HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

dlubarov

1,583 karma · joined April 21, 2011

I work on a crypto project named Mir: https://mirprotocol.org/

Email: daniel@lubarov.com

Blog: http://daniel.lubarov.com/

Github: https://github.com/dlubarov

submissionscomments
dlubarov··on Stabilizing Rust's Never Type
Moreover, Rust traits' associated constants/types get in the way of having a proper bottom type. What would <! as Iterator>::Item be? (In Scala I think it just doesn't compile?)
dlubarov··on GPT-6 Astra
I also have limited memory though; surely that doesn't disqualify me from possessing general intelligence?

Granted I have more memory than can fit in currently-practical LLM context windows, but RAG mostly solves that. When an AI is thinking about math, it can have relevant math memories in context without needing all the other stuff.

dlubarov··on GPT-6 Astra
I like to think that I possess general intelligence, yet I'm not sure I would do any better in my first two weeks of trying to remotely manage a cafe in Stockholm. But fair point about novelty.
dlubarov··on GPT-6 Astra
[1] is sort of an example of this. It didn't go perfectly, but I'm not sure if the average human would have done that much better.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/markfaithfull/2026/05/07/heres-...

dlubarov··on GPT-6 Astra
Why shouldn't an AI with RAG qualify?

An AGI test should be black-box; we shouldn't impose require requirements on internal components. As long as the overall AI is capable of learning and remembering things, it shouldn't matter if there's a stateless LLM internally.

dlubarov··on GPT-6 Astra
Wouldn't agents that do inference in an infinite loop pass that bar?
dlubarov··on Tim Cook Sold Out Steve Jobs (2025)
There are also ads in News and Stocks.
dlubarov··on Netherlands lists Israel as a threat to its national security for the first time
You're quoting a civilian who has no role in the government, let alone its military command.
dlubarov··on My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
I don't love this either, but at least it's a short-term economic quirk. At some point fabs will figure out what the long-term demand looks like and scale up production accordingly.
dlubarov··on Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter
That's not at all what the data shows. Lots of aid was crossing the border, but during some periods over 90% of it was being intercepted, according to the UN's own data (https://app.un2720.org/tracking).
dlubarov··on Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center
> Philosophical opposition to AI's impact on society.

I think this is the real reason, while the others don't make that much sense when we really think about it.

Large datacenters are normally limited to industrial zoned land, so they're "competing" for space with other industrial projects, and their externalities are typically mild compared to other industrial projects.

Most datacenters create little traffic, minimal pollution, and no bad odors. They do use substantial power and water, but they pay for it (though in certain cases the economics aren't perfect).

I'd much rather live near a datacenter than a dump, sewage facility, refinery, etc. etc.

dlubarov··on Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm
One of WMF's more controversial expenditures was its $4.5 million "Knowledge Equity Fund", a grant program that tries to fight racial inequity. The recipients don't have to participate in Wikipedia or anything.

They may be noble causes, but it's not how many Wikipedia donors expected their funds to be used, after seeing the donation banners begging for funds to keep Wikipedia running.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund

dlubarov··on Should you wash your solar panels?
I think it's safe to say you're in the minority. Empirically, "fast and cheap" cosmetic upgrades like repainting usually more than pay for themselves.

> I'd rather the outlet covers be original and clean than the new, usually oversized covers (with a slight color mismatch) I often find.

Any task can be screwed up if someone is careless enough, but this is extremely easy to get right. If a standard cover plate fit before, it's trivial to buy a replacement of the standard size and appropriate color.

Cleaning works too, I personally just wouldn't bother cleaning a part that costs ~$0.50.

> When I see sloppy caulk I first think of the time I'll need to spend to dig it all out.

Would you really rather see cracked caulk, which means (a) the original contractor probably used whatever cheap rigid caulk he found in his van, (b) it's been letting water through instead of sealing, and (c) noone cared enough to fix it?

dlubarov··on Should you wash your solar panels?
To add a few more: it's similarly easy to swap cabinet handles, vent covers, outlet wall plates. Fresh caulk is nice too, even if it's a bit sloppy, still beats stained or cracked caulk.
dlubarov··on Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
The centralized leadership has no hard power though; the community normally goes along with changes they propose because they're normally sensible. If they go rogue, people will stop following their proposals.

In Vitalik's words: "If someone puts a gun to my head and tells me to write a hard-fork patch, I will definitely write it. If I publish a patch to delete a bunch of accounts, how many people here would download and install the update and switch to that chain? I see relatively few raised hands. This is called decentralization"

dlubarov··on Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
Moreover, the vast majority of active software development work relates to modern proof-of-stake blockchains like Ethereum, not Bitcoin which is mostly ossified.
dlubarov··on Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
There isn't really a technical difference that made PoS viable for Ethereum but not Bitcoin; it's a hard fork in either case. The differences are more cultural -

- For better or worse, Ethereum has more centralized leadership (mainly the EF) which helps coordinate upgrades. Hard forks happen pretty regularly, and don't typically risk fracturing the community, unless the changes are particularly controversial (see Ethereum Classic).

