Hacker News Reader

According to their numbers the TRU rate of unemployment between 2022 and 2026 is the lowest it's been in 30 years.

While true, the divergence between U-3 and U-6 seems rather minimal: https://cdn.britannica.com/83/271883-050-64889D47/Unemployme...

rmahon Show HN: Galaxium, an experimental WebGPU space explorer

I also get an error:

    Requested allocation size (41967616) is smaller than the image requires (42778624).
    at ImportMemory (../../third_party/dawn/src/dawn/native/vulkan/external_memory/MemoryServiceImplementationOpaqueFD.cpp:132)

using Chromium on an old video card GTX 1070 with 32GB RAM, Fedora 44 KDE Plasma 4.7. Don't know if it matters but monitor scaling is set to 150%

rmahon What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

I think that's pretty blatantly obvious there are other ways to live. After all, there are still millions of people surviving on subsistence agriculture in fairly primitive conditions. Still people leading mostly-pastoral lifestyles herding animals. Still millions living in small isolated villages with few modern amenities. Still millions of people living in crowded dirty cities and working in dangerous factories for long hours the way people did in London of the late 1800's. And everything in between. It's funny how so few people voluntarily leave the wealth post-industrial regions to live in any of those, eh?

rmahon What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

That reminds me of another novel called "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson where everyone has a molecular assembler (i.e. nanotech or 3D printers on steroids) in their home. Putting aside the grey goo gone wild tropes, one thing that I suspect was realistic about the novel was that there were still rich people and poor people. Many people were still very unhappy and dissatisfied. Still the criminals and the corrupt.

You'd think that people would realize by now that material wealth (we've long since surpassed basic needs) does not bring happiness. IMO, past a certain point, happiness is more a function of society, family, status, and perhaps even purpose. Personally, I don't think the top three layers of Maslow's Hierarchy are on top of each other, but an interdependent mix. Even so, material wealth certainly makes life more comfy :-)

rmahon CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO

I'm sure their AI can simulate bad executives very effectively. Good ones, not so much. Humorously, the set of agents don't include an AI CEO, just the execs underneath the CEO. Someone must set the goals, after all and current LLM's have no agency (yet... thank the gods). Finally, the tasks their LLM agents can supposedly do are more the tasks that the executive's staff handles, not the executive themselves. Unless it's a smaller company, I guess.

rmahon U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

"anyone claiming the UK’s legal migration is any sort of problem right now, or in the past, should probably not be listened to in any way shape or form for anything they have to say on the matter."

This sort of position is, IMO, disgusting and immoral. I cannot express how appalled I am that someone would state something like this. Anyone who's a citizen of the UK most certainly has a right to express their opinion on legal immigration, either in favor or against.

rmahon U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

There's no single set of "international law" in the sense of national laws, state laws or local laws. There are only agreements and treaties between nations that are applied within those nations. As such, what "international law" applies depends on which nation you're in or from or if some nation's law enforcement have jurisdictional reach.

More to the point, nothing about this decision implies statelessness. Every visa applicant is a citizen of another foreign, non-American, nation. Being booted out doesn't make them stateless. They couldn't have applied for a visa if were stateless.

Note, I do agree that this suspension is unfair and a bad idea. But tossing out random accusations that imply that international law is being violated or causing people to become stateless doesn't help our case.

rmahon Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

You will never convince those who think the US is a state of lawlessness that the US is (mostly) a lawful, free and prosperous place. They literally cannot comprehend what living in a corrupt and mostly lawless society is like. They've never experienced anything even remotely close to it. It's like someone who grew up in the tropics and complains that they're "freezing to death!" because it's 50F. Someone from the arctic tells them about what real cold is like... they literally cannot understand.

rmahon Gloomberb

Bloomberg terminal is only $133/day (assuming 240 work days per year). So, while $32k/yr seems expensive at first glance, given the total annual cost of an analyst or trader, it's not huge. Of course, they'd rather not spend the $32k/yr if they could avoid it, if bloomberg can give you an edge on just one or two trades a year, you come out ahead. So...

rmahon AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

They're not jumping through any hoops, I think they're simply complying with reporting requirements. It's not on their balance sheet because being recorded as strait debt would itself be misleading. My understanding is that these sort of off-balance sheet "debt" is mostly in the form of deal terms that may or may not be expressed at some point in the future.

