Hacker News Reader

mil22on Brent Crude hits $119.56/barrel peak today

Spot on (pun intended). This guy knows the oil markets.

What's your take on the probability of a recession given the oil price shock and currently high interest rates? Historical parallels do not look good.

mil22on Brent Crude hits $119.56/barrel peak today

The actual real world price for immediate delivery is called the spot price. The price of the future is just the price for a contract to have it delivered on a certain date.

Spot prices: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_spt_s1_d.htm

Futures prices: https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/

mil22on Fidelity Won't Let Fund Holders Donate to Southern Poverty Law Center

It's truly a sad reflection on the state of our government that when I read the DoJ's press release about these charges, all I could think is that the charges are probably not legitimate and are instead politically motivated. This administration has no credibility left whatsoever.

Then to see Fidelity take a political stand - well, given my terrible experiences with that company, I can't say I'm surprised.

mil22on Another supply-chain attack: elementary-data Python package compromised

Their official security incident report: https://www.elementary-data.com/post/security-incident-repor...

mil22on US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

So crypto fraud gets deprioritized, with cases like the one against Nader Al-Naji dropped entirely, while Trump and his family profit massively from crypto and corruption themselves.

Yet prediction market fraud is made an enforcement priority, except to say that nobody close to Trump's own cabinet will be prosecuted - the little guys will be made an example of to make it seem like those at the top are taking the moral high-ground. "Every accusation is a confession."

I think we all can guess at the truth here.

mil22on UK Biobank health data keeps ending up on GitHub

The irony is, they don’t even provide the data to the participants themselves.

mil22on Claude Code to be removed from Anthropic's Pro plan?

Seems we were both right: https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2046740759056162816

"Codex will continue to be available both in the FREE and PLUS ($20) plans. We have the compute and efficient models to support it."

Both the compute, and the efficient models.

mil22on Claude Code removed from Anthropic's Pro plan

Equally, will offering a presumably unprofitably large quota of Codex tokens at $20 to retain non-enterprise customers turn out to be the right move for OpenAI?

Would not be surprised to see OpenAI follow suit.

Or perhaps OpenAI's LLMs are just so more compute efficient that they can actually offer that sustainably...

mil22on Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs

Ah yes, AirBnB, the company that famously hacked Craigslist to achieve viral growth by using a bot, crawler, scraper and definitely automated means to access and collect Craiglist's data and other content from and otherwise interact with the Craigslist platform.

mil22on Running Gemma 4 locally with LM Studio's new headless CLI and Claude Code

For those wondering how to do this:

  OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH=64000 ollama serve

or if you're using the app, open the Ollama app's Settings dialog and adjust there.

Codex also works:

  ollama launch codex --model gemma4:26b

mil22on Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

Yes. Even companies like Google have had plenty of scandals involving senior leadership. I've personally heard more than a few that are not public from people with direct knowledge. The difference is that some companies and executives are simply better at containing the fallout, suppressing what gets out, or cultivating such a polished public image that allegations seem implausible because they clash so sharply with the persona they project.

If you're considering working for a billionaire, choose carefully whose fortune and influence you're helping expand. Caveat emptor applies to employees as well. Or even better, don't work for one at all.

mil22on Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

It's a great read. Here are some of the most salacious bits.

---

She details the bizarrely intimate demands former COO Sheryl Sandberg placed on her young, female assistants - including demanding the author get into bed with her on a private jet:

"Sheryl recently instructed Sadie to buy lingerie for both of them with no budget, and Sadie obeyed, spending over $10,000 on lingerie for Sheryl and $3,000 on herself. ... 'Happy to treat your breasts as they should be treated,' Sheryl responds. ... Sheryl responds by asking her twenty-six-year-old assistant to come to her house to try on the underwear and have dinner. Later the invite becomes one to stay over. Lean in and lie back."

---

Facing open arrest warrants from the South Korean government over a regulatory dispute, Facebook's leadership team (including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg) realize it is too legally dangerous for them to travel there. So VP of Communications Elliot Schrage proposes a sociopathic solution:

"It’s breathtaking to me, how casually leadership speaks of employees being jailed. As if it’s a fact of life like taxes...

