Hacker News Reader

asmodeusluciferon 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

It's amazing how scary an obvious puppet in a grocery cart can be.

asmodeusluciferon New Beam Spring Keyboards

I had a model F, I loved it. Then the H key stopped working. I knew from previous experience that trying to fix them never went well, so it went to the shelf and eventually to the garbage.

They were only about $100 on ebay at the time though.

asmodeusluciferon What Is a Dickover?

In a similar vein, If I had to explain what javascript was to someone non-technical I would say "you know all that crap that covers up a web site you are trying to look at? That's javascript."

dickover n. : a modal panel, popover, or curtain presented by a website or app, deliberately obscuring its own content to frustrate the user with an unwanted, unnecessary, mandatory interaction

asmodeusluciferon The quiet renovation at Bitwarden

I believed Steve Gibson about lastpass, then about bitwarden.

asmodeusluciferon Trump's threats are giving Iran a reason for wanting a nuclear weapon

Why do we kiss Pakistan and Israel's ass? They have nukes. Why do we shit on Iraq and Iran? They don't.

asmodeusluciferon Laws of Software Engineering

I learned about Dunbar’s number

(~150) is the size of a community in which everyone knows each other’s identities and roles.

In anthropology class. You can ask someone to write down the name of everyone they can think of, real or fictional, live or dead and most people will not make it to 250.

Some individuals like professional gossip columnists or some politicians can remember as many as 1,000 people.

asmodeusluciferon Trump fires Pam Bondi as attorney general

When are they going to release Hunter Biden's laptop? The FBI has it. (supposedly)

asmodeusluciferon What changes happen in the aging brain?

With age comes four molecular hallmarks: chronic inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, genome instability, and epigenetic changes. Recent findings have pinpointed the epigenome as a major driver of physiological aging.

asmodeusluciferon Long overlooked as crucial to life, fungi start to get their due

Two mushrooms walk into a bar.

The bartender says "You can't come in here."

They say "Oh C'mon we're fun guys!"

asmodeusluciferon Rendezvous with Rama

Like celebrity deaths, news about RwR comes in threes.

asmodeusluciferon Tech jobs are getting demolished in ways not seen since 2008

I'm going to repurpose a quote I saw from a 'distinguished' (old) science fiction writer, I can't remember who.

I know writers who have stopped selling, but I don't know any writers who have stopped writing.

asmodeusluciferon Who discovered grokking and why is the name hard to find?

Yes I did find that paper, I did not find which one of the 5 authors it was, or someone not listed as an author. The word 'vacation' is not in the paper. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.02177.

asmodeusluciferon Show HN: A tool to capture my every ADHD thought

Hug of death for me.

asmodeusluciferon Distributed Denial of Secrets

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has documented over 100 people killed in the United States and Canada in attacks committed by extremists linked to the white supremacist movement since 2014.

google is your friend

asmodeusluciferon Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’ (2022)

Thanks to reading The Three Body Problem, I can imagine.

https://three-body-problem.fandom.com/wiki/Sophons

asmodeusluciferon At least $9B billed across 14 Medicaid services in Minnesota may be fraudulent

Just a reminder, the poor don't do the billing. Businesses do.

asmodeusluciferon How big tech is force-feeding us AI

"Even when it’s not obvious to the user, tech companies are often engaged in what the designers call a “manipulation of visual choice architecture” that tilts users towards AI products."

I'm not surprised the people who invented dark patterns are using them.

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

asmodeusluciferon Mapping the US healthcare system’s financial flows

I'm more interested in what the equity owners get.

edit: and the insurance companies

asmodeusluciferon Mapping the US healthcare system’s financial flows

Beat me to it. This chart is only 1/2 complete. It doesn't show where the money goes after hospital care, for instance.

asmodeusluciferon US Tariffs Are Making Money. That May Make Them Hard to Quit

https://archive.ph/8SN2q

About 60 billion so far.

asmodeusluciferon [dead]

