Hacker News Reader

1970-01-01on A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

Carpenters? As in carrying around a framing hammer and nails? I'm not sure they have the right term here. I'm not familiar with these wooden datacenters.

1970-01-01on What's That Burning Smell?

The idea is your inline fuse overheats and melts instead of the entire controller turning into fire due to the heat cooking the plastic at the rail or terminal. It's a passive device for both overcurrent and overheating. Or just step into 2026 and use mag breakers, there are lots of DC breakers that do this: https://www.amazon.com/Miniature-Circuit-Isolator-Magnetic-D...

1970-01-01on What's That Burning Smell?

Inline fuses and breakers are a thing. Use them. Or don't. There's no electrical code in the middle of nowhere.

1970-01-01on The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

American money is fully metric.

1970-01-01on The only road in London where you have to drive on the right

London will switch sides when America goes metric - i.e. never.

1970-01-01on OpenAI, Anthropic Staff Share Letter Asking US to Help Pace AI Progress

We just did this in 2023. Remember OpenAI and their big hesitation on signing? Sam was fired..That was supposed to be a one-time thing. Asking for another pause smells very fishy.

1970-01-01on Una GPS smart watch – Repairable, USB-C charging, developer-friendly

When the port pins break and you have no way to recharge it until a new USB port arrives, yes.

1970-01-01on Una GPS smart watch – Repairable, USB-C charging, developer-friendly

How is USB a feature?? Everything done via USB-C can be and should be entirely wireless for a watch.

>Gone are the days of brand specific charging cables.

Returned are the days of worn-out, broken ports and searching for another charging cable.

1970-01-01on Free Formatter – Online coding tools website shuts down after 10 years

Salty man, have a drink. You have earned it.

1970-01-01on GrapheneOS Defends Data-Wiping Function That Blocked US Border Search

It's like this: The 5th protects your password, which protects your data, which is already protected by the 4th, but things happen, which is why we have the 5th after the 4th and the password. Agents shouldn't be able to just take your info on the spot, but if they try, you have the 5th amendment right to try and stop them. I'm not a lawyer, but I play one online.

1970-01-01on GrapheneOS Defends Data-Wiping Function That Blocked US Border Search

See also, 5th amendment. They can't just declare on the spot that your data is now their data.

1970-01-01on GrapheneOS Defends Data-Wiping Function That Blocked US Border Search

"defends" is doing quite a bit of flashy work for this headline. "Feature works as advertised, nobody upset" would be a much more practical headline.

1970-01-01on Our position on open-weights models

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) lapsed on June 12, 2026. They don't get to do anything they want.

1970-01-01on Our position on open-weights models

Godel numbering is banning a number. What are you talking about?

1970-01-01on Our position on open-weights models

Why wouldn't it be a scan, just as we have with all other open-source code? Why can't open-weight models be easily checked for evil alignment? Sophos, Symantec, Malwarebytes, etc. would surely leap at the chance to upsell you on their product.

1970-01-01on Exercise works for depression. So why isn't it treated like real medicine?

I've always thought the hard cure to depression was to rip the person completely away from their lifestyle and give them an entirely new, physically active job, witness security program style.

1970-01-01on AI companies are shredding rare books

They're destroyed for 3 reasons:

It is the cheapest way to get them scanned.

It is the fastest way to get them scanned.

It doesn't need to be safely archived for another century until it is resold to someone that has not yet been born.

1970-01-01on AI companies are shredding rare books

>And the judge said it's legal.

Was was the alternative? Order them to stop quietly destroying their property, it is making someone else very upset?

1970-01-01on We have proof automation now

Makes me wonder if we should just be dumping some tokens into decades and decades of stale code to formally verify and then Fix-It-Forever (TM) because the alternative is waiting around for it to be broken.

1970-01-01on Show HN: Comparing stock returns after cyber incidents

I was about to say the exact same thing! This could easily go 10x to 100x for better info.

1970-01-01on Fairphone 6 wide camera experimental Linux support

What are you talking about? Phones have been open for a very long time. Hundreds of thousands of Linux IoT devices are already on the air. Again, it is the Linux community that has never bothered to organize and put in the work to meet FCC and carrier standards for a consumer-grade phone. Here's v43 of the open guide that nobody from the Linux community wants to even begin working on: https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/open-access/arti...

1970-01-01on DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

     All Stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

1970-01-01on AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

The crux of the problem is models are not evolving anymore, they're iterating. Cheaper, faster, better. We're only seeing better, and that's because there is fierce competition with massive debt behind it. The "cheaper and faster" part is all taking place with local models. All of this adds up to a big red flag for a bubble.

1970-01-01on Understanding the AI Economy

Again, it isn't money if it isn't generally accepted. Crypto was forced to pivot into an exotic investment thing that works great if you already have "regular money" to convert and spend. It is not money.

1970-01-01on Fairphone 6 wide camera experimental Linux support

The phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" comes to mind. So what happened here? Shouldn't there be at minimum a framework for making a camera driver? Nope. They're gluing everything together and hoping it works.. Again. This is not standing on the shoulders of those that came before. It's the same issues year over year over year. It isn't trolling, it is calling out the highly non-optimal, "reinvent the wheel using these bits we have lying around" situation for getting things working.

1970-01-01on Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines

Very brave of publishers to hold their own content hostage against Google search. That's certainly one noble way to die.

1970-01-01on Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

Crypto failed and pivoted. One still cannot pay bills, taxes, buy medicine, transportation, etc. directly with crypto. It is fair to assume the same story will happen to AI.

1970-01-01on Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

One massive unmentioned counterexample: High quality Chinese tools continue to proliferate and sucker-punch these brands for being so egregious with quality. They are now the high quality standard if you know what brands to look for, and not because their competition got worse as mentioned here, they are simply iterating and improving and making better tools and designs than they did 10 years ago. Sometimes you are getting the exact same tool as the name-brand but with less warranty for a fraction of the price. "Corporate Greed" is self-correcting in a free and fair market! Vote with your wallet.

Example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/harborfreight/comments/1v1ujxe/hmmm...

Which directly contradicts the blog's post about Knipex never selling-out on quality:

https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-power-tools-got-worse-...

>Knipex is family-owned out of Germany. They make what many consider the best pliers on the planet. Part of a larger group (Knipex Group) but not publicly traded, not for sale.

1970-01-01on Everyone should know SIMD

It's not a nitpick. The undefined acronym problem strikes yet again. It is fantastic to never use to AI write your blog posts, but please at least have it read it once. It's literally free to catch these simple writing errors and improve your writing. Vis-a-vis:

     Everyone Should Know AI
     AI has a reputation for being complex. I've met many very good software engineers who dismiss it as something too complex to learn or a niche meant for only highest-performance, not useful everyday. I think that's wrong. AI can be simple to understand, and common AI editorializing can speed up a blog, and almost always follows the same general shape. Once you learn the basics, editorializing with AI is just easy. And when it's not, it's usually a good sign to skip it for now. Every developer should know at least that much AI.

1970-01-01on John C. Dvorak has died

https://www.pcmag.com/authors/john-c-dvorak

He went all-in on his takes. Most were on the money, some were big misses. He was very good at what he did. R.I.P.

https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/reddits-wild-west-experiment-...

https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/the-30-year-ai-scare-cycle

https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/the-dark-ages-of-search

https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/enough-with-the-3d-printer-hy...