HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

romellem

1,049 karma · joined July 12, 2018

submissionscomments
romellem··on U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk
> textbook designation.

Hardly. I invite you to [read the opinion][1], particularly the great pains the majority spends on wrangling the definition of the word "manipulate."

Basically, [FASCSA][2] says to denote a company is a "supply chain risk," the govt has to meet the law's rigorous definition of what a "significant" risk actually is. That definition contains a catch-all "or otherwise manipulate the function" of the thing at hand (in this case, Claude) at the very end.

The govt's whole argument is "Well Anthropic has admitted that it can technically "manipulate" the response, therefore its a significant risk, therefore we designate it as such."

The dissent gives an analogy:

> A library might post a sign saying, “Do not shout, loudly talk on the phone, play music, or otherwise disturb others.” The common understanding would be that the rule bans bringing a boom-box into the reading room with the volume turned on high but not listening to music with headphones set at a modest sound level—even though both constitute “playing music.”

It is as if the govt argued "ah ah, Anthropic played music on their headphones, they broke the rules! We therefore have the authority to ban them" and the majority insanely agrees. It is clear to anyone with basic reading comprehension that the "manipulate" clause is supposed to continue the idea of malicious or subversive manipulation that the whole section entails. The hand-waving the majority uses gives the whole game away.

[1]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=000001a0-d91e-d276-aff6-f97f3...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SECURE_Technology_Act

romellem··on U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk
Opinion by Katsas and Rao. For those that don’t follow this regularly, those are two of the biggest Trump hacks on the bench.

I suspect this will be reversed en banc.

Anthropic’s argument is really clear and easy to understand: we can’t simultaneously be a supply chain risk and also be a company the DoD demands we change our policies so they can use our models without restrictions.

romellem··on Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce"
It is too easy to write O(n^2) code using reduce, in fact I wrote an eslint rule to catch a common pattern I see other developers write.

- https://github.com/romellem/eslint-plugin-no-spread-in-reduc...

It catches code that looks like this:

    items.reduce((acc, item) => {
      return {
        ...acc,
        [item.id]: item
      };
    });
romellem··on The whole premise of checking for human writing is daft
Counterpoint: https://sophiebits.com/2026/06/25/there-are-no-lossless-tran...
romellem··on Show HN: 92% of US city websites fail ADA accessibility
These are interesting results, but it reeks of LLM output. [ You made an interesting thing, why not describe it in your own words? I already read this all day.][1]

[1]: https://bsky.app/profile/danabra.mov/post/3mpyd3esthc2m

romellem··on GitHub Is Down
Literally just had this same signal with PR review comments. Checked the status page, saw it was green, and (correctly) assumed “not for long!”
romellem··on TypeScript 6.0 RC
Some of these missing checks were why Flow was an attractive choice when weighing [Flow vs Typescript][1].

For example, it wasn't until Typescript 2.0 that we got null checks!

- https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/release-notes/t...

  function getLength(s: string): number {
    return s.length; //  Runtime crash if s is null/undefined
  }
  
  getLength(null); // TypeScript <2.0 would not error here

[1]: https://djcordhose.github.io/flow-vs-typescript/2016_hhjs.ht...
romellem··on My 2026 Open Social Web Predictions
The experience you describe has been completely different from mine. I’m not a big poster, but I use Bluesky daily for:

- Sports

- Law

- Authors

- Comedy

- Video Games

- Programming news

- Other general news

Really feels like you are projecting a bit.

romellem··on Replacement.ai
“Guns don’t kill people, etc…”
romellem··on Node 20 will be deprecated on GitHub Actions runners
Is there a specific part of Node 22 that isn’t there in Node 24?
romellem··on ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair
> The overall message of the democrats has been "we didn't do it, but he had it coming".

Please give examples of this.

romellem··on ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair
> needs to be cancelled
romellem··on ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair
In his one singular semester in college? Going to need a source for your fact there. Pretty sure no one has all the info yet.
romellem··on ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair
Except all indications are the show was pulled because of pressure from the government. The FCC threatening “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” is not constitutional.
romellem··on The $1,999 Liberty Phone Is Made in America. Its Creator Explains How
Smarter Scrubber video, for those that aren't familiar:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

romellem··on The $1,999 Liberty Phone Is Made in America. Its Creator Explains How
Should say "Made in America*", since:

  Not all of its parts are U.S. made: Other components come from China and other Asian countries. [...]
  The screen and battery come from China and the rear-facing camera comes from South Korea.
Also, what is this bit at the end about tariffs?

  Tariffs likely won’t affect his costs at his current production rates
  because he ordered a large batch of parts when he started and still has
  them in supply at his facility. Weaver says that a long-term tariff on
  imported electronics could make the Liberty Phone’s manufacturing cost
  more competitive, since the cheap components would only see marginal
  increases, and more components are likely to be built in the U.S. soon.
They won't affect his costs because he has a huge stockpile? That's like when people said "I don't need the government to force me to get health insurance. My husband is a doctor."

