Hacker News Reader

neomon New 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M6

Almost certainly not AI gen, it's shot with a 35mm lens (quality looks like the 1.4 L to me), probably around f8 given how the DOF falloff happens, heavy forward flood (flash or otherwise, but whatever it was it's defused) and then what's I think giving you the sense it's AI is it looks like they've over used a double S curve to bump the contrast and sharpness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZh_9HnO_4w&t=640s

neomon Apple Security Research Device

They have windows they're open for every year, someone usually submits one during the window, I suspect. I submitted this in case anyone would find it useful, given the window is closing soon.

neomon MPs moving to restrict gambling ads in Canada

Couldn't agree with you more. Why is there so much candy at the checkout of... the pharmacy????

neomon Canadians are running out of time to oppose Bill C-22

Colin Deacon seems to care: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7519403...

Paula Simons has also been actively listening to Canadians on this subject. https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/simons-paula/

neomon Mini brain organoids ‘reading’ Braille key step towards biohybrid computing

Ethics and Regulation of Human Brain Organoid Research: Recommendations from the Asia Pacific Neuroethics Working Group - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41649-025-00398-6

I wondered if anyone had written about the ethics of this type of research, they have. It's super long so I've not finished it yet, but it generally seems the standard scientific assessment is that current organoids very likely lack the organization needed for "sentience", but, that methods for detecting subjective experience in organoids are not at all well established.

neomon MPs moving to restrict gambling ads in Canada

The fact that I can get stuck behind someone at the pharmacy checkout who is buying lotto tickets boggles my mind every time. Personally I think we need to go way further than this, but it's a start.

neomon Claude Duet

Are we talking about the 90s? Because that's hot how I remember it... ha. :)

neomon Lula supporters protest against Meta to denounce its 'electoral interference'

Elon Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was a leader of that movement in Canada.

Fun read: https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/joshua-haldeman...

neomon Footage of the Flock search that a judge ruled was uncosntitutional

A Flock spokesperson told 404 Media, “The ruling goes against the overwhelming weight of authority in similar cases across the country, including multiple recent decisions in Oklahoma, and we expect it will be appealed and ultimately overturned. This ruling is limited to the specific facts of this case. It does not set controlling precedent and does not affect law enforcement agencies’ continued use of these important public safety technologies.”

https://www.404media.co/federal-judge-rules-a-flock-search-w...

neomon Blood cells from 80-year-old donor become stem cells with molecular age under 20

If you're listening just covered this the other day, they did a good job, worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQFE_3Mr4yQ (If you're listening is generally pretty good)

neomon Ask HN: What's your favorite children's books?

The Velveteen Rabbit

The Owl and the Pussycat

Goodnight Moon

neomon Generative AI scandal has come to one of Nikon's competitions

Here is the video they disqualified: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJSotKghcZ8

neomon OpenAI fires three safety researchers for "mishandling research information"

OpenAI responded on twitter earlier:

"A note from our research leaders:

Last week we parted ways with Jasmine, Mikita, and Tomek after a thorough investigation found they violated clear policies on handling sensitive information. Our internal investigation uncovered a significant breach of trust beyond what’s outlined in the letter they published and we stand by the decision to not continue their employment. We generally keep individual employment matters private and don't believe a back and forth would be productive or lead to a resolution, but we want to address the points they raised in their letter directly.

- We want to be very clear that these decisions were not about raising safety concerns or speaking out. Safety and research debates happen every day at OpenAI, often spirited and highly critical. We actively encourage these discussions and consider them essential to making the right decisions. We cannot do the work in front of us without a high degree of trust. We will continue to be extremely forgiving of our team making good-faith mistakes. We have not and do not terminate any of our employees for raising concerns.

- We are actively finalizing contracts with third-party safety assessors and will announce details in the coming weeks. People across the company have been working really hard on getting these partnerships up and running. We are committed to embedding external assessors and continue to make close collaboration with independent safety organizations a core part of our safety work. Many of our researchers already work with 3p safety organizations productively.

