Hacker News Reader

econon WebMCP: Teaching Your Website to Talk to AI Agents

Yes, and the form fillers are also terrible. I have and need a street and number field. Iphone puts the number behind the straatnaam and leaves the huisnummer field empty.

If enough websites have duplicate functionality it should most likely be implemented in the browser.

Let Mozilla or Alphabet define an API for country addresses and let national registers implement it.

Having some tiny website buy a db with an outdated version of ALL the worlds addresses is terrible. People with new addresses buy a disproportionate amount of stuff.

econon Supreme Court Allows Trump Plan to Restrict Mail-In Voting, for Now

It seems perfectly reasonable to be part of a people but not pay, not vote and not suffer the consequences.

As us citizens do have to pay taxes while enjoying limited benefits it would be much stranger to not let them vote.

econon Supreme Court Allows Trump Plan to Restrict Mail-In Voting, for Now

What does seem unique is the obligation to pay income tax living abroad.

It seems to make no sense to have a say if you aren't going to pay for anything.

My Aunt moved to Australia 60 years ago. She should vote how my tax is spend? She had a very busy life, she should make time to watch dutch propaganda TV? She also doesn't like the idea of being counted as someone who didn't vote.

We likewise have lots of immigrants who vote in their "home" country they don't live in or never did.

econon Supreme Court Allows Trump Plan to Restrict Mail-In Voting, for Now

If you have a task you might want to notice how your 200 coworkers and/or competitors are doing it and how it works out. You might be able to figure it out superiorly on your own but it's still a waste of time and you won't even know you've done well.

The us probably has wonderful data on the full spectrum of tools to manipulate elections.

econon The Iran War Is a Whole New Level of Quagmire for the US

The ruling class (both foreign and domestic) are struggling on many fronts with the suppression of public dialog. HN isn't one of those places, here you can just press a button a few times ~ and the uni-party will come out victorious once again to bring the world another round of the same earth shaking bullshit.

econon Someone is running mass vulnerability scans, spoofing AI bots like ClaudeBot

Before you can hack a static website you first have to realize it is one and you need the motivation to do so.

My "audience" is motivated by it being very outdated software. If non of the exploits work they will think I've patched everything.

There must be more interesting targets out there?

If you are capable enough to hack appache the choice of target makes no sense.

My best security layer is that one first has to even find my websites. If you do there are plenty of better targets among them. From the business end however the most secure look the least secure.

It's a shared hosting account, if I try to send bulk email they will immediately unplug it.

That leaves only the glory of pwning the last instance of some obscure cms?

It would probably make me laugh? Everything will be back up within a week. Nothing of value is lost.

econon First human trials of designer protein therapies stun US neuroscientists

Your use of "Printing" before the edit had me wonder. Rapidly growing population under a one child policy? Comparable to India? How?

econon Apple proposes to take a 15% cut of purchases made outside the App Store

At work we have a phone used for a specific app. Rarely someone uses it for things that would build a targetable audience.

I play a long YouTube video (AI slop) on it and the low profit ads are both frequent and very long.

I just left it playing and didn't bother pressing skip. I'm 99% sure now the timer for the next add starts when the previous ad block starts. It runs ads for 2-10 minutes then plays only 20-30 seconds of video!

I Google for expensive products and services on my own phone. I play the same video and get one ad every 5-20 minutes. Sometimes it's just one short ad.

The moral of the story. If you are a good boy and buy all the subscriptions your time is more valuable and we won't have to bother you non stop.

econon Apple proposes to take a 15% cut of purchases made outside the App Store

You do want the window to open in the drive thru now don't-cha?

econon The TEMU-Fication of Software, Digital Goods and Services

Haha, and the way Chinese economics are described here shows what little people know.

When they invited our professors in the 80s they came back arguing China will eventually be the future. They listened to everything and started working on everything immediately.

We did the yes men privatization garage sale, gutted R&D, outsourcing, abolish education, housing, medical care. All that good stuff - but at what cost?

econon My Rules for Using Spreadsheets

You mean the second row right? Then i have to freeze the top row that isn't the top row?

I understand there is no way back but it was a poor design choice. If you see a table on a website no one would put the alphabet in the top row. That you get a thousand columns by default also is a poor choice.

The thing is supposed to be data entry, organisation, presentation, calculation and data storage in one. Very ambitious, not a bad result but also not good at any of it. It makes relatively simple things terrifying lol

econon My Rules for Using Spreadsheets

While putting formulas in cells is confusing a single use script somewhere on the file system is also terrible and looking at it isn't all that obvious what is going on either. If you put everything in a db you need the ancient art of SQL Kung Fu. Great if you can, to bad if you can't. I like joins, it instantly confused the hell out of the uninitiated. You can make the query complicated enough that even a seasoned champion needs a warm up before lifting.

I remember my first thought looking at excel. They force name and number everything which is exactly like using single letter variables, they are only allowed for simple things. Using row numbers is even worse. Each additional col of numbers makes it harder to find things and it invites mistakes.

I'm not complaining, each solution survived because it has great advantages. JSON and XML have their place too ofc.

