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perihelions

42,477 karma · joined June 4, 2020

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perihelions··on Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only
"aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests"" is a direct quote from one of their top politicians. I'm not going to pretend I didn't read it.

There's foreign bad-actor misinformation in every country (Iran too!)—it's cynical, and specious, to say that excuses governments who take away their citizens' internet access. New Caledonia admitted specific intent to target "organizing protests". That's exactly the reason why they shouldn't have the power to cut off their internet (though really, no one should). They shouldn't be in that position of power over the protesting faction, because their disagreements are so strong that they can't help but abuse that power. They've delegimitized the protestors; by censoring them, they're not "protecting" them from foreign actors in some well-meaning paternalistic way (their rationalization), they are rather continuing their political battle by other methods.

It's an anti-pattern, all over the world right now, that groups of people who start off with irreconcilable political differences, devalue the legitimacy of the other group's speech and their right to speak it. One group calling another "mislead by propaganda" is an aspect of that delegimitization. This pattern needs to be called out and pushed back against, when it's used to rationalize silencing dissent.

perihelions··on Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only
An even more apt analogy is France in New Caledonia. Back in 2024, the French territorial government used an anti-terrorism law to enforce DNS blocks in that overseas territory, for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government).

> "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app."

[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/french-tiktok-ban-new-caledo...

This is the only example I'm aware of (are there others?) of a Western government effecting internet censorship to suppress protests. (Though the article also mentions Macron considering (but rejecting) the same idea in France, to suppress protests following a police shooting. See also[1])

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36599726 ("Macron floats social media cuts during riots", 105 comments)

edit: There was also an incident in San Francisco way back in 2011,

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879546 ("San Francisco Subway Muzzles Cell Service During Protest", 113 comments)

perihelions··on Man shot and killed by federal agents in south Minneapolis this morning
> "interesting new phenomenon"

Pardon me, but summary executions in the United States taking place in broad daylight, with seeming impunity, is very much a new and novel phenomenon, and incredibly interesting to many of us.

These are events of historic significance.

perihelions··on Man shot and killed by federal agents in south Minneapolis this morning
Here's the source for that one (just in case anyone is living under a rock or something),

https://www.startribune.com/border-patrol-greg-bovino-smoke-... ("A federal agent sprays a man being pinned to the ground by other agents following the detention of at least two teenagers in south Minneapolis on Jan. 21. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune)")

perihelions··on Man shot and killed by federal agents in south Minneapolis this morning
That's a summary execution in broad daylight. I have no words.
perihelions··on SEC obtains final consent judgments against former FTX and Alameda executives
> "Not sure what he would gain from that."

Besides the ~$1 million a head he's openly selling[0] pardons for?

Why wouldn't he pardon a white-collar felon fraudster? This president has pardoned dozens of those[1]—frauds who had no reason at all to be deserving of clemency, other than being incredibly rich. He's pardoned fraudsters who defrauded thousands of victims[2]. He's pardoned a fraudster convicted of fraud, who committed fraud again, and he pardoned them a second time[3]. There are no limits.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-presidential-pardo... ("Inside the New Fast Track to a Presidential Pardon / Lobbyists close to Trump say their going rate to advocate for a pardon is $1 million")

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executi... ("List of recipients of executive clemency from Trump")

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/politics/trump-david-g... ("Trump Frees Fraudster Just Days Into Seven-Year Prison Sentence / David Gentile had been found guilty for his role in what prosecutors described as a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of investors.")

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/us/politics/trump-fraudst... ("Trump Sets Fraudster Free From Prison for a Second Time")

> "The crypto community largely backed him in the last election"

Gee golly; I wonder why.

perihelions··on Viking Ship Museum in Denmark announces the discovery of the largest cog
More discussion,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46633574 ("Found: Medieval Cargo Ship – Largest Vessel of Its Kind Ever (smithsonianmag.com)", 54 comments)

edit: Also, I think this domain (medievalists.net) is suspect. This article has no author byline; and its text is highly similar to other published articles (like [0]), with only minor word changes. Here's an A/B of an excerpt:

> [vikingeskibsmuseet.dk] "Dendrochronological analysis shows that Svælget 2 was built around 1410 using timber from two regions: Pomerania, which is modern-day Poland, and the Netherlands. By comparing tree-ring patterns with reference data, researchers were able to date the wood and determine its origin. The planks were made of Pomeranian oak, while the frames – the ship’s ribs – came from the Netherlands. This construction pattern suggests that the heavy planking timber was imported, while the frames were cut locally at the building site, reflecting a practical approach and a complex trade network where large quantities of timber moved across Northern Europe."

