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Springtimeon Scott Hanselman says he's working on Windows local accounts

It's already possible (with domain join, customized bootable installs or esoteric workarounds) but non-obvious due to deliberate UI changes/regressions.

I suppose this just hints at the possibility someone may be advocating for it to be made again a clear choice during install but it's a vague response.

Springtimeon Mozilla to launch free built-in VPN in upcoming Firefox 149

I doubt Mullvad would be doing this if they weren't getting compensated given they've always said (even right now[1]) they don't offer a free tier since they don't believe it makes sense.

The other aspect is I expect it would stain the IP pool further. VPN IPs often end up on various blacklists due to abuse and introducing a wave of free users would only make it worse for paying customers.

[1] https://mullvad.net/en/pricing

> Why no free plan? "Free" services nearly always come at some cost, whether that be the time you spend watching an intro ad, the collection of your data, or by limiting the functionality of the service. We don't operate that way – at all.

Springtimeon It Took Me 30 Years to Solve This VFX Problem – Green Screen Problem [video]

In an earlier video they made a couple years back about Disney's sodium vapor technique Paul Debevec suggested he was considering creating a dataset using a similar premise: filming enough perfectly masked references to be able to train models to achieve better keying. So it was interesting seeing Corridor tackle this by instead using synthetic data.

Springtimeon Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill

I've seen skepticism about the veracity of the claims, in part as various sources cited in the git repo pointed to todo files not actual data[1] (in that example was only just hours ago a source file was added, when the project still claims part of the conclusions are based on data said to be contained there).

Which has led some to suspect much is LLM generated and not properly human-reviewed, in addition to the very short timeframe from initial self-disclosed start of the research to publishing it online (mere 2-3 days) despite the confident tone the author uses.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260317184359/https://lobste.rs...

Springtimeon Digg is gone again

There's a forum (HardForum) where they've taken a kind of opposite approach: people pay to access private forums where they can talk about politics and random things while the public-facing boards remain tech focused.

Basically incentivizing those who feel strongly about things to just pay up to talk about them in an exclusive area, which also keeps the site ad-free. Been apparently working for 25 years.

Springtimeon I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

> I don't want someone to come up to me and say, "Your code is wrong; you should have done ABC". I want them to say "Hey, I ran into a problem with your code. I think here on line 123 you meant to do ABC but you did XYZ by accident. What do you think?"

It's also a sign of good faith and tentative analysis since while that example sounds cut and dry sometimes context/details can be overlooked even those familiar with something.

Even in the article while the headline and main text suggest they'd be happy with bluntness to the point of rudeness the actual full examples at the end show the language used is merely succinct while still being helpful, with the second example also substituting the more direct 'you' for the diffused 'we'.

Springtimeon Wired headphone sales are exploding

Article explains it's being partially driven from people following celebrities who believe they're using it as countersignaling, demonstrating economic class via things that could be perceived as the opposite.

"Wearing wireless 24/7 tells me you don't own any land."

I wonder how much is being driven by such lead following.

Springtimeon Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation, Institutional Capture

Also not really a fan of the 'what they're hiding from you' tone it takes (even if that's the subject), like saying that because a website was made less than 100 days before a bill was signed it was a '77-day pipeline' to the bill (which jumped out as a dramatized rephrasing and not present in the original Reddit post).

It also doesn't inline link sources, like the Bloomberg article it mentions (this[1]). A more impartial voice and linked citations to allow quick reference would raise fewer red flags, even if the goal is worthwhile.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-25/meta-clas...

Springtimeon Ceno, browse the web without internet access

I think the relevant use case for this are places like Russia (one is even quoted in the testimonials) where I've seen concern about the country isolating itself from the outside internet, due to the various regional tests actually trialling this.

I've seen such users ask about ways to prepare storing outside data in the event it becomes permanent. Some have suggested mesh networks, others downloading Wikipedia and torrenting things.

So it seems that this is useful where internet is still available but is restricted at say the ISP level. It seems to be a browser that when a page is unavailable it checks for Ceno torrents of the page from other users and serves that instead.

Springtimeon BitNet: 100B Param 1-Bit model for local CPUs

Does this account for them reading the article though? There are pre-existing opinions that could be easy to rapidly post based on topical discussions but here it also has to be considered the time to parse technical submissions.

