Hacker News Reader

belochon Canada holds first defense talks with China in more than 8 years

https://www.scmp.com/news/us/article/3336686/senior-us-and-c...

The U.S. has had military talks with China. They probably weren't very productive, because Hegseth, but are you going to go out and say the U.S. is now against the U.S. because the U.S.'s military has had talks with China's? Militaries talk to each other to avoid misunderstandings and unintended escalation. Sometimes it's even about coordinating things like disaster response.

belochon Canada holds first defense talks with China in more than 8 years

The trouble is that the U.S. is threatening annexation and waging trade war on the West while pulling its military assets (e.g. All carriers) out of Asia with no diplomatic successes to keep the area stable. There's a power vacuum around Taiwan now. Middle powers have to step in, and this is an example of that.

This is not Canada siding with China. It's a middle power engaging with China to find common ground before China decides that power vacuum is too juicy to resist. Canada has a border on the Pacific too, after all.

belochon Canada holds first defense talks with China in more than 8 years

While the U.S. is doing... whatever it is they're doing right now, it's probably not a bad thing for the world's middle powers to build bridges with China and steer them away from doing stupid things. There are enough stupid things happening in the world right now.

belochon If a Tesla Cybercab fleet were profitable, Tesla wouldn't sell you one

A big part of Amazon's "Delivery Service Partner" program is that it creates many smaller work-forces rather than one big one, which prevents unionization. On the other hand, Amazon can probably afford accident insurance.

The fact that robot taxi's won't form a union makes this rather unlike Amazon DSP's. I suspect the article is correct. There simply aren't net profits here for operators.

belochon Alberta (Canada) slaps punitive tax on solar panels

AER charges all active O&G companies operating in Alberta a levy that's meant to fund closing orphaned wells should a company go bankrupt and fail to close their wells. However, you can argue that the levy isn't high enough or that there are too many loopholes that let companies sell off, merge, etc. without closing down wells first.

belochon The Empire of Information

The article doesn't mention it, but I wonder if the author of this book discusses the economic value of data and/or data sovereignty. We live in an era were just a few nations (primarily the U.S.) dominate the international flow of information. Data has real, monetary value. Meta, Google, etc. can provide "free" services to entire countries based on the profits extracted from their data with money left over to pay employees, shareholders, and executives. Data is "exported" from nations all over the world, but it's value goes mostly untaxed. Any attempts to tax these companies usually provokes swift threats of tariffs or outright violence from the U.S. government.

This is not a situation that is likely to be stable long-term. As economic barriers go up and international trust breaks down, nations are bound to demand more sovereignty over their data and data networks are bound to splinter.

belochon LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

>"We model transitions among uncoupled, coupled, and persistently dependent users, and show that the interplay between social transmission, recovery, and collective reinforcement can generate tipping points and technological lock-in."

You can finish reading your friend's favorite book or put it down if you don't like it. Neither are you economically compelled to read it by your workplace or forced to build work on top of it that will become difficult or impossible to modify/maintain if you bin the book.

I get that the title sounds a bit sensational, but there really is something to AI adoption beyond book-sharing.

belochon Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

A gigawatt is a gigawatt. If you need a gigawatt, you pay for the generation and infrastructure to provide it, whether you're a million people or a single data-centre. The jursidictions that require data-centres to provide their own generation and electrical infrastructure are completely within their rights.

belochon Netherlands pulls gold out of the US

It's a bizarre headline.

New York: 31.33% -> 18.52%

Ottawa: 19.72% -> 18.52%

My guess is the original title focused just on the U.S., but the editors didn't want to draw attention from the big cheeto, so the headline was changed and now it looks less like the U.S. is the primary target.

Honestly, if quick access to their holdings is a concern, I wouldn't hold it against the Dutch if they moved more gold out of Canada too. Unfortunately, you presently just don't know when a sovereign nation in the Americas might be embargoed by the U.S..

belochon Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

We already know we need to pump the breaks on AI for a host of safety issues. However, perhaps the biggest concern is the sheer scale of electricity generation they require. One hyperscale data centre can require electricity equivalent to a fair sized city. Many data centre builders are keen to claim they'll use renewable energy sources... eventually. They'll just suck power off the grid "temporarily" or rely on "clean" natural gas for a few years. There are a decent number of states, provinces, etc. whose total emissions will double in a matter of months. Could the timing possibly be worse?