> [medievalists.net] "One of the most striking results so far comes from dendrochronology (tree-ring dating). Researchers report that Svælget 2 was built around 1410 using timber sourced from two different regions: Pomerania (in modern-day Poland) and the Netherlands. The planks were made from Pomeranian oak, while the ship’s frames (ribs) came from the Netherlands—an arrangement the team interprets as evidence of complex material supply and specialised shipbuilding capacity."

[0] https://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/news/archaeologists-rev... (author byline Rikke Tørnsø Johansen)

perihelions··on Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain
> "think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing"

Anna's Archive made threats in writing to distribute, concretely and specifically, the plaintiff's copyrighted works as torrents.

perihelions··on TeraWave Satellite Communications Network
An even better source, imho:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/blue-origin-we-want-to... ("Another Jeff Bezos company has announced plans to develop a megaconstellation")

perihelions··on EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification
(Mercosur*, for "Mercado Común del Sur"[0]; Mercator was a geographer from the 16th century[1]).

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... ("Glossary:Mercosur")

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_Mercator ("Gerardus Mercator")

perihelions··on Vitruvius Basilica found after 500 years
This is a clear plagiarism of a Reuters article[0], which should be submitted instead.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/science/italy-uncovers-basilica-desi... ("Italy uncovers basilica designed by Vitruvius, the 'father of architecture'")

(edit: To be precise, it plagiarizes off of the London-based "Asharq Al-Awsat", whose English-language edition syndicates Reuters (legitimately). I'm inferring this because the thearchaeologist.org also clones al-Awsat's choice of hero image, and the idiosyncratic language in that image's caption. That image, in turn, originates (as attributed) in an Italian government press release[1]).

[1] https://www.regione.marche.it/News-ed-Eventi/Post/114291/Sco...

perihelions··on Palantir CEO Says AI to Make Large-Scale Immigration Obsolete

    character: l (displayed as l) (codepoint 108, #o154, #x6c)
    LATIN SMALL LETTER L
Why did you replace the "I" in "AI" with its homoglyph "l"?
perihelions··on Our approach to age prediction
Discussed here at the time,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45604313 ("Chat-GPT becomes Sex-GPT for verified adults (twitter.com/sama)")

perihelions··on Google co-founder reveals that "many" of the new hires do not have a degree
If you zoom out and look at the big picture, the whole article is little more than a summarization of a different article, published in Fortune.

https://fortune.com/2026/01/12/google-founder-sergey-brin-hi... ( https://archive.is/fefa9 )

If it is AI, this is the easiest type of AI content to generate: a summary of a small, delimited text corpus, with some generic filler added.

If it isn't AI, it's still nevertheless low-effort and (IMHO) doesn't belong on HN. The primary journalistic source (Fortune) should replace it.

Look at this before/after comparison, how lazily they (or it) paraphrased the source material:

> [Primary] "Between 2017 and 2022, the share of job postings at Google requiring a degree dropped from 93% to 77%, according to analysis from the Burning Glass Institute."

> [Derivative] "Data from the Burning Glass Institute shows that in 2017, degree requirements were part of 93% of job postings at Google. By 2022, that figure had dropped to 77%."

Or this:

> [Primary] "And Google isn’t alone: companies including Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco have reduced degree requirements in recent years, signaling a broader industry shift toward skills-based hiring."

