News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

ImPostingOnHN

Re:AI Isn't Replacing SREs. It's Deskilling Them on Friday October 30, 2026 @12:30PM (#50306298)
It turns out it's easier to hire people who specialize in scalability, reliability, debugging of distributed complex systems, cost ops, efficiency gains, etc. than it is to instantly ensure every single engineer that works there is an expert in all those things, without anybody on staff who is an expert in them. Much like database skills, IT security skills, etc.

It's still something everyone can theoretically learn, of course, and someone who works in that role is most effective by instilling those disciplines in others as they go, and making everyone successful.

> People keep polling against the things that are happening, but in elections that actually matter they keep voting for them, so...

Since the usa isn't a direct democracy, this isn't actually true. People vote for representatives, not things.

As for what happens to the representatives which have, since the last election, done things people oppose? We'll find out in a week or so! Looks like most people won't be voting for them.

They also tried to indict several democratic US senators for reiterating that it is okay to refuse illegal orders.
Please consider posting comments more in line with the YC posting guidelines, with fewer shallow dismissals and insults.

You're not going to have a good conversation like this, and you aren't going to be "winning" anything for your troubles, either.

Re:Hackers expose the identities of more than 40k DHS employees on Thursday October 29, 2026 @12:04PM (#50291256)
> Since when are crimes laudable?

I have faith that you understand the nuance of crimes sometimes being okay. For another example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

> it's possible to argue that America is still democratic, since it voted for all the stuff that's now happening

It's possible, but not very credible, to argue that in a situation where direct democracy doesn't exist.

The closest we have to voted for these things rather than voted for these people is polls, which overwhelmingly illustrate that most people oppose those things.

We'll know more after the election, if people supported those things.

> It would be pretty undemocratic if a president tries to stay in office age losing an election

Yes, the current president tried exactly that, in a violent insurrection, and has interfered in national elections since regaining power.

thank you for your explanations

how can we verify that a file was not altered before checksumming and uploading it?

Re:I will no longer upload to NEW on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @10:12AM (#50259681)
> Slow PR review

> Nitpicks on style, not substance

> Async waiting for review or re-review after making changes, harder to stay in what passes for a "flow state" nowadays

> A lot of a ceremony around straightforward changes

Those aren't great, but you what I like even less?

- Wall of nondeterministic bot text spam that may or may not be correct.

- Bot output has not been verified for correctness by the person who set up this bot output pipeline.

- Bot output has not even necessarily been read by the person who set it up.

- You have 24 hours to respond to this 5 page wall of text which may or may not be correct, or even make sense, or you will be penalized.

An appropriate response to this might be a reply flatly claiming that, actually, there aren't any problems after all, but that nobody has checked that that is true, and it is incumbent upon a human reviewer to verify your claims, like it was incumbent upon you to verify their bot's.

Can an LLM catch some errors? Absolutely. Can it be trusted to be correct absent review of the output? Absolutely not. So the simple solution seems to be, a human reviewer is free to run an LLM against code to review, on their own computer, and then they review the output, and they post the output only after verifying its correctness, taking personal responsibility for any issues with their posted output.

> But it is okay if not-rich people do it

Are you sure you replied to the right post? You're agreeing with me here.

The post I replied to is the one suggesting that us little people doing this is at least as bad as rich people and rich corps doing it.

In order to follow, you would need to first read the post I replied to, and answer your question as it pertains to that post.
"it's ok if a rich person or company does it, but not if someone less rich does it" is equally blatant hypocrisy that is worse for society.
Re:Lula wins election after final votes tallied on Monday October 26, 2026 @09:12AM (#50243033)
Yes, you're describing the trump tariff saga in the USA (tariffs are taxes).
Re:Lula wins election after final votes tallied on Monday October 26, 2026 @12:59AM (#50239332)
If it was illegal, then why did Bolsonaro ask for it to be done in this election?

If Bolsonaro did not want it done in this election, then why did Bolsonaro ask for it to be done in this election?

It depends how much money you pay Google annually, because that determines your leverage and access with support.
> we’re the guys who defeated them

Are you?

You personally were one of the guys that defeated the nazis?

How about the current leader of America, was he one of the guys that defeated them?

You shouldn't even coast on your own success, but you definitely can't coast on the success of people who are not you, much less do so nearly a century later.

Re:How Block Blast harvests its players for ad money on Saturday October 24, 2026 @08:27PM (#50226935)
when a user has lost, but can watch an ad to "revive" and continue the game, they are more likely to sit through that ad placement

some advertisers are thus more likely to pay more for those placements, and thus the placement is paired to one of these higher bidding campaigns

Re:How Block Blast harvests its players for ad money on Saturday October 24, 2026 @01:09PM (#50223179)
> It’s not like I get sucked into the game and decides to watch more expensive ads

It seems to be exactly like that for a sufficient portion of their users.

Sure, I'm asking what happens if you have whatsapp and swap phone numbers and the next day someone gets your old phone number.

Can they register for a different whatsapp account under the same number?

Can they access your whatsapp account?

Can you?

Re:Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner's phone on Friday October 23, 2026 @03:57PM (#50214485)
Thank you for sharing your opinions.
Re:Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner's phone on Friday October 23, 2026 @12:20PM (#50211449)
> People can mask their lies using their prior honest reputation. If anything this kind of lie can be more damaging.

