Hacker News Reader

yadaenoon Our position on open-weights models

You are taking a hardline libertarian position. We safety test cars, roads, bridges, pharmaceutical. What happens when the unvetted AI model starts teaching people how to make biological weapons, or convincing kids to kill themselves?

yadaenoon Our position on open-weights models

It is not demanding a ban at all. Any sane regulation of AI will involve safety testing. This seems like common sense.

yadaenoon Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. Import Reliance with Substitution and Recycling

reflect on what? both things can be true at the same time.

yadaenoon Can we have the day off?

I can promise you this is not how the MBAs are reading the situation.

yadaenoon Can we have the day off?

You can have the day off. Don't think for a million years you will be paid for it.

yadaenoon Most Americans don't trust AI – or the people in charge of it (2025)

https://x.com/projomike/status/2055850621832446432

People use it; they also understand that the end goal of AI is to automate away the vast majority of white collar jobs and enrich the capital class.

yadaenoon Joby kicks off NYC electric air taxi demos with historic JFK flight

2 engines can fail and it will still fly

yadaenoon I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

If a business attempts to steal from me I instantly charge back and the onus is on them to prove that I owe them money. I do this all the time and have never been blacklisted.

yadaenoon Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

Absent any useful context about the situation at all, it’s very strange for a girl to ask a random guy for a ride home. Most women I know would 100% ask a girl. I think it’s very reasonable to think something is up here.

yadaenoon How to talk to anyone and why you should

I usually dislike when people talk to me in public. Some people have nothing to say but they trap you in a conversation anyways. Some people are genuinely interesting and energizing to talk to. Either way, every conversation i've had in public has stuck with me and I can remember these conversations 6+ years later.

yadaenoon The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran

Take a look at the Iran subreddit.

yadaenoon US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

> The day the tariff goes into effect is after vast amounts of on-shore stock has already landed

Tariffs took effect in February 2025. We saw CPI go up 2.7% in 2025 and 2.5%/4 in Q1 2026 so I'm skeptical of the inventory lag theory. Maybe we're stressing some other part of the economy and gearing up for catastrophic failure, but I don't see that in the economic data.

> If you live in the US

I live in the US. Gas prices spiked in 2024 and prices went up, gas prices went down and CPI leveled off, tariffs started in 2025 and CPI remains stable. Maybe tariffs are cutting into some drop shipper's profits but I'm definitely not paying for it.

yadaenoon US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

I'm skeptical. Tariffs affect the cost of business same-day. If we were going to see a change in consumer prices id expect to see an inkling of a change 12 months in. I'm open to being wrong but claims that tariffs are destroying the American consumer feel like gas lighting given the CPI data.

yadaenoon US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

US consumer inflation in 2025 was 2.7%, so clearly the impact on consumers from tariffs was minimal.

yadaenoon Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

> Republicans are getting what they voted for and they STILL want what’s happening.

Trump was elected as a specific reaction to the previous administration’s immigration policies. You’re right that voters supported that, but they didn't sign up for the rest. If you look at the polling, the tariffs and the Greenland push are explicitly unpopular.

> having free elections doesn’t make you the good guys if you elect a tyrant.

it does. The point of democracy is that voters make mistakes. Even European countries have elected tyrants in the past. The difference is that a free system allows you to survive a bad leader and vote them out; an authoritarian one doesn't.

yadaenoon Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

China is buying 50% of Russian gas and supplying them with drone parts and gunpowder which is directly used to kill Europeans and destabilize Europe.

They are also exporting their surveillance state technology to dictatorships in Pakistan, Iran, and Venezuela. Look at Iran, 16000 protestors are dead in two weeks. That is the Chinese model of stability.

Bad leaders exist everywhere, Europe included. But in the US, they leave. Trump is gone in two years. Good luck aligning your economies and value systems with China. I’m firmly on the side of liberal democracy.

yadaenoon Iran report says 16,500 dead in 'genocide under digital darkness'

I wouldn’t place a government massacring 16500 citizens and enforcing immigration laws in the same category.

yadaenoon Iran report says 16,500 dead in 'genocide under digital darkness'

For reference ~8000 people died on D-Day. Most of the protestors killed are believed to be under 30.

yadaenoon Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

Isn’t China buying 50% of Russia’s Gas and supplying them drone parts and gunpowder which is directly being used to kill Europeans and destabilize Europe?

yadaenoon Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

The downside is that this tech stack is also being rolled out to Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Venezuela to build their own local versions of the Great Firewall. It is currently being used to crush dissent and imprison anyone who disagrees with the regime.

I guess if you consider that “winning” then definitely continue to support Chinese dominance.

yadaenoon Officials showed off a robo-bus in DC. It got hit by a Tesla driver

Drivers crash their cars into things thousands of times per day. What’s the point of this article?

yadaenoon Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

> in the US, which also has many examples of large scale human right abuses.

Excuse me? Citation is needed here for present day human rights abuses in the US.

> Canada should just do what's best for its citizen, which is get good trade deals, and ensure that our values don't morph into something unrecognizable. What other countries do in their own borders is largely irrelevant.

It’s extremely relevant, if you believe in personal liberties and democracy you should to do business with societies that uphold personal liberties and democracy it’s that simple.

yadaenoon American Dialect Society 2025 Word of the Year Is "Slop"

That's maybe true, but "goyslop" was specifically referring to vapes, processed food and tiktok. Then shortly after people started calling tiktok "slop" and ai tiktok "ai slop".

I think its a stretch to declare there is zero relation considering how much internet language originates from 4chan.

yadaenoon American Dialect Society 2025 Word of the Year Is "Slop"

The way “slop” is used here is very specific. It implies a power dynamic between the slop producer and consumer where the consumer is viewed as cattle, and the producer feeds the cheapest possible product.

GP cities specific examples of this usage on 4chan in 2022 which is proof until someone can find a counter example.

yadaenoon American Dialect Society 2025 Word of the Year Is "Slop"

Right.. but it’s WOTY in 2025 not 1600. The reason this word and many others (including doomer, neckbeard, zoomer, etc) are popular can easily be traced back to 4chan.

There’s a book called“Algospeak” by Adam Alekaik specifically talks about how internet slang terms often originate from radicalized communities like 4chan and slowly filter into the mainstream while losing their original political meaning. Goyslop-> AI slop is a textbook example of this.

yadaenoon Building a Rust-style static analyzer for C++ with AI

This whole thing feels like clever marketing. Why would the mobile app be credited?

yadaenoon Elegance is Bullshit

Language is one way we use to estimate the status of other people. Someone who is eloquent or aesthetically pleasing is more likely to be high status, and thus it’s personally beneficial for me to associate myself with them so some of their status might trickle down to me.

yadaenoon UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

In 2023, the number of people arrested for online comments: UK (12,183), Belarus (6,205), Germany (3,500), China (1,500).

How do people in the UK defend this? I consider myself a liberal and to defend this government is a level of hypocrisy so beyond the pale.

Am I being reactionary here? Are things actually not that bad in the UK?

yadaenoon Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

It’s been a thing, but Covid and remote work took away any possible argument to no offshore everything ASAP.