Hacker News Reader

akudhaon Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits

Maybe they haven't learned anything. Or maybe they crunched the numbers and decided losing a percentage of users to piracy was worth the risk? The only thing that is crystal clear is the greed - no amount of money/profits will ever be enough.

As a user, probably the best thing to do is get a library card and read books published prior to 1980 or thereabouts. Much of the movies/shows produced these days is not that good anyways, and anything that is good gets canceled after a season or two

akudhaon Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy

Why is it tough to balance? There are ridiculously cheap ad ridden phones sold in Asia - it makes sense because ads subsidize those phones. How does it make sense to show ads in a $2000 phone, especially from a company that prides themselves for "taste", "courage" and a bunch of other buzzwords? And a company that is already far, far ahead of its competitors when it comes to profit margins in the smartphone business? I don't understand.

akudhaon Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU

India does the same. They try to be friendly (or at least on business terms) with as many countries as they can and stay out of global conflicts as much as possible. They were buying oil from Russia well after the Russia-Ukraine war started. It also worked well for India as they were able to get rock bottom prices.

From a purely economic standpoint, this would make sense. Not sure what to feel about the ethics of it though - at least part of the Russian war bill was footed by the money India paid for Russian oil. One can argue the Ukraine's problems are not India's problems. One could also argue it would be nice to not fund shitty wars, even a little, even indirectly.

Geopolitics is a complex subject I suppose, for a layman like me.

akudhaon Apple is no longer thinking different

I dunno, as a user I’d rather have the basics right first (longer battery life, no forced obsolescence, good UI etc) before having innovation. We already have enough good features, except many of them are frustrating to use. Might be a good idea to improve them first before adding more new stuff…

akudhaon Show HN: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021

Taking Netflix as example - it has been going downhill steadily, they have a habit of canceling good shows after one or two seasons etc. It is no wonder users get annoyed when they have to pay more over time, and get less for their money. Increasing prices is never going to be popular even when it is justified, but users are more likely to tolerate if the price increase comes with better features or at minimum, no drop in features/quality.

Another egregious thing these subscriptions do is all kinds of dark patterns. Making it super easy to subscribe but super hard to cancel, not informing before charging (how hard can it be to send an email "upcoming charge next week"), showing ads in supposedly "ad-free" services etc. All this just add to the frustration which leads users to cancel.

akudhaon Keep Our Servers Running

How do they handle AI slop? If they index AI generated articles, it is just not sustainable, right?

akudhaon Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

It is likely, never. When all of this happen, a not-so-insignificant percentage of population would still say "it is god's will" or "it is just nature" or "it is just cyclical" etc, will never acknowledge humans caused a big part of it. There is a well funded, well coordinated effort by media, politicians, pundits, businessmen etc that will make sure of it

akudhaon The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

The most dangerous part of this addiction is that it doesn't feel like addiction. Suppose we spend 4 hours in an afternoon consuming random content - starting somewhere on a Google search, landing on Wikipedia, end up reading dozens of articles on various topics in that 4 hours. Unlike alcohol or drugs, this is knowledge addiction - afterall, we learned about a bunch of things in those 4 hours, didn't we? We didn't spend any money (well, other than the laptop, electricity and internet bills), we didn't harass anyone (like alcoholics sometimes do) etc. Heck, we didn't even "waste" time like we think we do, when we play video games. So it feels somewhat better.

But, all that we learned in those 4 hours - is it really that useful? Some of it might be, lets say an hour of it. What about the other three? That could have been spent on something healthier - having fun with friends, play sports, or even just sleeping!

I understand the irony of typing this, but I too am in the same boat - consuming things voraciously, most of which is just useless knowledge, at the cost of relationships, health etc.

akudhaon Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

Setting ethical and moral questions aside for a second:

Never pay a human again

Every time I see stuff like this (along with other more serious shenanigans like wage theft, union busting etc) I only ask myself the same question again and again - what is the end game here? If much of the population is too poor to buy anything, too sick to consume much etc - who is left to buy anything at all? If all their power comes from their wealth and if that wealth is threatened because consumers are too poor to buy, then what happens? Someone has to buy for the system to work, no?

akudhaon AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

Amazon has been getting bad press for years now - union busting shenanigans, poor working conditions, low quality products, customer reviews being gamed etc. Why would they care? Unless bad press directly and measurably affects their bottom line, they wouldn't care. Just this week there was news about a massive datacenter they are planning whose power generators would become single biggest polluter in the country, if it gets built.

