Marvel films being popular to make every film like a Marvel film. Can’t really comment if that’s true, though I’ve definitely noticed an increase in films becoming franchises, etc, but I think that was the implication.

New comment by sandcat_ in "APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs"

sandcat_ — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 02:27:25 +0000

For what it’s worth, a non-locking blade is a plus for some people. I wouldn’t really want to leave a locking box cutter around, I’m too forgetful, but one that stows itself away automatically I’d feel a bit safer about. Still a silly price, though.

New comment by sandcat_ in "APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs"

sandcat_ — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 02:26:10 +0000

That used to be $95 at launch, which still is very expensive of course, but slightly more palatable. I wonder if the current price is due to tariffs perhaps?

New comment by sandcat_ in "The OnlyFans Economy of American AI"

sandcat_ — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 18:56:42 +0000

https://www.qwencloud.com/pricing/token-plan I think

New comment by sandcat_ in "Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot"

sandcat_ — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 07:09:09 +0000

Worth noting that Meta has a track record of revising breach numbers upwards. We may find out it’s a lot higher than this in the coming weeks.

New comment by sandcat_ in "The desperation of NYTimes"

sandcat_ — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 19:00:53 +0000

Yeah but they’re different. Print ads don’t grab your attention in the way animated ads mid article do. You can even fold the paper to ignore them if they are. I can read a newspaper with ads no problem, but NYT without an adblocker (or in app) is endlessly distracting to me.

New comment by sandcat_ in "The desperation of NYTimes"

sandcat_ — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:44:00 +0000

I pay the $2/month. They occasionally try and get me to pay more. No chance, I always tell them I’ll cancel (and I would.)

I don’t get it. If they cut out all the awful mid-article ads, stopped the page resetting to the top every time you hit the back button, and stopped nagging me to install the app (which I don’t use because of the aforementioned mid-article ads, but would use otherwise), I’d happily pay 5x the subscription. I like the content (mostly) but everything else makes me despise them.

I just want to read the news!

New comment by sandcat_ in "Dumbphone 2"

sandcat_ — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 03:24:14 +0000

> People need to learn to guard their time and schedule like a hawk and not operate in chronic reaction mode, i.e. someone else setting your priorities for the day.

Why not just use a smartphone if you’re able to guard your time effectively?

I feel like the main reason people are interested in dumb phones is because they’ve identified that they personally can’t, for whatever reason. (Certainly that’s why I’m intrigued by them.)

New comment by sandcat_ in "The advertising cartel coming to your web browser"

sandcat_ — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:57:08 +0000

> When Meta, Google and Apple [and Mozilla] agree on a “privacy” feature, watch out.

This feels like a good sign, to me. I get far more worried when I see the likes of Meta, Google, Spotify, Epic etc team up.

New comment by sandcat_ in "A walking tour of surveillance infrastructure in Seattle (2020)"

sandcat_ — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:20:26 +0000

The problem with stereotypes isn’t their accuracy (they often are inaccurate or outdated but that’s beside the point).

Otherwise you are effectively saying that it’s ok to be *-ist as long as you’re accurate.

The problem is they are unfair, dehumanizing and cruel, and based off categories we usually can’t control.

New comment by sandcat_ in "Ruby and Its Neighbors: Smalltalk"

sandcat_ — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 20:07:51 +0000

Unless you are indeed the original author from StackOverflow, it would be polite to attribute your comment: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3617319

New comment by sandcat_ in "I launched a Mac utility; now there are 5 clones on the App Store using my story"

sandcat_ — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 23:48:40 +0000

That’s fair. I’ve read a bit more and some of the replies are clearly generated, you’re right. I don’t see any signs the original post is however and can’t comment on the app itself.

I still maintain that reporting this to dang and moving on is the best strategy. It’s hurtful to have your comments pored through and every flaw or inconsistency pointed out in the hope of identifying whether they were written with AI or not.

New comment by sandcat_ in "I launched a Mac utility; now there are 5 clones on the App Store using my story"

sandcat_ — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 22:39:24 +0000

I feel like it’s time HN had a rule against comments like this. I am biased: I say this as someone who was previously (inaccurately) accused of being an AI, which was kind of a bummer as I’m already quite shy online and rarely speak.

But in that case there was at least a tell-tale sign: I’d used em-dashes. In this case, correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s really no reason to think this post is written by AI. It’s just a long post, that’s all. The sort we should be encouraging!

New comment by sandcat_ in "I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file"

sandcat_ — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 18:52:50 +0000

Just add new notes and tasks at the top? I find that it means less important tasks tend to settle towards the bottom, and I’ll periodically go and reshuffle things as required.

New comment by sandcat_ in "Meta announces Oakley smart glasses"

sandcat_ — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 19:59:17 +0000

FWIW when I first skimmed your comment I came to the same conclusion as everyone else. I don’t think people are reading closely.

New comment by sandcat_ in "Builder.ai did not "fake AI with 700 engineers""

sandcat_ — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 15:08:47 +0000

I used iOS to write my comment. It adds curved apostrophes automatically. macOS does too.

The em-dash was me — you can long press on the dash button and you get the choice.

Also, next time? Maybe consider that you might be wrong, and you’re responding to an actual human. Who spent half an hour or so writing a comment to share what they thought was an interesting anecdote. And who is now feeling a bit rubbish.