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jkaplowitz

4,179 karma · joined September 10, 2017

SRE/ops person, some cloud and container experience, getting my bearings as a new people manager, aiming to be a good ally to marginalized groups.

Some current affiliations: Debian, OFTC Some past affiliations: Hopper, Plotly, Etsy, Google, Brown University Other things I like: Germany, Montreal, NYC, board games, tabletop RPGs, languages, law, tax, politics, economics, business, HR

Unless otherwise explicitly stated, I am speaking only for myself, not for any employer or other group.

You can reach me at: jimmy+hn-inquiries@kaplowitz.org

submissionscomments
jkaplowitz··on MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID
It says that about the C2PA content credentials metadata, but not about the modified image pixels.
jkaplowitz··on MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID
As the article explained, the EU does not mandate a prompt-specific GUID, only the ability to identify the content as AI-generated. The highly privacy-invasive level of provenance tracking which Microsoft has added goes beyond the EU’s new mandates.
jkaplowitz··on Thinking in Python
Me too, one year before you. A classic.
jkaplowitz··on Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code
They just launched it in the USA a couple of days ago! Link to HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344811
jkaplowitz··on Tracking down the 16-year-old WAL-reset SQLite bug
Tailscale is Canadian, headquartered in Toronto.
jkaplowitz··on Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc
No GitHub at all?
jkaplowitz··on US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
Generally yes, unfortunately, with very narrow exceptions. Not all countries follow this rule, but the US does, and it’s certainly not alone in this respect.
jkaplowitz··on Kill The Cookie Banner
The GDPR doesn’t allow opt-out consent to count as consent. The only consent it recognizes as valid consent is opt-in.

However, since we are discussing the banner that The Guardian website shows to US viewers, I assume they’re trying to comply with California privacy law, which does allow opt-out regarding the sale of personal information.

jkaplowitz··on Supreme Court strikes down limits on party spending in federal elections
> Platner is. Not sure if you count him as a politician.

At minimum he's a politician between now and the end of the Senate election, and of course longer if he wins.

jkaplowitz··on Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure
> We haven't tried in a generation.

Longer than a generation if you include the Congressional stage of the process as part of the attempt - the last time Congress sent an amendment to the states was in 1978.

Yes, an amendment was ratified as recently as 1992, but that amendment was approved by Congress all the way back in 1789 (!) along with ten other amendments which we now know as the Bill of Rights and one additional amendment that has still never been (and probably won't ever be) ratified. The story of why that ended up getting ratified in 1992 is quite interesting, but it has nothing to do with how to get new amendments through Congress these days.

jkaplowitz··on The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party
In other words, give labor the same mobility as capital. Nothing inherently unreasonable about that.

Note they say “to seek employment” and “without restrictive border controls”, not “for any purpose” and “without border controls”. This does not mean they’re advocating to let in convicted murderers or people who just want to migrate for welfare benefits. Calling it “open borders” is an exaggeration in absolute terms, though it is for sure accurate as a relative comparison to what we have now.

Also, their political party, as such, is the Democrats. DSA is not a political party. But yeah they are members of DSA as well as being Democrats.

jkaplowitz··on Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
Oh yeah, I'm referring to external launches, not to internal launches.
jkaplowitz··on Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
> does Google have strict procedures (and approvals) before launching a product?

I worked at Google in the past, most recently ending in early 2015, and can confirm that the answer to this question was yes when I was there - presumably still the case today with different details.

I have no idea whether the procedures were followed in this case, nor do I have any other inside information on this story, nor am I speaking for Google or Alphabet here.

jkaplowitz··on LLMs Are Complicated Now
Adverbial clauses at the front of a sentence don't always have to have a comma. It's often taught this way to new English language learners or in style guides that want to keep things as unambiguous as possible because including the comma in that case is never wrong. But it's also sometimes optional.

Here is the Chicago Manual of Style's Q&A on commas: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/C...

One of the answers cites section 6.34 of the Chicago Manual of Style as follows: "Although an introductory adverbial phrase can usually be followed by a comma, it need not be unless misreading is likely. Shorter adverbial phrases are less likely to merit a comma than longer ones."

