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causalscience

218 karma · joined January 20, 2026

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causalscience··on Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
If they're actually self-driving they should be able to drive around the obstacles just as well or better than human.
causalscience··on TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues
That's because those people are all brainwashed.

They were told: buy guns because freedom, and they repeat "we buy guns because freedom".

Then they were told: never mind freedom, lets shoot this unarmed person, and they repeat "never mind freedom, shoot the person".

"we need our guns to protect our freedom against the government" idea could have some merit, but the reason right wingers say it is different. They say it because that meme has infected them, and uses them to replicate. A meme in the original sense

> A meme is a term referring to a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another.

causalscience··on TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues
The distinction between promotion and spam is solely that the promotion side can be entertaining enough that the users will willingly chase it.
causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
So what? Whether this matters depends on your threat model, but you present this as a universal concern. Yes, we know, and we use it appropriately.
causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
It's not a sock puppet in the usual sense. Every time I log in I create a new account, and it lasts until I get logged out for whatever reason. But I'm not having conversations between multiple accounts that I control, if that's what you mean.
causalscience··on Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux
The fact that you leave unsaved work overnight is the actual crazy part.
causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
"You have to use it correctly" is true for everything. Stop parroting garbage you read and exercise some critical thinking.
causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
I'd be curious as well, though I completely understand if they don't want to talk. Someone should write a book just listing the usual mistakes.
causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
> it'd be extremely non trivial

Extremely non trivial. What I'm hearing is "security by obfuscation".

causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
Sorry, I don't pay attention to anyone who disses PGP. I don't care if it's easy to misuse. I focus on using it well instead of bitching about misusing it.

If there's one thing we learned from Snowden is that the NSA can't break PGP, so these people who live in the world of theory have no credibility with me.

causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
Is that good? According to the wikipedia page it seems last stable release was 9 years ago. Is anyone using that? Last time I had a look at XMPP everybody was using OMEMO.
causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
Your point is correct but irrelevant to this conversation.

The question here is NOT "if Signal didn't leak your phone number could you still get screwed?" Of course you could, no one is disputing that.

The question is "if you did everything else perfect, but use Signal could the phone number be used to screw you?" The answer is ALSO of course, but the reason why we're talking about it is that this point was made to the creator of Signal many many times over the years, and he dismissed it and his fanboys ridiculed it.

causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
I have no idea if that was true 20 years ago, but it's not true now. XMPP doesn't have this problem; your host instance knows your IP but you can connect via Tor.
causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
Worse, I often wondered how some people collaborated. Now I know that many people would rather have a chunk of the population rounded up and killed than lose their job.
causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
This throwaway account wasn't created specifically for posting trolling comments, this is just my personality :-(
causalscience··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
I've been hearing for years people say "Signal requires phone number therefore I don't use it", and I've been hearing them mocked for years.

Turns out they were right.

causalscience··on House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs
Why am I a fanatic exactly? Do you not see people everywhere going around like zombies on their phones? I think that someone who sees that but still wants to do nothing because of a vague principle that someone talked him into, is the fanatic.

Ignore the other idiot. If you want to have a rational conversation I'm open.

causalscience··on Show HN: We Built the 1. EU-Sovereignty Audit for Websites
Happy to see mastodon.xyz score 100%.

Mastodon is pretty cool and proof that we can make federation work.

causalscience··on There is an AI code review bubble
> Then, going through their code, they make excuses about their code not meeting the same standards they demand.

Yes!! Exactly. When it comes to my PRs, he once made this snarky comment about him having high expectations in terms of code quality. When it comes to his PRs, he does the things he tells me not to do. In fact, I once sent him a "dis u?" with a link to his own code, as a response to something he told me I shouldn't do. To his credit he didn't make excuses, he responded "I could've done better there, agreed".

In general he's not bad, but his nitpicking is bad. I don't really understand what's going on in his mind that drives this behavior, it's weird.

causalscience··on House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs
I mean.. Tor isn't gonna help you if there's no computers. We already got smartphones banned from schools. Work in progress.
causalscience··on House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs
Ok, so an airport is a private business and it chose to put "hot water" labels on the taps, and therefore does not and could not by definition support calling the country in which it occured a "nanny state".
causalscience··on After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand
Exactly. That's why you see so many people say it works great. And the rest of us are like "am I the crazy one?" No, you just don't build CRUD apps.
causalscience··on There is an AI code review bubble
Yeah or worse like my boss. We don't have a style guide. But he always wants style changes in every PR, and those style changes are some times contradictory across different PRs.

Eventually I've told him "if your comment does not affect performance or business logic, I'm ignoring it". He finally got the message. The fact that he accepted this tells me that deep down he knew his comments were just bike shedding.

causalscience··on Over 700k (UK) graduates out of work and claiming benefits, analysis suggests
He probably did the calculation that 707 - 200 = 507 and 200/507 = 0.39 which is different from 0.46.
causalscience··on After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand
You're not crazy, I'm also always disappointed.

My theory is that the people who are impressed are trying to build CRUD apps or something like that.

causalscience··on House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs
Yo, I'm all for banning all of these companies from my country. That would be ideal.

But then you'll have HN: NOOOO it's not effective, people will just use VPNs nanny state! Oppression! Freedom of speech!

causalscience··on House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs
Well, we've tried your thing of letting these companies call the shots. Now we'll try my thing for a bit :-)

What's more hacker than experimenting to get the results you want?

causalscience··on House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs
If caring that people might burn themselves with hot water is nanny state, then caring that people might burn themselves with macdonalds coffee is also nanny state.
causalscience··on House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs
I'm in the UK and I've been involved in advocating for this.

I find it utterly frustrating to read the "think of the children" mockery here on HN.

I argue that this is good.

There's many reasons why children having unfettered access to the internet and different campaigners care about different aspects, so I'm going to talk about the one I care about: addiction, destroyed ability to focus, and dopamine desensitization. In the UK (and elsewhere in the world, I imagine) there's a huge problem with people addicted to phones and children are especially vulnerable. I don't care if adults are vulnerable, they have to make their own decisions. But I care that parents that do everything right in terms of educating their children on how to be healthy with respect of phones (like me and my partner) then have to send their children to schools where they're given ipads. It's not fair to say "banning doesnt work you should just not give your children phones", but then force you to send your children to schools that give them ipads and other distractions.

It's a matter of network effects (something that HN loooves talking about). In addition to the fact that phones are engineered to be addictive, you have the fact that in many schools EVERY child is on social media, and so any family that wants to stay away has to decide between isolating their child from society, or selling themselves into the "engagement industry".

I think that banning is a valid approach. It won't be 100% effective, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that it will introduce friction (another thing that HN looooves talking about) and so will reduce the total number on children that is on social media and therefore reduce the social need for other children to be in.

So, we're adding friction to break or weaken the network effects that keep these cancer companies harming children in schools.

causalscience··on France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.
Stop being reasonable!
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