News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

jasonboyd

Re:ICE Will Use AI to Surveil Social Media on Sunday October 26, 2025 @10:53PM (#45716950)
I agree they are deadly serious, but to the parent commenter’s point, why wander the streets grabbing random people when they could go straight to the employers? They would have far more success targeting farms, construction sites, restaurant kitchens, etc.

The answer is the business owners are their constituents. They cannot afford to piss them off. If they lose their support the wheels will fall off this farcical performance.

I grew up in Florida, and I remember the sugar plantation “raids” they used to stage. They were a complete dog and pony show. They would announce them in advance so the plantations could hide most of their undocumented workers. Then they would round up just enough people for the photo op to prove they were being “tough on immigration.”

This is the same thing but on a grander and more dangerous scale.

Re:Oldest boomerang doesn't come back on Monday June 30, 2025 @12:55AM (#44419542)
I have wondered this myself. I can see how it would be useful if you missed your target and it returned to you. But the demonstrations I have seen, where the boomerang is thrown and returns, the boomerang is usually thrown at an angle up in the air rather than near the ground or treeline where a person would be hunting. It seems like in a realistic hunting scenario the boomerang would most likely be thrown in a way that would cause it to hit the ground or some vegetation and not return.
Are you sure? He certainly engaged in a lot of military operations in several countries without Congress's approval. He also ramped up drone strikes dramatically.
I feel seen.
Re:Ask HN: What book bit, stung and shook you deeply? on Thursday July 04, 2024 @11:56PM (#40879721)
Kolyma tales. It's a collection of essays from Varlam Shalamov, a Russian writer and reporter, who was imprisoned in the Gulag for nearly two decades. It was a shocking first hand account of human suffering and depravity.
Re:Why Cats Knock Stuff Over (2023) on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @12:04AM (#40128370)
I think if you are careful there is little risk of rupturing your eardrum. That being said...

I have ruptured my eardrum with a q-tip.

It wasn't my finest moment. My wife was behind me and said something. I turned to ask her what she had said and I hit my elbow, jabbing the q-tip into my eardrum.

That hurt like hell, but it didn't actually rupture on the spot. It wasn't until later that evening, when my wife and I were watching TV, and it suddenly sounded like the television was under water. I looked at my wife and asked what the hell happened to the TV, she freaked out and said blood was coming out of my ear. Interestingly, I did not feel any pain when that happened.

It took over a month before everything sounded normal again

I commented to my wife this past week that I was suddenly contacted by multiple recruiters, seemingly out of nowhere. It had been many many months prior since that had happened.
Re:Reasons to avoid static type checking on Sunday January 28, 2024 @01:07AM (#39163000)
Everybody would rather write Python than php or c++. It isn't because of the type system.
Re:Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2023 on Sunday December 10, 2023 @01:38AM (#38589633)
I use reusable food grade silicone bags I bought from Amazon. They are not vacuum sealed but I don't think that matters at all. As long as the portion of the bag containing the food is completely submerged the water pressure is sufficient to seal the bag around the food and ensure even heating in my experience.
Re:Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs. It Isn't Working on Sunday November 12, 2023 @02:53AM (#38238253)
I haven't touched a lawn dart since 1989.

I was a nine years old and I tossed it as high and as far as I could. I realized it was coming dangerously close to a friend. Everybody had their backs to me. I yelled, but nobody heard me.

In my memory it landed inches from them, but that could be because I was young and scared shitless. Maybe it landed fifteen feet behind them. All I know is it scared me enough that I have never touched a lawn dart after that.

Re:YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin on Monday October 30, 2023 @01:36AM (#38066046)
Honest answer, I have no interest in doing that research. I wouldn't know how to make that determination with any degree of confidence. Even if I could, I feel like it would require that I constantly monitor how a site delivers its ads.

Fortunately, I am at a point in my life that if I really like something, and they offer an ad-free subscription, I can support them that way.

Re:YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin on Sunday October 29, 2023 @03:37PM (#38061879)
I allowed ads for a long time, believing a site should be able to earn revenue for the content they provide.

