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numairon The Signal App and the Danger of Privacy at All Costs

> Signal’s users may not be the product, but they are the witting or unwitting advocates of the moral views of the 40 or so people who operate Signal.

Whether you agree or disagree with the article, this is 100% true. We (the tech community) have the same problem with Mozilla.

numairon Twitter server costs around $1.5B/year

Oh man, where do we even begin. $1.5B would be a great number if it's true. The fact that the commenter compares that amount to the $300M they claim Netflix spends each year shows that they ... are ... a lot less intelligent than they probably think they are.

Twitter: Billions of little updates that invalidate billions of cached data sets, every single day, that need to be analyzed and delivered very quickly.

Netflix: Maybe millions of static files that do not ever change, that need to be shuttled to the closest CDN peer and cross referenced against profile and billing data before allowing access.

How does anyone even begin to compare these two engineering tasks and think they have anything in common? ... And, looking at their timeline, they then went on to compare Twitter's infra to WhatsApp in the 2010s, when it did nothing other than store-and-forward over an Erlang bus! And thinks this infra has something in common with what it takes to run Twitter! What!

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that a false expert with such a mediocre grasp of the realities of social infrastructure would be a major Elon fanboy.

numairon I still use Flash

A lot of large companies did a tremendous amount of back office using VB6 applications. I remember visiting Disney and seeing it all over the place in the late 90s.

numairon I still use Flash

Thank you for this very thorough and honest explanation. Really appreciate what you’re doing with Ruffle!

numairon I still use Flash

Really great writeup. So people stop asking the obvious question, here is the GitHub issue that clearly shows Ruffle doesn’t support ActionScript 3:

https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/1368

I recently picked up a copy of Flash MX to use on an old PowerBook, highly recommend others do the same. As many have commented, today’s authoring tools are poor substitutes (someone should do a list of the superior abandonware versions of SaaS products).

numairon Recommendations for Japan Travel

Of course Japanese people do it as well, including in their own country (see: Miyakojima). The escapist fantasy problem is something you see in almost every “cool” place. Island paradises, ski towns, Australian country towns, etc all have the same issue — people thinking they’re running away from their problems, but actually bringing them along to wherever they go (hence why all of these places to “rest and rewind” or whatever tend to be easy places to score drugs, meet alcoholics, and so on).

Japan attracts a disproportionate number of foreign people, especially foreign residents, who actively celebrate their ongoing escapist delusion. The difference is, Japanese society is too reserved and passive-aggressive to openly call people out on their BS. Thus, when other foreigners see this happening, we should call it out for what it is. Whattaboutism isn’t the answer.

This guy has lived in Japan for long enough to have a bit more balance than this ridiculous how-to guide to being blissfully ignorant of your temporary surroundings while attempting to extract maximum value from them.

numairon XCheck at Meta: Why it exists and how it works

Thanks, this is very helpful. It would be wild if this was a very carefully crafted campaign meant to bait The Wire into blowing itself up over an almost-true but totally fake news story. Now I really want to know where this all ends up.

numairon XCheck at Meta: Why it exists and how it works

I think that the key takeaway from the entire Wire vs Meta fiasco is that there is a lot of absolutely weird Spy vs. Spy behavior going in the Indian political and media industries.

I was initially extremely sympathetic to the story presented by The Wire, because it's quite believable that Meta/FB would go to extreme lengths to try to distance themselves from such a situation, but the facts ... just ... don't add up. As Alex Stamos has noted, there is little debate regarding collusion between Meta's "government relations" people and policy groups, so that's not really much of a scandal -- it's not like Meta will deny that Modi was treated like a divine being when he visited their campus, so the idea that his people can easily call in a favor to crush a social media post won't really surprise anyone.

The bulletproof evidence with DKIM authentication and a video of a logged-in admin instance doesn't look so bulletproof after all, based on the credible reports from those who know how Meta's admin tooling actually looks and functions, and those with other DKIM authenticated emails from the fb.com domain.

So, the question is, what's the agenda here? Why would someone go through all of this effort, to create a scandal out of something that is not very far from the truth? What's the point of this entire thing? Maybe this is like Nick Denton and Gawker losing their entire business over the stupidest sex tape story ever; or maybe this is part of something else that requires domain knowledge regarding Indian politics and media to understand (do page views monetize so well that this mini-scandal is going to be super-profitable to The Wire? Highly doubtful, right? What could they possibly get out of this?).

The whole thing is just really weird. It's also a major distraction from the very real problems that Meta doesn't even try to hide. Meta's relationship with the governments in various countries -- including the United States -- is way too close for comfort, and absolutely toxic on multiple levels. If this story turns out to be fake news, it'll do a lot to help the company deny, deflect and discredit the next real scandal. I think this is what the wacky conspiracy theorists call "4D chess," but I don't think that's what's happening here.

The true story behind all of this is bound to be very strange, and very stupid.

numairon Stripe is PayPal circa 2010

I think this article is equally critical of both companies. Which is quite remarkable given the narrative that was popular a few years ago. We've gone from an obvious winner to a dead heat. Goes to show: if you've got perfect competition, just wait a while...

numairon Stripe is PayPal circa 2010

> Paypal's inclusion of fraud prevention makes it about 50% cheaper than Stripe with Radar.

