HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

avnfish

425 karma · joined November 6, 2014

      ___         ___         ___        _____        ___         ___     
     /__/|       /  /\       /__/\      /  /::\      /  /\       /  /\    
    |  |:|      /  /::\      \  \:\    /  /:/\:\    /  /:/_     /  /::\   
    |  |:|     /  /:/\:\      \  \:\  /  /:/  \:\  /  /:/ /\   /  /:/\:\  
  __|__|:|    /  /:/~/::\ _____\__\:\/__/:/ \__\:|/  /:/ /:/_ /  /:/~/:/  
 /__/::::\___/__/:/ /:/\:/__/::::::::\  \:\ /  /:/__/:/ /:/ //__/:/ /:/___
    ~\~~\::::\  \:\/:/__\\  \:\~~\~~\/\  \:\  /:/\  \:\/:/ /:\  \:\/:::::/
     |~~|:|~~ \  \::/     \  \:\  ~~~  \  \:\/:/  \  \::/ /:/ \  \::/~~~~ 
     |  |:|    \  \:\      \  \:\       \  \::/    \  \:\/:/   \  \:\     
     |  |:|     \  \:\      \  \:\       \__\/      \  \::/     \  \:\    
     |__|/       \__\/       \__\/                   \__\/       \__\/
submissionscomments
avnfish··on The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen
The implications of this are quite unsettling. Meta gave an agent privileged read AND write access to user accounts with no human in the loop?
avnfish··on OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)
There are some side-bet experiments like $2Mn on Hyperliquid[1], $1Mn on Polymarket[2] which are available to everyone. Unfortunately companies stay private for longer these days and a seat at the big boy table is de facto impossible

[1] https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/trade/vntl:OPENAI

[2] https://polymarket.com/event/openai-ipo-closing-market-cap-a...

avnfish··on Accenture to 'exit' staff that cannot be retrained for age of AI
I’m very bearish on Accenture for the following reason: the business model is a levered flywheel (high-paid salespeople and aggressive M&A buyouts powered by share price appreciation and low wage outsourcing). This is kicking into reverse due to revenue growth deceleration

Unlike a partnerships model, Accenture taps the public markets for financing to do M&A and pays its star salespeople with stock. Declining revenue growth rerates the stock price lower, which then makes the market more competitive (can’t buyout others) and acts as a disincentive to the salespeople, which then lowers the stock price further. This alone may be survivable, but at the same time, the company has more than half a million staff (!) employed in India/Philippines/etc at exactly the time when the market wants SOTA-level AI work instead of legacy ‘managed services’, and the federal government is cutting many $B of ACN contracts

Tl;dr: these guys aren’t getting IBM’d, they’re getting Xerox’d

avnfish··on Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
Here is my attempt: blockchain is a 'good enough' way to bootload a platform for making permissionless dollar-denominated payments. You could technically achieve the same functionality, with better performance, off an interoperable open standards database and communication protocol. But everyone from global south governments, to the CFTC/SEC, to Mastercard would be after you before liability could be effectively distributed. With the design they're going for, you can vaguely gesture to the stablecoin issuers, node operators and on/off ramp operators that will be there on day 1 as legally separate parties each carrying part of the liability.

I will end with this thought: If we can get to a new local equilibrium where global transaction costs are 10x lower and >30% of global GDP can get paid faster / with better price signals / etc., shouldn't we try even if the tech is non-optimal?

avnfish··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2025)
The car physics in GTA IV was divisive but very memorable :) I will be cheering on whoever takes this role!
avnfish··on Data Breach at LexisNexis Risk Solutions
Wow—this being an AI generated comment is certainly a possibility. The proliferation of LLMs in online discussion spaces is accelerating and radically reshaping the modern web.

Identifying AI-generated comments often involves spotting patterns in tone, structure, and content. Here are the most common indicators: [1] Overly polished or formulaic structure, [2] Repetition or redundancy, [3] Unnatural verbosity or vagueness, [4] Subtle logical gaps (e.g., "LLMs are radically reshaping the modern web")

avnfish··on Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
I'm experiencing the same issue which is definitely exacerbated by straying from a 'default' configuration e.g. using a custom browser screen reader, browsing from Brazil, using a VPN, using Firefox. I think eventually I'll be completely locked out of the 'mainstream' web
avnfish··on All political ads running on Google in the US
I was completely shocked to find out how many people use search in those apps to query open questions rather than 'search the web' via something like Google
avnfish··on How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah
Wow, they did a licensing deal with a legitimate manufacturer in Taiwan to get the battery listed on official websites? This runs so much deeper than I expected.