For the example we're discussing, "Back in 2022 or 2023", my personal instinct as a university-educated native US English speaker would be to include or omit the comma primarily depending on how much emphasis I want to put on the timing of my statement. I also know that I tend to write overly long sentences with too many commas, so sometimes I'd intentionally counteract my own tendency and limit the complexity of the sentence by removing a comma like that if the sentence still seems good without it. Other times I'd split the sentence into two, but my sentences rarely get as staccato as AI-written ones.

jkaplowitz··on LLMs Are Complicated Now
Leaving out that comma is not a grammar mistake. The comma slightly changes the feel of the sentence, but it's not wrong to include or omit it. But yeah, I agree with the other commenter that AI would be less likely than a human to omit the comma.
jkaplowitz··on Legislation Killed Would Have Effectively Blocked Police LPR, Including Flock
If they coupled strict speed limit enforcement with adjusting the legal limit to the speed at which people actually drive plus a tolerance buffer for speedometer variance, properly publicized the change with both road signs and advertising / media signs, and applied this change in a non-discriminatory way - then yes.

Certainly I wouldn’t support such strict enforcement with the current usual driver approach of aiming for a bit above the limit under good road and weather conditions, nor if applied disproportionately against less privileged people.

jkaplowitz··on Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare
> It seems disingenuous to suggest that the choices Trudeau made in his cabinet aren’t still being felt by the LPC and the rest of the country to this day.

I agree that would be disingenuous, but I never said that. Of course the choices made by every Canadian prime minister in their cabinet are still being felt by their party and the rest of the country slightly over a year after they leave office. Trudeau is no exception.

> Painting Carney as a progressive conservative doesn’t seem like a good faith position, I’m skeptical of your earnestness here.

It’s a very widely held position and widely discussed in many sources.

As one bit of evidence that he has some appeal to the conservative wing of the political spectrum, Carney himself stated in February 2025 that former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper had offered him the role of finance minister in 2012. The response by Harper-era staffers tried to make him look as bad as they could without lying, which is unsurprising treatment of a then-Liberal leadership candidate given how partisan politics works nowadays, but notably they never denied that what he actually said was accurate.

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-stephen-harper-...

jkaplowitz··on Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare
CCP allies paying to attend a fundraiser co-hosted by an MP who was a Conservative until December does not contradict my point about Carney being economically a Progressive Conservative. I’m not saying that either Carney or that co-hosting MP belongs in Pierre Poilievre’s version of the Conservative Party of Canada. Certainly Carney doesn’t (I don’t know much about the other MP’s views). I’m saying that if the former Progressive Conservative Party of Canada had not merged itself out of existence, Carney (and quite possibly also the other MP) would be in that party rather than the Liberals. With the current federal party configuration, Carney is indeed within the centrist big tent of the Liberals, but very much economically to Trudeau’s right.

To be clearer on the tangent I said was off-topic, I am not saying Carney is opposed to engaging thoroughly with China. He isn’t. But that’s more of a Conservative position than a Trudeau-style Liberal position.

Evidence: former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the one who signed a major free trade agreement with China which has a really long duration (for some purposes a full 31 years), which allows Chinese state-owned enterprises to sue the Canadian government like private investors, and which is in many ways asymmetrical in China’s favour. Not Trudeau. Look up 2014 FIPA if you want more info on that agreement.

The Trudeau quote you cited is real, but Trudeau’s actual actions have been far less pro-China than either Harper’s or Carney’s. Keep in mind that plenty of the criticism which Trudeau received over that quote came from within the Liberal party, meaning it isn’t like the Liberal party is disproportionately filled with CCP admirers. Some individuals will have that viewpoint in both major parties, but it’s certainly not accurate to say that it’s more dominant among the Liberals than the Conservatives.

Also be careful about assuming that the National Post will present things fairly. Like many (maybe even most?) well-known Canadian newspapers, they are part of Postmedia, which is majority-owned by an American financial firm with close ties to the US Republican Party. Their non-opinion news articles generally do avoid factual falsehoods, but they often use style and selective omission to present a very biased view of the truth in the service of right-wing messaging goals.

jkaplowitz··on Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare
You do realize that that former Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is not the Liberal leader who is currently pushing this bill, right? Justin Trudeau is now a private citizen with no official role in his party, in the House of Commons, or in government beyond what applies to any former leader/MP/PM (e.g. former PMs remain Privy Council members).

