<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: scarmig</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=scarmig</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:24:12 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=scarmig" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Gender Equality and Work"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>These also hold for single, childless men and women. But that's almost besides the point: you can just as well say that men work more hours because society demands they sacrifice their well-being to earn more income.<p>The only reason your formulation gets more play in media is that there's a strong social bias ascribing hypoagency to women (so whatever unfair pressures they face are due to patriarchal oppression) and hyperagency to men (so whatever unfair pressures they face are their own fault).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 05:02:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657179</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657179</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657179</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Gender Equality and Work"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is more complicated than I let on and not as simple as class X is victimized. However, it's frustrating that this pushback happens only when a random internet comment is oversimplifying in the men have it worse direction and never when a massive institution is oversimplifying in the women have it worse direction.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:57:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47653247</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47653247</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47653247</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Gender Equality and Work"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As always, the OECD is leaving out other massive gaps. For instance, the working hour gap: even if you limit yourself to the class of full time workers, men work more hours than do women. There's the work satisfaction gap: women work in jobs that offer them more work satisfaction than men. There's the commute gap: men spend more time in their commutes per week than women do. There's the retirement gap: full time women retire years earlier than full time men. There's the workplace risk gap: men are far more likely to work in jobs that cause them injury or death. There's the on-call gap: men tend to work more inconvenient hours and do work outside of normal working hours.<p>I'd love for all these gaps to be reduced, but the situation is less "patriarchy stealing money out of women's pockets and undermining equal pay for equal work" and more "men face strong gendered pressures to sacrifice well-being in exchange for more income." There is definitely social sexism being surfaced by the wage gap statistic, but it's against men, not women.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:01:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652719</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652719</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652719</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But imagine the efficiencies to be gained if you swapped out the direct human operator with an automated operator. Then, you can have teams of automated operators being operated by a single human!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 19:44:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47605601</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47605601</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47605601</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "R3 Bio pitched “brainless clones” to serve the role of backup human bodies"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The neurons in the brain and body will inevitably learn connectivity patterns to best take advantage of neural signals from the other. Which is kind of an interesting wrinkle to the mind body problem: the brain likely has more capability to remap circuits than the body. So, if you implant a brain into a body... The implanted brain changes more to match the implanted body than vice versa.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2026 22:51:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47580703</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47580703</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47580703</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So we've got point in time comparisons between Austin and itself; the change in delta between Austin and a particular city known for restricting housing; and the change in delta between Austin and national median rents. They all support the idea that increasing supply tends to decrease costs, which by a massive coincidence is what basic economic theory suggests.<p>Of course, people can come up with an ad hoc explanation for why Austin's prices happened to decrease against each of those data points. But is there a single principled way to present the data that suggests increasing supply in Austin did not decrease costs?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2026 04:47:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47435065</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47435065</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47435065</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> In December 2021, Austin’s median rent was $1,546, near its highest level ever and 15% higher than the U.S. median ($1,346). By January 2026, Austin’s median rent had fallen to $1,296, 4% lower than that of the U.S. overall ($1,353).<p>For comparison, in San Francisco December 2021, the median one bedroom was $2810. In San Francisco March 2026, it was $3597, an increase of 28%.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:35:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47433218</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47433218</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47433218</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Americans Recognize AI as a Wealth Inequality Machine, Polls Find"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Poll wording is nearly always biased in some way. What it's useful for is tracking trends, keeping the wording identical.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:57:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47429935</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47429935</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47429935</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "UBI as a productivity dividend"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The point is that, if limited to a level that just covers essential goods, it won't change their distribution, just their payer.  If it did change the distribution of the good, then it wasn't essential (because it's the floor; without it, the consumer of the good would be dead; above it, and the vast majority of people immediately spend their income on luxury substitutes).<p>That is, to be clear, a much lower floor than what many people mean by "essential," which has undergone a kind of concept creep in modern discussion that, depending on the person, might be a cell phone, to an education at a private university, to owning a condo in San Francisco. My essential here means enough to afford enough caloric and nutrient intake to maintain a livable body mass; a couple sets of plain tee shirts and jeans; and a minimal shared living space in a low cost of living area. That's quite below what the US considers the current poverty line and a quite bleak existence (and most people would wonder what's even the point of it).<p>Income beyond that would drive inflation, at least in the short term.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:51:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382136</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382136</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382136</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "UBI as a productivity dividend"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Inflation isn't inevitable, especially in the long term. But of course it depends on implementation.<p>The goal of a UBI is to make sure people get their essentials to live. Right now, people get those essentials, one way or another (otherwise, they'd be dead; and to the extent people starve to death in the developed world, it's issues of distribution, not production or money). This makes the UBI an accounting trick: there's no actual goods not being produced that need to be produced, and it is just shifting costs from welfare, charity, family and friends, etc to the UBI program. This is not inflationary and frees up human effort to focus on higher needs than scraping together a basket of things merely to live.