I started blocking ads when ad networks failed to properly vet their ads and allowed malicious ads to be distributed.

Re:Why Are So Many Dogs on Prozac? on Sunday October 22, 2023 @10:51PM (#37981076)
As somebody who has put a dog through training, that tracks with my experience. As I recall, the first lesson did not involve our dogs at all. It was just a long list of all the ways we had failed our dogs. Everything after that was addressing those issues.
Agreed. But I still laughed
Looks like somebody is gunning for a head writer role on Sharknado 4.
What the airline industry has done is amazing. Had they fixed the seats in place so they could not move at all people would be directing their ire at the airlines for the cramped conditions. Instead, they let you recline your seat one inch and, incredibly, passengers are angry at each other rather than the airlines. It is stunning, the industry created an issue and then found a way to make passengers blame each other rather than the airline.

I don't know if there is a name for this tactic but there should be if there is not.

I am not an expert in this field by any means but, Planet Money did a piece recently that suggested some people are putting forward a serious theory for how a profit-price spiral would work. Again, not an expert, but the reasoning ng seemed sound. Link here:

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/11/1175487806/corporate-profit-p...

Re:Official Norad Tracks Santa on Sunday December 25, 2022 @02:48AM (#34125259)
How is Santa over a large body of water in a sleigh pulled by reindeer? Magic my friend.
Re:Ask HN: What RSS Reader do you use in 2022? on Saturday December 24, 2022 @12:22AM (#34114243)
I use Feedly Classic which is clocking in at around 37 MB. But I am looking at the other apps on my phone and the majority of them (maybe 90% roughly estimating) are well over 59 MB. Chrome, for example, is almost half a gig. What device are you using that 59 MB is an issue and are you also eschewing all the other apps that are that big or larger?
Re:Copyright denied because the model’s pose is not unique on Sunday December 11, 2022 @03:53AM (#33941454)
It's clear that one is a mirror image of the other with minor Photoshop edits. I think it's clear to just about everybody. I don't believe you are arguing in good faith.
> Git is the interface.

What? That doesn't even make any sense. Aside from the CLI I can think of almost half a dozen GUIs off the top of my head. All different interfaces for Git.

> Try this - have the lowest ranking engineer announce they’re going to go have drinks and see who follows. Track that number for ten announcements.

Out of curiosity, what outcome do you expect? This thought seems incomplete, I think, maybe, because the outcome seems obvious to you, but it is not obvious to me.

Then it's a fixed point?
Re:Why do so many bikes end up underwater? on Saturday July 30, 2022 @02:35AM (#32284808)
Damn. I didn't know he had passed. I liked him.
Re:How did REST come to mean the opposite of REST? on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @02:33AM (#32148238)
So instead of a hard coded url it's a hard coded reference to a url? How does it deal with a breaking changing? Say the order of the links changes? It doesn't seem like this works without some out of band information.
I don't know the answer but we have had some very tragic fires in California the last few years that can be attributed to the power _company's_ failure to maintain their equipment.
Re:Where is there more livestock than people? on Sunday July 17, 2022 @12:16PM (#32128113)
I had a similar experience on that drive from SF to LA. I remember a UPS truck driving by me and the man inside wearing a face mask (this was pre COVID). I thought it was the weirdest thing. A few miles later though and you hit stench. It's hard to do it justice in a comment. Saying it's the foulest thing I've ever smelled really fails to capture it.
Re:An interactive mechanical contraption in pure CSS on Saturday July 16, 2022 @11:37PM (#32124283)
It's a little finicky but I got it to work eventually. I had to get my finger on the black tape at the end of the rope just right.
Re:Designing the Characters of 'Cowboy Bebop' on Friday July 15, 2022 @09:39PM (#32114574)
It was cancelled pretty quickly. There was a lot of hate for it. I enjoyed it for what it was and would have liked to see another season.
Re:Leetcode Considered Harmful on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @02:22AM (#31904704)
That is one way to look at it I guess. But if it means a substantial pay raise then the amortized cost of those hours is negligible.

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