News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

vict7

Re:25 Years of Mass Surveillance Is Enough on Tuesday September 15, 2026 @07:49PM (#49720409)
Why are these supposedly serious violations funny to you?

Most of what you cited is about what a policy might imply or what someone’s rhetoric might lead to. Also, I don’t know if you knew this, but Walz was never part of the Biden administration.

Are you similarly bothered by the actual First Amendment violations the Trump administration has carried out?

The White House excluded AP reporters because the AP wouldn’t adopt its preferred “Gulf of America” wording. A federal judge found that unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination: https://www.ap.org/media-center/ap-in-the-news/2025/ap-wins-...

The administration targeted pro-Palestinian students and faculty with visa revocations, detention, and deportation efforts because of their political advocacy. A federal judge ruled that unconstitutional: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-backed-targeting-pro-...

It targeted Perkins Coie with loss of federal access, contracts, and security clearances over the firm’s clients and political associations: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-temporarily-blocks-tr...

It canceled more than 1,400 humanities grants based on viewpoint. A federal judge found that violated the First Amendment: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-rules-huma...

It canceled billions in Harvard research funding in an effort a federal judge found violated Harvard’s First Amendment rights: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-unlawfully-canceled-h...

Many of these Trump cases involve the government actually imposing penalties on people or institutions because of protected speech or association, not just an argument about what a rule might eventually imply.

This is not something you get to pretend is equivalent across “both sides”.

Re:25 Years of Mass Surveillance Is Enough on Tuesday September 15, 2026 @07:27PM (#49720246)
Oh yeah. For that reason (I guess an unpopular opinion?) I have always been a fan of the /s.
Re:25 Years of Mass Surveillance Is Enough on Tuesday September 15, 2026 @03:45PM (#49717867)
I may have issues detecting sarcasm. I hope to god this is sarcasm… because these kinds of takes are rampant on this site.
Re:25 Years of Mass Surveillance Is Enough on Tuesday September 15, 2026 @02:57PM (#49717142)
Please cite specifically what the Biden administration did to curtail people’s right to freedom of speech.

I’ll wait.

Re:25 Years of Mass Surveillance Is Enough on Tuesday September 15, 2026 @02:50PM (#49717028)
Are you familiar with the concepts of propaganda and lying?
I agree with you. I simply took umbrage with the characterization of other human beings with different points of view as “bots”.

It’s really no different than the cringy characterization of other humans as “NPCs” often spouted by children. That thinking indicates a sort of complex that is very off-putting.

Given that, this person would likely benefit from exposure to alternative viewpoints instead of further insulating themselves.

That is a perfectly reasonable request.

Is it reasonable to trust statistics provided by the current administration?

i.e. create a personal bubble to avoid being exposed to alternative points of view. We’ve seen how well that has been working out.
Are you familiar with the concept of cause and effect? Are you aware of any major changes to these agencies in the past couple years?

I’ll leave the rest as an exercise to you.

inb4 correlation is not causation.

Ah yes, blame the victim for their decision while also attempting to moralize the consumption of frozen food.

It’s not unreasonable for people to expect their food not to poison them. Have you considered being less sociopathic?

Morals? On Hacker news? But seriously, happy to see some pushback against such inane takes as that which you replied to.
“Terrorism” right… as defined by the folks at CPAC who openly admitted they are all domestic terrorists. And the same traitors that pardoned the insurrectionists that attacked the Capitol and police officers on Jan 6th.
Re:Banning AI Art – Wallhaven on Sunday April 26, 2026 @11:41PM (#47917493)
Wallhaven has consistently been the best location I've found on the internet for wallpapers. From alpha until now. I'd be surprised if there's any other site that matches the UX and amount of quality wallpapers they have. And all that with no ads!

Glad that they are maintaining their reputation with this decision.

Re:Notepad++ for Mac – Independent community port on Sunday April 26, 2026 @11:15PM (#47917351)
First I've heard of Nova. I have used Transmit--also made by Panic--and was impressed with the UX there. I'll have to give Nova a spin.
Re:A.I. is creating engineers who can't think without it on Sunday April 26, 2026 @07:27PM (#47915939)
> Not all

is doing a lot of work to avoid engaging with the actual argument.

Re:A.I. is creating engineers who can't think without it on Sunday April 26, 2026 @05:05PM (#47914447)
IDEs are free. Libraries are free. Languages are free. This is becoming more like an internet subscription where you’re at the mercy of Anthropic the same way you may be at the mercy of Comcast.

I’m sure you can see the difference between a garbage collector and a nondeterministic slop generator

But it feels good to equivocate, so here we are.

