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ethanwillis

2,375 karma · joined May 19, 2016

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ethanwillis··on We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970
Or how about I just don't want to worship anyone? Is there something extreme about this?
ethanwillis··on Google is illegaly cutting forest to build data centers
There's a shortage of something but I don't think it's compute.
ethanwillis··on Anthropic AI model submits false tip on unsolved Philly murder
Who submitted the prompt?
ethanwillis··on Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program
But a high tech salary in that area doesn't put them in the percentile we were discussing.
ethanwillis··on Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program
Well then why do the people who do earn that much there need it?
ethanwillis··on Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program
Hatred of the labor theory of value. This isn't my judgement on it. Just my guess why certain people with certain interests argue against it
ethanwillis··on Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program
Why don't we need it? I wouldn't mind being in the 0.1% or 0.0001% of earners in a place.
ethanwillis··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
Revealing it doesn't make you a fraud. That was already the truth.

Revealing it makes you known as a fraud.

ethanwillis··on OpenArm: An open-source 7DOF humanoid arm

  A fully open-source humanoid arm for physical 
  AI research and deployment in contact-rich 
  environments.
When will someone release this but for deployment in target-rich environments?
ethanwillis··on Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"
But what if I've done nothing illegal and they only think I have?
ethanwillis··on OpenAI might have stolen another major proof
I think Anthropic told them being a plumber is a great option.
ethanwillis··on What would Steve Jobs think?
break out the ouija board
ethanwillis··on Flock Safety's controversial CEO just got a taste of his own medicine
It's called choice. Maybe a dumb choice, but a choice!
ethanwillis··on Flock updates privacy, accountability, security, and transparency safeguards
The last thing I'd want replicated in the US is UK governance.
ethanwillis··on Flock updates privacy, accountability, security, and transparency safeguards
The people running Flock are simply bad people with the completely wrong temperament.

We shouldn't have these cameras at all but even if we were forced to have them the people running Flock are the last people who should be in control of them.

The way they act on social media and in interviews they just come off (and surely are) fragile ego children.

ethanwillis··on Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery
Their right to a business model doesn't outweigh the right of the public to not be harmed.
ethanwillis··on Keyv and friends compromised in active Shai-Hulud supply chain attack
You know with all this AGI swirling around nowadays that is stronger than nation state hackers you think one of these companies would demonstrate just how capable they are by defending public infrastructure.

Unless...

Maybe in 6 months.

ethanwillis··on Ask HN: Why is the "Who is hiring?" post being re-aged?
thanks! was just wondering. maybe some issue with the implementation of manual movement of posts.
ethanwillis··on Ask HN: Who is firing? (August 2026)
Good question. I'm intentionally leaving it vague to see what people come up with.

Also, I've seen what you are describing a few times. Usually happens in companies with certain financial incentives to hide "problems"

ethanwillis··on UI8 Forge
the infinite scroll loop is cool but a bit nauseating lol
ethanwillis··on Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
I have a family member who has been a butcher for nearly 40 years.. if you'd want some tips on this to try it again I'm sure he'd be willing to tell you how to go about it properly.
ethanwillis··on Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
Definitely has always been some absurdity and I think there always will be. I think it only varies in the degree!
ethanwillis··on Biohub releases a world model of protein biology
You're simply wrong. I say this as a computer scientist who ended up studying and working in bioinformatics for a period of time.

The reason I don't now? It's that people don't understand biology enough to understand the currently untapped potential and definitely not the advances that have happened. So they allocate money to yet another todo app, food delivery app, crypto wallet, or yet another finetune of a model to talk like a caveman.

ethanwillis··on Tokenomics: Quantifying Where Tokens Are Used in Agentic Software Engineering
I have also developed a similar system not focused on the exploratory refinement of prompt(s). But more focused on feedback loops cybernetic style, so focused on the maintaining of stability of the prompt outputs by a growing library of deterministic checks and autofixes. Anything that is a "problem" which isn't covered by that library is surfaced to the human driving the process.
ethanwillis··on Biohub releases a world model of protein biology
I'm sure people will take this the wrong way, but a lot of the people who are on HN and who orbit technology circles in SF are really just not actually intellectually curious people.

They might like to think they are, they might try to pretend they are, but when pushed they're simply not.

Look at all of the groupthink that is perpetuated nonstop while they also proclaim they're creating, investing in, etc. so many unique ideas. Yet year after year it's the same thing in a different color.

What they actually are is interested in money and prestige. So give it a little time and they'll learn enough about biology to try and get some validation from their peers with comments. If money actually pours into bio that is.

ethanwillis··on Biohub releases a world model of protein biology

  a scientific engine for prediction, design, and discovery that can map proteins across the tree of life, predict their structures, and design new protein binders that function in laboratory experiments. 
So, my issue with this is just like in a lot of the other areas of bio we're not able to explore outside the semantics of what is "known." Even a simpler task of just doing proper assembly is plagued by this. De Novo assembly of an alien/novel organism mixed with samples from other alien organisms would be impossible with what we can do today. Even with things that we're familiar we struggle with metagenomic assembly.
ethanwillis··on Domain expertise has always been the real moat
Maybe not between continents but we had meaningful live video chat in 1968
ethanwillis··on Magnifica Humanitas
> but I think we still have it a whole lot better than a century ago (by and large).

Worse, they won't even give you the dignity of a claim to contribution to society. Then the lack of contribution is weaponized against you.

ethanwillis··on The Rage of the Billionaires Is Coming
> It sounds like the public is only booing. Barely anything of note yet.

I think this is being misunderstood. I read it as a final bit of civility. It's a warning.

ethanwillis··on Cisco workforce reductions
When local governments are captured by corporate interests this isn't the argument you think it is.
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