They read this article, called out a specific discrepancy then commented on a paper on Arxiv in a 70-odd word post then the same minute another 70-odd word post on a different technical post. Maybe like you suggest they're just wired differently.

Springtimeon BitNet: 100B Param 1-Bit model for local CPUs

They post 146 words per minute across multiple different submissions with similarly structured posts? I know there are users who post frequently in other communities I'm familiar with but not in that kind of timeframe with such paragraph density or structure.

Springtimeon Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

I get the sense the point of the HN rule is to preserve unique human expression, regardless of how someone's communication skills are at a given point. Like, I periodically see articles on HN which have stale turns of phrase and signs of poor LLM use (which then becomes distracting while reading) and then the author sometimes mentioning in the HN comments they used an LLM to 'help' with their post based on some list of points they wanted to communicate. Yet when it's relied on too heavily like that it smothers the author's own voice.

If an opinion/idea is being communicated in the voice of another then something unique to that user has been lost. Like if I were to have a germ of an premise and told someone else about it and I found their thoughts clearer and how they expressed it and then copied how they'd expressed it then I think I'd be at least crediting them. Otherwise our own growth with self-editing and clarity will just atrophy and the internet will be a soup of homogenized ways of expressing things.

Springtimeon BitNet: Inference framework for 1-bit LLMs

Your account posted dense, opinionated and structured paragraphs mere minutes apart—sometimes the same minute—for multiple story submissions. Even with my own sometimes lengthy replies this would be infeasible to both instantly have structured opinions and type them out in time. Two of your posts were posted the same minute, with a combined word count of 146.

It feels like it'd take someone superhuman to come across different stories, have such opinions and type and submit both of these in that timeframe or queuing up comments to post rapid-fire.

Conspicuously too, as another pointed out, is every single comment of yours uses an em dash, which despite occasionally using myself (hey look they're in this reply) is not in every single comment. Idk, if I was being seriously accused of botting I'd put more reasoning into my response about it.

Springtimeon BitNet: Inference framework for 1-bit LLMs

Hmm, the user joined in 2019 but had no submissions or comments until just 40 minutes ago (at least judging by the lack of a second page?) and all the comments are on AI related submissions. Benefit of doubt is it'd have to be a very dedicated lurker or dormant account they remembered they had.

Edit: oh, just recalled dang restricted Show HNs the other day to only non-new users (possibly with some other thresholds). I wonder if word got out and some are filling accounts with activity.

Springtimeon RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

And those using LLMs from not post-processing the output to swap such known watermarks. Not sure if meant as a joke RFC though.

Springtimeon Flash media longevity testing – 6 years later

Yes, it's also confirmed on the OP's blog linked in the post.

Springtimeon Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

> Not sure I understand your 2nd argument though?

Sorry, I meant in the context of that original dev their earnest fixation/obsession with their creation came across in their personality that I think made people sympathetic.

Springtimeon Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

To provide a heads up to others for who feel similarly for whether something is worth spending time with there isn't a problem speculating if something is produced by AI if there are indicators of insufficient human authorship but that's a big if. If incorrect such comments themselves become noise.

In its worst form I've seen now many times in other communities users claim submissions are AI for things that are provably not, merely to dismiss points of view the poster disagrees with by invoking calls to action from knee-jerk voters who have a disdain for generative AI. I've also seen it expressed by users I expect feel intimidated by artwork from established traditional artists.

Thankfully on HN it hasn't reached that level but I have seen some here for instance still think use of em dashes with no surrounding spaces is some definitive proof by pointing to a style guide, without realizing other established style guides have always stated to omit the spaces (eg: Chicago Manual of Style). This just leads to falsely confident assessments and more unnecessary comment chains responding to them.

What one hopes for with curated communities is that people have discriminating taste at the submission and voting level. In my own case I'm looking for an experience from those who have seen a lot of things and only finds particular things compelling and are eager to share them. Compared to some submission that reaches the front page of say popular programming language docs that just provide another basis for rehashed discussion (and cynically since the poster knows such generalized submissions do this and grow karma).

Springtimeon Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

This thread is evidence that some are unhappy with the state of a core HN feature due to users posting what they judge to be low effort content, so it does get through.

The comments here are about possible mitigations. Based on this feedback dang has apparently now restricted new accounts from posting Show HN threads, so globally now there is a form of filtering users from being seen by others based on a heuristic.