The current Liberal leader Mark Carney has spent his whole career in the banking world, including running both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England at different times, except for running for and winning his current political roles last year. Far from being elected again and again, he’s only been elected once ever in party office and once ever in public office.

Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau have very different policies on fiscal and economic matters, to the extent that Carney would probably be a Progressive Conservative if that party still existed at the federal level.

There’s more I could say about the substance of Trudeau’s remark and comparing his China policy to that ofnother PMs like Harper, but that whole tangent is off-topic for this thread, since - again - Trudeau holds no role relevant to current Liberal legislative decisions.

jkaplowitz··on Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?
Pretty sure the free limit is 5 GB, at least for personal Microsoft accounts, not zero.
jkaplowitz··on Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal email
That doesn’t disprove him at all: if the average one lasts 200 years and not all last exactly 200, then some will necessarily last more than 200. This is a mathematical consequence of what an average means.
jkaplowitz··on War in Iran exposes US's shift from a global guardian to an arbiter of chaos
Maybe avatar was meant instead of arbiter?
jkaplowitz··on Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
> generally speaking, gambling more than a token sum (say, less than $100) should not be legal exactly because any benefits of gambling is far outweighed by the mountains of externalities it brings. Yes, this includes the obvious incentives to threaten random people. It's bad for society, so it should be effectively banned.

I agree with you in theory, but remember that people frequently do illegal things, just illegally. If we assume that people will in practice gamble whether or not it's legal, I'd rather the gambling not be run by organized crime free from the ability of everyone else to oversee and regulate. That would be the same thing which happened with alcohol during Prohibition and which happens now with the many illegal drugs fueling today's Mexican cartels and US gang networks.

> The only reason why it has suddenly become legal everywhere in the US is because many states have found themselves under mountains of deferred liabilities and are scrambling to raise revenues however they can without raising taxes.

And because of a SCOTUS ruling overturning a federal prohibition on states' ability to legalize sports betting, but otherwise yes.

jkaplowitz··on C++26: The Oxford Variadic Comma
Hats off for using "..." in your comment immediately after a valid identifier word and with no comma in between, given the topic of the article.
jkaplowitz··on Shall I implement it? No
At least if this "Store cookies?" question is implicitly referencing EU regulations, those regulations don't require consent for cookies which are considered essential, including a cookie to store the response to the consent question (but certainly not advertising tracking cookies). So the respectful replacement for "Ask me again" is "Essential cookies only" (or some equivalent wording to "Essential" like "Required" or "Strictly necessary"). And yes, some sites do get this right.
jkaplowitz··on Wikipedia was in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise
Yeah, but the purpose of an encyclopedia like Wikipedia (a tertiary source) is to relatively neutrally summarize the consensus of those who spend the time and effort to analyze and interpret the primary sources (and thus produce secondary sources), or if necessary to cite other tertiary summaries of those.

In a discussion forum like HN, pointing to primary sources is the most reliable input to the other readers' research on/synthesis of their own secondary interpretation of what may be going on. Pointing to other secondary interpretations/analyses is also useful, but not without including the primary source so that others can - with apologies to the phrase currently misused by the US right wing - truly do their own research.

jkaplowitz··on We Will Not Be Divided
> Well tweets aren't legally binding

There's nothing in general about a tweet that makes it any more or less legally binding than any other public communication, and they certainly can be used in legally binding ways. But sure, a simple assertion to the public from the CEO of a privately held company about what a separate contract says is not legally binding - whether through tweet, blog, press release, news interview, or any other method.

jkaplowitz··on OpenAI reaches deal to deploy AI models on U.S. DoW classified network
Nobody was advocating for zero AI in the military - certainly not Anthropic. They were fine with all lawful US military use cases except for two: the mass domestic surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons. Whether you agree or disagree with their particular red lines, that's quite far from them trying to keep their product out of the military.
jkaplowitz··on Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books
True, I was only arguing against something that you seemed to me to have implied, not anything you outright said.
jkaplowitz··on EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity
Would the liability shield not generally apply to a foreign entity registered in Germany? Sure there may be special rules for non-compliance with specific tax obligations, but I'm talking about for general liability for other purposes, like a contract signed by the entity where no personal guarantee was given, or a harm caused by the corporation where the owner was not personally involved or negligent in causing the harm.
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