Hacker News: tomhow

New comment by tomhow in "The hacker sent by Anthropic to calm the government's nerves about AI safety"

tomhow — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 06:51:08 +0000

We don’t apply the rules selectively. We take action on the breaches we see. If you’re sincere about wanting to observe the guidelines or point out other comments you think may be in breach, you can always email us. Plenty of people do this routinely and it helps a lot.

New comment by tomhow in "The hacker sent by Anthropic to calm the government's nerves about AI safety"

tomhow — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 06:37:46 +0000

I was trying to understand exactly what you meant so I could understand how I got it wrong. It didn’t even cross my mind to ban or penalize your account. We don’t do that.

New comment by tomhow in "The hacker sent by Anthropic to calm the government's nerves about AI safety"

tomhow — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:10:14 +0000

> Show me where the sneer is.

What did you actually mean by this, in your first comment?

Genuinely hilarious reply.

New comment by tomhow in "Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore"

tomhow — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:58:32 +0000

Please don't comment like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

New comment by tomhow in "Update on Ocean Observatories Initiative"

tomhow — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:46:04 +0000

Please don't do this here.

New comment by tomhow in "Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI"

tomhow — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:28:51 +0000

Thanks. We don't take anything down (except in rare cases when a user explicitly asks us to remove one of their posts for privacy reasons). We just need everyone to make the effort to observe the guidelines at all times when participating here, no matter the topic or how they feel about it.

New comment by tomhow in "The hacker sent by Anthropic to calm the government's nerves about AI safety"

tomhow — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:21:30 +0000

I was actually trying to be good humored rather than snarky. I get that it’s not always easy to strike the right balance and sometimes the intended spirit doesn't come across.

Regarding this:

> My bad, I will do better.

Your account is only four months old but already has too many comments that are against the guidelines and the spirit of the site. If you are serious about reforming, that will be welcome and appreciated, but try to be earnest in the way you engage with us.

New comment by tomhow in "The hacker sent by Anthropic to calm the government's nerves about AI safety"

tomhow — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:08:15 +0000

It wasn't clear whether you were making a swipe at moderation or the community or both, and I guess I tried to cover all possibilities. You've clarified that it was at the community. Thanks for that. But the guidelines specifically ask us to avoid sneering at the community, because it's repetitive and unfair to the people here. HN is large and heterogeneous.

New comment by tomhow in "Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI"

tomhow — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:39:43 +0000

Please don't comment like this here. The HN guidelines ask us not to engage in political or ideological battle or use swipes like "comically stupid take". Same goes for your other comment in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48590901) – "sigh how are so many brilliant people this stupid?" adds nothing but venom to the discussion.

Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to participate here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

New comment by tomhow in "Midjourney Medical"

tomhow — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:29:11 +0000

I guess the key quality of the best humour is that everyone can see the humour in it; at least appreciate the joke even if they didn't agree with the underlying point. At best it makes them rethink what they previously thought about the topic. Much of what is offered as humour online (and also mainstream television) is theatrical rage, which generates laughs and applause (a.k.a. 'clapter') from people who already shared the rage, but to those not already on side it just falls flat. That seems to me what's going on here.

New comment by tomhow in "U.S. science is in chaos"

tomhow — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:37:12 +0000

We've banned this account. HN is for curious conversation, not this.

New comment by tomhow in "Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI"

tomhow — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:33:29 +0000

We've banned this account.

New comment by tomhow in "Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month"

tomhow — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:25:11 +0000

We updated the link, many thanks!

New comment by tomhow in "Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month"

tomhow — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:24:45 +0000

We've updated the URL to the English-language version that CalRobert submitted. We appreciate all languages and cultures but HN is an English-language site, so we always want the English version to be submitted here, thanks!

New comment by tomhow in "The hacker sent by Anthropic to calm the government's nerves about AI safety"

tomhow — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 19:58:22 +0000

Believe it or not, between the two of us we don't read and deliberate on all of the 10,000+ comments submitted here each day. We obviously can only read a small fraction of them via routine monitoring of the site, and we're less likely to see comments in threads like this one that spend fewer than two hours on the front page. We're much more likely to see the comments that are put on our radar via community flags and emails, which is why I saw the one I replied to and not the others.

For what it's worth, sentiment analysis is unlikely to yield useful findings in this context, because the probability of a bad comment being flagged is highly correlated with the number of people who see it, which will be much lower in a thread that spends little time on the front page, but a sentiment analysis model won't have access to that data.

New comment by tomhow in "CS 6120: Advanced Compilers: The Self-Guided Online Course (2020)"

tomhow — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 19:45:08 +0000

Previously...

CS 6120: Advanced Compilers: The Self-Guided Online Course - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39577878 - March 2024 (102 comments)

Advanced Compilers: Self-Guided Online Course - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35130975 - March 2023 (82 comments)

Advanced Compilers: Self-Guided Online Course - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25386756 - Dec 2020 (232 comments)

New comment by tomhow in "The hacker sent by Anthropic to calm the government's nerves about AI safety"

tomhow — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 09:47:14 +0000

Some are, some aren't, but could you please just flag comments that break the guidelines, or if they're particularly egregious, email us (hn@ycombinator.com).

New comment by tomhow in "The hacker sent by Anthropic to calm the government's nerves about AI safety"

tomhow — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 06:57:34 +0000

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

New comment by tomhow in "Hacker News actively blocking SpaceX IPO submissions"

tomhow — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 20:05:14 +0000

Please don't post trash like this to HN. The subthread was already entirely forgettable dreck but at least it had petered out four days ago, until you chimed in with this. HN is for curious conversation.

New comment by tomhow in "Frood, an Alpine Initramfs NAS (2024)"

tomhow — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:16:59 +0000

Thanks, macroexpanded!

Frood, an Alpine Initramfs NAS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42428722 - Dec 2024 (13 comments)