Hacker News: user142

New comment by user142 in "Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged"

user142 — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:47:50 +0000

Tests can only prove the presence of bugs, but not their absence. If the AI can access the tests, it can easily make them pass by just adding additional if statements. It doesn't mean the code is actually correct.

New comment by user142 in ""

user142 — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:34:29 +0000

Surely programs can know where the pointer is as long as it is over a window that belongs to the program. Otherwise hover wouldn't work.

New comment by user142 in "Separating the Wayland compositor and window manager"

user142 — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:31:01 +0000

I heard the desktop environmentalists are working on such a project.

New comment by user142 in "Stop Sloppypasta"

user142 — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 10:37:37 +0000

The first question should have been "Was this ticket AI-generated?".

New comment by user142 in "I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services"

user142 — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 16:38:18 +0000

> the ability to start a program with restricted access to files, network or OS calls (on Windows and on Linux)

Bubblewrap allows you to do that on Linux.

New comment by user142 in "Ask HN: Have you ever cloned a cat?"

user142 — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 08:21:26 +0000

I just realized that you can run sudo apt install nyancat on Ubuntu. It even includes a man page.

New comment by user142 in "How Stablecoins Became the Digital Gold Standard"

user142 — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 12:37:12 +0000

Stablecoins are just tokenized versions of exisiting currencies. Instead of settling through the current financial system which takes days for a global transaction you settle on a blockchain within seconds or minutes. These stablecoins will probably be issued on existing global blockchains like Ethereum so they might all be interoperable within a single system just like SWIFT currently supports multiple currencies.

New comment by user142 in "How Stablecoins Became the Digital Gold Standard"

user142 — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 12:24:38 +0000

Stablecoins are quite different from banks. Under the system of fractional-reserve banking, banks by definition only have reserves for a fraction of their user's balances. Stablecoins are meant to be fully backed and the issuers claim to be fully backed. In theory it is possible that the issuers are lying but in practice this seems unlikely. Running a stablecoin business seems to be a relatively inexpensive operation compared to the amount of money you can make by investing your reserves into short term treasuries in the current interest rate environment. Even if Tether wasn't fully backed in 2018 they should have made billions in profits since off interest rates and recovered their losses.

I still don't understand your argument how the GENIUS Act would turn off the 'faucet'. Legalizing and legitimizing stablecoins would presumably lead to more stablecoin issuance instead of a bank run.

New comment by user142 in "How Stablecoins Became the Digital Gold Standard"

user142 — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 10:31:02 +0000

This article seems to be built on a few misconceptions.

It starts off with the claim that stablecoins are the modern-day 'digital gold standard' which they really aren't. Stablecoins are just tokens on a blockchain the vast majority of which are backed by US dollar cash and cash equivalents. There is nothing gold-like about these stablecoins. Maybe the article refers to the rumors that Tether isn't fully backed but this isn't clear from the article. As the article also mentions, the GENIUS Act requires compliant stablecoins to be fully backed (by US dollars) so the GENIUS Act would actually be the reverse of what Nixon did in 1971 by leaving the gold standard. The problem with the gold standard was that gold is a scarce physical asset that cannot just be created. There is no scarce asset involved in stablecoins so the comparison between stablecoins and the gold standard doesn't make much sense to me.

Then there is the claim that there are $13.2 trillion 'shadow dollars' circulating outside the United States via stablecoins which makes no sense given that the biggest stablecoin (USDT) only has a market cap of $143 billion (actually $158 now) which is also mentioned in the article.

The article then goes on to compare the GENIUS Act to the Nixon shock by 'turning off the stablecoin faucet'. It then correctly mentions that major stablecoin issuers already have freeze and burn capabilities so it becomes unclear how the GENIUS Act would 'turn off the stablecoin faucet'. From all I've read and heard so far people expect the passing of the GENIUS Act to lead to increasing stablecoin liquidity.