ryan_lane

Are you seriously asking if a Nazi website is a bad reference?

I don't think you understand the scale of "running Wikipedia". I do. I worked there for years when there were 100 engineers and they were severely understaffed.

Wikipedia is: mediawiki (and its development), wikimedia cloud services (which I built) that runs tools and provides services for developers (including volunteers and tool authors), server/network infrastructure, wikidata, search, etc.

Mediawiki itself is extremely complicated to build and run, and it's running for numerous languages across multiple projects (wikipedia, commons, wikidata, wiktionary, etc etc).

I'm leaving out a lot of the other things handled by the engineering teams, but it's considerably more complex than you think it is.

300 employees is an extremely low number of employees for a project of this scope.

I think some of yall need to think about how this would be run if it was a company. There would be thousands of employees, realistically.

The alternative is that the Daily Stormer is usable as a source.

There has to be some mechanism of determining what should and shouldn't be usable as a source.

You generally need to wire libraries in to your service, and you may be using the library in a slightly different way than normal. AIs are perfectly capable of doing this.

Back to the original point, though: most software engineering work isn't novel. Most people are working on slightly different iterations of the same thing, but with the aim of different products. You can have completely different products that use nearly the same patterns as most other services.

To put it bluntly: we don't need AI to generate novel code for the vast majority of the software being built.

Gutting organizations _leads to_ these kinds of problems.

Sadly in Tokyo, most businesses post their info to twitter or instagram, but in both cases you're able to read without an account (not well, but it's possible).

If your friends won't use something other than messenger to talk to you, they aren't your friends.

How can you fight when your power has been taken away from you? The reason I'm saying you're part of the problem is because you're blaming victims for the situation they're in without realizing that you're up next, and others like you are going to scream "why aren't you doing MORE TO HELP?" while you're screaming "Why isn't anyone helping ME?".

Southern states have been stripping people's rights away for decades.

New Orleans is extremely blue. They're the ones having their rights stripped away by the rest of the state.

You're part of the problem here.

This both sides thing is stupid. Though there's always some form of military actions under either Democrats or Republicans, Republicans consistently start unilateral (and illegal) wars that leave us in massive quagmires, leave power imbalances in the middle east, and destabilize things considerably.

AI models will simply build the ads into the responses, seamlessly. How do you filter out ads when you search for suggestions for products, and the AI companies suggest paid products in the responses?

Based on current laws, does this even have to be disclosed? Will laws be passed to require disclosure?

Using Lyft, Uber, or Waymo in San Francisco is slow, especially during peak times. To go across town in NYC by train, it would take 5-10 times as long to go that same distance in SF by car. If you have to cross a bridge or tunnel, it's going to be even longer during peak times.

That's the whole problem. Car transportation simply doesn't scale, so there will never be an option to use waymo that's as fast and cheap as the subway. It's worth calling out that an efficient train system is vital to keeping car traffic moving quickly, because once everyone is in a car, it's gridlock.

> I think you’ll find people on HN fairly unsupportive of population wide surveillance

Lately I'm not sure that's the case.

"I only speak one language, so models I use should only understand one".

This is satire. Its purpose is to use exaggeration to provide comedy while also drawing attention to issues.

Obviously the intended use and design of AI isn't to scam the elderly, but it's extremely efficient at doing it, and has no guard rails to help prevent it.

Why is anyone allowed to make a digital copy of me, without my permission, and then use that to call my relatives? It should be illegal to use it and it should be illegal to even generate it. Sure, it's already illegal to defaud people, but that's simply not enough at this point. The AI companies producing these models should be held liable for this form of fraud, as they're not providing any form of protection.

You're exactly the person that this article is satirizing.

Scammers are using AI to copy the voice of children and grandchildren, and make calls urgently asking to send money. It's also being used to scam businesses out of money in similar ways (copying the voice of the CEO or CFO, urgently asking for money to be sent).

Sure, the AI isn't directly doing the scamming, but it's supercharging the ability to do so. You're making a "guns don't kill people, people do" argument here.

> Red meat also helps people stay at a healthy weight, lower the risk of heart disease (caused by glucose) and some types of cancer (which feed on glucose).

Are you a lobbyist for beef? This is not at all what research says, and research has said mostly the opposite for decades.

> in an environment with regulations and high living standards.

Is this a joke? The US has poor living standards for these types of workers. Minimum wage in low minimum wage states. Poor or no healthcare. Most are probably on government assistance programs. Tariffs hit these workers hardest as well, because they're the most likely to be laid off, and also the ones paying the largest percentage of their salaries for products affected by tariffs.