The money quote. (No pun intended!) I doubt this article will stay on the front page for very long, because HN seems to have a difficult time with content that is critical of one of Y Combinator's biggest portfolio positions.

numairon Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage

I’m pretty sure that this ban is impossible to enforce, because it’s not just AirTags that use the Find My Network — AirPod cases and other Apple devices have the same functionality. Someone who knows more about the technicals of the Find My system might disagree, but it seems the airlines would have to literally ban carrying Apple devices in your luggage.

This also seems to indicate that a “workaround” would be to drop a spare Apple accessory with Find My capability in your luggage. Again, I could be wrong, so hopefully someone with more domain expertise can correct me!

numairon Dwell House – 540 sq ft prefab home that you can add to your backyard

Based on my experiences with some of the board members of Dwell, I'm not at all surprised that they've ripped off someone else's idea and presented it as their own innovation. But really, I can't believe they're trying to charge people more than double the cost of the MUJI design they've ripped off, which is also double the square footage:

https://www.muji.net/ie/younoie/

Glad to see that the commenters here on HN recognize this as a totally obnoxious concept.

numairon Ask HN: Why Adobe still can’t figure out Flash on WASM?

I guess you’re right… but there really isn’t anything that has replaced the ease of use and functionality of Flash. It is a definite loss for society, as large numbers of non-programmers are unable to use a tool to create rich interactive environments that can be used by large numbers of people. I suppose this was always going to happen given that we were entering a mobile-first world, but it’s sad!

numairon Ask HN: Why Adobe still can’t figure out Flash on WASM?

Wow. The fact that you did this work, and Adobe didn’t do anything useful with it, indicates that you had some extremely lousy managers and executives above you in the org chart. I’m glad you left, for your sake!

numairon Rockstar Games confirms they were hacked by an outside party

“Industry analysts anticipate that the next Grand Theft Auto will be out sometime in Take-Two’s 2024 fiscal year, which runs from April 2023 through March 2024, but developers are skeptical. The game has been in development in some form since 2014. Although there are loose schedules in place, people interviewed for this article said they didn’t know of any firm release date and that they expect the game to be at least two years away. Earlier this year, a group of designers quit Rockstar’s Edinburgh office, telling colleagues they were sick of the lack of progress.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-27/gta-6-rel...

numairon Rockstar Games confirms they were hacked by an outside party

I think this is overhyped as damaging and negative. In fact, GTA VI seemed to be on the path to becoming the “new Duke Nukem Forever,” which is no longer the case. Everything I’ve seen from the leak indicates this will be a really great game with the same cinematic qualities and cultural relevance that remains somewhat unique to this franchise.

It’s not great from a creative standpoint to have parts of your narrative out there for inspection and criticism, true, but from a commercial perspective the timing of this leak (weekend of Tokyo Game Show) could not be better. More people are talking about this than whatever announcements took place at TGS.

numairon The Japanese tradition of raising and eating wasps (2019)

Someone already beat me to the “this is a bogus attempt to project a fringe local behavior onto the entirety of Japan” post, so I’m just going to post a link to the post Italian maggot-cheese (which I am surprised hasn’t already happened!) to make it clear that the idea of this as a “Japanese tradition” is as utterly absurd as calling that an “Italian tradition.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu

For some reason, foreigners really love finding fringe activities in Japan, a country of more than 100 million people, and declaring these activities are “Japanese.” There is something fetishist and exploitative and weird about the relationship between foreign bloggers/YouTubers/journalists/etc and Japan that I find very disturbing.

numairon Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

So you’re stating that you have been involved in a situation in which a merchant account was frozen due to circumstances involving the Bank Secrecy Act? I just want to be completely certain that this is the assertion?

numairon Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

Unless you are a federal prosecutor, law enforcement officer, or bank executive that has actively worked on a Bank Secrecy Act case, I don't think you can authoritatively state that this sort of cowboy-style, "Move Fast and Break Things" way of blitz-scaling revenues while downscaling customer service favored by companies such as Stripe has ANYTHING to do with the Bank Secrecy Act.

If anything, I would bet that regulators would be concerned about the fact that companies such as Stripe have triggered a race to the bottom whereby underwriting has become an after-the-fact exercise that can severely damage and/or kill a high-growth SME. The old way, where you filled out a ton of paperwork, provided every bit of information possible about you and your business, and then went back and forth with a human to get approval, was a much more stable way to business. But alas, when you've got former bank governors on your payroll and political mega-PAC donors on your cap table, people don't scrutinize very much.

numairon Snap’s political data slip-up

https://www.vox.com/recode/23297459/axios-facebook-advertisi...

Axios receives direct financial and distribution assistance from Facebook, Snap's main competitor. Since Axios is such an ethical news outlet, they've certainly disclosed that somewhere in the intro to this article, right? Of course not...

