Hacker News Reader

SomaticPirateon Gemini 4 Argon

I think it only has "--dangerously-skip-permissions" Claude and codex auto mode will reject certain actions. No secondary check on gemini/agy AFAIK

SomaticPirateon Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented

Source? It’s very possible today to adopt a plant-based diet and its typically superior in its health benefits to most other diets (especially the standard Western diet). https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/planning-a-plant-b...

Also knowing that nothing on my plate was tortured for its entire existence on a factory farm is important to me. I still eat meat but it’s either meat I harvested personally or from a local farm where I can verify the living standards. As a consequence I eat significantly less meat. It’s entirely possible to opt out of the industrial factory farming method that abuses animals the entire time

SomaticPirateon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)

This is super cool!

SomaticPirateon Atlassian Rovo Exfiltrates Data, Bypassing Controls

To where? Where did you convince c-suite to move to?

SomaticPirateon A Sick People

If your only experience with other countries are 2-3 week vacations then yes, those people will always be exceedingly kind to you. They are more than happy to be kind to you since A, you will be leaving soon and B, you are paying a good chunk of $$$ to be there.

The fact the author was able to take a multiple day vacation to several top Mexican resorts is exceedingly ironic. The meals he ate and the resorts he stayed at are probably on accessible to 10% of the entire Mexican population. Those around him made around $750 USD per month. A night at any of those resorts probably runs around that amount.

If you visit a small town in the USA and stay in a nice bed and breakfast, you will find the country has the same quaint charm as several places abroad.

SomaticPirateon Kelly Criterion Simulator

Interesting, I recently learned about this.

So there is a term called "Full Kelly" which is were you actually wager the amount given by the formula. This is pretty aggressive and not for the faint of heart. Usually, you do something like a "half Kelly" where you halve the suggested bet amount. Usually because you assume you might be incorrect in your estimated advantage.

What I haven't found yet is some mental math rule to apply this. Given some assumed advantage, what percentage should I "wager"?

SomaticPirateon 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

Somewhat unrelated but how did you find the process of moving to Japan (assuming you emigrated there)

SomaticPirateon How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

What is firecracker needed? Couldn’t this just run in a container directly? I understand some of the isolation concerns but a browser and container breakout is a billion dollar CVE, no?

SomaticPirateon AI outperforms law professors in Stanford Law study

You are probably going to pay about the same.

While you might find a lawyer who bills fewer hours, think about what would happen if you got a second legal opinion from another human lawyer. The second lawyer would still need to do essentially the same work. In fact, their ethics would likely require them to independently review the facts, documents, and legal issues before giving you advice.

So even if AI gives you a draft, the lawyer is not simply checking grammar or spotting obvious mistakes. They still have to verify the analysis, look for missing issues, and decide whether the work is legally sound. Could even be more expensive

SomaticPirateon Can the stockmarket swallow Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI?

No doubt these companies are woefully overvalued. But this won’t stop me from putting in orders for several thousand dollars of shares with at market open. There will undoubtedly be plenty of buyers and I expect them to gain rapid entry into the indexes which will unlock a flood of additional capital from 401ks and pensions

SomaticPirateon Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says

Not to speak on the anguish that this would undoubtedly cause but economically? This is like shooting yourself in the kneecap. America doesn’t nearly have the social security net of European countries and ours is already overburdened. Without younger, immigrant workers paying into our social security net the US govt will either need to print money (double digit inflation) or start raiding the evil tech bros RSUs for Medicare money.

Being a natvist is an expensive proposition. Expect your retirement to decrease in real value and struggle to find acceptable healthcare as you age (healthcare in the US is increasingly staffed by immigrants, especially nursing).

SomaticPirateon Gemini CLI will stop working from June 18, 2026

This is my read too. Google wants more control here. They have been banning accounts and the repo for gemini-cli is a dumpster fire of issues

SomaticPirateon The Biochemical Beauty of Retatrutide: How GLP-1s Work

https://www.ft.com/content/b15407bd-7b86-45c3-9780-0c92117cc...

They are buying from Chinese dealers. And sadly, as with most GLP-1s they likely will need to take them for the rest of their life or suffer some incredible rebound weight loss/ negative health effects.

These medications are incredible if you are overweight and need them. But they are not a panacea. Also arguably buying these drugs from Chinese dealers means there is no recourse if you get a bad batch.

There is a pseudo testing setup around Finnrick but talk to anyone with a PhD in biochemistry and there are numerous ways these molecules can be improperly manufactured.