My gut says that after learning the advantages and disadvantages we should be able to make something better.

I put CSVs in html documents, use JS, run from the file system, output is CSV usually. I haven't tested the limit of html files but if you put a comment at the bottom the rendering engine ignores it efficiently.

One more bad solution for your collection.

econon Bike Bureau: Report Bike Lane Obstructions

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/s/n1qmL52YtN

lol

econon Vibe Coding Interview

I write almost everything from scratch, around 2020 I chat with a 13 year old on irc who tried to familiarize himself with 3 api, frameworks or modules per day. A bad day was only 2. He did that since he was 9, he had perfected the art of asking for help. He showed many impressive things. Maps populated with data sets etc he asked what I was working on and suggested 3 tools to "save" me from having to write it myself. Much to my amusement.

I of course asked him what he did when something stopped working. Happened quite a few times, (no surprise with all the dependencies)

Well, apparently the solution is to delete everything and just start over!

He did report bugs but even when they started fixing them immediately it took much to long for his taste.

He managed to glue code the project before so it should be easier the second time.

Back in the main channel I joked for days with much sarcasm how the regulars pet projects were either already done or could just be glued together in a few hours. All this ambition lol just get it done already.

Now that everything is even easier with llms you should probably generate the backup versions with different dependencies in advance.

I'll just continue to write everything from scratch by hand without autocomplete like a senile old man but to each their own :)

econon Dutch Train Map Simulator

If the data gets hard to navigate on a phone.

I have a funny request laying around for a mobile version of a 5000 row 50 column table. It works on my phone but I have no idea where I am. Im thinking and testing all kinds of things but nothing looks nice and it doesn't feel pleasant.

But in most cases there is no excuse for it.

econon Someone is running mass vulnerability scans, spoofing AI bots like ClaudeBot

Humans never visit but I have some websites with ancient cms's. When I got bored playing with them I download the html, change the extensions to php and replace the site with a static copy. People then tirelessly try to hack it since they have laundry lists of known vulnerabilities. (Now that I think about it I regret not making the admin area public for added nostalgia.)

econon Controversial creators are benefiting from monetization programs run by Meta

They put you in several opposing camps. They identify the most insane content and show only that to everyone in the opposing camp.

No one cares if you clean up after your dog makes a nr 2. The anti dog poop people want to hear you don't give a fk and let Herman poop wherever he likes.

Similarly the dog owners don't want to hear you understand. They want you to talk about little poopers getting stuck in your barbed wire with razorblades.

econon Manus will return to operating as an independent company

Perhaps unfairly my interest suddenly dropped to zero when the acquisition was announced. The hype also seemed gone?

econon AI psychosis is the new leadership blind spot

I've thought about this (for laughs) for many decades (pros and cons) The further up the hierarchy the harder it gets to be in many places at the same time and to talk with everyone simultaneously. You get a level of abstraction (and a game of telephone) that might be worse than LLM hallucinations.

Being able to talk to the higher-ups directly 24/7 all at the same time and as much as you want would be a game changer.

econon Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)

The sad part is that, with the same formula, they could generate good ideas that also make them more rich.

econon Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)

That's quite funny. I recall several people not even responding but just silently staring at the proponent. Other bad ideas (like privatization) were adopted by repeating opposing talking points.

econon I stopped trusting USB-C cable labels and started testing them

Color coding seems good

econon 99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots

You can validate by repeating the work and sign your content.

The domain name system is now just a rent seeking scheme. It was great as a temp solution but over time it has deleted more content than preserved. I might in theory be billed for having a country name but I don't pay for a city, street name, house number or postal code. Online you should be able to move your widget shop to widget street. Can bill people who want to live on real estate street or used car street and/or set some requirements.

econon 99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots

I once discover you can put escaped XML or json in css content. The purpose was to have static data sets that work cross domain. No headers to configure no letting strangers run all you can eat malicious js on your site.

econon 99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots

They think scraping = money so you can just ask them to scrape (copy paste websites into a text area) and it will feel like payment.

econon AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog

You are thinking of something nice to have. At least half the idea here is that it would be nice not to have something.

Usually there are many buttons and links one wouldn't click on.

If authors can't resist having chunks of copy paste slop in the middle of their article they can do it in a way I don't have to see it.

They also get a fair opportunity to impress me with a prompt that looks interesting enough.

And they get to distance themselves from the idea that copying [say] a Wikipedia article into a blog posting is the same as writing something.

econon LLMs reward expertise

Im beginning to think buzzword bingo is a viable job interview method.

If you use the b words the LLM would be somewhat constrained to content that has them. If you don't use them it will use content that doesn't have them.

The company website (subject) will never become a static html document. If you request exactly what static html does it should probably point you to a wysiwyg website builder.

econon AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog

On the other hand, it could be great to have collapsed sections clearly marked as LLM with the name of the model, the prompt, the assumption the author somewhat checked it and didn't use it to write the article.

You can put it inline or at the end of the article: references, citations, further reading, "AI".

(It might also be the only way to stop training models on their own output)