News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Apreche

Re:Somebody please stop the spam texts on Monday October 26, 2026 @04:42PM (#50250638)
Screen unknown callers. Any call that comes from a number that is not in your contacts will just be sent to voicemail or blocked entirely.
Re:Somebody please stop the spam texts on Monday October 26, 2026 @04:42PM (#50250631)
Screen unknown senders. Any text that comes from a number that is not in your contacts will be stashed away in the unknown senders bin without any notification. Problem solved.
Re:Online censorship is crushing indie webcomics on Sunday October 25, 2026 @08:44AM (#50230969)
Censorship means someone took your freedom of speech. That hasn’t happened here. They’ve only lost freedom of reach. Webcomics in the old days just had normal old web sites. Nothing stops them from continuing to do it the old way. Many webcomics do.

If you want the reach of a big platform, comply with their TOS. To the extent possible use the big platforms to steer people to your normal web site where your uncensored content is. This isn’t hard.

They’re not stupid. They’re evil. They are also nazis themselves.
Re:Why are we even doing all this? on Thursday October 15, 2026 @04:56PM (#50110100)
I’m not doing it. Why are you?
Re:Orkut.com on Thursday October 08, 2026 @12:06PM (#50007563)
My friends and I used Orkut back in the day for a hot minute. Then it was taken over by spam, and also Brazil. Looks like most of the interest in the new one is also from Brazil.

No matter how well-intentioned and good a new Orkut is, it’s an no-go. I’ve learned my lesson. For the rest of my life, I will not be joining any new platforms that are not under my control.

Re:Memory Companies Have Destroyed the Consumer Market on Tuesday September 29, 2026 @04:06PM (#49899574)
Yes, but zoom out more. Wealth inequality and the k-shaped economy are the real culprit.

When a few people have so much wealth that they are no longer price-sensitive, they bid up the price of everything and anything of value be it stocks, real estate, computer hardware, fine arts, sports teams, etc.

The result is that a business which tries to make quality products at reasonable prices will fail. They aren’t luxurious enough for the people with money. They aren’t cheap enough for the people without. Customers in the middle hardly exist. Any valuable good that is genuinely scarce will inevitably become a luxury.

Re:Alan Kay's answer to "Did the ENIAC have a BIOS"? on Sunday September 27, 2026 @04:03PM (#49870294)
If you have too much adblock, as I do, you can never visit quora.com. The security check will just loop infinitely.
Re:Teen Social Media Bans Miss the Point on Sunday September 20, 2026 @10:01AM (#49775981)
Don’t ban it for kids. Ban the doomscrolling algorithmic feeds for everyone. Make them only show people posts from accounts they opt-in to following, and nothing else.
Re:Ask HN: How to recover Google auth after phone stolen? on Thursday September 17, 2026 @12:31PM (#49743186)
You were supposed to save your backup codes.
Re:Writing a better reality: The case for optimistic sci-fi on Sunday September 13, 2026 @11:40PM (#49691688)
The optimistic sci-fi usually from other countries besides the US and in other languages besides English.
Yes, it is accurate. Welcome to USA!
Re:Ask HN: What default model do you use and why? on Saturday September 12, 2026 @12:14PM (#49673912)
I don’t use any LLM at any time for any reason.
Re:Humanity has built the records of FATE by accident on Wednesday September 02, 2026 @04:07PM (#49541732)
How naive of you to think it was by accident.
Because corporations are autocratic. All power is top down. Make corporations democratic with bottom up power structures, and the opposite will happen. Leadership will face blame for everything, and the bottom rung will never.
Re:When the shortage is the strategy on Friday August 21, 2026 @02:51PM (#49392370)
This is the wrong way to look at it.

In a K-shaped economy a business will not succeed by making quality goods at reasonable prices. Who are the customers for that? The middle class no longer exists.