'We need to get someone to test the appetite of the Korean authorities for arresting someone from headquarters. It can’t be someone located there. They need to fly in before Mark and Sheryl do. You know, a body,' Elliot states matter-of-factly. The room falls silent. It’s a weird thing to realize that the tech world, this most modern of industries, has cannon fodder."

---

A woman suffers a severe medical emergency in the middle of the open-plan office while everyone just keeps typing:

"She’s foaming at the mouth and her face is bleeding. She must’ve hit something when she fell from her desk. And she’s being completely ignored. She’s surrounded by desks and people at computers and no one’s helping her. Everyone types busily on their keyboards, pretending nothing is happening.

'Are you her manager?' I ask a woman at a nearby desk who seems to be studiously concentrating on her computer, while a woman convulses in pain at her feet. 'Yes. But I’m very busy,' she says brusquely. ... 'She’s a contractor. I don’t have that sort of information. Her contract’s coming to an end soon. I suggest you call HR.'"

---

She uncovers secret internal documents detailing Mark Zuckerberg's master plan to get Facebook into China:

"But the thing that gets me is where Facebook’s leadership states that one of the 'cons' of Facebook being the one who’s accountable for content moderation is this: 'Facebook employees will be responsible for user data responses that could lead to death, torture and incarceration.'

... And yet, despite the fact that our employees would be responsible for death, torture, and incarceration... the consensus among Mark and the Facebook leaders was that this was what they’d prefer..."

mil22on Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

It's a good way to win market share and build goodwill, but one has to wonder whether this class of usage is marginally profitable for them (or anyone) and how sustainable their lenient policies will be for them long term.

mil22on Claude Code's source code has been leaked via a map file in their NPM registry

This isn't even the first time - something similar happened back in February 2025 too:

https://daveschumaker.net/digging-into-the-claude-code-sourc...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43173324

mil22on New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

This would be even more compelling if you included screenshots with magnified detail insets showing the text blur.

mil22on Telnyx package compromised on PyPI

https://docs.astral.sh/uv/reference/settings/#exclude-newer

"Accepts RFC 3339 timestamps (e.g., 2006-12-02T02:07:43Z), a \"friendly\" duration (e.g., 24 hours, 1 week, 30 days), or an ISO 8601 duration (e.g., PT24H, P7D, P30D)."

mil22on Telnyx package compromised on PyPI

For those using uv, you can at least partially protect yourself against such attacks by adding this to your pyproject.toml:

  [tool.uv]
  exclude-newer = "7 days"

or this to your ~/.config/uv/uv.toml:

  exclude-newer = "7 days"

This will prevent uv picking up any package version released within the last 7 days, hopefully allowing enough time for the community to detect any malware and yank the package version before you install it.

mil22on WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

If that's the way you see it, you are also free to do so. Labor is a market and the laws of supply and demand are at play just like any other market. Go start a company and hire some people. This is Y Combinator's Hacker News after all. The world needs more founders.

mil22on WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

It's not about whether rich people should or should not feel it. It's not about whether they should or should not be taxed heavily. This isn't a normative question - it's about incentives and mobility.

It's about what their alternatives are, where they choose to be domiciled, what job-creating businesses they take with them, and what effect that has on the state's economy over the long term.

As it is, California and New York have the highest income tax rates in the nation, and are both experiencing large net domestic out-flows. Florida and Texas have no state income tax and have been the largest net recipients of domestic migrants for several years.

mil22on Layoffs at Block

Yep, he hasn't changed. F*ck that guy.

mil22on Gemini 3

It's available to be selected, but the quota does not seem to have been enabled just yet.

"Failed to generate content, quota exceeded: you have reached the limit of requests today for this model. Please try again tomorrow."

"You've reached your rate limit. Please try again later."

Update: as of 3:33 PM UTC, Tuesday, November 18, 2025, it seems to be enabled.

mil22on The untold impact of cancellation

Absolutely, and to be clear, "this much damage" could have happened to anyone.

mil22on The untold impact of cancellation

You can have whatever opinion you want, but don't confuse "sounds credible" with evidence. From the sidelines, you don't know enough to judge either way. Saying "I don't know" is the only accurate position. Everything beyond that is just speculation - and speculation is exactly what keeps cancel culture alive.

mil22on The untold impact of cancellation

Oof. So much opportunistic grandstanding and virtue signaling in the comments there. I read for 5 minutes and didn't find even a single comment that expressed any uncertainty about the truth or accuracy of the allegations.

mil22on The untold impact of cancellation

A lot of works of fiction sound credible. Are you going to believe those?

