News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

hluska

Re:If you love a website, back it up on Monday November 02, 2026 @01:01PM (#50340855)
A fictional movie? Geez, we’ve got the cats who can’t spell Hitler and people bringing up fiction.

Hacker News has sure dropped off.

Re:If you love a website, back it up on Monday November 02, 2026 @01:00PM (#50340830)
Do you really have trouble spelling Hitler?
Re:If you love a website, back it up on Monday November 02, 2026 @12:12PM (#50340031)
This is hyperbole. Do you really think an LLM will try to rewrite the past? Come on…
Re:If you love a website, back it up on Monday November 02, 2026 @12:11PM (#50340006)
There are far better tools that are not built by this person’s company. Dig around and you’ll find an incredible array. Not everything has to be a sales pitch.
You’re likely thinking about TARP:

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

TARP delivered a $15.3B surplus on $426.4B invested for a roughly 3.5% return.

Re:We ran AI agent swarms in Minecraft and Mindustry on Friday October 30, 2026 @09:58AM (#50303986)
Sorry but you’re wrong. In a situation where a more experienced person doesn’t like the aesthetics of a site they could provide something actionable and with some level of instruction. Telling someone that you understand what they’re going for but they missed the point is completely useless. That’s immature feedback because it’s a criticism levied at a student without providing any areas for them to improve.

It’s totally useless and immature. We used to actually mentor and help people not just run them down. I’m not going to sit by and idly watch mentorship completely disappear.

Re:The Tragedy of Losing Your Wikipedia Page on Thursday October 29, 2026 @08:00PM (#50297988)
I’m glad you’re struggling too. I was starting to wonder if I was having a stroke.
Re:The Tragedy of Losing Your Wikipedia Page on Thursday October 29, 2026 @07:56PM (#50297961)
I’m really struggling to understand why this is relevant. I quoted a section the original commenter wrote and asked a question. I have zero involvement with Wikipedia shy a few proposed edits when I published and had sources to add. But that was nearly twenty years ago and I have less than no interest in getting involved again for reasons that are even more irrelevant than this comment.

I have no interest in notability guidelines or in getting involved and proposing anything. But I would like some actual discussion about things that people say as opposed to wild claims about how every UPC should have a Wikipedia page. That is fucking insane… but if you impose insane arguments upon those you disagree with, you’re not engaging, you’re obfuscating.

I have nothing against you whatsoever, but are you sure you hit reply to the right comment?

Re:We ran AI agent swarms in Minecraft and Mindustry on Thursday October 29, 2026 @07:09PM (#50297542)
I get that you’re angry, but could you try that one again? It doesn’t make sense.
Re:We ran AI agent swarms in Minecraft and Mindustry on Thursday October 29, 2026 @07:07PM (#50297519)
Their website is great, and they’re a student. Back in my day, we supported younger people in the industry regardless of whether they met our personal aesthetic. We used to call that ‘maturity’.
Re:The Tragedy of Losing Your Wikipedia Page on Thursday October 29, 2026 @04:18PM (#50295232)
> Maybe you think it shouldn't be an encyclopedia, but should be some larger project that indexes every product UPC, every person born, and every website ever registered, but that's not what it is.

Can you point out where the parent (or anyone else on this thread) has suggested this? Or are you just using a cheap persuasion technique?

Re:Valve Responds to Developers Fearing AI Slop and Clones on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @11:10AM (#50275001)
Absolutely nothing that you wrote precludes Valve from funding a lawsuit. You wrote a cost-benefit analysis.
Re:SS United States to be sunk as largest artificial reef on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @11:04AM (#50274887)
Their website currently has inside cabins listed at “CA$600.57” per person with a note that says “All prices in US dollars.” They have a deal now where third and fourth guests travel free so you could take four people to London for $1200 Canadian/US. I have no idea what currency Canadian/US is and as a general rule, I like it when big floating things are run by companies with a lot of attention to detail.
Re:SS United States to be sunk as largest artificial reef on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @10:59AM (#50274789)
I have good news and bad news. I’m pretty sure this would be the relevant page on their careers site:

https://www.cunardcareers.co.uk/roles-and-opportunities/ente...

But while the intro mentions talks, “Activity Manager” seems to be the only open position that mentions talks. Activity Manager doesn’t sound like as much fun as the gig you proposed.

Oh hahaha, a troll wants me to touch grass. How funny and original.
Re:AI is ruining haunted houses on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @07:32AM (#50257569)
You can choose to spend money elsewhere or you can choose to start your own business and promote it as you see fit. How much more power would you deem sufficient?
Re:Websites Should Be Printable on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @06:23AM (#50256953)
Its funny that you have such strong opinions yet seemingly zero experience using actual browsers.
Re:Websites Should Be Printable on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @06:22AM (#50256937)
Firefox remembers your zoom settings on each site:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/font-size-and-zoom-incr...

So no, you don’t have to set the default.

Your little ‘breaking news’ intro is neither funny nor even remotely accurate. Do you always discredit research without even reading articles?
Re:CSS-Tricks has a new owner on Monday October 26, 2026 @07:58PM (#50252916)
I published a magazine for a few years. Off the top of my head:

- publishing is fucking hard. Early on, you need a constant stream of dependable writers who do not value their time. Later on, you have a constant stream of writers but have to figure out who will make you hate your life the least.

- good writers are flaky and they always have options. A little less than half of good pitches get published. 100% of good pitches take work.