The factories in China cranking these things out also have poor conditions, but the reason they're making stuff so cheaply is because their factories are typically more advanced. You can get small batches made cheaply, which is nearly impossible in the US. This allows them to compete with even somewhat niche products.

Also, let's be a bit real here. Nearly every "American Made" product at some point offloads the production outside of the US, and there's plenty of companies in the US that make dupe products as well.

Currently on the front page, and not flagged:

* California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years * Inside the secret world of Japanese snack bars * Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries * Driver killed and several injured after second train derails near Barcelona * De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)

It's common to have things that are covered on TV news on the front page. It's more common for anything negative about Trump to be flagged, though.

> Is HN really a place to criticize administration?

Articles critical of economics policies aren't criticizing the administration, but the policies. Yes, economic policies are of interest to technology, and articles related to it are of interest to us.

Even ignoring the fact that an article critical of a policy isn't specifically critical of the administration, yes, HN is really a place to criticize any administration.

> I don't want competition with the Chinese either.

You also only want to be able to sell your goods in the US? Because the outcome of tariffs is retaliatory tariffs, which will considerably reduce your available market. No matter what you're going to have competition from China, and tariffs ensure markets outside of the US will be more dominated by them.

If your product can so easily be duplicated, and for cheaper, it's probably not a great product.

> no matter how much you don't want your dad to be your dad, he is your dad

Someone biologically being your parent, doesn't mean you're required to call them your dad.

The claims around whether these things would be true or not are questionable. We don't know whether these things were solely his decision or not, or if others were involved in the process. We don't know that his early involvement lead to the success of the project or not.

I added HTTPS infrastructure to wikimedia foundation sites. Even if I weren't there, that would have eventually happened, though potentially much later. I moved wikimedia from svn to git, for development, and maybe that never would have happened and some other source control system would have been used, but would that have led to failure of the project? Almost certainly not.

You're giving this person far too much credit, especially as they've spent decades trying to destroy something they "created".

Why is this flagged? Why are things critical of this administration usually flagged? Moderation on HN is a joke.

I think it would be hard to say it's an oligarchy. There's 450 or so active admins (and around 900 total), and really, they don't truly have that much power. The vast majority of decisions on Wikipedia are made by editors, and on occasion admins get involved.

This isn't a country with some ruling class. 450 people aren't in cahoots to stop you from editing.

> Even if your father abandons your family on your second birthday, to start another family, he's still your dad, no matter how much you hate him.

I think if you asked anyone in that situation, they probably wouldn't call them their dad, so yeah, this is indeed a good example.

Larry Sanger is effectively an abusive parent who did their best to try to ensure Wikipedia didn't survive. Him being there for the birth doesn't mean much.

There's also a large number of folks moving to management as they age. Yes, the tech industry tends to skew young for engineering, but management doesn't. There's also a relatively decent chunk of people retiring in their early 50s (I plan to). There's also a decent number of them leaving to create their own companies, or to join friends at their early stage startups.

I don't think it makes sense to say they're the exception. I'm also mid-40s and have no issues finding employment. Most of my friends are mid 40s/50s and also have no issues. The vast majority of them have switched into management, though. Myself and the other older engineers I know are staff+, though, which helps a lot. I can't imagine being this age as a senior engineer trying to fight an army of equally qualified people in their 20s (who are also having issues finding employment right now).

That isn't written in good faith, though. It's a "both sides" argument that's clearly written from a particular side.

> ICE has a clear and ethical mandate

It doesn't, given the current administration. It's somewhat questionable in general, given that being in the country illegally isn't a felony (or criminal) in itself. We have local law enforcement that can handle cases of illegal actions, regardless of immigration status, and actual crimes can and do lead to deportation.

The vast majority of people being targeted, via mandate, are not criminals. The mandate of the current administration also includes protestors, regardless of citizenship status.

So, no, that person didn't cover the points, and your neutrality here is also written in a way that backs up that person, so that's also somewhat questionable.

Jimmy Wales isn't Wikimedia. He's the co-founder of Wikipedia, and an honorary board member. He doesn't serve any official capacity.

> Your co-founder Larry Sanger, perhaps?

Who left extremely early on in the project, went to create a poorly conceived and failed competitor, then spent the next 23ish years shitting on Wikipedia? Why does he deserve any credit?

I think this deserves more than a nitpick. WMF also doesn't dictate the actions of the volunteer community, and neither does the board. The content of Wikipedia is fully volunteer created and maintained, and admin actions are also handled by the volunteer community.

The foundation is there to provide technical, legal, and community support. In some cases this is funding for community events, in other cases, this includes funding towards making the editor community more diverse. In most cases, though, it's keeping a staff of folks that maintain and improve the software, and defend the project legally.

So, no Wikipedia isn't a corporation. It's more of a commune.