Yeah, but it's more likely they will continue their reputation as a reliable source, and that someone with a track record of dishonesty and non-transparency will continue being dishonest and non-transparent. So those two things combined result in no net effect on the bayesian priors, and we are again left with `VF > JK`, absent further evidence.

> I'm not saying VF is lying in this case, it could all be true, but extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence.

Given the bayesian priors, VF's claim doesn't seem all that extraordinary, whereas JK's claim of innocence in comparison seems rather extraordinary. From there I apply the same heuristic of extraordinary claims.

Honestly I doubt Jared has even read the book, so I don't see how he could even be an informed source on the matter of his denials.

Re:Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner's phone on Friday October 23, 2026 @10:27AM (#50209658)
> Jared's response to the tweet, that the story is fabricated because of how complicated it is and VanityFair disclosed no evidences, should be considered as well.

You are right that it has nonzero value, but appropriate bayesian priors should take into account Vanity Fair being a reliable source, and Jared being a historically unreliable, untransparent source.

tl;dr: VF > JK absent further evidence in either direction

> This was not “criticism of israel”, it was attacking someone just because they are Israeli.

Perhaps, but attacking someone because they are israeli is not attacking someone because they are jewish, and is not anti-semetic. It may be xenophobic, but there is no need to bring jews into it and thus implicate all jews in israel's atrocities.

Even if you are upset because you think someone else was xenophobic. That does not excuse the blood libel of ascribing israel's actions to judaism.

> “Israelis” == Jews of the Levant.

Whoa, settle down there, you're making israel out to be some kind of ethnostate or caliphate-like entity, rather than a liberal democracy.

> Saying “Israelis are baby killers” is antisemitic

No it isn't, for the simple reason that israelis represent neither semitism nor judaism. There are countless more semites and jews who do not kill babies. Plus, I'm sure, as a liberal democracy, israel and its military-industrial complex is very diverse and non-discriminatory with regard to ethnicity and religion. And that's not even addressing the actual child-killing which israel is actively perpetrating on the reg.

> > which attempted to conflate all jews with israel

> That is not what it did.

That is precisely what it did, and what all "antisemitism" dismissals of criticism towards israel do. Judaism literally did not enter the conversation until the criticism of israel (not judaism) was dismissed as "antisemitism". israel != semitism. israel != judaism (indeed, their actions violate the basic tenets of judaism).

If defenders of israel lump all jews in with israel's child-killing, just for being jewish, that is a blood libel. israel is doing that because it is led by monsters, not because it is led by jews. Sincerely, a jew.

> Not sure I understand what you mean. X had the number, so the fact is reflected in some searchable dataset. Then abandoned it. Maybe there was no WhA registered, or it expired after 120 days. Now Y gets the number from a mobile operator pool, and registers WhA.

What about before 120 days but after the phone number was "abandoned"?

ok, thank you for sharing that about yourself

Im sorry you're having a bad time

Again, maybe you're upset because someone else said something else, but that doesn't excuse the post I responded to, which attempted to conflate all jews with israel, and in so doing, ascribed horrific torture, killing, and crimes against humanity to all jews. That's literally a blood libel. "We" didn't do that. All jews/semites did not do that. israel did. Don't use us jews as human shields against criticism of israel, please.

> African != black. As a black person, I'll thank you for not conflating the two again, because claiming all blacks are African is tantamount to racism.

Yes, precisely. You are getting it. African != black, just like israeli != jewish. Claiming all blacks are African is indeed bigoted, just like claiming all jews are israeli (as happens when someone claims a criticism strictly of israel is "anti-semetic). Don't make either conflation, it is ignorant and disrespectful.

> blood libels always targeted only some Jews, but they targeted them because they were Jews

Yes, just like conflating me and my judaism with israel's actions is targeting me for being jewish and attacking me.

> Would you be ok with someone making accusations against anyone who is from an African country?

Would you be ok with someone making accusations against anyone who is jewish? Because that is what is happening here, just like making accusations against someone for being black.

Maybe you're upset because someone else said something else, but that doesn't excuse the post I responded to, which attempted to conflate all jews with israel, and in so doing, ascribed horrific torture, killing, and crimes against humanity to all jews. That's literally a blood libel. "We" didn't do that. All jews/semites did not do that. israel did. Don't use us jews as human shields against criticism of israel, please.

israel != judaism

as a jew, I'll thank you for not conflating the two again, because claiming all jews are a part of what israel is doing is tantamount to a jewish blood libel

it is also ignorant, like picking a random african country and suggesting it represents all black people

But if they tried to use whatsapp with that number, they would either be unable to register, or would be using someone else's whatsapp account which was set up with that number, until the original whatsapp account expires, right?

> Phone numbers don't come with the guarantee of only one user given enough time.

Whatsapp seems to think they do, based on the article, and their logic of making the phone number the account. Therein lies the problem.

> If there are publicly-available records that link you to a phone number because you used to use it, then you should be able to delete the current account which is used by the current owner of it?

You're talking about someone who is using my whatsapp account because they managed to get a phone number I used to use?

Yes, of course I should have control over my account, regardless of who else happened to hack into it.

Older »