Your initial comment is written with the impression that the poster wanting to improve their chances of higher effort content is making some judgement on the posters themselves as though they're conceited ('filthy masses', 'your royal highness') when they're merely considering one approach to reducing noise from their feed.

I myself in this very comment chain have already posted that I disagree that filtering by karma would help due to gaming issues but I don't see the problem with the user's goal.

Springtimeon Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

Filtering is a valid form of improving signals. If there there was a reliable heuristic for users posting low effort content that was better then the user would be considering that instead.

If someone in a chatroom for example is being spammy with their messages at the expense of noticing posts one finds more relevant then blocking them isn't due to considering them some filthy pleb but improving their experience. If the user being filtered never becomes aware there's no reason to be offended, either.

Edit: also I wasn't the one to downvote you if that makes any difference.

Springtimeon Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

That dev made many videos about its creation and motivations though and along with their personality I think people would be understanding.

Springtimeon Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

Would be fine for a personal filter but if used globally would incentivize karma gaming. You can get high karma from reposts of past popular submissions (an author who was in prison who reached the front page even half-joked/resented once how many common Wikipedia articles land on the front page for the nth time).

Springtimeon LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy

I thought this would be more about stylometry but it's mostly about users literally posting the same identifiable information across multiple services, including in one example their age, dog name, profession.

It's all classic dox profiling techniques. Even the things like spelling differences being regional signals and commonality to specific things being discussed.

It's why one has to think about what is being posted to which community if using different identities, rather than posting the same things across all of them. Though any such effort would be a waste if reliant on some non-public info that later was exposed in a database breach which tied together previously unrelated profiles.

Springtimeon I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

Related: this[1] current article/thread about privacy-preserving age verification.

The author here seems to be commenting specifically on the type of anonymity-breaking age assurance widely being utilized along with the vaguely justified social media bans. Given the right technology to prove an age threshold but while preserving anonymity I'd be curious how their thoughts would change.

For example, we've never seen people critiquing the naive kind of 'Are you over 18?' prompts seen on ye olde Reddit or adult sites, precisely because those weren't breaking anonymity or leaking any trackable identifiers.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229953

Springtimeon Unsung heroes: Flickr's URLs scheme

I'm always surprised that archive.org's URL scheme is still used. To this day uploads will have URLs like `/details/hey` and IIRC the only thing to distinguish them from other submissions with matching names is the auto appending of a digit. It feels like `New Folder (1)` for URLs.

Edit: I misremembered. They append the date to the URL to avoid name conflicts, like `/details/hey_20260122`.

I think Youtube got it right early. Make it short enough but random, so users won't be tempted to manually type it out and make mistakes but if they really do need to manually type it the length is reasonable. It also made sharing via SMS/Twitter limits more feasible.

Springtimeon Gemini 3 Deep Think drew me a good SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle

The interesting aspect of the ongoing tests I feel is seeing how models can plan out an image directly using SVG primatives solely through reasoning (code-to-code). If they have a reference then it's a different type of challenge (optimizing for a trace).

Springtimeon Gemini 3 Deep Think drew me a good SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle

I have wondered if with these tests it'll reach a point where online models cheat by generating a line art raster reference then behind the scenes deciding how to vectorize it in the most minimalist way (eg: using strokes and shape elements, etc, rather than naively using path outlines for all forms).

Springtimeon An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

The wrinkle in this case is the author blocked AI bots from their site (doesn't seem to be a mere robots.txt exclusion from what I can tell), so if any such bot were trying to do this it may have not been able to read the page to verify, so instead made up the quotes.

This is what the author actually speculated may have occurred with Ars. Clearly something was lacking in the editorial process though that such things weren't human verified either way.

Springtimeon An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

Ars Technica being caught using LLMs that hallucinated quotes by the author and then publishing them in their coverage about this is quite ironic here.

Even on a forum where I saw the original article by this author posted someone used an LLM to summarize the piece without having read it fully themselves.

How many levels of outsourcing thinking is occurring to where it becomes a game of telephone.

Springtimeon The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

I've seen it used in non-addictive ways for search results (both specialized[1] and generic global search engines) and portfolios (for showcasing work progressively not merely constantly appending content to the end of singularly viewed work like say news sites do now), off the top of my head.

[1] Eg: printables.com (for open source, 3D print files)