> [Derivative] "Other large tech companies have also begun judging candidates by their abilities instead of their diplomas. Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco are among those dropping degree mandates."

perihelions··on LG UltraFine Evo 6K 32-inch Monitor Review
You misread the article; this is a $2,000 product. An unrelated 32-inch 8k monitor from Asus is $8,000—it's mentioned in passing to disclaim that the LG isn't, technically, the highest-DPI monitor on the market.
perihelions··on Level S4 solar radiation event
There's not that much they can do. It's often discussed that if the extreme August 1972 solar storm had overlapped with an Apollo mission (it didn't), it would have acutely sickened the astronauts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_1972_solar_storms#Human...

> "Had a mission been taking place during August, those inside the Apollo command module would have been shielded from 90% of the incoming radiation. However, this reduced dose could still have caused acute radiation sickness if the astronauts were located outside the protective magnetic field of Earth, which was the case for much of a lunar mission. An astronaut engaged in EVA in orbit or on a moonwalk could have experienced severe radiation poisoning, or even absorbed a potentially lethal dose."

The Orion capsule's contingency plan looks something like this:

> "To protect themselves, astronauts will position themselves in the central part of the crew module largely reserved for storing items they’ll need during flight and create a shelter using the stowage bags on board. The method protects the crew by increasing mass directly surrounding them, and therefore making a denser environment that solar particles would have to travel through, while not adding mass to the crew module itself."

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/orion/scientists-and-e...

perihelions··on Tell HN: The current top story on R/news is LLM slop
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this discovery. I noticed when this story was posted on HN earlier, that this "news" domain (thedefensenews.com) is an LLM product; and it hallucinates direct quotes from experts who do not exist.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260119203631/https://www.thede... ("Pentagon Places 1,500 Arctic-Trained Airborne Troops on Standby as Greenland Dispute Escalates")

I.e., a quote it attributes to a CSIS analyst, "A domestic mission provides legal cover to load aircraft, marshal equipment, and place units on short notice. The moment of truth is the flight plan", is actually unique to this domain.

And: "This is an Arctic hammer being readied for an urban nail" has no results anywhere else on the internet. Nor even just the substrings, "arctic hammer" + "urban nail".

The LLM nature is subjectively obvious, too, even without the verifiably fake quotes.

perihelions··on US Places Arctic Airborne Troops on Standby as Greenland Dispute Escalates
(Self-reply): This LLM slop is the current #1 story on r/news, if anyone else wanted to share in my abject despair at the state of AI disinformation.

https://old.reddit.com/r/news/

perihelions··on US Places Arctic Airborne Troops on Standby as Greenland Dispute Escalates
It's LLM-generated too. Not subtle about it either; besides being gross unreadable dreck, things it represents as direct quotes from experts are hallucinations.

I.e., the quote attributed (falsely) to a CSIS analyst, "A domestic mission provides legal cover to load aircraft, marshal equipment, and place units on short notice. The moment of truth is the flight plan", is unique to this domain.

And: "This is an Arctic hammer being readied for an urban nail" has no results anywhere else on the internet. Nor do the substrings, "arctic hammer" + "urban nail".

perihelions··on High-speed train collision in Spain kills at least 39
Just a few weeks ago, terrorists twice tried to sabotage rail lines in Poland, endangering a passenger train with hundreds of people.

> "[Prime Minister Donald] Tusk said that a military-grade C4 explosive device had been detonated on 15 November at about 21:00 (20:00 GMT) near the village of Mika."

> "The explosion, which happened as a freight train was passing, caused minor damage to a wagon floor. It was captured on CCTV."

> "Tusk said the train driver had not even noticed the incident."

> "A previous attempt to derail a train by placing a steel clamp on the rail had failed, he added."

> "The second act of sabotage, on 17 November, involved a train carrying 475 passengers having to suddenly brake because of damaged railway infrastructure, said Tusk."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gknv8nxlzo

perihelions··on Statement by Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands,Norway,Sweden,UK
[flagged]
perihelions··on U.S. Court Order Against Anna's Archive Spells More Trouble for the Site
> "used as precedent"

It's only a default judgement (Anna's Archive was a no-show in court), so I'd assume not. Since there were no lawyers arguing the defense side, the judge would have more or less rubber-stamped everything the plaintiff argued, without careful analysis.

perihelions··on Jeff Bezos Needs to Speak Up
Bezos also didn't speak up last year when AWS partnered with Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi monarch who ordered the torture and murder of a Washington Post journalist. So we can predict how this will go.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/13/aws-enters-into-strategic-...