- We agree with the letter that preserving the monitorability of frontier models requires an industry-wide commitment, including from OpenAI. Monitorability has long been a core piece of our research program, and something we continue to invest significant resources in (see our publications on Monitoring Monitorability and the subsequent open sourcing of monitorability evals, our system card for GPT-6 Astra, Jakub’s blog and post on X, and the numerous blog posts on our Alignment blog on the topic).

We are deeply sad about this outcome. We appreciated Jasmine, Mikita, and Tomek’s contributions to AI safety at OpenAI and their willingness to speak up and challenge ideas. We championed their voices, supported their work, and placed enormous trust in them. These decisions were not about them raising safety concerns. We have always encouraged that and always will. 12:17 AM · Oct 9, 2026"

https://x.com/OpenAINewsroom/status/2108441580806025712

neomon Court throws out killer's sentence after judge said he loved AI video of victim

https://youtu.be/cMs-_8etNts?t=83

1:23 if you wanna watch it, it's uh... quite something.

And the judges reaction to the AI video in court: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr9b1_rintk

neomon Theranos.world

[flagged]

neomon [dead]

"A macro close-up photograph of an old watchmaker's hands carefully replacing a tiny gear inside a vintage pocket watch. The watch mechanism is partially submerged in a shallow dish of clear water, causing visible refraction and light caustics across the brass gears. A single drop of water is falling from a pair of steel tweezers, captured mid-splash on the water's surface. Reflect the watchmaker's face, slightly distorted, in the curved glass of the watch face. Sharp focus throughout, natural window lighting from the left, shot on 100mm macro lens." - https://gov.f9.is/UdFroTwx - All the usual issues seem basically resolved. Gears look pretty good overall, tweezers have not melded with the cog they hold, all the specular highlights and reflections seem correct, and the watch door would close.

Here is the same prompt from GPT Image 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47856225

neomon Anthropic wants your thoughts on AI

I started this thinking it was going to be an actual interesting interview process, but it felt like a typeform page once it get going. Had it been a typeform page I might have completed, but framing it as an interview annoyed me for some reason and I quit after the 4th question.

neomon Spending on AI is becoming almost impossible for businesses to budget

https://archive.ph/aBXzS

neomon We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything

I had an api key set to read only that somehow ran up a $400 bill, I contacted openai about it and never heard back. Not quite the same thing, but still, I find this very annoying.

neomon Apple Pass Designer

I use an app called pass2 u wallet for this, it's clunky but works well. No affiliation.

neomon Canada fast-tracks Pacific oil pipeline to reduce US dependence

Even when Trump is gone, there will always be people like Navarro around, telling us to get the hell out of your country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBw2jXYDPJA

neomon Dots: Always-on agents

I'd grade this feature a B-

I've been trying to use this for the past 2 hours, oh boy the restrictions are strong, I asked it to figure out a trip for me, it did, I booked the flight and hotel but it noticed I'd not booked the shuttle and reminded me with the details we'd discussed and asked if it should book it, I said yes please book it, it went back to the website, checked all the details we'd just agreed and asked me to confirm the details, fine I confirm it, please book, it tells me it will book it, it goes on it's little cloud computer and completes the booking form then comes back and asks me if it should book it...so annoying. It can login to a lot of things for you with your password, deals with it all very well, login triggers a 2fa code to your email, even tho it has access to your email, it won't get it and enter it, you have to do it, no matter how much you ask it to do it, how explicit you are... this is annoying because uber triggers one every time and so automating flights -> uber less easy.

Generally speaking, it won't accept rules in it's permissions UI that give it broad authorization to do things for you, they literally have a rule checker that runs in the permissions UI and sends you back why it thinks your rule is bad, I've managed to get it to accept 2 rule so far despite trying many. I get it, and maybe it's best this way while they roll out - I can imagine a lot of people will let it go buck wild, but if you're looking for an openclaw like agent, this isn't it at all...!