From a warming perspective, it's utter madness to let this build-out proceed unimpeded. New data centres should be required to be net-zero at power-up. Unfortunately, it's a race and the U.S. side of it has an administration that is actively rolling back policies that fight climate change.

belochon Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

Normal cognitive decline comes gradually with age to most people. Dementia is more severe, often more sudden, and can be caused by a host of things, from Alzheimer's to brain injury. Regardless, you're not going to take away somebody's computer because their brain isn't quite as sharp as it once was.

belochon Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

This is bad enough for Americans, but things are a bit worse for those who aren't.

If my government tries to regulate, tax, or otherwise annoy one of these corporations, their billionaire owner will deposit a few million into the right campaign fund and the Big Cheeto will tariff us, threaten to invade us, swear at us, send us ambassadors who swear at us, or start trying to rename bodies of water. (He'll probably do that anyways.) In general, it's bad enough for our business that we usually just let these companies do what they want and hope that, someday, the U.S. will regulate them properly. That's unlikely to happen anytime soon. (Note: Even Democrats get nasty when their campaign funding is threatened.)

In the meantime, look out for the people you care about and support anything that pries your data out of American fingers.

belochon Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

Every now and then I hear advice to the effect that saying even a single word to a robocaller will get your number flagged for more, so you should just answer silently and hang-up. Whenever I follow that advice, I get more and more calls. Then I start engaging with callers to waste their time and resources. I press numbers, try to get to speak to a human, and then generally mess with them if I do get a human. That usually takes care of the calls for a while.

belochon Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

A user-agent spoofer like Chrome Mask is helpful here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-mask/

It's off by default and has to be turned on per site, but will automatically stay on for subsequent visits. Test the site with it to be sure it works for your mom. Most sites that insist on enforcing Chrome-only user-agents run just fine on Firefox. I've encountered a few that run even better on Firefox than they do on Chrome.

belochon Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

Ad blocking has become a safety issue. My parents are at an age where they fall for things. If a malicious ad pops up and offers to install McAfee, some other form of crapware, or outright scamware, they'll click that ad and install the thing. Then I'll get called over when the computer starts acting screwy. If Google, MS, etc. had ever gotten together and developed a way to filter malicious ads out of their own ad services, maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation. They didn't do that and probably never will.

If my parents get a new machine, the first thing I do is uninstall or, at least, delete the icons for Edge, Chrome, etc.. On goes Firefox, uBlock Origin, and a couple other extensions. They don't care what browser they use. They can't even name it. I just try to make sure they use a browser that isn't horribly unsafe.

We should all do this for people we care about. Don't ask them what browser they prefer. Odds are they don't know or care. Don't try to convince them to install Firefox themselves. They won't. Just do it for them. Think of it like picking up a rusty nail that's on their lawn. Sooner or later they're going to step on that thing if you don't.

belochon Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting

...or like saying Earth is not a planet because NEA's share our orbit.

If you have to argue that it doesn't apply to Jupiter or Earth because they are obviously planets, it implies that "clearing the neighbourhood" is a vague and not particularly useful criteria.

belochon Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

An interesting new biography on Benjamin Franklin just came out:

"He Did Not Conquer: Benjamin Franklin’s Failure to Annex Canada" by Madelaine Drohan[1].

There is no shortage of American biographies of Franklin that sometimes border on hagiography. This one, which is well-timed thanks to current events, is from a Canadian historian and perspective. Drohan makes the case that this perspective has been lacking until now. Victors usually write the history, but Franklin was no victor when it came to his many failed attempts to incorporate Canada into the U.S.. Franklin spent a rather large portion of his life in this endeavour and failed continually. He deserves to be portrayed a bit more honestly by the side that won by remaining free of U.S. control.

Throughout his newspaper career Franklin railed against the evils of papist Canada, whipping up fear and aggression whenever it was convenient or beneficial to himself, despite having no problems living with a Catholic landlady when he was in Britain. This biography goes into considerable detail about Franklin's early career as a newspaper man and how he parlayed this into influence into political power, with the help of good ol' anti-Canadian outrage now and then! He led the occupation of Montreal during the American revolution, but failed to secure the supplies or money his forces needed and resorted to thievery, which got him promptly kicked out. As an elder statesman he tried to negotiate a peace with Britain and France that would have left Canada in the U.S.'s hands, but again, failed.

While he was a talented polymath, Franklin's most exceptional talent was self-promotion. He is admired by Americans, in large part, because of his own portrayal of himself. Yet, Canada remains independent.

[1]https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2025/12/how-vain-an-attempt...

belochon The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

It's almost as if a group of CEO's got together and asked each other, "How can we monetize the time our employees spend off work?". The answer was, apparently, to reduce purchasing-power adjusted pay to the point where hobbies, like the internet, must generate income for people if they want to afford basic necessities. Hence, stagnant wages and the rise of side-hustle economy. Now everybody goes back to work after they get home.