(Disclaimer: Not a fan of any of the companies cited above.)

numairon Meta cuts Responsible Innovation Team

I think these sort of "Responsible Innovation Teams" and whatever else they are called are double-evil for various reasons:

1) They are literally created by these companies as a means for deflecting attention from the real problems that are occurring at a higher / hidden level. For example, these people have no idea that Facebook has actively lobbied to prevent countries from enacting a digital tax that would more fairly spread the tax revenue associated with profits generated in countries around the world. There's nothing these people would ever do about that in their "work."

2) The people who take these jobs are generally quite terrible. They are willing to accept a paycheck from a company whose ethics and tactics they supposedly find reprehensible. If we take their jobs at face value, they are paid to show up every day and hate what they see and criticize it. It takes a certain type of toxic mental state to find that appealing, regardless of how much money you're making for doing it. And, if you're motivated by money to take such a job, well... What does that say about you?

3) These teams spread the false belief that these companies are so big and powerful that you have to try to "fix it from within," rather than doing what we have done so well for so long in the tech industry: we've burned these empires to the ground and started all over, with something better/faster/[eventually] bigger.

4) People within the organization who know that these teams exist for regulatory / PR purposes think that they've been given cover to continue to act in shady and unethical ways. These sorts of groups perversely make it easier for the bad actors within these organizations to continue acting bad, and sometimes even act worse. Facebook and its current/former executives are the gold standard for this: the more you see "regrets," "internal dissent," etc, the more utterly depraved and shameless the behavior behind the scenes is.

In summary: Bad people working for bad companies that do bad things. Pointless jobs at best, a net negative at worst. These are toxic jobs that attract toxic people.

Thankfully, none of this really matters, because Meta/Facebook is slowly disintegrating and there's nothing Zuckerberg or anyone else can do about it.

(And before someone posts the inevitable "2 billion active users" response, do remember that these are network effect businesses in which the network effects need to be constantly replenished with new and exciting reasons to stay connected. If people are more excited to be connected somewhere else, you're dying. And, the sort of people who invent exciting new reasons to be connected don't work at evil corporations that silo "responsible innovation" off from the "real work.")

numairon Ask HN: YC misses that went on to do well (like veed.io)

The most amazing thing about this story is that Robert Morris, of all people, was the one who dismissed it as a spam company. Ironic, hilarious, something like that…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm

numairon Launch HN: Lion Pose (YC W21) – Safe and effective skin care for people of color

Is Hacker News turning into Product Hunt for YC, and is YC turning into a CPG incubator? If this weren’t a YC company, it would be flagged and voted off the site in an instant.

If this is the future of HN, there’s going to be a market opening for a replacement!

numairon A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

Aren’t there Chinese navy vessels running around that patch of the South Pacific?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian

I have a feeling the professor will be able to raise the funds he needs for his expedition.

numairon Coinbase is in deep trouble – and so is the SEC

Regardless of people’s opinions on crypto, they should be concerned that the SEC stood by and watched while billionaires and unsophisticated investors got together and pumped and dumped LUNA. And after the whole thing blew up, the SEC went after zero people and forced the billionaire promoters to disgorge approximately zero dollars in profit.

The SEC is a complete disaster. Time for a change in management.

numairon FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

This is dangerous political rhetoric which sets the stage for all sorts of tit-for-tat regulation that seeks to optimize for the protection of local companies (in this case, Meta/Facebook/Instagram, which have the world's largest face database and have consistently violated laws + lobbied against them).

Imagine what would happen if a Chinese regulator decided that Tesla's telematics stack was a massive national security risk? One random comment from some loser trying to build a political career (like this guy) and you'd see the stock go through a small crash.

The capture of American bureaucracy by paid interests is going to be the downfall of the country. Michael Lewis has been talking about this quite a bit recently, and will apparently make this the subject of his next book. I hope everyone reads it.

numairon 'Cryptoqueen' Ruja Ignatova added to FBI most-wanted list over OneCoin scheme

So Pulse is just one big Excel macro in the cloud…

numairon FCC commissioner wants TikTok removed from app stores over spying concerns

The headline is misleading. They’ve been asked by a Trump-appointed commissioner to “consider removing” TikTok.

I think TikTok is a giant human rights violation for being utterly stupid, but that doesn’t mean the arguments presented here make much sense. This comment is going to be fed as training data to some stupid AI to spit out comments that sound like I wrote them, which I find much more troubling from an intelligence community perspective. I never agreed to this when I joined Hacker News. TikTok users, on the other hand…

numairon Meta bans staff from open discussion of Roe vs. Wade

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-joel-kaplan-rallie...

Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the Facebook/Meta executive team are partly responsible for the reversal. No surprise that they don’t want their staff thinking a bit too much about this.

numairon SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

The fact that you’ve inserted “political” into a fact-based happened-or-didn’t situation says more about you, and your willingness to buy into people’s conspiracy theories, than anything about the situation.

SpaceX is operating in a highly regulated industry and shoving crap into space, which affects every person on Earth for the next several decades. They are way more accountable to society than almost every “multinational” you can think of.