An analogy that comes to mind is when companies used to book future sales in the present. They got in trouble for this and is now forbidden. I recall reading that one deal had terms that transferred assets if certain conditions were not met. If terms-based debt should be booked now, then terms-based assets should as well. This stuff makes my head hurt.

Either way, as long as it's not hidden (and it's not for the public companies), then it's fine.

rmahon Punch yourself in the face with reality

This is, IMO, quite the insightful thought experiment. I suspect, however, that it is very difficult for most people to face.

rmahon Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

The first two look interesting, the last looks like a huge slum. They all look like bad places to live. IMO, of course.

rmahon American Wealth, Sliced Up

While mildly humorous, I don't understand why people on HN are voting this up. The pie chart is misleading at best.

rmahon Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

"Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behavior". This is true, but what people seem to fail to grasp is that rewarding such behavior == buying the product. If people simply didn't buy it, they wouldn't do it. It's really that simple. It may be hard to not buy, of course. The alternatives may be worse, there may be downsides to not buying, etc. But nothing else will really be effective.

rmahon The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

Sounds like a good way to ensure less capital in total.

rmahon The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

If the vast majority live at a "borderline biblical" standard of living, then there is simply not enough excess wealth to pay for the data centers (or more accurately, the industrial output necessary to build and maintain those data centers) you're talking about. Agrarian societies (i.e. borderline biblical), by definition, do not have the excess labor necessary for industrial output at any scale (here I mean anything more than a few % of contemporary levels).

rmahon Bcachefs creator insists his custom LLM is female and 'fully conscious'

Lol, you know this is sorta sad but true.

rmahon Bcachefs creator insists his custom LLM is female and 'fully conscious'

IMO, it's similar but worse. at least dogs and cats are living beings.

rmahon 11.8M EU citizens pay taxes to governments they cannot vote for

So every time your side loses a vote is equivalent to "cannot vote for"? Interesting perspective.

rmahon YouTube Blocks Background Listening Workaround for Free Users

It actually is an addition marginal expense. They have to pay for infrastructure and possibly licensing fees.

rmahon IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

People have literally started revolutions and wars over taxes. Empires have fallen because of taxes. People are often emotional and don't even want to think logically about taxes. I suspect that it's been like this since taxes were invented :-)

rmahon IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

Because, for white collar jobs, that is so rare that it's reasonable to say that it never happens.

rmahon IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

It sorta does, that's one of the primary points of a federal system.

rmahon Portugal: The First Global Empire (2015)

Yes and no. it's not like they ever extracted taxes from most of the natives living in the amazon jungle. Saying that you rule over people that have literally never heard of you is, IMO, stretching the definition of "rule" quite a bit :-)

rmahon 11.8M EU citizens pay taxes to governments they cannot vote for

I see. So by "cannot vote for" you meant "did not vote for". Thanks for clearing it up.

rmahon 11.8M EU citizens pay taxes to governments they cannot vote for

Your statement doesn't make sense to me, perhaps you could clarify it? Did you mean that 85% of the population didn't vote for the current leader of the executive branch? If so then perhaps "that 85% [...] did not vote for" might be more appropriate. Or were your referring to the electoral college used to elect the POTUS?

For the first, 100% of citizens cannot vote for the federal government representatives (children, most felons, etc do not have the franchise), and about 1/2 of citizens who are eligible to vote do not. The vast majority of adult citizens can vote.

For the electoral college, that only applies to the POTUS. I agree that the electoral college is deeply flawed. But both senators and congressmen are elected directly. They are the ones who make the laws. The executive branch just enforces and executes those laws. The responsibility for the many vague laws that hand over power to the executive is on congress.

IMO, to say "85% of Americans pay taxes to a federal government that they cannot vote for" is misleading at best.

rmahon Real-time estimates of animals consumed by humans worldwide

All of it.

rmahon Real-time estimates of animals consumed by humans worldwide

Most people live in asia. thus most foods are both produced and consumed in... you guessed it asia.

rmahon Real-time estimates of animals consumed by humans worldwide

I disagree.