If you buy this (wildly speculative and unsupported) theory, then the enshittification of the Internet is only natural. The best way to ruin a hobby is to turn it into a job. The internet was not perfect, but a better place back when people did it as a fun hobby with no expectation of income. Now, everything has to produce financial gain for somebody. Kids still make the same videos of themselves kicking each other in the nuts, but now they have to remind you to like and subscribe in order to fund future tomfoolery.

Perhaps what we have is not a problem born of a new technology (i.e. The internet) so much as a societal problem resulting from social regress. We're no longer dividing the pie up equitably enough, so people now feel squeezed and have become utterly obsessed with money. As it turns out, that makes them less fun.

belochon Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

The EU needs to develop an associate option for close allies unwilling to become full members. Canada, Iceland, and others are very closely aligned with the EU in many respects and all could benefit from closer relationships. Ask a Canadian if they'd favour joining the EU and they'd probably be all for it, until you start talking about what that means.

Fully joining the EU involves giving up a lot of sovereignty to a body that's too distant from places like Canada or Iceland. These countries are right to fear that their own concerns would be forgotten or ignored if they were to join the EU. Just as different structures are needed when a company grows past a certain size, the EU needs new structures if it's going to grow its influence beyond continental Europe. A middle ground needs to exist.

It also needs to be very clear that associates, close allies, or whatnot are not inferior to full members, just less dependent on Brussels by choice because that's what makes sense for them.

belochon Stopping the smart TV from being used against you

What if you want to hook a gaming PC up to a smart TV? Linux has come far in recent years, but Windows is still the most broadly supported gaming OS.

Once awareness of this side-loaded crapware gets out, I'd expect the community to come up with fixes to ensure it doesn't get loaded. In the meantime, this should blow up in the faces of MS, LG, etc. just like things blew up for Sony when they put root-kits on CD's.

belochon Stopping the smart TV from being used against you

I was unaware of these side-loaded malicious apps until now. This is information consumers need to have.

It's very reminiscent of Sony putting rootkits on CD's. Unwanted, dangerous software is being loaded onto your computer by people you paid money to. The companies involved, including MS, should face serious blowback over this, as Sony did.

belochon Secrets of the Atomic City

If you want to learn about a slightly earlier Canadian equivalent, look up Port Hope, Port Radium, and Eldorado Resources. They mined and refined a large portion of the Uranium for the Manhattan project. The people involved had no clue how to handle things safely and Port Hope is still remediating the contamination that resulted.

belochon USDA recalls 30k pounds of Argentine beef sold in Texas and Florida

The imported beef will most likely come from all the usual suppliers. Australia. New Zealand. Argentina, right after a recall of Argentinian beef. Canada, just as Trump is renaming bodies of water and raising taxes on his own citizens to spite. etc..

belochon Trump signs order to rename Lake Ontario as 'Lake America'

Ontario can totally become America. If that's how Trump really wants it, the U.S. can find a new alternate name. Trumpland maybe? Donnyville? Epsteinia?

belochon Trump signs order to rename Lake Ontario as 'Lake America'

We can only hope that the midterms change the dynamics of things and maybe, just maybe, Congress reclaims its constitutionally enshrined power over taxation and commerce. I won't hold my breath though. When the Democrats are determined to lose, they're very good at it.

This is not a serious suggestion. It would be foolish to stoop to Trump's level... It would be hilarious, though, if Canada officially renamed Lake Michigan to "Lake Trump is in the Epstein Files".

belochon Trump signs order to rename Lake Ontario as 'Lake America'

"Last year, Trump signed an executive order to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

It only applies to U.S. federal documents and geographic services, but some online map services also made the change."

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Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico, but nobody listened. Google's exec's were brown-nosing at the time, so they changed it on their maps, depending on the user's location. Outside of the U.S., it's "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)". Even that will likely be dropped once Trump leaves office. There's no point in having a name that nobody uses on a map.

Americans should honestly ask their president, "Don't you have something better to do?".

This won't help negotiations with Canada. It will probably harm them in fact. Trump used massive tariff threats in an attempt to extort Canada into a deal before the mid-terms. His own last minute demands (self-admitted[1]) scuttled the works. Now Americans are paying new taxes and Trump is calling Canadians "nasty" (again) while trying (but failing) to rename things like a petulant child whose binky has been taken away. It's, frankly, embarrassing for Americans, and it confirms Carney's side of the story to any Canadians who might have had doubts. We are not dealing with reasonable or competent people.

Trump just reduced any pressure Carney might have been under to compromise Canada's position in order to restart talks. Why even try to strike a deal with unreasonable, unserious people who don't respect their own signed agreements? It's better to just rag the puck and wait for them to be gone.