Surprised to see so many on HN being relatively careless with their heath

SomaticPirateon Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

I think unethical and illegal activity is par for the course in most realms of American business. And I would replace “sued into oblivion” with mandatory arbitration and “appropriate settlement”.

SomaticPirateon Using “underdrawings” for accurate text and numbers

inb4 this technique is subsumed into the next MoE model release

LLMs are evolving so fast I wouldn’t be surprised if this technique was not needed in <6 months

SomaticPirateon Kimi K2.6 just beat Claude, GPT-5.5, and Gemini in a coding challenge

This seems to be testing the models on leetcode style prompts that also require the model to implement TCP calls to send the results. Interesting but probably not a apples to apples comparison. The fact only Grok qualified for the first one seems suspect

SomaticPirateon Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs

Exactly. So just buy it. They have the money or does Sam need a moonbase to complete his villain arc. Any of these AI companies could come out and start paying creators a licensing fee. Instead of being forced to pay damages which is their current approach

SomaticPirateon Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?

I agree with you but Ozempic is a bad example here. Part of the reason it is so valuable is that patients usually must take it for the rest of their lives. Its actually the perfect example of “evil” pharma since patients slmost akways regain the weight if they stop taking it. This leads to dependence or people searching for grey market sources.

An example of “good” pharma would be Hepatitis C. We can now cure that. Although, pharma is charging the lifetime equivalent in order to do that (a treatment can run over $100k and insurance balks at covering it)

So pharma will absolutely develop a cure if they can. They however will still charge you as if you had to take a dose for the rest of your life.

SomaticPirateon Trump fires NSF's oversight board

Every American here has allowed the quickest decline of a superpower in history. The damage to our country is irreparable and going to result in a worse life for generations to come

SomaticPirateon Is Chain-of-Thought Reasoning of LLMs a Mirage? A Data Distribution Lens (2025)

A useful reminder that just because an LLM "appears" to be thinking and reasoning that it likely isn't. If it hasn't seen something similar or "in distribution" before, then it typically doesn't perform well.

SomaticPirateon You can't trust macOS Privacy and Security settings

What is the arcane Terminal command to undo this access?

SomaticPirateon The Raft consensus algorithm explained through "Mean Girls" (2019)

“Chat generate me an explanation blog posts on the Raft consensus algorithm… but explain it through mean girls”

SomaticPirateon Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?

This website is down now for me

SomaticPirateon FBI Extracted Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database

This is well known in the op-sec communities. iOS and Android notifications route through their servers and can be stored indefinitely (ie especially under a court order) You need to disable the content previews if you want to be secure. But even the notification metadata can be quite valuable to law enforcement (who is messaging you, what time of day, etc.)

Also standard requirement on govt mobile devices to disable notifications. Mattermost provides this option at the server level to block notifications entirely for ios/android devices.

SomaticPirateon OpenYak – An open-source Cowork that runs any model and owns your filesystem

Not to be too conspiratorial here but since the founder of OpenClaw was snatched up, there seems to be a rush of “open source” AI projects desperately bidding to be alternatives. Which can generate huge returns if one of the major players decides that “they also need a cowork-style product”

So its uniquely viable to be a sellout here and attempt to clone a major lab’s attempt on the off-chance you get acquired later

SomaticPirateon The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

My exact thoughts. Too often we lash out at the person who is working within a Kafkaesque system as a lowly bureaucrat. Attack the system. Find the fax number for the chief of your social security administration. Get a letter sending group together. The democratic system is slow and terrible but atleast the author seems to live in one.

There should be a political call to action here. Call xyz or work to change this law. Bureaucrats run on laws. Laws can be changed. I was able to get my local HOA to accept pdf uploads just be talking with them. Small example but change is possible. Not as fun as ruining someones day though

SomaticPirateon Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming

How quaint. I hope Claude/Codex reads this since from what I've heard here I'm not likely to need this rules anymore /s I am curious if anyone has attempted to use codex/claude with something like this in the prompt

SomaticPirateon Hazardous substances found in all headphones tested by ToxFREE project

Honestly you should check every product you that comes in contact with your body against the OKEO Tex standard 100

While it would probably be preferable to reduce the plastic in your life in general (I’m converting as much as I can to platinum silicone from reputable sources) that might not be possible for everyone.

In the meantime, if you buy nylon or polyester clothing you should see what their policies are https://corporate.lululemon.com/~/media/Files/L/Lululemon/ou...