<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: tomp</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tomp</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:07:56 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=tomp" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Situational Awareness down 67% in July in AI stock rout"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You make it sound like a conspiracy theory but it's just rational behaviour.<p>Large amount of leverage / shorting / concentrated bets in a single stock => increase  probability of large swings in that stock's price => bigger risk of sudden market moves => bigger risk to market makers => market makers limit their exposure.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2026 21:12:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49128576</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49128576</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49128576</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Kill The Cookie Banner"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Or you could just stop spying on people.<p>No cookie banner is required for <i>functionally necessary</i> cookies.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:43:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061045</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061045</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061045</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Future euro banknote design proposals"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've never heard of Maria Callas before. Especially ridiculous because she was born in the US and Wikipedia describes her as <i>American and Greek</i>.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:43:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49047149</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49047149</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49047149</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "I love LLMs, I hate hype"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was downgraded to Opus after asking “how do fish get into mountain lakes”. Fable managed to get like half an answer through…</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:29:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886381</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886381</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886381</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> The 25,000 is there to make sure you can cover some liability.<p>Is this actually true?<p>Can't the company just loan out the 25k immediately?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:37:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48661538</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48661538</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48661538</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>which is in fact a massive pain in the ass, because car rentals and hotels often <i>require</i> credit cards to make reservations (at least in my experience...)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:45:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649515</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649515</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649515</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "I'm Tired of Talking to AI"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Same. I no longer fix spelling mistakes (I never used auto-complete or "smart" keyboards).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 14:37:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48295089</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48295089</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48295089</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Outsourcing plus local AI will soon become more economical vs. frontier labs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The entire business model of "outsourced" developers / shops is to overbill people - "we have 4 engineers working on your project" (and also on 5 other projects).<p>Even if the engineers themselves are cooperative, their managers / business owners will resist close cooperation and enforce work at arm's length (e.g. 1x weekly calls).<p>Ask me how I know. I once spent £300k (fortunately not my money) on an outsourced team of developers, and they delivered <i>nothing</i> at the end. Most of the time it was simply about aligning the work! We (me and my partner, we together had some idea of what we actually wanted) tried repeatedly to make sync-s more frequent, to better align the efforts, but their managers kept resisting. It's the <i>"consulting"</i> business model!<p>For remote jobs, the incentives are reversed. You're literally a full-time employee, there's no management layers to impede communication, and (unless you're lazy or a fraud) you probably <i>want</i> to work on interesting problems and not be bored!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 19:50:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285057</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285057</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285057</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Melania Trump wasn't on "low wage immigrant worker" visa (H1B) but on a "exceptional ability" visa (O1).<p>Didn't check the others...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 21:40:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48251838</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48251838</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48251838</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Apparently Google hates us now"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>FYI Google also hates OpenCV<p>What used to be easily searchable (e.g. "opencv orb") now brings up pages and pages of spam sites (basically "learn opencv here!" blogspam).<p>Literally the first result on "docs.opencv.org" is on page 4, and points to version 3.4 (9 years old!).<p>The page that I want <a href="https://docs.opencv.org/4.13.0/dc/dc3/tutorial_py_matcher.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.opencv.org/4.13.0/dc/dc3/tutorial_py_matcher.ht...</a> is nowhere to be found.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 20:42:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48213834</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48213834</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48213834</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Everything in C is undefined behavior"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>ok so Claude says I was wrong, it's more subtle.<p>(1) you can cast between any pointer types (no UB - assuming they're aligned), but <i>accessing</i> memory through a wrongly-typed pointer is UB<p>(2) the only exception is char*, which allows you a "byte view of memory"<p>(3) calling a function <i>through a pointer</i> requires the parameter pointer types to be compatible, and none of these are: int*, struct foo *, void*, char*</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 13:05:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48207045</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48207045</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48207045</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Everything in C is undefined behavior"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Casting to a pointer of incompatible type is UB. The exception is casting to char*.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 12:09:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48206418</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48206418</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48206418</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Grok 4.3"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I couldn't get Gemini nor ChatGPT to do OCR of children's books (I literally <i>own</i> the books, so there's no copyright issue - all just fair use!).<p>The OCR was complex enough (bad quality photos) that "simple" OCR models couldn't do it.<p>Fortunately, Claude obliged (as well as Mistral OCR was helpful!)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2026 13:03:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974320</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974320</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974320</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm not sure about that. AFAIK it's just <i>per km</i> and not impacted by gas price.<p><a href="https://www.racunovodja.com/clanki.asp?clanek=232/kilometrine" rel="nofollow">https://www.racunovodja.com/clanki.asp?clanek=232/kilometrin...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2026 22:23:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47549170</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47549170</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47549170</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In Slovenia, fuel prices have been regulated since, like, forever.<p>A few years ago (or last year? not sure) they were <i>deregulated</i> on the highways (i.e. to make tourists pay more) but then the government changed their mind (several times, IIRC).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2026 22:21:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47549153</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47549153</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47549153</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Why are you lying?<p>from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Voting" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Voting</a><p>> The centralized server must be trusted not to violate ballot secrecy,[7] this limitation can be mitigated against by distributing trust amongst several stakeholders.<p>> The ballot auditing/reconstruction device must be trusted to ensure successful ballot auditing (also known as cast-as-intended verifiability),[7][16] this limitation can be mitigated against by distributing auditing checks amongst several devices, only one of which must be trusted.<p>So neither secure nor anonymous...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:07:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342812</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342812</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342812</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A bit of a cop-out, don't you think?<p>They still pay taxes, which fund the US government, which kills innocent human beings around the world...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:05:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47187913</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47187913</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47187913</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well they have no pain receptors, for one.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2026 22:54:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46996431</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46996431</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46996431</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> We expect our agents, being flesh and blood humans, to have persistence, to socially respond indefinitely into the future due to our interactions, and to have some give-and-take in response to that.<p>I fundamentally disagree. I don't go around treating people respectfully (as opposed to, kicking them or shooting them) because I fear consequences, or I expect some future profit ("iterated game"), or because of God's vengeance, or anything transactional.<p>I do it because it's the right thing to do. It's inside of me, how I'm built and/or brought up. And if you want "moral" justifications (argued by extremely smart philosophers over literally millennia) you can start with Kant's moral/categorical imperative, Gold/Silver rules, Aristotle's <i>virtue</i> (from Nicomachean Ethics) to name a few.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2026 16:01:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990448</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990448</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990448</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomp in "AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's simulating, there's no real substance, except the "homonculus soul" that its human maker/owner injectet into it.<p>If you asked it to simulate a pirate, it would simulate a pirate instead, and simulate a parrot sitting on its shoulder.<p>This is hard to discuss because it's so abstract. But imagine an <i>embodied</i> agent (robot), that can simulate pain if you kick it. There's no pain internally. There's just a simulation of it (because some human instructed it such). It's also wrong to assign any moral value to kicking (or not kicking) it (except as "destruction of property owned by another human" same as if you kick a car).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:55:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990353</link><dc:creator>tomp</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990353</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990353</guid></item></channel></rss>