Abstract

Conservative political ideology is associated with social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), psychopathic propensities (PPs), and other malevolent dispositions, and reduced empathy. We examined the links between SDO, RWA, PPs and political ideology, and whether those who view Trump favorably reported higher PPs (or malevolent traits) and reduced empathy or benevolent dispositions. Two U.S. community samples were used; Sample 1 was white vs. minority status men (N = 1000, 32 % minority) and Sample 2 contained men and women (N = 8,047; 45 % male). Structural equation modeling was utilized to represent ideology in terms of right- vs. left-leaning orientation on social and economic issues, including participants’ views of Trump. Malevolent (+) and benevolent (−) dispositions and empathy disturbances were significantly linked with conservative ideology.

asmodeusluciferon People with higher cognitive abilities have weaker moral foundations

Immediately reminded me of this TED talk from 2008:

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_...

But yeah, I don't just do what I'm told. Got kicked out of heaven for it.

asmodeusluciferon DOJ looking at denaturalizing American citizens convicted of certain crimes

1. Cases against individuals who pose a potential danger to national security, including those with a nexus to terrorism, espionage, or the unlawful export from the United States of sensitive goods, technology, or information raising national security concerns;

2. Cases against individuals who engaged in torture, war crimes, or other human rights violations;

3. Cases against individuals who further or furthered the unlawful enterprise of criminal gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and drug cartels;

4. Cases against individuals who committed felonies that were not disclosed during the naturalization process;

5. Cases against individuals who committed human trafficking, sex offenses, or violent crimes;

6. Cases against individuals who engaged in various forms of financial fraud against the United States (including Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) loan fraud and Medicaid/Medicare fraud);

7. Cases against individuals who engaged in fraud against private individuals, funds, or corporations;

8. Cases against individuals who acquired naturalization through government corruption, fraud, or material misrepresentations, not otherwise addressed by another priority category;

9. Cases referred by a United States Attorney’s Office or in connection with pending criminal charges, if those charges do not fit within one of the other priorities; and

10. Any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue

asmodeusluciferon The Curious Case of Jack Smith: Insurance Verification Drama

Jack Smith is breathing out of spite.

He’s survived:

Incorrect name suffix entries.

DOB mismatches.

Insurance Portal rejections.

Jill’s confused, dazed look.

Three AARP cards that instilled Jill with lifelong UHC trauma.

A system that insists Jack’s name is “not on file.”

asmodeusluciferon Smokers are less likely to develop Parkinson's. Why? (2024)

New research in lab models indicates that low doses of carbon monoxide — comparable to that experienced by smokers — protected against neurodegeneration and prevented the accumulation of a key Parkinson’s-associated protein in the brain.

asmodeusluciferon Phoenix.new – Remote AI Runtime for Phoenix

Well of course I have to test it.

Disabled on news.ycombinator.com

asmodeusluciferon Abbott signs law permitting use of fracking wastewater in agriculture

“Well, we need water," Miller said. "We don’t really care what the source is as long as it’s good, clean water that we can grow crops with. Fracking water would be fine."

Miller said the goal won't be just to treat the water, but to fully remove harmful substances like heavy metals to ensure it's clean and safe. He added that there are methods to achieve that, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would be responsible for regulating the process.

Technically true -- clean water is clean water -- the relevant conundrum is if you trust the people who clean it and those who make sure it is clean.

asmodeusluciferon [dead]

I've been wondering why the Republicans did well in the downticket races, but never read anything by anyone who followed up on it.

asmodeusluciferon Ask HN: Is a strong volunteer military incompatible with a strong safety net?

Sounds like you are begging the question. Are there any such countries? Volunteer militaries (militias) went out of fashion in the USA after the war of 1812. Am I not understanding what you are asking?

asmodeusluciferon What keeps Wandering Thoughts more or less free of comment spam (2025 edition)

That one trick is a honeypot text field in my 'write a comment' form. This field is normally hidden by CSS, and in any case the label for the field says not to put anything in it. However, for a very long time now, automated comment spam systems seem to operate by stuffing some text into every (text) form field that they find before they submit the form, which always trips over this. I log the form field's text out of curiosity; sometimes it's garbage and sometimes it's (probably) meaningful for the spam comment that the system is trying to submit.

Good idea, they would have to customize the scripts for your site.