Hacker News Reader

timtom123on DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

Sorry, I can't say. I always stayed near the water for work as a dive master or ESL teacher, so I never made it to Laos.

timtom123on DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

Spent significant time in Vietnam & Cambodia & Thailand. Cambodia is a sad country full of desperate people. "less-policed" is the entire country. ~50 years since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide.

Vietnam was by far my favorite of the three and the contrast between the three countries is stark.

timtom123on Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

Might happen. I told my entire family I would not support their windows installs past 10 and 11 is full of spyware. Half bought a mac and half opted to install Linux. IF all you want to do is a browser. Linux is honestly very easy to use.

timtom123on Microsoft to Cut 9k Workers in Second Wave of Major Layoffs

It isn't just the $ savings. It is indentured servitude. I have more than one friend that quit the day they got their green card.

timtom123on Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work

This exactly, having ran very large scraping operations, it only takes a slight increase in cost to make it unprofitable for many use cases.

timtom123on Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work

Better suited for discouraging scraping. 2 cents * 300 scrapes = $6 although 2 cents is huge over estimation and you would probably not show this every time. Only when there is unusual traffic.

timtom123on Marginalia Search receives second nlnet grant

Great search engine. I use it daily via SearXNG and an API key. Maintainer is very friendly.

timtom123on Jensen Huang – Nvidia GTC 2025 Keynote

easy to do when you don't ship any cards :P

timtom123on What We've Learned from 150 Years of Stock Market Crashes

What did you have nothing but TBills, TIPS? Not quite sure what you have where you could just sell them. But, ya, bit silly as your money is still in USD. Nothing is happening to US bonds or there are bigger problems and all your investments are at risk.

timtom123on On Google’s Policy Change Towards Fingerprinting

Yes, there was a big one for FF in Oct https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-9680

timtom123on Deepseek: The quiet giant leading China’s AI race

I am not GPU poor and don't care about speed. I care about how good the model is which is much harder to measure and much harder to do. I have not seen many independent reviews. There are finally some coming out now but a lot of this is just marketing hype to drive attention. Every AI company does it.

timtom123on Orbit by Mozilla

Where is the source code for the extension itself?

timtom123on Orbit by Mozilla

I like yours better. I can't even find the source for Mozilla's and yours does not have google analytics.

timtom123on Deepseek: The quiet giant leading China’s AI race

So much spam around this model. LocalLLaMA is stuffed with spam posts and even hacker news is getting spammed. Who has actually ran this model and verified performance? Does anyone know of a decent review from a trustworthy source?

timtom123on Judge Blocks Kroger-Albertsons Mega-Merger

Kroger is 7.3% & Albertsons is 4.5% according to GlobalData. Varies a little by source but that is approx correct.

But that misses the consumer picture, grocery is very regional and in many markets these two are 100% of offerings, hence why the deal required them to sell a bunch of stores.

timtom123on Judge Blocks Kroger-Albertsons Mega-Merger

This is great news! I live near Kroger HQ and have been following the case closely Both of these companies are in the S&P 500 and have plenty of negation power with suppliers without merging. Both are profitable companies. This was not a win for consumers and I am not convinced it was even a win for the companies themselves as it required them to give up ~10% of their stores.

timtom123on Pre-training a 15B parameter language model over the internet

I'm excited to test the final model. This could be a major breakthrough for open-source LLMs.

timtom123on EU AI Act is much worse than you think

It reminds me of encryption in 90s in the US. Motivation is different but I could see outcome being similar, driving development out of Europe. Interesting history read IMO: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab... & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

timtom123on OpenAI Pleads It Can't Make Money Without Using Copyrighted Materials for Free

I don't think so. People will just follow personalities not aggregators. I can go buy a Neal Stephenson and know it is not spam. I can watch Cody'sLab and no it is not spam.

By the web do you really mean google and FaceBook? Most of the channels/feeds I follow have not been flooded with spam. I am pleased that the large corporation content aggregators are struggling. It isn't like they produced content themselves anyway.

timtom123on Toyota bets big on hybrid-only models as EV demand slows

45mi drive to work so 90 round trip. There is no way to charge there. Most weeks will be 4 days 90 miles (WFH Friday). So, less than 60% but similar ballpark.

Circuit breaker is in the garage so not too hard to modify but sounds like I do need 240V if I want to get an EV. Thanks.

timtom123on Toyota bets big on hybrid-only models as EV demand slows

Running it through a calculator, I am getting 24 hours on a standard 120V 15AMP socket. from 20% to 80% on a Model 3 2024 Tesla. I am using calc at https://evadept.com/calc/ev-charging-time-calculator

So I can charge in my garage but only if I upgrade to 240V?