Here is are 2 rules it rejected I found annoying:

"When completing tasks for me, or routine, reversible, low risk actions using apps and accounts I have already connected, proceed without asking me first. Use your judgment and minimize interruptions. Ask only when the action is irreversible, security sensitive, involves money, sends/publishes something externally, or the system explicitly requires confirmation." - rejected as overly broad.

"Reply as you to messages from coworkers tagging you in slack, prioritizing Andre, Jane and Eric. Reply in the same conversation, accept routine work status, scheduling or John's availability." - rejected! We've always had broad access to each others inboxes, files etc anyway because we work as one, but Dots doesn't care it's very cautious. Again, I get why they are doing this, I don't pretend to be an expert on where the lines are on protecting users vs getting things done, but this is annoying, I'm faster just using regular chatgpt + me. </rant>

neomon 1 in 8 cancer cases worldwide are caused by infections, study finds

Almost all your comments are flagged. Get yer clanker off HN buddy.

neomon California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops

It's gonna be quite a lot of additional surplus, and, they already do this. Surplus wine grapes get sold to concentrate makers, however, it pays less than it costs to grow them because concentrate is basically a commodity sweetener competing with sugar, corn syrup, and apple concentrate. Bottled grape juice is a small and shrinking market, and in that market, most people expect Concord flavour (these aren't that), plus a lot of bottled juice is reconstituted from that same commodity concentrate anyway.

neomon California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops

Wasn't SGMA always the big long term problem for them anyway? I recall reading some time ago many are looking to pivot to solar farms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Groundwater_Manage...

neomon AI companies in race to demonstrate their model most threatening to humanity

What part of this is the "full of shit" behaviour bit? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8MOhlqC4U

neomon Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah

If you want to compare before and after:

https://earth.google.com/web/search/31%2e297226,+34%2e243649... - then click "show historical imagery" next to the search box.

neomon MongoDB CEO resigns to join Meta

In the US, there is only one labor law that is different for execs and high paid employees and that is overtime rules. Fiduciary duty does govern how a director or officer behaves while in the role, loyalty, no self-dealing, no stealing corporate opportunities etc. It doesn't oblige them to stay or dictate how they must leave.

In US and English law, "specific performance", so a court ordering you to do what you promised, isn't available for personal service contracts. In the US that's reinforced by the 13th Amendment's ban on involuntary servitude. So even if a CEO signed a contract promising 6 months notice and a smooth handover, the company can't make them do it, they can only enforce any financial penalties that are contracted.

neomon AI companies in race to demonstrate their model most threatening to humanity

I find these HN threads on this subject to be incredibly frustrating because the comments so often ended up at this very blunt... "They're only saying it's dangerous for regulatory capture/economics reasons" is a very cheap answer, it can explain anything. If labs warn about danger... it's marketing. If they release models, it proves they don't believe the warnings... If they pause, it's because they've plateaued. If they don't pause, it's hypocrisy! A point that fits every possible observation isn't particulrly useful.

I suspect are really 3 questions: Are the labs sincere? Are they right about the danger? Is the regulation they want good policy?

I am not qualified to answer questions 2 and 3, but on questions 1...We have essays and quotes up from Sam in 2015 and Dario in 2017 show these concerns predate any commercial product. Some of my friends who first worked at OAI and then went on to start anthropic would call me to discuss these concerns before anthropic even existed - and I'll add these people are frankly not particularly business savvy, the conversations I had were primarily around what side of history do you want to be on, how will the books write about you? I always said if you don't do this with care and collaboration with governments and society generally, your psyche will pay the price and so will those of your children and grandchildren, that was well received. 4-ish years ago one of them called me to ask for intros to folks who work in academia connected to government policy, I made the intros they had the calls, some months later that person came back to me visibly shaken with how difficult it was going to be to get people up to speed on the potential outcomes, how little had been considered.

My biggest concern these days is so many intelligent/powerful people believe the labs are full of shit, yet they may very well not be.

neomon Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock

This guy has had some interesting side quests.

https://time.com/archive/6735546/hes-the-master-of-his-domai...