You don't have all the information. You weren't there. You don't even know the people personally. You are not in a position to make any judgement either way.

Something sounding credible doesn't make it true. It doesn't automatically make it false, either. You don't have to believe the accuser or the accused. The only thing any of us should do is mind our own business.

mil22on The untold impact of cancellation

Ultimately, this reflects just terribly on the Scala community and every individual who signed the open letter, including Brian Clapper himself and over 300 others. You can read the full list of names here: https://scala-open-letter.github.io/

Having been in a similar situation myself as a teenager, it is truly abhorrent how quickly people are willing to jump to conclusions against someone based on the most limited information, and without giving the accused any chance to tell their side of the story or defend themselves. Not even a single one of my so-called friends asked me what happened, and almost all of them disappeared from my life permanently.

What I learned from the experience was that none of the people who jumped on the cancel bandwagon had ever been worth even a second of my time. It was their loss, and I became much more careful about who I choose as friends after that.

I can certainly say that if I encounter any of the 300+ individuals listed in the letter in my personal or professional lives, I will be giving them a very wide berth indeed.

mil22on The untold impact of cancellation

The logical consequence of this would be that all it takes to destroy someone's reputation is collusion between just two people who decide to make false allegations against someone. That is, frankly, ridiculous. Inadequacy of the justice system and the difficulty of prosecuting cases where there is a lack of (or in this case, no) evidence, doesn't justify abrogating the principle of "innocent until proven guilty."

mil22on Gemini CLI

Thank you, this is helpful, though I am left somewhat confused as a "1. Login with Google" user.

* The first section states "Privacy Notice: The collection and use of your data are described in the Gemini Code Assist Privacy Notice for Individuals." That in turn states "If you don't want this data used to improve Google's machine learning models, you can opt out by following the steps in Set up Gemini Code Assist for individuals.". That page says to use the VS Code Extension to change some toggle, but I don't have that extension. It states the extension will open "a page where you can choose to opt out of allowing Google to use your data to develop and improve Google's machine learning models." I can't find this page.

* Then later we have this FAQ: "1. Is my code, including prompts and answers, used to train Google's models? This depends entirely on the type of auth method you use. Auth method 1: Yes. When you use your personal Google account, the Gemini Code Assist Privacy Notice for Individuals applies. Under this notice, your prompts, answers, and related code are collected and may be used to improve Google's products, which includes model training." This implies Login with Google users have no way to opt out of having their code used to train Google's models.

* But then in the final section we have: "The "Usage Statistics" setting is the single control for all optional data collection in the Gemini CLI. The data it collects depends on your account type: Auth method 1: When enabled, this setting allows Google to collect both anonymous telemetry (like commands run and performance metrics) and your prompts and answers for model improvement." This implies prompts and answers for model improvement are considered part of "Usage Statistics", and that "You can disable Usage Statistics for any account type by following the instructions in the Usage Statistics Configuration documentation."

So these three sections appear contradictory, and I'm left puzzled and confused. It's a poor experience compared to competitors like GitHub Copilot, which make opting out of model training simple and easy via a simple checkbox in the GitHub Settings page - or Claude Code, where Anthropic has a policy that code will never be used for training unless the user specifically opts in, e.g. via the reporting mechanism.

I'm sure it's a great product - but this is, for me, a major barrier to adoption for anything serious.

mil22on Gemini CLI

Where did you find the terms and conditions for Gemini CLI? In https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/main/README..., I find only links to the T&Cs for the Gemini API, Gemini Code Assist (a different product?), and Vertex AI.

mil22on Gemini CLI

There is some information on this buried in configuration.md under "Usage Statistics". They claim:

*What we DON'T collect:*

- *Personally Identifiable Information (PII):* We do not collect any personal information, such as your name, email address, or API keys.

- *Prompt and Response Content:* We do not log the content of your prompts or the responses from the Gemini model.

- *File Content:* We do not log the content of any files that are read or written by the CLI.

https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/0915bf7d677...