Hacker News Reader

WillPostForFoodon Kentucky man becomes the first humanist granted religious exemption from AI

It is more that knowledge workers are less sophisticated at using AI. It is not that hard to check whether sources are real, using AI or other tools, for example. Something like functional testing will come to non programming tasks.

WillPostForFoodon US Government is hiding a secret court ruling about how it spies on Americans

6th amendment is strictly about criminal prosecutions. The court in question is not a criminal court.

WillPostForFoodon A 28-Year-Old DOGE Operative Gutted USAID. HR Had No Record of Him Working There

NY Times has done no reporting substantiating the claim the hundreds of thousands have died. They have published an OpEd piece and have reported a memo by a USAID employee how was upset about being fired. It is all models and unsubstantiated claims.

WillPostForFoodon Jared Kushner Hacked Phone Reveals Secret Negotiations, Millions in Transactions

Media had access to the laptop, and we only have second hand claims about the phone.

WillPostForFoodon Xbox wants you to pay 24 to 40 cents per hour to stream games you bought

Do you think commercial real estate are backing maintaining single family zoning in places like Palo Alto, or do you think they'd actually benefit from tossing all the zoning, and being able build, sell, and rent as many office buildings and apartments and condominiumns as possible?

WillPostForFoodon "I'm on a war footing": Terry Tao and the crisis in math

And that's why Alta Vista still reigns supreme in search.

WillPostForFoodon The Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” is deceiving

Because it is not a documentary about the history of Theranos or a bio of Holmes, it is about truth, deception, and media.

WillPostForFoodon Gemini 4 Argon

Models are actually getting better.

WillPostForFoodon Living in the Weimar Era of Ruby

The author didn't share what DHH actually said, and distorted a bunch of comments.

WillPostForFoodon Living in the Weimar Era of Ruby

You received a highly distorted negative version of what he was saying. Another example is the claim 37 Signals "banned" hand coding. What he said is they went AI first, and that hand writing was exceptional.

We are going, and have gone, pencils down on the idea that we were gonna write code by hand as a normal course of business creating things. Writing code by hand at 37signals is now an exceptional state.

WillPostForFoodon Living in the Weimar Era of Ruby

What the article characterizes DHH as saying:

Look how I don’t care anymore, and you should not care either

What DHH actually said:

I have AI delirium. AI euphoria. Because this is simply the most exciting thing we have made computers do in the time I have worked with them, played with them, interacted with them. But I think actually to wrestle with the fact that on the one hand, this is tremendously exciting, it is also a little unnerving.

and

There's only one play here, and it's total Fucking optimism. Lean in to the max possible. Because the utopia is almost here.

WillPostForFoodon Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat

"This American Life is an independent program, not produced or distributed by NPR."

TAL is independently produced, but distributed by PRX() for broadcast to NPR, and NPR is partially financing it by paying for the right to air it.

PRX also funded by Corporation for Public Broadcasting; this is all a somewhat incestuous, government financed form of independence.

WillPostForFoodon What makes Lisp difficult to read?

Do you mean readable, as in it is easier for you to match "." to "," than ( to ), or is it just easier to look at without reading because there is less there.

WillPostForFoodon Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]

The first link in his article cites his source:

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

WillPostForFoodon George Lucas Returns to Earth, Bearing Gifts

Fortunately for Los Angeles, unfortunately for San Francisco!

WillPostForFoodon Measure internet censorship

You are misunderstanding time/place/manner restrictions. The rule must apply equally to all speakers regardless of topic, opinion, or political stance. If you banned "the distribution of all writings by authors in another country/region" you aren't applying the restriction equally.

WillPostForFoodon I build a mechanical watch face: a real gear train for a watch with no gears

Give them some grace. The author is a Czech developer likely using AI to help write in a second language or translating.

WillPostForFoodon Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

WillPostForFoodon C Is Not a Low-Level Language (2018)

From the preface of first edition The C Programming Language. Just interesting to note the authors never claimed it was low level, just not "very high level."

---

C is a general-purpose programming language with features economy of expression, modern flow control and data structures, and a rich set of operators. C is not a "very high level" language, nor a "big" one, and is not specialized to any particular area of application.

But its absence of restrictions and its generality make it more convenient and effective for many tasks than supposedly more powerful languages.

WillPostForFoodon True Rate of Unemployment

That data is in the article, "true unemployment" was higher in 1999. The last few years are the best years on the graph.

WillPostForFoodon Hacking IKEA Furniture

It depends. Solid particleboard is pretty close, but a many Ikea pieces are hollow, with internal cardboard support. I prefer some of these to particle board because of the lightness. Like the Lack or the Linnmon table tops.

WillPostForFoodon Chicken products recalled in five states due to “false marks of inspection”

Why not? If the agency is doing a poor job you might be better of defunding it or disbanding, or forcing smarter, cheaper, more efficient testing. If money fixed problems we'd have great schools and great health care.

WillPostForFoodon Chicken products recalled in five states due to “false marks of inspection”

The big Boar's Head listeria recalls were in Summer 2024, before Trump was elected, before Doge existed...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boars-head-listeria-recall-bug-...

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls-alerts/boars-head-provisio...

WillPostForFoodon An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

In defense of Prusa, I’ve had mine for six years and have done basically zero maintenance. I’ve adjusted temps a few times when switching filament brands, and that’s about it.

You are right to say Prusa is more of a hobbyist machine while Bambu is closer to a consumer appliance. But within the hobbyist spectrum Prusa is more on the light hobby side these days. My first printer was a Printrbot where I was hand-entering G-code to move the nozzle around and level the bed. Prusa is a dream compared to that.

I like Prusa as a company (and the guy), and I like the community around it. The machine is simple, keeps working, parts are available, and you can understand and repair it if you need to.

WillPostForFoodon An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

Some context on the US/WTO conflict. It started under Obama, blocking reappointment of two judges. Trump in term 1 went all in, stopping all appointments. When Biden was elected he fully maintained and supported the policy of blocking judges. So it has been more of a bipartisan policy than "Trump gutted".

https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-administration-continues-be-...

WillPostForFoodon France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

There is slow progress being made on this.

https://cyberscoop.com/fcc-robocall-action-operation-robocal...

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/fcc-proposes-new-numbering...

WillPostForFoodon Aristotle quotes on virtue, knowledge, and happiness

That's near the opposite of what Aristotle intended. He wrote about happiness as virtuous action, living well. He wasn't so internally oriented.

WillPostForFoodon Writing by hand is good for your brain

Riding a unicycle and coding are not complementary activities - you are multitasking. Writing is aligning different parts of your brain to the same task, perhaps it is just creating additional focus.

WillPostForFoodon Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

But the idea of a blanket ban on Chinese open-weight models was not seriously discussed.

Article should probably put the above higher in the story.

WillPostForFoodon Qwen 3.8

It will be a great day for China and the world when the Chinese people are free from a totalitarian dictatorship. But until then we have to speak of the policy of the Chinese government as the policy of China, even if many, or most disagree with those policies.