Agree with the gist of 1. & 2. but was hoping for a more analytic-scientific approach to measuring the impact of the HN Front Page. That is probably impossible though. If you invent github/sliced bread then hitting the front page might be the best thing to happen to your idea. If your profitable business of scamming grannies gets the same exposure it will probably be removed from the iOS/Android App Stores within minutes. Launching Dropbox here is likely somewhere in the middle.
Readit Newsbijant commented on The value of hitting the HN front page mooreds.com/wordpress/arc... · Posted by u/mooreds
Trying this out for the last few minutes feels like how Unix-Admins must have felt when they first used Linux. Sure, it's still a bit rough around the edges but you instantly realize that it's just a question of time before its "game over" for all commercial Unix vendors.
bijant commented on ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action openai.com/index/introduc... · Posted by u/Topfi
While they did talk about partial-mitigations to counter prompt-injection, highlighting the risks of cc numbers and other private information leaking, they did not address whether they would be handing all of that data over under the court-order to the NYT.
bijant commented on ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action openai.com/index/introduc... · Posted by u/Topfi
I've been using OpenAI operator for some time - but more and more websites are blocking it, such as LinkedIn and Amazon. That's two key use-cases gone (applying to jobs and online shopping).
Operator is pretty low-key, but once Agent starts getting popular, more sites will block it. They'll need to allow a proxy configuration or something like that.
THIS is the main problem. I was listening the whole time for them to announce a way to run it locally or at least proxy through your local devices. Alas the Deepseek R1 distillation experience they went through (a bit like when Steve Jobs was fuming at Google for getting Android to market so quickly) made them wary of showing to many intermediate results, tricks etc. Even in the very beginning Operator v1 was unable to access many sites that blocked data-center IPs and while I went through the effort of patching in a hacky proxy-setup to be able to actually test real world performance they later locked it down even further without improving performance at all. Even when its working, its basically useless and its not working now and only getting worse. Either they make some kinda deal with eastdakota(which he is probably too savvy to agree to)or they can basically forget about doing web browsing directly from their servers.Considering, that all non web applications of "computer use" greatly benefit from local files and software (which you already have the license for!)the whole concept appears to be on the road to failure. Having their remote computer use agent perform most stuff via CLI is actually really funny when you remember that computer use advocates used to claim the whole point was NOT to rely on "outdated" pre-gui interfaces.
bijant commented on Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster qwenlm.github.io/blog/qwe... · Posted by u/synthwave
Without structural assumptions, there is no necessity - only observed regularity. Necessity literally does not exist. You will never find it anywhere.
Hume figured this out quite a while ago and Kant had an interesting response to it. Think the lack of “necessity” is a problem? Try to find “time” or “space” in the data.
Data by itself is useless. It’s interesting to see peoples’ reaction to this.
@whatnow37373 — Three sentences and you’ve done what a semester with Kritik der reinen Vernunft couldn’t: made the Hume-vs-Kant standoff obvious. The idea that “necessity” is just the exhaust of our structural assumptions (and that data, naked, can’t even locate time or space) finally snapped into focus.
This is exactly the kind of epistemic lens-polishing that keeps me reloading HN.
bijant commented on Which year: guess which year each photo was taken whichyr.com/... · Posted by u/trymas
o3 got a SCORE AVG.4989 YEARS OFF 0.2 TOP 0%
bijant commented on Ask HN: Why is my F500 employer okay with paying 5x to freelancers? · Posted by u/mettamage
You’re not crazy; the math really is lopsided. I know the feeling all too well. My own autism diagnosis put a label on that jarring moment when logic collides with a corporate system that runs on something else entirely—risk management, optics, and a reflexive fear of precedent. Years of nose‑first landings and therapy taught me an uncomfortable truth: asking “Why isn’t this rational?” is read not as curiosity but as confrontation, because someone up the chain would have to admit the rules are incoherent. You don’t need to change the way you think, only the angle of attack.
So let’s talk about angles. Since January the Dutch tax office has been fining companies for blurring payroll and freelance status under Wet DBA, which makes your manager twice as jumpy about letting an employee invoice on the side. Fine—don’t fight the hedgehog head‑on. Two work‑arounds turn that absurdity into leverage.
First, the low‑friction hack. Find a trusted friend or cousin—ideally in a friendlier tax jurisdiction or a lower bracket—who fronts the freelance contract while you quietly deliver the work. Your firm still gets the only AI engineer who already knows the codebase, HR gets a clean vendor file, and you earn something far closer to the market rate without triggering an audit. It feels like sleight of hand, but it’s legal and, frankly, no shadier than paying a staffing agency to skim thirty percent for forwarding e‑mails.
Second, the bigger‑canvas fix. Recruit a handful of HN types stuck in the same trap and build a tiny marketplace—call it the YC play if you want venture upside or the Vim play if you’d rather tithe a slice to open‑source. Members post internal gigs they’re barred from taking; peers at other firms take the work at the full €150. Next month the favour reverses. Ten or fifteen percent goes to keep the lights on—or to kids in Uganda, your call—and suddenly the premium everyone was happy to pay a middleman flows to the people doing the work. Bureaucracy can’t object: every invoice still bears the magic words “external vendor,” and the talent free‑market gets a blood supply.
Both routes shift incentives instead of pleading with logic, and that’s the only language the system understands. Arguments rarely move a corporate wall. Action reroutes the plumbing so the money follows you anyway.
End of argument.
bijant commented on It would take three years to install a speed bump. So I bought my own substack.com/home/post/p-... · Posted by u/sebg
There's something distinctly Kafkaesque about a bureaucracy that requires multiple years to install a $98 piece of plastic you can literally order from Amazon overnight. Ironically, what's trivially achievable even in places labeled "failed states"—say, Somalia or Afghanistan—is outright impossible under the watchful eye of Bay Area local government.
Imagine: the co-founder of Vimeo, a person presumably equipped with resources, connections, and media savvy, finds himself reduced to helplessly installing a CCTV camera to document crashes instead of preventing them. He’s left sending annual appeals to bureaucratic email addresses that no longer exist.
It might sound absurd, but in a scenario like this, you're genuinely better off with mafia management. At least the mafia would deliver your speed bump within 48 hours (fees negotiable), no paperwork required.
Jokes aside, the deeper problem here is that bureaucracy isn't just slow—it's optimized toward risk-aversion and self-preservation rather than actual outcomes. This inversion of incentives creates paralysis masquerading as accountability. Bureaucrats face career-ending risk from mistakenly installing a bump, but zero consequences from doing nothing.
If governance becomes indistinguishable from satire, don't be surprised when people start seriously discussing alternative power structures—even troubling ones—just because they get things done. Bureaucratic dysfunction at this extreme level isn't merely inefficient; it's a symptom of systemic rot.
If I were a Paul Allen-tier billionaire, I’d endow university chairs in ‘Computer Archaeology’ specifically for people doing this kind of meticulous digging. It’s fantastic work, clarifying how operating systems evolved—though arguably just a bit more practical than crawling around ancient Greek ruins searching for fragments of the past.
bijant commented on OpenAI Roadmap Update for GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 twitter.com/sama/status/1... · Posted by u/gigaArpit
So if you subscribed to "pro" because Sam said o3 and o3 pro would be available to ChatGPT pro subscribers by the end of February you are out of luck...