Hacker News Reader

tareqakon Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Jones

> Owen Jones (born 8 August 1984)[2] is a left-wing British newspaper columnist, commentator, journalist, author and political activist.[3][4][5][6]

> He writes a column for The Guardian and contributes to the New Statesman, Tribune, and The National[7] and was previously a columnist for The Independent. He has two weekly web series, The Owen Jones Show and The Owen Jones Podcast.

tareqakon Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

The Guardian article does not have a link to the letter itself unlike the Owen Jones page.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n3926pSPNwXd8j7I716CBJEz...

tareqakon Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

This movement seems similar to software licensing to me.

  proprietary -> BSD/MIT -> GPL -> AGPL

tareqakon OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

Page 301

> there shall allowed as a deduction any domestic research and experimental expenditures which are paid or incurred by the taxpayer in the current taxable year

AFAIK, there was no domestic vs. foreign R&D distinction in section 174 before.

tareqakon Is there a no-AI audience?

I had similar idea but applied to anything that uses some sort of “recommendation engine” internally.

The things I wanted use it for was for Netflix for TV shows and movies, and Yelp for restaurants.

With the restaurant example, the curation can become as strict as dietary requirements (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher, halal, etc) that are in some cases regulated by NGOs or government bodies or as flexible as having the same spice tolerance as a friend.

tareqakon Compression Dictionary Transport

Interesting idea. I wonder if there would be a way to do steganography here. That is, changing the message by using a different dictionary but with the same delta / same set of compression rules.

Allowing for changing the message obviously means that things like malware become a possibility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

tareqakon OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

I came across the article on Techmeme, and they used the following title: “President Trump signs the One Big Beautiful Bill, which allows immediate deduction of US software labor; foreign R&D still must be amortized over 15 years”.

tareqakon OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

Quoting all the fees in https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/big-beautif...

> Expansion of Immigration Fees:

> $1,000 asylum application fee — first in U.S. history

> $1,000 fee for individuals paroled into the U.S.

> $3,500 fee for sponsors of unaccompanied children

> $5,000 fee for sponsors of unaccompanied children who fail to appear in court

> $550 fee for work permits

> $500 application fee for Temporary Protected Status (TPS)

> $400 fee to file a diversity immigrant visa application

> $250 fee to register for the Diversity Visa Lottery

> $250 visa integrity fee

> $100 year fee while asylum applications remain pending

> $100 fee for continuances granted in immigration court

> $5,000 fee for individuals ordered removed in absentia

> $1,500 fee to adjust status to lawful permanent resident (green card)

> $1,050 fee for inadmissibility waivers

> $900 fee to appeal a decision by an immigration judge

> $900 fee to appeal a decision by DHS

> $1,325 fee to appeal in practitioner disciplinary cases

> $900 fee to file motions to reopen or reconsider

> $600 application fee for suspension of deportation

> $600 application fee for cancellation of removal (permanent residents)

> $1,500 application fee for cancellation of removal (non-permanent residents)

> $30 fee for Form I-94 (arrival/departure record), up from $6

tareqakon OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

> Foreign R&D must still be amortized over 15 years

tareqakon Sam Altman says he's 'politically homeless' in July 4 post bashing Democrats

I used the title from https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/04/openai-altman-july-4-zohran-... and made it fit the word limit (“OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he’s ‘politically homeless’ in July 4 post bashing Democrats”).

tareqakon My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

From what I understand, it would be a breach of contract at minimum (based on what I remember from past discussions of this sort of activity involving different participants).

If someone else has a better idea of what “forking GPL 3 source code and using a different licence” would be, then please let me and others know.

tareqakon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2025)

  Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  Remote: Yes (I prefer in-person work, but I am flexible). 
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: Backend - Python, Rust, Golang, Java, TypeScript, Scala
  Résumé/CV: https://www.tareqak.com
  Email: see Résumé

tareqakon I deleted my second brain

With respect to knowledge and notes, I would say that the knowledge (gems) may not be worthless in an absolute sense but its relevance may no longer be worth the cost of keeping said knowledge organized under a given person’s organization scheme.

For what it is worth, I still find it frustrating when I cannot find a certain piece of information that I am looking for but I know exists because I came across it before but didn’t record it at the time. However, I also appreciate being able to forget distressing events that would find ways to remind me about their existence.

I guess all of this may depend on the exact definitions of knowledge, data, and memory, and how an individual reckons with acquiring, organizing, and forgetting information.

tareqakon Empire of office workers strikes back against RTO mandates

FWIW, I saw a segment on Canadian television yesterday where a Canadian employment said that a Canadian employer cannot deny you severance if they change the commute, the number of hours worked, the job title, or the salary.

tareqakon Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Mainstream media made fun of China for building “ghost cities” in the middle of nowhere.

Now, those cities are full of people.

“Chinese ghost cities are finally stirring to life”

https://norcalapa.org/2021/09/chinese-ghost-cities-are-final...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/chinese-g...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underoccupied_developments_in_...

First Edit: removed unnecessary snark.