<p>A lot of the time, though, people also want some non-essential but still pretty important things covered, which is a bit trickier. In this case, there is the potential for more money to be chasing a fixed supply of goods. This will drive inflation in the short term. However, in the longer term, capital will be redeployed to capture that increased demand (while being deployed away from the desires of those taxed to fund the UBI).<p>This all assumes that the UBI is revenue neutral; if not, yeah, we will get a lot of inflation.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 14 Mar 2026 21:49:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381600</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381600</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381600</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Wiki's Gamergate opening paragraph:<p>> Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015. Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.<p>Grokipedia's:<p>> Gamergate was a grassroots online movement that emerged in August 2014, primarily focused on exposing conflicts of interest and lack of transparency in video game journalism, initiated by a blog post detailing the romantic involvement of indie developer Zoë Quinn with journalists who covered her work without disclosure. The controversy began when Eron Gjoni, Quinn's ex-boyfriend, published "The Zoe Post," accusing her of infidelity with multiple individuals, including Kotaku journalist Nathan Grayson, whose article on Quinn's game Depression Quest omitted any mention of their prior personal contact. This revelation highlighted broader patterns of undisclosed relationships and coordinated industry practices, such as private mailing lists among journalists, fueling demands for ethical reforms like mandatory disclosure policies.<p>I don't care about "Gamergate" and never use Grokipedia, but Wiki definitely has a stronger slant: it's as if an article about Black Lives Matter started with a statement that it was a campaign meant to scam people to pay for mansions for leadership.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 14 Mar 2026 01:02:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47372166</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47372166</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47372166</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Plenty of scientific authorities believed in it through the 19th century, and they didn't blindly believe it: it had good arguments for it, and intelligent people weighed the pros and cons of it and often ended up on the side of miasma over contagionism. William Farr was no idiot, and he had sophisticated statistical arguments for it. And, as evidence that it was a scientific theory, it was abandoned by its proponents once contagionism had more evidence on its side.<p>It's only with hindsight that we think contagionism is obviously correct.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:40:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328537</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328537</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328537</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The miasma theory of disease, though wrong, made lots of predictions that proved useful and productive. Swamps smell bad, so drain them; malaria decreases. Excrement in the street smells bad, so build sewage systems; cholera decreases. Florence Nightingale implemented sanitary improvements in hospitals inspired by miasma theory that improved outcomes.<p>It was empirical and, though ultimately wrong, useful. Apply as you will to theories of learning.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:12:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328218</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328218</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328218</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "Does that use a lot of energy?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I end up shrugging. For a Claude Code power user, today, a day's use uses less electricity than a morning commute in an electric car. To say nothing of the costs to keep your workstation running, your building heated or cooled, etc. Not quite a rounding error, but a relatively minor component of overall usage.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 22:49:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47255093</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47255093</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47255093</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "We do not think Anthropic should be designated as a supply chain risk"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Between Anthropic, the military, and Congress, I have the least faith in Congress to make knowledgeable policy around tech.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 01:02:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47202450</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47202450</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47202450</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in their classified network"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> you'll never find altman saying anything like "our agreement specifically says chatgpt will never be used for fully autonomous weapons"<p>To be fair, Anthropic didn't say that either. Merely that autonomous weapons without a HITL aren't currently within Claude's capabilities; it isn't a moral stance so much as a pragmatic one. (The domestic surveillance point, on the other hand, is an ethical stance.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2026 07:33:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191725</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191725</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191725</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in their classified network"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Why do you suppose OpenAI's deal led to a contract, while Anthropic's deal (ostensibly containing identical terms) gets it not only booted but declared a supply chain risk?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2026 07:27:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191668</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191668</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191668</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "We Will Not Be Divided"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> it's also unprecedented for a contractor to suddenly announce their products will, from now on, be able to refuse to function based on the product's evaluation of what it perceives to be an ethical dilemma<p>That is a <i>deeply</i> deceptive description of what happened. Anthropic was clear from the beginning of the contract the limitations of Claude; the military reneged; and beyond cancelling the contract with Anthropic (fair enough), they are retaliating in an attempt to destroy its businesses, by threatening any other company that does business with Anthropic.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2026 07:03:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191462</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191462</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191462</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "We Will Not Be Divided"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Going by what Hegseth said, it bans them from relationships or partnering with Anthropic at all. No renting or selling GPUs to them; no allowing software engineers to use Claude Code; no serving Anthropic models from their clouds. Probably have to give up investments; Amazon alone has invested like $10B in Anthropic.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2026 07:00:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191442</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191442</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191442</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scarmig in "I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The military already has access to Grok, but doesn't want it, because it's an inferior model, even compared to open source ones. So the military would probably choose to replace supply chain risk Claude with Qwen or Kimi before Grok.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 23:39:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47187615</link><dc:creator>scarmig</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47187615</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47187615</guid></item></channel></rss>