Supply chains are one heck of an attack surface...

avnfish··on EU competitiveness: Looking ahead [pdf]
Did McKinsey write this?

> Quantum computing is poised to be the next major innovation, but five of the top ten tech companies globally in terms of quantum investment are based in the US and four in China. None are based in the EU.

avnfish··on Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
Yep, plus Apple is opening up the NFC API for tap to pay. I could easily see merchants accept both cards (2%+8c) and USDC (0%) at point of sale
avnfish··on Jeff Bezos' management rules are slowly unraveling inside Amazon
Amazon 1st party is and continues to be a loss leader. If they got rid of their 3rd party sellers tomorrow, the company would go bankrupt from the loss of B2B commission, fulfilment and ads revenue
avnfish··on Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?
Bytedance, Nvidia, OpenAI, Stripe, Anthropic, Checkout.com, maybe parts of Shopify
avnfish··on Ted Chiang has won the PEN/Faulkner Foundation's short story prize
Absolutely love 'Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom' by him
avnfish··on Veo
It's introduced early on (and not what the book is really about): distribution of a video that is so entertaining that any viewer is compelled to watch it until they die
avnfish··on Tech companies are flocking to the Middle East
The big tech co I work at has filled thousands of back office roles in UAE this year. Political neutrality + fundraising + tax advantages have pulled them away from US/Europe/Asia
avnfish··on Project Astra
One company is led by engineers, the other is led by MBAs
avnfish··on How to Make More Money Renting a GPU Than Nvidia Makes Selling It
Great article. If this sustainable arbitrage exists from renting gpu time instead of selling and shipping gpus, why doesn't nvidia become a cloud provider itself?
avnfish··on Whistleblower Josh Dean of Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems has died
The Onion: "Boeing Promotes Mysterious Employee Known Only As ‘The Panther’": https://www.theonion.com/boeing-promotes-mysterious-employee...
avnfish··on WhatsApp Outage
Does Meta provide a status page for its consumer products?
avnfish··on Tell HN: Reddit now blocks VPN access via browser, 'old' subdomain included
Yep, for me this means I simply can't use the site anymore. Recommend: https://old.lemmy.world as an alternative
avnfish··on Reddit S1
CEO total comp of $193m in 2023 is...quite something
avnfish··on 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer
If this person was laid-off on Jan 1st and spent one hour on each application, that averages to 12.5 hours of non-stop job applying every day for 197 days straight
avnfish··on Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff
I recently migrated from Dropbox to Google One. I find Dropbox's personal pricing really baffling: you get 2 GB for free or have to move all the way up to 2 TB and pay £100 a year. 100GB for £16 via Google is a much more sensible offer.
avnfish··on Surviving Burnout (2015)
Megacorps can be made to work for you (albeit with a certain set of tradeoffs):

* milk the wellness benefits as much as possible - including any therapy cover

* look at leave of absence / sick leave (larger corps are better able to accommodate)

* transfer to a better team

* adjust your hours downwards either explicitly or tacitly

Megacorps aren't great at the whole empowerment and outcome control thing, but you can at least use the benefits to recover and then maybe move to something more meaningful

avnfish··on Surviving Burnout (2015)
My timelines are basically the same as yours, which is reassuring because often articles talk about timelines that are measured in months rather than years
avnfish··on My Dating App Method May Be Unorthodox, but Good Lord Does It Work
I suspect this article is intentionaly inflammatory. Opening sentence mocking someone's physical appearance. Outlandish salary / other attribute expectations. At the same time: admission of being a single parent freelance journalist and complaining about the perceived lack of eligible options. I'm glad it all worked out well for the author but what exactly is the point of this article other than to provoke?
avnfish··on CFTC sues Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao [pdf]
For those interested, he's mostly talking about Jump. Jane Street and Cumberland DRW too possibly.
avnfish··on Windows needs to stop showing tabloid news
The microsoft org chart comes to mind: https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts
avnfish··on The M247/DataPacket Problem with Mullvad VPN
Can someone with more networking expertise than me explain whether this sort of risk applies only to rented DC servers? Or is it an ISP risk that can also impact Mullvad's owned servers[1]?

[1] Mullvad owns 159 servers in 9 countries (https://mullvad.net/en/servers/), so not quite sure why you wouldn't just choose to use one of those instead if concerned about this

Page 1 of 4Next →