Hacker News Reader

dfxm12on Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For better or worse, it looks unique, and while a truck probably should be functional rather than flashy, I appreciate the swing they took with the design.

dfxm12on My gym forced a social media down my throat. So I reverse-engineered its app

If you hate the app enough, you could see this as damaging them (consuming its resources without getting the ads). Even if it is negligible, it might feel good.

dfxm12on AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt

a lot of open source software had a false sense of being secure with the assumption that someone else would have audited the code

Do you have examples of people saying this? I don't think I've come across idea being espoused...

dfxm12on Study estimates 75% of NFL players who died over 15-year span had CTE

Why do you think it is incorrect?

"This analysis revealed that risk ranged from a 5-fold increase in Alzheimer’s disease, through an approximately 4 fold increase in motor neurone disease, to a 2 fold Parkinson’s disease in former professional footballers compared to population controls."

https://www.thepfa.com/news/2019/10/21/field-study-increased...

"...the odds of having chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) increased by 34% each year [of ice hockey] played, and 18 of 19 National Hockey League players had CTE."

https://www.bumc.bu.edu/camed/news-events/articles/2024/larg...

dfxm12on Study estimates 75% of NFL players who died over 15-year span had CTE

You don't even have to go that far back. ESPN used to have the Jacked Up segment, but quietly stopped doing it after all the negative press around CTE/concussions in the late 00s. Here (in Nnamdi Asomugha's hit) we hear a commentator talking about a player in the fencing response saying, "You see the arms up, you know that he got... JACKED UP!" Leading with the helmet like this would be an obvious personal foul today. I love a big hit as much as the next guy, but when I see someone go into the fencing response, it really bums me out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ELj-79jbqA

dfxm12on Study estimates 75% of NFL players who died over 15-year span had CTE

If you're worried about head trauma, just consider that football is being widely studied & reported upon right now. Look at the stats of basically any contact sport: wrestling, soccer, hockey, etc. You'll probably have to dig deeper to find the the studies, but they all show that the athletes are significantly more likely to develop these types of brain disorders.

dfxm12on Study estimates 75% of NFL players who died over 15-year span had CTE

~60% of rugby league players in one study were found to have CTE [0]. I bring this up because they don't wear pads, and I often hear (ETA: and even saw another commenter here post) that this makes them play safer (which might be true, but not to a meaningful degree; they still are not "safe").

FWIW, the NFL seemingly increasingly penalizes and expands the definition of unsafe hits every year. If people just liked the violence, BKB or power slap would be much more popular than they are.

0 - https://apnews.com/article/cte-australia-rugby-league-035e24...

dfxm12on Study estimates 75% of NFL players who died over 15-year span had CTE

I see you emphasize "this" sport. I think it is important to understand that American football happens to be studied & reported very rigorously at this point in time. I hope you recognize that players of many other contact sports suffer higher rates of neurodegenerative disease that the average person, like all sorts of combat sports, association football, hockey, etc...

To the NFL's credit, they have made rules and equipment changes to address this.

dfxm12on Charles Tandy, the mastermind behind Radio Shack

What's the cost of shipping on a single resistor from mouser or digi-key? Can you buy <15 from Amazon? Another way to think of it is that the ability to have no minimum quantity, not having to wait for shipping and maybe, if you're lucky, someone who can help you with info if you need it is baked into the price. With that in mind, maybe it isn't as overpriced as it seems.

dfxm12on US boy names that became girl names and vice versa

I don't know why but the very specific episodes of when he buys a convertible and when he gets his friend to break his video game addiction still live rent free in my head. I can't remember anything else about the series.

dfxm12on US boy names that became girl names and vice versa

A baby does not "adopt" their name, though. It is given to them.

dfxm12on US boy names that became girl names and vice versa

I'm just going by the article, which has data for both names. If you think it is wrong, take it up with them :)

dfxm12on US boy names that became girl names and vice versa

Interestingly enough, Lindsey, like Lindsey Buckingham, the guitarist of Fleetwood Mac, became a more popular girl's name during Fleetwood Mac's heyday.

dfxm12on SIGSALY: Churchill's top secret hotline to the president

I think historic context provides enough clarity for readers of the website of the imperial war museum.

I also think the headline as is would be good enough even for people who might not have learned about ww2 yet. A headline is not meant to be a complete summary after all...

dfxm12on Anthropic's proposed AI safety bill only kicks in if 50 deaths or $1B in damages

The situation as provided is missing too many details for anyone to make a meaningful judgement call, but remember, more than one party can be found liable/guilty (maybe of different things) in a situation. Overall, the law usually protects people who are acting reasonably, but does not protect people who act negligently.