Second Edit: Added sources.

tareqakon California squirrels are eating another rodent, new study finds

Journal linked in the article: Journal of Ethology, https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10164-024-00832-6

tareqakon Facebook restricted news in Palestinian territories

Quotes from the article:

> BBC News Arabic compiled engagement data on the Facebook pages of 20 prominent Palestinian-based news organisations in the year leading up to the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, and in the year since.

> Palestine TV has 5.8 million followers on Facebook. Journalists at the newsroom shared statistics with us showing a 60% drop in the number of people seeing their posts.

> To test this, we carried out the same data analysis on the Facebook pages of 20 Israeli news organisations such as Yediot Ahronot, Israel Hayom and Channel 13. These pages also posted a large amount of war-related content, but their audience engagement increased by nearly 37%.

> Meta has previously been accused by Palestinians and human rights groups of failing to moderate online activity fairly.

> An independent report in 2021 commissioned by the company said this was not deliberate but because of a lack of Arabic-speaking expertise among moderators. Words and phrases were being interpreted as offensive or violent, when they were in fact innocuous.

> For example, the Arabic phrase "Alhamdulillah", which means "Praise be to God", was sometimes being auto-translated as "Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom".

> To see if this explained the decline in engagement with Palestinian outlets, the BBC carried out the same analysis on Facebook pages for 30 prominent Arabic-language news sources based elsewhere, such as Sky News Arabia and Al-Jazeera.

> However, these pages saw an average increase in engagement of nearly 100%.

tareqakon Cybertruck's Many Recalls

To your point, both things can be true. The CyberTruck can have recalls worse than 91% of all 2024 cars, but many of its recalls can be cheap to for Tesla to fix.

I think that is where the two clusters of people that I see commenting here are converging / possibly arguing past each other.

One popular form of headline that comes to my mind from business new channels of which I remember no specific instance basically goes like this: “Car manufacturer recalls X many cars costing over them Y dollars because of some fault”. X is usually in the tens of thousands or more and Y is usually in the millions of dollars (now maybe tens of millions of dollars).

tareqakon Boeing Ends Crippling Strike as Workers Accept Latest Offer

Same story from the Associated Press: https://apnews.com/article/boeing-contract-vote-strike-machi...

tareqakon 'I Don't Want to Die.' He needed mental health care. He found a ghost network

I’ve had a similar experience with an insurance provider with similarly outdated providers when I was in Arizona.

One of the care providers that was listed was one that I had previously seen in California (the education/ alma mater, name, etc. were all the same). I did end up calling to make sure, and found that my hunch at the time of this information being horribly stale was correct.

tareqakon Meta to pay Texas $1.4B for using facial recognition without users' permission

Same story from the Associated Press:

Meta agrees to $1.4B settlement with Texas in privacy lawsuit over facial recognition - https://apnews.com/article/texas-attorney-general-meta-settl...

tareqakon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2024)

  Location: Canada (Eastern Time)
  Remote: Office preferred
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: Go, Java, Python
  Résumé/CV: https://www.tareqak.com/tareqak-resume.pdf
  Email: tareqakhandaker AT gmail DOT com

tareqakon US sues Adobe for 'deceiving' subscriptions that are too hard to cancel

FTC Consumer Alert about this topic:

Adobe used hidden fee to trap people into paying for subscription plans, FTC says

https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2024/05/adobe-used-...

tareqakon Brazil judge opens inquiry into Musk for obstruction involving X

Same story from the Associated Press:

Brazil Supreme Court justice orders investigation of Elon Musk over fake news and obstruction

https://apnews.com/article/brazil-musk-x-supreme-court-inves...

tareqakon Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

I have been thinking that with better and more frequent reporting of the statistics over the years that this inflation target of 2% could go to 1% if not zero.

In my mind, central banks and the all the levels of governments should be getting weekly (if not daily) reports of hiring, job losses, house building, and rental prices / turnovers in like a Grafana dashboard.

tareqakon Class Action Against General Motors LLC, OnStar LLC, LexisNexis Risk Solutions [pdf]

spyflation

tareqakon Lie-to-children

I was taught that computer science is the study of abstractions. In my opinion, an abstraction is a kind of story, and storytelling is the most powerful tool that human beings have had at their disposal.

tareqakon The new science on what ultra-processed food does to the brain

I have been under the impression since university that sushi is a healthier option for a meal, and the most popular sushi option in North America is the California roll.

> California roll (加州巻き,カリフォルニアロール, kariforunia rōru) or California maki is an uramaki (inside-out makizushi roll) containing imitation crab (or rarely real crab), avocado, and cucumber. Sometimes crab salad is substituted for the crab stick, and often the outer layer of rice is sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds or roe (such as tobiko from flying fish).

> As one of the most popular styles of sushi in Canada and the United States, the California roll has been influential in sushi's global popularity, and in inspiring sushi chefs around the world to create non-traditional fusion cuisine.[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_roll

tareqakon Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

It would be nice for me as customer to see what sorts of objectives any given company values: a sort of barcode scanner / brand scanner that travels up the tree of parent companies and returns the objectives for each one.

tareqakon The new science on what ultra-processed food does to the brain

One example of an ultra-processed food that was a surprise to me is imitation crab [0][1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_stick

[1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/imitation-crab