If they ever cared enough about bad PR, they have much bigger items to think about, like the proposed data center. Rare books probably wouldn't even make it their top 5 bad-press list

akudhaon Ask HN: If you're burning tokens at scale, what are you using them for?

Interested in this kind of work. How did you get into this niche?

akudhaon Hello, me. It's been a while

I just love silence.

I am just like you, but my guess is most people are not in this category. I also like empty space - no matter how big my living space is (not that it is big), I hate to fill it with things I don't need. Perfectly happy with just keeping only those things I need and leave the rest of the space empty. In this too, I have noticed, I am in the minority.

Not saying one is better than the other. If people like sound/noise, it is their choice. That said, people who like silence are at a disadvantage, as silence is becoming rarer and rarer, whereas noise is everywhere. At minimum, it would be nice if people put their headphones on and not bother others...

akudhaon Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities

I wonder how much of these architecture, building etc decisions are because of higher percentage of aging population. In the west, we see more anti-homeless designs (spikes, removing benches in train stations etc) which is sad

akudhaon LLMs reward expertise

I don’t understand why this is such a revelation. Anyone who has listened to a good/great interview knows the skill of the interviewer plays a big part. To ask good questions, to understand what the other person is saying (AI or human) - that requires skill, expertise and patience.

Someone with less skill or expertise might still get good results, sure. It would just take longer and it wouldn’t be pretty

akudhaon Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

Genuinely curious - why is photographing FIFA World Cup important? It is a very wildly watched event, extremely popular. Literally every for-profit media is going to cover it.

Wouldn’t that money be spent on lesser known, lesser popular events? Or even projects like photographing the effects of climate change etc - the events that for-profit media is unlikely to cover?

akudhaon What happened to TheNumbers.com

It does make sense. When podgietaru wrote their doo-dad programs, I guess they made their work available for humans to use and they didn't mind giving their work away for free. Some other person might say "I'm giving my work away free, I don't care if humans use it or AI, for any purpose". Both are legitimate choices, each according to their own.

As for "everyone benefiting from training data" - sure, but the AI companies are not investing Billions of dollars out of the goodness of their hearts, it is towards one and only singular goal of making profits (at some point). People might be sympathetic to these AI companies if they at least behave decently - they take everyone's work (text, software, fiction, music, images, videos...) without paying a penny to anyone. If they take everyone's work for free, they should give away anything that is built on that work also for free. This is before we even get to environment, privacy, hammering sites by not respecting robots.txt etc issues.

If I stole all veggies from your garden but spent time/money/effort making a meal, I should at minimum share it with you for free, no? Even if I spent my own money making the meal, it was made from stolen raw material...

akudhaon I Reported on Flock's Cameras. Now I'm One of the System's Mistakes

unless maybe they are democratically controlled with strict oversight and transparency

Lets say it is strictly controlled today. What about in six months? What about next year, 2, 5, 10 years from now? There is no guarantee that strict controls that work today will work tomorrow. The only thing that is guaranteed is it will be abused by someone, at some point, even if it is miraculously tightly controlled today (which itself is not true, as we see from number reports of abuse already).

The only way to prevent data abuse is not to collect un-necessary data in the first place

akudhaon Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

If it is any consolation, this kind of corruption exists in many countries. I don’t know how to fix this, but corruption always finds creative ways.

Here is one I learned recently - govt started issuing birth certificates online. Hopefully Less corruption, right? Officials made deliberate spelling mistakes in names etc, because you have to go in person for corrections. In person means bribe, which means back to same situation as before (almost)

akudhaon Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

If a human’s performance for 40 plus hours a week can be reduced to a performance score, that too in a field like healthcare, that alone feels weird. Sure there needs to be some way to reward people/evaluate their work etc, but I dunno if management by metrics is the best way, especially when those numbers are calculated by an algorithm.