I'm not a lawyer, but I imagine there's not a lot of precedent or law around this, so it'll be up to the court to decide on the finer details until we do have meaningful laws/regs. Anthropic will probably have better lawyers than the user.

This is why it's important to get ahead of issues like this, and anthropic should not be involved in discussions around regulating itself...

dfxm12on Anthropic's proposed AI safety bill only kicks in if 50 deaths or $1B in damages

I don't know if that analogy holds. You don't normally blame Toyota for car crashes, but the driver. If you must use a car analogy, consider the 2010 Toyota recalls rather than just normal car crashes.

That is to say, anthropic should be considered responsible, not (or not just) the users.

dfxm12on Will it be a golden age or a dark age for mathematics (and science)?

In the US, we've already seen the decrease in funding for education & research and closing borders down to many foreign researchers. The current admin and mainstream media is science-skeptic. We're already heading for a dark age. AI's contribution is largely because those policies are coupled with the same admin putting all their eggs into the AI basket, and likewise, basically all the major players in AI being on board with the admin's policies. This should be considered a systemic issue. Things like having a "healthy scientific skepticism and the limits of LLMs’ creativity" are important, but won't solve this alone.

dfxm12on Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men

AI chatbots contributing to or reinforcing suicidal ideation.

dfxm12on Why do LLM pelicans look like this?

This isn't generic, it's the same thing. Why would you expect the same thing? There are limitless ways to picture a bird on a bike. White pelican? Brown pelican? Wings out for balance? Wings anthropomorphized into hands on handle bars? Bmx bike? Mountain bike? Riding towards you, away from you, on a race course, etc.

Do a Google image search for pelican, you get a diverse set of sub species of pelicans and different poses and angles for them. Go on a writing prompt forum, you get many diverse ideas from the same simple prompt. Hell, ask your friends at a dinner party to describe a pelican riding a bike and see what happens.

Now, there are a lot of images of bikes from that side angle facing right on the web. Why? Because that's how they're staged on e-commerce websites. Does this say something about AI?

dfxm12on Switzerland proposes banning profiling-based ads to minors

Constant surveillance has become the default order of things. Doing what's best for corporations is the default order of things. On the flip side, "think of the children" is a strong appeal to lawmakers and has won this round. Us adults still have to suffer under the thumb of big business though.

dfxm12on Amazon pushes up prices across the Internet

How did you come to learn the original source in the case of the wheels? Can this be applied to other products?

dfxm12on OpenAI engineer arrested in bugging of executive conference room

Yeah, the tweet reads more like an ad then a news report.

dfxm12on Show HN: PS2 games statically recompiled to WebAssembly

There were already a couple of ways to play PS2 games though. Is it meaningful to put it in WebAssembly (especially when we were promised things like a cure for cancer [0])?

0 - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/08/ai-cure-can...

dfxm12on Hackers activate automatic defrosting accross European supermarket fridges

To monitor when something like this happens...

dfxm12on The Making Of Super Mario 64 – full Giles Goddard interview (2001)

99% of the game is concerned with [Mario's movement]. most of Miyamoto’s time is spent on that, and the movement of the camera.

I had to put down too many early 3D action games because of clunky controls and not being able to see what was going on. Maybe horror games (like resident evil) could get away with awkward cameras in the service of jump scares, but it's frustrating when you have to make a jump and the camera, and thus the controls, don't cooperate with you.

dfxm12on So, you’d like to sell your print issues of The Onion?

TIL The Onion goes back to at least 1988.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of what their new(ish) management has been doing, especially with infowars. I hope they can get the issues they're looking for.

dfxm12on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect

But where is the line exactly?

This is what courts are for. There is no exact line because many situations are different.

Surely you don't have to have a big red cancel button on every page of your platform

Why not?

Some examples would be helpful

The text you quoted is clear enough to me, and it's probably clear to any reasonable person (most rules are written this way). If you're worried about gaming the system to find the exact process that just on the "legal" side of things, you probably aren't reasonable.

dfxm12on I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall

Fwiw, every municipality I've lived in has had some kind of program to help people who own and live in their house to afford property tax if they can't.

I think they're usually called "homestead exemption" or something like that.

dfxm12on Takeshi's Castle

Most of Beat Takeshi's work is amazing, from this, to his films, even his infamous Nintendo game.

dfxm12on How Protein Took over the World

Of course. These things are cyclical. Some might remember the f plan diet or similar.