skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on Will your AI teammate bring bagels to standup? in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Yep, true. I find it fun, though, and the costs are reasonable so far.

    Yep, true. I find it fun, though, and the costs are reasonable so far.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Government payments drive US farm income surge in 2025 in ~finance

  3. Comment on Government payments drive US farm income surge in 2025 in ~finance

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link
    From the article: [...] Here is commentary by Sarah Taber.

    From the article:

    The U.S. farm sector is poised for a significant increase in net farm income in 2025, primarily driven by an unprecedented rise in government payments, despite a decline in overall farm revenues.

    According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service, net farm income is forecast to reach $180.1 billion, up $41.0 billion from 2024, while net cash farm income is projected to hit $193.7 billion, reflecting a $34.5 billion increase.

    [...]

    This surge is largely attributed to ad hoc disaster and economic assistance, totaling $35.7 billion, approved by Congress in December. Other direct payment programs, such as Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC), are also projected to rise significantly.

    Here is commentary by Sarah Taber.

    6 votes

  5. Comment on Will your AI teammate bring bagels to standup? in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    No, because it's a ghost. Ghosts can't schlep. On the bright side, you don't have to feed them. Current status: putting scaffolding in place to see if I can convince Shelley to be better about...

    No, because it's a ghost. Ghosts can't schlep. On the bright side, you don't have to feed them.

    Current status: putting scaffolding in place to see if I can convince Shelley to be better about generating UI mockups. It sort of works.

    11 votes

  6. Comment on San Francisco parents are letting teens ride in Waymos without an adult in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    When we’re comparing rates we need to be careful about denominators and there are a lot of things one could legitimately put there, depending on what you’re interested in. For example, deaths per...

    When we’re comparing rates we need to be careful about denominators and there are a lot of things one could legitimately put there, depending on what you’re interested in.

    For example, deaths per passenger-mile makes airlines look very good, because we don’t fly that often and it’s for long distances. If we are thinking about what’s the safest way to get from San Francisco to New York, this is the relevant statistic. I wouldn’t expect bicycling to do particularly well because that would be a very long trip by bicycle and so there’s a lot of time for accidents to happen.

    Deaths per person-hour is also a useful statistic but it means something different: we are comparing ways you occupy your time. This might be relevant if you’re comparing a career working as a pilot or flight attendant to versus, say, a bike messenger. The miles you put in isn’t really relevant compared to time on the job.

    The relevant statistics we’re looking for would answer for individuals what would happen if they start bicycling more as part of an active lifestyle. This is going to depend on what kind of bicycling you do. I do know serious bicyclists who were injured where it wasn’t due to a car, it was due to falling off the bike. In a couple cases it was going off road going downhill at high speed. In another case, she just fainted for unknown reasons. These weren’t fatal, but head injuries can be very serious.

    I don’t think we found the right statistics to do this comparison yet. What you want to know as an individual is what happens if you take up cycling. It seems like deaths per time spent riding might be useful, but there are different kinds of riding, and deaths aren’t all we’re concerned about.

    4 votes

  7. Comment on San Francisco parents are letting teens ride in Waymos without an adult in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It seems like something of a milestone that some kids are growing up taking driverless cars for granted.

    It seems like something of a milestone that some kids are growing up taking driverless cars for granted.

    10 votes

  8. Comment on San Francisco parents are letting teens ride in Waymos without an adult in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link
    https://archive.is/t6ke0 From the article: [...] [...] [...]

    https://archive.is/t6ke0

    From the article:

    Increasingly, parents in San Francisco and Silicon Valley are relying on robotaxis to transport their unaccompanied children — mostly teenagers who aren’t quite old enough for a driver’s license. This practice breaks the rules imposed by Waymo and its state regulators, which require that riders be 18 or older unless they have an adult chaperone. But parents have found they’re unlikely to get caught, and the need is clear.

    [...]

    “It’s really become part of our culture,” said Megan Schmidt, a mother in the Inner Richmond who considers Waymo a vital form of mobility for her 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. Like other moms, Schmidt said that AVs have helped her reclaim a lot of time, some of which she can spend socializing with other parents.

    [...]

    Waymo responded to similar interest in another market, Phoenix, by introducing teen accounts for riders ages 14 to 17 — with the stipulation that each be linked to a parent or guardian. The feature, launched last July, was pitched as a tool for parents who want to give their children more autonomy while still being able to track their trips. It drew instant buzz.

    [...]

    Whether Waymo or any of its competitors can replicate this feature in San Francisco is unclear. The company would need approval from the California Public Utilities Commission, whose members are midway through a process to make new rules and policies for autonomous vehicles. Children’s use of robotaxis was among the items up for discussion, though at this point it’s unclear where regulators would land.