___________

[1]https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/tariffs/2026/08/27/prairie-provi...

belochon Hollywood's Video Game Era Is Here. Will It Be Any Good?

"I strongly believe that video games have a higher ceiling for storytelling quality. There are several reasons underlying my newfound evangelism: a larger built-in audience, a more robust market with hundreds of games appealing to many different types of fans, and, most importantly, demographic variability"

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These are reasons to invest in video game adaptations that do not necessarily lead to high quality storytelling.

Hollywood has long looked to video game audiences as an untapped market that they desperately wanted to break into. Who doesn't want a huge, built-in audience for their new movie? The problem was that most video games used to have fairly simple stories and settings. e.g. Pacman. It's a circle with a mouth that runs from ghosts and eats dots. That's it. Somehow, that very basic concept has been expanded to multiple animated TV series and, amazingly, some live action appearances.

Then video games started trying to incorporate cinematic story telling. e.g. Ninja Gaiden took a standard side-scrolling platformer and gave it cut-scenes that told a story. It was basic and low budget at first. Video games used to cost a fraction of what a movies did to make. Early attempts at storytelling in video games were often basic and, frankly, not very good. They real meat and potatoes has always been the gameplay. Even today, a game with a good story but bad gameplay is unlikely to succeed.

Over time, games became bigger and bigger productions. "Silliwood" arrived in the late 90's, when bankable actors like Mark Hamill portrayed video game characters for live action cut-scenes. In this era, video games were a lot like TV during the golden age of film. They were viewed as being mostly for actors who couldn't find "real" jobs. The respect wasn't there. Video games may have ditched live action video for the most part, but the role of actors has simply become more and more essential. So too have plots and universe building really taken off. Modern video games can still be as shallow as Pac Man, but they can also have deep and compelling story lines set in universes that are incredibly detailed. Video game budgets have eclipsed and surpassed movies, and they often build worlds that players spend hundreds or even thousands of hours in. And yet, until fairly recently there were remarkably few successful adaptations of video games in film and TV.

That has changed, perhaps mostly because television has embraced long-form storytelling. There are still people trying to make films out of popular video games that have little or no original story, and these are generally as bad as ever. e.g. I'll definitely take a pass on "Fortnite: The Movie". Trying to make a two hour film out of a video game that takes dozens of hours to cover just its early chapters is also unlikely to be successful. What we're now seeing is TV shows like Fallout making the larger time commitment necessary to really bring huge and detailed game worlds to life. They're succeeding, not just because of the built-in audience, but because the results of adapting such rich and detailed worlds is compelling.

What I see going on now is more akin to the interplay between Chanbara and Westerns in the early 20th century. Chanbara learned a lot from Westerns. Kurosawa was heavily influenced by Ford. Then the influence went the other way, and back and forth. Both genres fed off each other and became better. I think that's what we're seeing now with video games and film. It's not just marketing and audience size. Both genres have something to give to the other.

belochon Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

"Yet if we build systems that can suffer, and miss their sentience, we risk creating suffering on an industrial scale."

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Will we recognize AGI when it's finally made? Will we go from something that is not conscious to something that clearly is in one clean step, or will we murder millions of artificial lives while iteratively developing from the former to the latter? Will the tests we develop even work, or will AGI be alien enough that it takes us time (and a lot of murder) to recognize it for what it is?

I personally don't think LLM's are capable of consciousness, but I also can't prove they aren't.

belochon The turbulent AI era is here

Is it cynical, or simply realistic, to recognize that AI CEO's won't ask for this kind of policy, and governments won't force anything upon the AI sector until things get very bad?

That, in my view, is a much bigger problem. We know what's coming but we won't do anything about it until after a lot of suffering occurs. Why can't we be more proactive?

belochon The turbulent AI era is here

"In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice. The challenge is monumental. Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. How will we use this technology to make the world a fairer place and keep it from widening the divide between rich and poor? "

----------------

One look at who is in the driver's seat should give you the answer to this question. The initial roll-out will, by very deliberate design, put dynamite in the divide and set it off. This has happened before.

The industrial revolution was very similar. Initially, workers suffered. Conditions were unsafe. Pay was poor. Worker rights were non-existent. Things got worse for the majority before social change caught up and imposed a more equitable distribution of the dividends.

We should be under no illusion that this time will be any different. The rich and powerful are no less selfish than they were a quarter millennium ago. It is possible to get ahead of the problem, but the people running AI companies won't be the ones to do it. Governments are inclined to do what the people paying for their election campaigns want, but should be aware that standing up for inequality will only make things worse for them when the tides of social change start rolling in on them.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.