Every successful business will do one of two things. Some will make ludicrous luxury goods at preposterous prices for customers that are not price conscious. Others will make mass produced garbage at insanely low margins in vast quantities.

The shortage is only the strategy in the sense that a large part of luxury goods is status. If you have a luxury product, you have to make it into a status symbol to get sales. Limited availability increases desirability. If something is too popular, wealthy people don’t want it anymore at any price.

The only solution is to end wealth inequality and restore the middle class. Tax the rich.

Re:Buy Your Friends Batteries on Monday August 17, 2026 @01:08PM (#49334314)
Anyone who can afford to own a home can afford their batteries and doesn’t need gifts. Renters are not allowed to modify their home in such a way.
This would be an interesting story, but I can’t replicate it. I used curl and set the User-agent, and I indeed got a markdown reply, but no ads.
Re:A Discord Alternative – Echoed on Monday July 27, 2026 @07:49PM (#49077250)
If it’s not open source and self-hostable, it’s a non-starter. Not switching to another closed platform just for it to die. I’m tired of switching. Whatever I switch to next must be able to last the rest of my life expectancy.
Re:Worse on Purpose on Monday July 27, 2026 @09:34AM (#49069504)
In a K shaped economy, there is no success in making quality goods at reasonable prices. There’s no middle class to buy them. You can make luxury goods for wealthy customers who do not care about price, or you can make absolute garbage to sell to the masses in bulk.

If you want to bring back quality goods and services, end wealth inequality. Tax the rich.

I only encountered this brand when trying to buy batteries for old cameras. It would be a shame if some of those less common varieties were no longer available.
Re:How do you use Vim in the era of AI? on Friday July 10, 2026 @09:51AM (#48859923)
Can confirm. Using vim same as always. Do not use any so-called ”AI” whatsoever.
> I used AI daily—how could I expect my students to avoid it entirely?

Uh, by also avoiding it entirely?

Re:Did my old job only exist because of fraud? on Sunday June 21, 2026 @06:53PM (#48623416)
One of the many reasons to never actually care about the work you are doing if it is a for-profit endeavor, and you are not the owner. You are there to collect a paycheck so you can survive. If you want a job that you should care about then work in public service, at a non-profit, or for yourself.
At first I was frustrated because I didn’t know what the controls were. The arrows were moving, but nothing seemed to shoot.

Then I realized the space bar was shooting. You just can’t see the bullets because they are tiny black dots on a dark blue background.

Re:What the Fuck Happened to Nerds on Friday June 12, 2026 @12:37PM (#48506269)
The nerds you are looking for are still here. We just got pushed out of the leadership of the tech industry by evil people who are not nerds.

The reason you can’t see us anymore is because you don’t know how to look. Money and the major social platforms will never direct your eyes towards us. You must look at the independent spaces that are hiding in plain sight.

I heard the memory bandwidth is not just slower than on a GPU, as expected, but is significantly slower than Apple’s unified memory.
Re:How to convert between wealth and income tax on Friday May 22, 2026 @12:05PM (#48237775)
His math is correct, but the conclusion is wrong.

Income is money that comes from actually laboring and contributing to society. Wealth tax is tax from sitting on your ass doing nothing.

Also, taxes don’t have to be a flat percentage. Like income tax, a good wealth tax would be progressive. Only wealth beyond a certain amount would be taxed, and the percentages would scale.

This is why we should have income taxes that are as low as possible, but still progressively scaled. We should similarly have a progressive scaling wealth tax, but it should be much harsher than the income tax because we want people to work.

Re:Who will buy your services if you fire us all? on Monday May 18, 2026 @05:57PM (#48186307)
The author is so naive to think that after eliminating the dependency on labor that the wealthy class will launch UBI so that they will still have customers. What will happen is they will leave us to die.
Re:I have seen the dystopian future of elderly care on Sunday May 10, 2026 @12:50PM (#48085527)
Someone watched Roujin Z and thinks they are so smart.

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