    6 votes

  10. Comment on Clarity-1: What worked, and where we go next in ~space

    skybrian
    Link
    People from Albedo Space are answering questions about it on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46747119

    People from Albedo Space are answering questions about it on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46747119

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Clarity-1: What worked, and where we go next in ~space

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    One of our four CMGs experienced a temperature spike in the flywheel bearing. Our Fault Detection, Isolation, and Recovery (FDIR) logic caught it immediately, spun it down, and executed automated recovery actions. But it wouldn't spin back up. Manual recovery attempts followed. Also unsuccessful.

    Rushing back into CMG operations without understanding the failure mechanism risked killing the mission entirely, so we turned off the other three and put the satellite in two-axis stabilization using the magnetic torque rods.

    [...]

    We had a choice. Hack together novel 3-CMG control algorithms as fast as possible and risk losing another, or figure out how to leverage only the torque rods to achieve 3-axis control with sufficient accuracy to navigate the maneuver to VLEO.

    We went with the torque rods.

    [...]

    We were eager to make some amount of progress, so we started imaging on torque rods even though there would be severe limitations: 50+ pixels of smear, large mispointing from the wobble of torque rod control due to earth's magnetic field, and downlink limited to at best two small images per day. The last two constraints meant we were at risk of spending precious downlink capacity on clouds.

    [...]

    Although we couldn't control attitude accurately, we did still have good attitude knowledge after the fact. AyJay whipped up a clever idea with Claude Code that automated posting weather conditions in Slack for each collection. We analyzed that to determine which images were likely clear, and selected those for downlink.

    [...]

    And this is where our ground software really showed its teeth. On most missions, “data on the ground” is just the start — turning raw bits into something viewable is a slow chain of handoffs and batch processing. For us, within seconds of the downlink finishing, the image product pipeline was already posting processed snippets into our company Slack. Literally seconds.

    [...]

    Three days into the excitement, CMG problems started again.

    A second CMG began showing the same telemetry signatures we now recognized as warning signs.

    What we had learned from the investigation: the allowable temperature specifications of the CMGs were much higher than the true limit, constrained by what the lubricant inside the flywheel could handle. A straightforward fix for the future — an unfortunate corner case to learn about in hindsight.

    [...]

    Nine months into the mission, we lost contact with Clarity-1.

    [...]

    We know exactly what to fix. It’s straight forward: operate the CMGs at lower temperature. The system thermal design is already updated in the next build to maximize CMG life going forward.

    [...]

    Our next VLEO mission will incorporate these learnings and demonstrate new features that enable missions beyond imaging — we’ll share more details soon. In parallel, imaging remains a core focus: we’re continuing to build optical payloads for EO/IR missions as part of a broader VLEO roadmap.

    The successes of Clarity-1 reinforced our core conviction: VLEO isn’t just a better orbit for imaging — it’s the next productive orbital layer.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on German chain Aldi bets big on cheaper groceries as US shoppers feel squeezed in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...]

    From the article:

    Aldi, which is celebrating its 50th year in the U.S., is seizing the opportunity. The grocer announced this month it will open 180 locations across 31 states this year, including in new markets in the Southeast and West, making its total store count close to 2,800 by the end of the year.

    The expansion is part of Aldi’s plan to spend $9 billion in store openings and three distribution centers to reach its goal of 3,200 stores by the end of 2028. In comparison, Kroger and Albertsons have about 2,800 and 2,200 stores, respectively, in 35 states and the District of Columbia under various banners. There are more than 600 Costco’s and more than 3,500 Walmart Supercenters in the U.S.

    [...]

    Aldi is widely recognized as the fastest growing chain across the grocery sector. Real estate services firm JLL reported Aldi outpaced competitors in both openings and square footage added from 2019 through 2024, the latest year with available data.

    [...]

    Aldi’s main draw is its below-market prices, a key advantage over its big box and supermarket competitors. Although Walmart, Target, Albertsons and Kroger have all increased their private-label offerings, about 90 percent of the products in an Aldi store are deeply discounted offerings from its house brand. This innovation shaves down the middleman costs from distributors and consumer goods companies.

    Aldi also has a smaller store footprint than the traditional grocery stores, requiring less product assortment and fewer staff members. Stocking shelves takes a fraction of the time, since most products are displayed in the boxes they were shipped in, and shoppers bag their own groceries.

    Finally, Aldi is ruthless at undercutting its competition, said Katrijn Gielens, a professor of economics and marketing at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. The chain is known for reducing prices when it enters a new market to entice customers to try them out. And once they’ve shopped at Aldi, they’re more willing to stay, she said.

