Hacker News Reader

gentleon Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade no-crawl directives

I believe you're being disingenuous. Perplexity is running a set of crawlers that do not respect robots.txt and take steps to actively evade detection.

They are running a service and this is not a user taking steps to modify their own content for their own use.

Perplexity is not acting as a user proxy and they need to learn to stick to the rules, even when it interferes with their business model.

gentleon Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

https://archive.is/QIvhV

US tech dominance has long been seen as a benefit and this administration is ruining that position.

gentleon Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

I'm always fascinated by the posters here who insist on second-guessing the writers and the scientists who spend their whole lives studying a topic like this.

No one needs to read your post fessing up to your profound ignorance and the fact that you didn't really read the link.

gentleon Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers

I love that so many people here think they can think about the problem for 10 seconds and come up with a solution that hasn't already been considered a thousand times and discarded.

gentleon Judge sends Sam Bankman-Fried to jail over witness tampering

I'm fascinated by how so many comments here seem to assume that Bankman-Fried is playing some long strategy, when the simplest answer is that he's mentally ill and can't stop himself from engaging in compulsive behaviors, even when he's been appraised of the consequences, repeatedly.

gentleon The Samsung Galaxy S23’s bloated Android build somehow uses 60GB of storage

I've moved from a Samsung S10+ to a Google Pixel 6 Pro and I couldn't be happier, and it's mainly because of November like this.

I also hate that they got rid of their headphone jacks and removable storage. They were the few differentiations that kept me on Samsung.

gentleon A non-constructive proof of the Four Colour Theorem

Yes, that's right.

gentleon Jaron Lanier warns of tech’s existential threat to humanity

That guy is the worst kind of contrarian.

gentleon White House privately demanded Twitter ban me months before the company did so

This guy spreads vaccine and mask disinformation and as a result should be deplatformed. No sympathy for liars.

gentleon Apple has a bug in its disk I/O throttling code that affects raw disk copies

The hardware looks nice but it's not for normal people getting normal work done. Things have gotten marginally better since Ive left, but they still have a long way to go.

gentleon A CIA hacker’s revenge

Bernie Sanders wasn't even a Democrat at the time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders#Party_affiliati...

gentleon I’m going to miss you, but I am taking a sabbatical

I've been reading Jason every day for the last 20-something years. I love his writing voice and his perspective on the world.

There's no other blog I read as consistently or as enthusiastically. I hope he gets the time out he needs from his sabbatical. I look forward to the next 20 years of reading his work.

gentleon US man wins $450k lawsuit after unwanted office birthday party

This appears to be the company: https://gravitydiagnostics.com/contact-us/

They even have a Twitter: https://twitter.com/GravityCLIALab

gentleon Generating the pseudo-random codes that measured distance to Apollo spacecraft

I was under the impression that this technique was used commonly today.

gentleon Apple says they're removing my game because it's more than 2 years old

This is exactly why I refuse to buy any ios apple that cost more than $1. They're inevitably going away.

This is also why the iPad is never going to replace a computer for me. Any productivity ecosystem I create for myself is just going to break after a couple of OS updates.

gentleon Apple Discontinues macOS Server

Uh, huh. They're laughably expensive and not untradable or serviceable in any way.

gentleon Apple Discontinues macOS Server

...unless it's the iPhone.

gentleon Apple Discontinues macOS Server

I'm not going to be at all surprised when Apple sells off their laptop division and kills their few remaining desktops. It's obvious they have no interest in anything outside of the iPhone. Even the iPad is treated like a second class citizen.

gentleon SoCal man says computer on his Tesla froze, causing it to be stuck at 83 MPH

It's amazing to me how there are so many Tesla Stan's on HN that any time any article gets posted that is in any way critical of Musk or Tesla it immediately gets flagged and booted from the site.

gentleon Pockit: A tiny, powerful, modular computer [video]

This is so great. It reminds me of what BugLabs was doing about ten years ago, but this is honestly better.

gentleon Bringing the Framework Laptop to more of the world

I'm looking forward to buying one of these as soon as there's good Linux support.

gentleon ISS Docking Simulator

Ok, that's pretty neat.

gentleon NYU is top-ranked in loans that alumni and parents struggle to repay

This is something that students and parents should take into account when they're trying to figure out what school students should go to.

In other words, stop going to NYU. It's a bad investment of time or money.

gentleon NYU is top-ranked in loans that alumni and parents struggle to repay

I went to a state school rather than an expensive private school, went into a well paying career and paid off my student loans in 3 years.

I'm sorry these students chose a different path, but there's no way the rest of us should take care of their terrible decisions. If you want to mandate some super low interest rate, then I'm fine with that, but just having the government pay off their loans is extremely offensive.

If these people got into NYU in the first place then they're almost certainly from more well off families. They don't need the help.

gentleon Kinesis Advantage 360

I love my Kinesis Advantage and I credit it with saving my elbows 15 years ago.

These look great, but I'd definitely be worried about the little stands standing up to constant use.

gentleon YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

They're banning a set of channels that are known to be spreading vaccine lies and then they're also banning videos that are claiming that vaccines aren't safe.

We know they're safe because they undergo exhaustive testing. Banning videos from people that are lying isn't stifling debate, it's banning lies.