Hacker News: sseagull

US awards $500M to SandboxAQ, taking minority stake

sseagull — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:49:12 +0000

Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-awards-500-million-nvidia-backed-sandboxaq-finding-new-chipmaking-materials-2026-06-17/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48569040

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

New comment by sseagull in "Amazon Announces Multibillion-Dollar Data Center in Missouri"

sseagull — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:48:10 +0000

“There is Mr. Geborand, buying a bit of paradise for one penny.”

(from Les Misérables)

New comment by sseagull in "Chrome is looking to permanently drop MV2 extension"

sseagull — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:55:31 +0000

I only use the Home Depot website, and it shows the location for me. Maybe it’s regional or something

New comment by sseagull in "WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants"

sseagull — Sat, 30 May 2026 18:25:54 +0000

Oh I’m sure we could commiserate about that. I think we work in vaguely the same area.

Unfortunately, getting money from industry isn’t much easier in my opinion.

We have some software projects we want to spin out into a small business or non-profit (because federal funding…), but industry is absolutely cold right now. Had a few very promising partners lined up, but it all evaporated last spring. Between tariffs, AI spending, and now oil, everyone is reluctant to spend.

New comment by sseagull in "WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants"

sseagull — Sat, 30 May 2026 12:41:51 +0000

The chaos is affecting pretty much all areas of science, not just the controversial ones. I work in non-controversial, pretty run-of-the-mill chemistry research and the attacks on the NSF have certainly impacted our funding situation. Very long delays in proposal review, complete pivoting to AI, etc. I have co-workers panicking over the green card changes. And the overall morale is pretty grim everywhere.

Edit: don’t forget how he’s forcing NSF headquarters to move. All the NSF, not just the “bad” research.

Almost everyone has entertained the idea of leaving the US for more stability, which is required for research.

New comment by sseagull in "Private equity bought America's essential services"

sseagull — Wed, 27 May 2026 22:43:38 +0000

The McNamara fallacy. One of my favorite fallacies vaguely related to Goodhart’s Law

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

San Francisco Rents Spike 22% in a Year

sseagull — Wed, 27 May 2026 17:02:28 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-05-27/ai-boom-sends-san-francisco-housing-prices-soaring-with-rents-rivaling-nyc

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48297134

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by sseagull in "An AI agent deleted our production database. The agent's confession is below"

sseagull — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 19:21:46 +0000

> he said "you may have the right of way, but you'll still be dead if one hits you"

  Here lies the body
    Of William Jay,
  Who died maintaining
    His right of way.
  He was in the right
    As he sped along,
  But he’s just as dead
    As if he’d been wrong.

Edgar A. Guest, possibly. Some variations and discussion here:

https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/18230

Sam Altman's Superintelligence New Deal

sseagull — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 10:47:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.axios.com/2026/04/06/behind-the-curtain-sams-superintelligence-new-deal

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659207

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by sseagull in "Thoughts on OpenAI acquiring Astral and uv/ruff/ty"

sseagull — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:23:58 +0000

I thought the same thing. Just a few years ago, everyone here was proclaiming Poetry was great, the python ecosystem was finally tamed, pip/conda/setuptools was dead, and every project and developer needs to adopt it.

Now it’s just a has-been. The churn in python is incredible.

New comment by sseagull in "The F Word"

sseagull — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 21:56:24 +0000

Over the long term, yes. However, universities like Buffalo might have some peculiarities. They are overall run by the state government, and professors/students/staff are state employees. In addition, the money that pays their salary often comes from the federal government (NSF, DOE, NIH) which comes with their own restrictions and regulations beyond typical accounting practices.

So things like reimbursements are handled by a university trying to implement a state government's interpretation of both granting agencies desires and federal and state laws/regulations.

My university seems to be going crazy with rules lately. My hypothesis is that the state, and by extension the university, wants to button down everything so as not draw attention of the federal government (given who is in charge). It's taking already stressed professors (funding cuts, etc) and piling on more stress.

Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

sseagull — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 13:23:53 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wpr.org/news/4-wisconsin-communities-signed-secrecy-deals-billion-dollar-data-centers

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46824098

Points: 336

# Comments: 362

New comment by sseagull in "Lessons from 14 years at Google"

sseagull — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 18:57:42 +0000

This is one of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team (fear of conflict, caused by absence of trust).

Highly recommend the book.

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

New comment by sseagull in "The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine"

sseagull — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 16:50:10 +0000

I’ve been working on splitting an idea out from government-funded academia into an industry-supported non-profit. Universities kind of like that, and industries (at least in my scientific domain) are fairly receptive to consortium-type arrangements.

Of course, industry is pretty gun-shy right now too, due to the general economic conditions and AI sucking all the investment out of everything else. So it’s not going according to plan.

New comment by sseagull in "Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe"

sseagull — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 04:27:44 +0000

> a commuter plane where the wings iced up a bit and the airplane stalled. The crew kept trying to pull the nose up, all the way to the ground.

There’s probably a lot that match, but sounds like Colgan Air 3407 in 2009 (the last major commercial airline crash in the US before the mid-air collision earlier this year in DC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407

New comment by sseagull in "LG TV's new software update installed MS Copilot, which cannot be deleted"

sseagull — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 17:37:19 +0000

I went there and saw two hairs, and yeah thought it was a nice funny touch.

I then went back to HN and turns out one of the hairs was real and I needed to clean my laptop screen :)

New comment by sseagull in "Powell – unlike the dotcom boom, AI spending isn't a bubble"

sseagull — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 19:52:46 +0000

That’s starting to change though

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-31/meta-xai-...

(Archive link: https://archive.ph/NBNEu)

The worrying kink in this job openings, unemployment curve

sseagull — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 16:43:23 +0000

Article URL: https://www.axios.com/2025/10/06/jobs-unemployment-fed-interest-rates

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45493255

Points: 64

# Comments: 84

New comment by sseagull in "How the AI Bubble Will Pop"

sseagull — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 13:39:37 +0000

OpenAI "spent" more on sales/marketing and equity compensation than that:

"Other significant costs included $2 billion spent on sales and marketing, nearly doubling what OpenAI spent on sales and marketing in all of 2024. Though not a cash expense, OpenAI also spent nearly $2.5 billion on stock-based equity compensation in the first six months of 2025"

("spent" because the equity is not cash-based)

From https://archive.is/vIrUZ

New comment by sseagull in "Vibe coding cleanup as a service"

sseagull — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 16:39:53 +0000

I’ve always found the pioneer, settler, town planner model to be a great way of thinking about this. Successful, long-term projects or organizations eventually can use all 3 types.

Maybe vibe coding replaces some pioneering work, but that still leaves a lot for settlers to do.

(I admit I’m generally in the settler category)

https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-to...