Re:Claude Code removed from Anthropic's Pro plan on Tuesday April 21, 2026 @06:18PM (#47855336)
Team plan shows “Claude code” in a main bullet point still. Which would indicate it is part of the team plan regardless if it has premium seats or not.

But it seems this is all in a state of flux.

And there’s the lovely asterisk at the bottom:

> Prices and plans are subject to change at Anthropic's discretion.

Re:EFF is leaving X on Thursday April 09, 2026 @05:03PM (#47710060)
Key thing being pictures, not videos. Far easier to make the same false equivalence you are making that way.

Sad to see folks continuing to twist themselves into knots to defend an indefensible gesture performed by an objectively terrible human being.

Re:Native Instant Space Switching on macOS on Thursday April 09, 2026 @04:56PM (#47709950)
I have been dealing with the same issue and thought I was going crazy that the setting which purports to fix this exact behavior simply doesn’t work?
Re:Will Claude Code ruin our team? on Monday March 09, 2026 @12:26PM (#47311207)
Have you ever heard of the Goomba fallacy?
Could you provide an example of your “very simple tests” ?
Re:Why Vampires Live Forever on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @02:56PM (#46979996)
I have not read Echopraxis yet, but I thoroughly enjoyed Blindsight. Some very thought-provoking concepts in that book.

The idea that vampires needed to take “anti-Euclideans” and the way the ship was constructed to avoid generating right angles were some great details.

Re:I miss thinking hard on Wednesday February 04, 2026 @07:01AM (#46884826)
I saw the same post and was a bit saddened that all the comments seemed to be focused on the implied hypocrisy of the OP instead of addressing the original concern.

As someone that’s a bit of a fence-sitter on the matter of AI, I feel that using it in the way that OP did is one of the less harmful or intrusive uses.

Re:The WiFi only works when it's raining on Friday January 30, 2026 @07:14PM (#46831801)
Yep, the nonstandard part of their setup absolutely should have been the first thing to consider. Feels a bit disingenuous to not mention that part straight away.
Re:AI Is a Horse (2024) on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @01:28AM (#46791785)
Nope. You apparently are incapable of distinguishing the massive gulf between an e-bike that enables the elderly, differently-abled, commuters, and less fit people to enjoy cycling at reasonable speeds. And an e-moto which is an illegally souped up vehicle that can reach closer to highway speeds. The latter is indeed a danger and should not be used in bike lanes or multi use paths… or really at all.

E-biking is only gaining popularity, so I’d suggest you educate yourself and adjust your ignorant perspective rather than digging in :)

Re:AI Is a Horse (2024) on Friday January 23, 2026 @07:06PM (#46739644)
There are 3 classes of e-bikes in the US, with class 3 topping out at 28mph—anything above that is illegal or in some weird legal grey area. You are thinking of e-motos which are an entirely different beast.

e-motos are a real problem; please don’t lump legitimate e-bikes in with those. It’s simply incorrect.

Re:Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction on Thursday December 11, 2025 @03:48PM (#46236940)
Many people/players have long perceived Arrowhead as a pretty incompetent and untrustworthy developer. Helldivers has suffered numerous issues with both performance and balancing. The bugs constantly introduced into the game (not the fun kind you get to shoot with a gun) have eroded a lot of trust and good will towards the company and point towards a largely non-existent QA process.

I won’t state my own personal views here, but I wanted to share the above information as someone that has seen these perspectives expressed repeatedly online.

Re:Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship on Saturday November 29, 2025 @03:53AM (#46086084)
I feel this is similar to how my brain works. If I am not using a skill close to every day/week then it can atrophy fairly quickly. On the plus side, it also comes back quickly (usually) if I start using it with greater regularity again.

I notice that general concepts usually stick better in my brain than specific things like your example with ‘when’. Even those are pruned down a bit after long enough though.

Re:When is it better to think without words? on Saturday October 25, 2025 @01:35PM (#45705602)
That is truly fascinating to me. My rumination takes a verbal form almost all the time… but it is also often related to past or anticipated conversations or interactions.

With no internal monologue, you can still hear words inside your head, but it would be a more conscious effort rather than an automatic, constant process?

Re:When is it better to think without words? on Friday October 24, 2025 @02:42PM (#45697781)
Yep, as someone whose brain is biased towards a higher verbal IQ and thinks primarily in words, a lot of the replies to this post are amusing.

I have genuine curiosity about those that claim to think in “pure abstract thoughts” or whatever. I don’t believe my way of thinking is superior. I’m certain that my constant internal monologue is strongly correlated to my tendency to ruminate. Or, I struggle with concepts that do not translate well into a verbal format.

People apparently can’t pass up the opportunity to disparage those with a different thinking style.

Older »