> "Amazon says it will work with Humain, the AI company recently launched by Saudi Arabia’s ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, to invest “$5 billion-plus” in a strategic partnership to build an “AI Zone” in Saudi Arabia."

perihelions··on Cloudflare threatens Italy exit over €14M fine
Cloudflare PR seems to have handled this badly (judging by the fast shift in HN tone). DNS censorship is wildly unpopular. This should have been one of the easier PR jobs in the tech world: they were handed free positive publicity on a silver platter.

Heck, HN expressly called on Cloudflare to take up this exact fight[0]; and now that they have, they've still, somehow, managed to turn most of HN against them.

How is that even possible?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448112 ("Italy demands Google poison DNS under strict Piracy Shield law (arstechnica.com)"; 9 months ago, 175 comments)

Top-rated comment: "It's one of the rare cases where the sheer size and international influence of companies like Google and Cloudflare can actually do some good for the world by fighting back against such laws."

perihelions··on Cloudflare threatens Italy exit over €14M fine
More discussion,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46555760 ("Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines (twitter.com/eastdakota)"; 1104 comments)

https://xcancel.com/eastdakota/status/2009654937303896492

https://torrentfreak.com/italy-fines-cloudflare-e14-million-...

perihelions··on Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
> "Denmark would already be an even wealthier petrostate"

Denmark does not (since 2009) control Greenland's minerals, nor take revenues from resource extraction[0,1]; and Greenland's democratic government has in fact totally banned oil exploration[2].

[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-neglect-greenland-min... ("In 2009, Denmark handed Greenland's inhabitants control of their natural resources...")

[1] https://english.stm.dk/the-prime-ministers-office/the-unity-... ("Revenues from mineral resource activities in Greenland are to accrue to the Self-Government. Such revenues will have influence on the size of the Danish Government subsidy, cf. section below on the economic arrangement.")

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27871672 ("Greenland bans all oil exploration (cbc.ca)" (2021))

> "Global warming means that retreating ice could uncover potential oil and mineral resources which, if successfully tapped, could dramatically change the fortunes of the semi-autonomous territory of 57,000 people."

> ""The future does not lie in oil. The future belongs to renewable energy, and in that respect we have much more to gain," the Greenland government said in a statement. The government said it "wants to take co-responsibility for combating the global climate crisis."

perihelions··on Trump Is Risking a Global Catastrophe
Without login,

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/trump-greenland-ri... (?gift=...)

perihelions··on FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home
> "And what if something turns up which would retroactively justify it?"

US constitutional law prohibits the introduction of evidence obtained illegally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule ("Exclusionary rule")

There's no "retroactive" exception. The core point of this rule is to deter police from intentionally violating people's rights, under the expectation that what they find will, "retroactively", vindicate them. Won't work.

perihelions··on FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home
> "So in this case the government is raiding the home of someone who did not commit any crime, in the hopes of getting at people who might have."

That's unequivocally a lawful basis for a court-ordered search warrant. They must have probable cause that the person being searched has evidence of a crime; not necessarily that the search target and the criminal suspect are one and the same. Search is investigative; not punitive.

The newsworthy part of this is it's a journalist they raided, and to go after their journalistic sources at that. It's previously been a DoJ policy not to go after the media for things related to their reporting work. But that policy wasn't a legal or constitutional requirement. It's merely something the DoJ voluntarily pledged to stop doing, after the public reaction to President Obama's wiretapping of journalists in 2013,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Department_of_Justice_inv... ("2013 Department of Justice investigations of reporters")

perihelions··on UK Officials could face US entry ban over Twitter policy
The US banned Thierry Breton a few weeks ago[0], also essentially over Twitter moderation[1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46374248 ("Former EU commissioner and activists barred from US (theguardian.com)")

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-moderation... ("EU warns Elon Musk that being too lax on Twitter moderation could get the platform banned in Europe" (2022))

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