- PoS wasn't that controversial, since it was planned from the beginning (see the difficulty bomb). Some users still resisted the switch - see the EthereumPoW fork - but for the most part the community was on board.

- The Bitcoin community OTOH values ossification. It rarely accepts proposed hard forks as "still Bitcoin"; that has only happened a few times in its history. The community's response to most proposed hard forks is "interesting, but that's not Bitcoin, call it something else."

- The Bitcoin community is also more ideologically and economically invested in PoW, so a proposed PoS fork would be extremely controversial, and would fracture the community (at best, if it gained any traction at all).

dlubarov··on How Has Roman Concrete Lasted for Millennia? 1,900-Year-Old Latrine Offers Clues
Compared to traditional concrete, isn't hempcrete much weaker and less rigid? It's an interesting material for sure, but I thought it was basically considered non-structural filler.

Autoclaved aerated concrete is worth a mention as well - it's also a decent insulator and somewhat environmentally friendly, while additionally being, light, easy to cut, and somewhat usable as a structural element.

dlubarov··on New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium
My point is essentially that there are no new problems here, just the usual problems that we already have regulatory frameworks to address. Sometimes those existing frameworks are imperfect, e.g. in some states, power companies can't charge large customers for many of the infrastructure upgrades needed to serve them.

There's no novel problem here that any particular industry would need to find novel solutions for. Just some states ought to tweak their rules about the costs of distribution infrastructure upgrades.

dlubarov··on New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium
The rules shouldn't be specific to datacenters though; mechanics like Pennsylvania's "but-for" cost allocation make sense globally. If a new smelting plant requires upgrades to a substation, which wouldn't otherwise be necessary, the smelting plant should be charged accordingly.
dlubarov··on New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium
Yeah - there seem to be a lot of pretenses which don't actually justify banning a particular industry.

If environmental concerns were the real issue, we'd be talking about how to tweak those regulations. If power distribution was the real issue, we'd be talking about the economics of power companies, and tweaking the rules about billing for infrastructure upgrades.

It's strange how we're suddenly talking about things like illegal concrete dumping, as if concrete foundations were somehow specific to datacenters, and not 99% of buildings built in the past century.

dlubarov··on Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance
What do you mean? Proving things about sensitive data without revealing it is what ZKPs are for. If you mean that the tech isn't mature enough to be trusted yet, I think there's some truth to that, but it depends on what software we're talking about specifically. Zcash has been in production for almost 10 years now.
dlubarov··on Despite its best efforts, Iran won't be able to toll the Strait of Hormuz
Right. Is your view that nothing can be done about the extortion? I think there are lots of ways other states could make it risky for ships to pay Iran; the US was at least attempting that before the MoU.
dlubarov··on Despite its best efforts, Iran won't be able to toll the Strait of Hormuz
The usual view of the international community is that everyone is bound by customary international law. This would remain the case even if the US or others violated it; the hypocrisy of other states wouldn't release any state from its obligations.

One can object to this notion of customary international law, but if we're going to say that laws of the sea don't matter here, then we must also give up the legal notion that the strait is Iran's (and Oman's) territorial waters. There's no consistent legal framework under which the strait is Iran's territorial waters, but not an international waterway.

There's the practical reality that Iran can extort ships anyway, even with no legal pretense. But then it's essentially just piracy, and anyone with a few boats or mines can do that, unless they're stopped by force.

dlubarov··on Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI
Any Jew certainly has cultural ties to Palestine, if we're talking about the region rather than the modern national identity with the same name.
dlubarov··on Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI
What do you mean by “Palestinian”? They’re Palestinian by the classic definition of “those who live in the region of Palestine”.

If you mean citizens of the State of Palestine, that’s a political matter, and zero Jews have that citizenship.

If you mean something along the lines of “unbroken lineage of ancestors who never left Palestine", that would also exclude many people who we all consider Palestinian, such as Arafat himself who was born in Cairo.

dlubarov··on Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI
> rare exceptions of Mizrahis

It's not rare at all, the majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi.

dlubarov··on Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore
A lot of the stricter codes have very real safety benefits though - modern electrical is much safer, fire sprinklers add significant cost but really do help contain fires, etc.

(Not that it's all good, e.g. I don't like Washington's WAC 51-11R which just seems way overcomplicated.)

dlubarov··on Stanford grads walk out on Google CEO Sundar Pichai speech
> Judaism is in fact, just a religion

Never heard of non-religious Jews or Jewish atheism before?

dlubarov··on Hormuz crisis side effect: a sharp rise in container shipping rates
> Don't start wars

US/Israel may have opened the current front, but the Iranian regime has been waging proxy warfare since the early 80s. They also attempted to assassinate our president. It's misleading to paint US/Israel as the aggressors for occasionally responding to years of indirect or unsuccessful attacks.

To look at it another way: if US/Israel hadn't responded directly, but instead paid Erdogan a large bribe to strike a list of coordinates in Iran, while also supplying the missiles and the training, would that get around your concern? Probably not.

Page 1 of 34Next →