- there is a difference between good and dependable writers. Early on, you need dependable even though each one eats a lot of time. Layer on, you need good. You won’t know when to switch until your readers tell you that you suck. Then it’s too late to save your publication.

- I published before generative AI was possible but at each stage of popularity, I dealt with more PR shit bags. Add in generative AI and I’m not sure my naïveté would have survived as long as it did.

- at its best, publishing is a very expensive way to harm yourself. Back in the day, Jim Rose would have paid me to fuck myself up in equivalent ways. Naïveté convinces you that you’re changing the world through self flagellation, but when that’s gone you’re just beating the shit out of yourself.

- my co-founder handled editorial and I handled publishing. The gap between them is so massive that we really needed double the headcount. Alas, publishing is totally fucked so our budget was so low that we needed slave labour yet couldn’t even afford the slave in the first place. Without the editorial/publication divide, I would have had a heart attack five years before I did.

- there’s this thing in publishing called the trough of zero ideas. You won’t believe it’s possible in the beginning but it will hit you hard. It’s not so much there aren’t ideas; it’s that you’re tired and ideas stop feeling good… they feel like work because they are.

- in publishing it’s really easy to come up with business models. Unfortunately, every single business model requires consistently exceptional content, a reality distortion field and a lot of hand holding.

- all those membership plans etc will be invaded by sales or PR fucks as soon as you launch them. $25 a month makes a lot of people feel entitled to explain your dreams to you.

Edit - This sounds very negative and it is… but I want to publish again.

Do you have a copy of that request? I’d love to read it because you’re making a big statement about a publication’s relationship with truth.
Re:Anthropic S-1 on Monday October 26, 2026 @03:48PM (#50249884)
It makes more sense if you only look at it from the perspective of personal finance.

If I expect Anthropic to perform as well as the market, I can lower my risk substantially and see a lot of its upside with the right mix of ETFs. It doesn’t make sense to take on all that risk if I have a much less risky path to the upside. On the other hand, if I expect it to outperform the market, it might fit in my high risk bucket. So from the perspective of individual investors, it’s about matching risk levels and returns.

Re:Anthropic S-1 on Monday October 26, 2026 @03:07PM (#50249302)
Let me put it this way.

For Anthropic to show similar returns over 29 years, it would be valued at many times the current total market cap of the S&P 500. At Amazon’s current value after 29 years of growth, its market capitalization is about 1/3 the total market cap of the S&P 500 at the of 1997.

It’s quite hard to justify that in terms of future cash flows. At even a quadrillion dollar valuation and a 20x revenue multiplier, they’d need $50 trillion in revenue… or roughly 1.5 quarters of current US GDP.

So while mathematically possible, it’s quite improbable.

Why did you make the exact same comment four hours ago?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50234721

How is it 12x more expensive than a similar request for another officer?
This story gets even more interesting when you pull out other sources:

> During a Thursday, Oct. 8, meeting of the Eugene Police Commission, Chief Chris Skinner said: “We reached out to the requester, gave them a heads-up that it was going to be a big number, and asked them if they’d like to collaborate with us on how they can narrow their scope, change their scope, get them to yes on something to release that, and they chose not to do that.”

But James Croxton, editor-in-chief for Double Sided Media, in an email Friday to Lookout Eugene-Springfield said police never made such an offer, describing how managing editor Mary Bell called to follow up on the initial request and was told by a records supervisor that the number of potentially responsive documents was 2.6 million.

“The call lasted for 5 minutes and 11 seconds and there was no offer to help narrow the scope or anything of the sort,” Croxton said Friday.

(Source - https://lookouteugene-springfield.com/story/justice/2026/10/...)

—

Or a further quote from that article says:

> Double Sided Media sought “[all] completed internal affairs complaints, intake logs, investigative summaries, witness interviews, audio/video evidence logs, and disciplinary notices issued to or involving Justin Peckels where findings of misconduct were ‘sustained,’” with the request covering an eight-year time period, June 18, 2018, through July 30, 2026.

The request also sought “[a]ll internal and external communications, correspondence, and logs sent, received, or maintained by EPD’s executive staff — specifically including Police Chief Chris Skinner and Deputy Chief — dated between June 18, 2018, and July 30, 2026, regarding any misconduct investigations, internal status, negotiations, discipline, stipulation, or certification of Justin Peckels.”

—

Contrast that with this statement from the posted article:

> The city’s response is beyond belief. In its response to the request on Monday, the Eugene Police Department claimed searching for records and processing the request would take at least 44,816 hours of staff time and cost approximately $2,484,599.04. (A separate request by the outlet for similar records concerning a former police officer, Eric Klinko, was met with a comparatively modest estimate of $195,869.52, for a grand total of nearly $2.7 million for both requests.)

—

Charitably, Justin Peckels’ supervisory bandwidth appears to be roughly 12x that of another officer.

Re:Why Washing Machines Took Decades to Catch On on Sunday October 25, 2026 @12:03PM (#50233028)
Oh, you're just a troll. Sorry for engaging - carry on with your bullshit.
Re:Why Washing Machines Took Decades to Catch On on Sunday October 25, 2026 @12:02PM (#50233013)
You're good at being pedantic and playing linguistic hopscotch but you still don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Re:Why Washing Machines Took Decades to Catch On on Sunday October 25, 2026 @12:01PM (#50233004)
My great-grandfather died in a coal mine so, I have an intimate understanding of your argument. Intimate enough to tell you that you did not understand the article.

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