    12 votes

  15. Comment on New California law means big changes for real estate listing photos in ~finance

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link
    https://archive.is/YAJwP From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]

    https://archive.is/YAJwP

    From the article:

    California house hunters should have an easier time detecting when homes look far better in real estate photos than they do in real life, thanks to a new state law that took effect Jan. 1.

    Under Assembly Bill 723, real estate agents and brokers who display photos of a home that have been digitally altered with editing software or artificial intelligence must include a “reasonably conspicuous” statement “disclosing that the image has been altered.”

    [...]

    The law states that the disclosure statement applies to “alterations that add, remove, or change elements in the image, such as interior fixtures, furniture, appliances, flooring, walls, paint color, hardscape, landscape, facade, floor plans and exterior features on or visible from the property such as streetlights, utility poles, views through windows, and neighboring properties.”

    [...]

    Agents also must provide an original, unaltered version of the photo, either on or next to the photo itself or via a QR code or link to a website where viewers can see the original.

    [...]

    The law applies to techniques that are employed after photos have been shot, meaning it wouldn’t address a common complaint among house hunters: the use of wide-angle camera lenses to make rooms look bigger. It also wouldn’t require disclosure of routine image editing, such as cropping and color correction.

    [...]

    AB723 is just one of many ways state legislators are trying to regulate the rapidly growing use of AI. California is the first state to require an explicit disclosure of digitally altered real estate photos, although Wisconsin passed a similar law in December that takes effect next year, said Daniel Hershkowitz, senior vice president of risk management with the Agency, a real estate brokerage.

    [...]

    Hershkowitz wryly noted that the same thing happens in real life. “You walk into a room (that has been physically staged) and realize that’s small-scale furniture. Nobody is going to sit on that couch.”

    Realtor associations, Multiple Listings Services and the California Department of Real Estate, which licenses and regulates real estate agents and brokers, have long-standing rules that prohibit false or deceptive advertising, but they were not consistent nor did they require explicit disclosures about altered images.

    In the past, if a room was virtually staged, for example, agents generally put a note to that effect in the “agent remarks” viewable only by agents or, less frequently, in remarks available to the public, Hershkowitz said.

    Some agents would post a virtually staged photo followed by a photo of the unstaged room, but this wasn’t required by state law or regulation.

    [...]

    Multiple Listing Services in California are working on ways to make sure that the required disclosures show up online on platforms like Zillow and Redfin.

    5 votes

  17. Comment on Wilson Lin on FastRender: a browser built by thousands of parallel agents in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Here is Simon's pushback to someone complaining about this article on HN.

    Here is Simon's pushback to someone complaining about this article on HN.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Wilson Lin on FastRender: a browser built by thousands of parallel agents in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It’s using some powerful building blocks, but does have to draw the rest of the owl.

    It’s using some powerful building blocks, but does have to draw the rest of the owl.

    5 votes

  19. Comment on Wilson Lin on FastRender: a browser built by thousands of parallel agents in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    Last week Cursor published Scaling long-running autonomous coding, an article describing their research efforts into coordinating large numbers of autonomous coding agents. One of the projects mentioned in the article was FastRender, a web browser they built from scratch using their agent swarms. I wanted to learn more so I asked Wilson Lin, the engineer behind FastRender, if we could record a conversation about the project. That 47 minute video is now available on YouTube. I’ve included some of the highlights below.

    [...]

    Wilson started what become FastRender as a personal side-project to explore the capabilities of the latest generation of frontier models—Claude Opus 4.5, GPT-5.1, and GPT-5.2. 00:56

    [...]

    A browser rendering engine was the ideal choice for this, because it’s both extremely ambitious and complex but also well specified. And you can visually see how well it’s working! 01:57

    [...]

    Once it became clear that this was an opportunity to try multiple agents working together it graduated to an official Cursor research project, and available resources were amplified.

    [...]

    The great thing about a browser is that it has such a large scope that it can keep serving experiments in this space for many years to come. JavaScript, then WebAssembly, then WebGPU... it could take many years to run out of new challenges for the agents to tackle.

    [...]

    We talked about the Cargo.toml dependencies that the project had accumulated, almost all of which had been selected by the agents themselves.

    Some of these, like Skia for 2D graphics rendering or HarfBuzz for text shaping, were obvious choices. Others such as Taffy felt like they might go against the from-scratch goals of the project, since that library implements CSS flexbox and grid layout algorithms directly. This was not an intended outcome. 27:53

    [...]

    The thing I find most interesting about FastRender is how it demonstrates the extreme edge of what a single engineer can achieve in early 2026 with the assistance of a swarm of agents.

    FastRender may not be a production-ready browser, but it represents over a million lines of Rust code, written in a few weeks, that can already render real web pages to a usable degree.

    3 votes