Also "more components are likely to be built in the U.S. soon" - says who? How much is "likely," and how soon is "soon?" Lazy reporting at the end with practically no push back from the WSJ writer.

romellem··on Being fat is a trap
[Simple is not easy][1].

[1]: https://www.entropywins.wtf/blog/2017/01/02/simple-is-not-ea...

romellem··on xAI dev leaks API key for private SpaceX, Tesla LLMs
The company I work for does this. I recently pushed an update to a personal repo that just contained a keyword match (the push included a dictionary.txt file which happened to include the company name) which flagged a review.
romellem··on "AI-first" is the new Return To Office
Oh wow, totally forgot about [Yammer][1]. What a waste of time.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viva_Engage

romellem··on DOGE worker’s code supports NLRB whistleblower
To remove the presidential pardon power, you'd need to [amend the Constitution][1]. Getting [two thirds of both Houses of Congress][2] to pass any amendment in the foreseeable future seems highly unlikely if not downright inconceivable.

[1]: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C1-3...

[2]: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artV-1/ALDE_0...

romellem··on I Accidentally Triggered a Hacker News Manhunt
Ah the old "make a bot post, then write about the bot post, then get called out as a bot, then make another post talking about getting 'falsely' accused of being a bot" play.

It's all so obvious!

/s

romellem··on Charlie Javice convicted of defrauding JPMorgan in $175M startup sale
Related discussion

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35441211

romellem··on The Frontend Treadmill
> hasn't been the case for years

For 10 years, actually. ES6 - otherwise known as ECMAScript 2015 - did in fact come out 10 years ago.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript_version_history#6th...

It truly did improve the JS landscape by an order of magnitude.

For those unfamiliar with the extensive features this brought to JS, here is a good list:

- https://rse.github.io/es6-features/

romellem··on How to get ahead of 99% of developers
I largely agree with these, except for #4:

  Ship First, Refine Never
  
  Write good enough code that solves a user’s problem and only optimise when metrics demand it.

  Too often, we’re focused on perfectionism or premature optimisation, which prevents getting our code in the hands of users quickly.
  
  - Identify the critical components of your feature.
  - Deliver only those to the user.
  - Users just want to click the button, do the thing, and move on—anything else is wasting time.
This only briefly touches on “only optimize when metrics demand it,” yet equally import is “collect the metrics and analyze them!”

Namely, talk to your customers, or use software to see how they are using your product. Often times, we don’t get something right the first time, so the idea that you’d aggressively deprioritizing refinement seems like a mistake.

romellem··on Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs
Contrast Meta's stance with Costco's, when [Costco responded][1] to a shareholder that proposed Costco prepare a report on "the risks of the Company maintaining its current DEI roles, policies and goals."

  Our success at Costco Wholesale has been built on service to our critical stakeholders: employees, 
  members, and suppliers. Our efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion follow our code of ethics: 
  For our employees, these efforts are built around inclusion – having all of our employees feel valued and 
  respected. Our efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion remind and reinforce with everyone at our Company 
  the importance of creating opportunities for all. We believe that these efforts enhance our capacity to attract 
  and retain employees who will help our business succeed. This capacity is critical because we owe our 
  success to our now over 300,000 employees around the globe.
[1]: https://materials.proxyvote.com/Approved/22160K/20241115/NPS...
romellem··on Cognitive load is what matters
> mostly useless comments about not having periods at the ends of lines

Oh my god, this sounds like a nightmare. I definitely would not be able to tolerate this for long.

Did you try to get them to change? Were you just not in a senior enough position for anyone to listen?

romellem··on Is Front-End Too Complicated?
https://archive.is/eAYIL
romellem··on Rewrite Git history via drag-and-drop
Agreed. I’d pay for this (I pay for [Fork][1]), but never as a subscription.

[1]: https://git-fork.com

romellem··on Trump wins presidency for second time
I genuinely don’t understand. I really hope I am wrong, but I believe we are about to enter a post-truth state.
romellem··on That's not an abstraction, that's just a layer of indirection
Being skeptical of abstractions is something I have been adhering to for a while in my career, and I have found it to be a successful strategy for long term project health.

This passage really connected with me:

> Asymmetry of abstraction costs

> There’s also a certain asymmetry to abstraction. The author of an abstraction enjoys its benefits immediately—it makes their code look cleaner, easier to write, more elegant, or perhaps more flexible. But the cost of maintaining that abstraction often falls on others: future developers, maintainers, and performance engineers who have to work with the code. They’re the ones who have to peel back the layers, trace the indirections, and make sense of how things fit together. They’re the ones paying the real cost of unnecessary abstraction.

I find this mentality to overlap with (the resurgence of?) discussion on DRY vs WET principles, with some other good links on this including:

* https://overreacted.io/the-wet-codebase/

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqfbAXCCVwE

Page 1 of 4Next →