Where has all the empathy gone? And common sense? :(

akudhaon AI 2040: Plan A

I don’t get the appeal of golf. Hitting a ball into a hole with a crooked stick? But hey, that is just my personal preference. People can play whatever sport they want, or do whatever they want and call it a sport.

That said, it would be nice if the so called sport didn’t take so much land, water etc. Especially in prime locations

akudhaon And Then the Billionaire Paid Off $550 Million of Our Debts

There was a post (on Reddit I think, so take it with a grain of salt) - someone mentioned they paid $300 to a student loan, out of which only $68 went to the principal, everything else went to the interest. Kinda looks high, but I haven't had a student loan, so not sure. I have seen many similar posts though.

So yeah, it would be a better use of the money to work on the root cause of the problems. It is also a bad idea to depend on the largesse of the ultra wealthy, for issues like this - just how many people can they help, and for how long? If the article is correct (It's one thing to say you've donated a quarter of your wealth, but a whole other thing to say you've donated 0.27% of your money.) then it even looks like a PR stunt than a genuine desire to help

akudhaon Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

Do you mean purely socially? That is very subjective

True. I remember walking the streets of NYC with a friend. We played a game, if we hear anyone talking, we'd try and identify the language. In less than 20 minutes, I think we counted like 10, and they were only the ones we were sure of. That level of diversity is possible only with immigration.

Some people might be good with diversity. Some people might hate it. Immigration is a complex, nuanced topic. Personally, I am in the camp of letting people move around freely (as long as they are not doing crime and are being respectful to locals). This is 2026, we can fly from one corner of the world to another in 24 hours. We are more dependent on each other than ever - so why not let people move freely too?

But I also realize some people might not want immigrants, there are people who don't even want tourists (and tourist money)

akudhaon Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

All this discussion makes me wonder - is there any country an immigrant can move to, and better their lives as well as the locals' life/economy? Assuming the immigrant makes every effort to integrate (learning the language, respecting local people/customs etc).

It seems the world is turning hostile to immigration in general - or maybe it is just the impression I get from the media? I don't know for sure.

akudhaon Zuckerberg's war on whistleblowers

My guess would be - there is way more primitive explanation than setting an example etc (which is also a good reason, from their point of view). It is just plain ego and pettiness - we see it everywhere, even from a manager who has 3 people reporting to him. Why else would Zuck cheat on a board game, of all things? That too in private?

It might just be as primitive as "I have more money than God, therefore I am better than everyone else, nobody dare to challenge/disrespect me even in the slightest". Blind rage can make people do things that they themselves can't understand

akudhaon Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95

lol, getting paid for nothing. Highest levels of capitalism

akudhaon Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

He/She is literally talking putting food on the table and yet you are interpreting it as superiority complex. I am not sure if we are even reading the same comment here.

Also, competition in itself not bad. It does mess people's livelihoods when competition is sudden and massive - he/she mentioned 5x increase in competition in 6 months. That is too much, too fast, it is not easy navigating/surviving it

akudhaon Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

Isn’t this a universal problem though, not just software industry? Even at home, if one kid just does his thing quietly but another kid is difficult, what do we say? “John has his problems but he is trying, we gotta encourage him”. While his brother gets no praise or attention for just doing his thing quietly without fuss.

When things run smoothly, very few people notice. When things break, everyone notices

akudhaon Core PPI up 9.6% annualized (0.8% MoM) in May

Exploiting wedge issues is how the game of politics is played, isn't it? This has been the playbook forever. Find (or create) an enemy (real or imaginary) and rally supporters against them and keep the wedges/enemies in place, so it can be exploited forever. This is true nearly in all democracies. It would be nice if it wasn't but somehow politics generally seems to attract/promote the worst people in society.

It is upto to the voters to see past this.

akudhaon Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

Looking at the world cup ticket prices gives me a mini heart attack. I don't know who is responsible for such high prices (maybe a combination of FIFA and Ticketmaster?), but goddamn these prices are insane. It is going to price out most people. Either that, or people are going to get into debt, just to see a couple of matches to see their favorite teams play.

akudhaon Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

Isn’t the costing money part true for other sports too, in the U.S? I remember there was a report on how much it costs for kids to play sports (more perfect union video, I think) and it isn’t cheap. It is made worse by (what else?) private equity