Hacker News Reader

tomhowon EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

Whatever this is meant to mean, please don't post it here. It's absolutely not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon Performance Improvements in .NET 11

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting abusive comments and ignoring our appeals to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you can email us and demonstrate an intention to observe the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

Can you please not go on enraged tirades on HN? You've posted several fulminatory comments in this thread alone:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49729021

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49728539

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49728246

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49728175

and at least one more in another thread today. This is not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for. You may not owe Mozilla better, but you owe HN better if you want to participate here. This is only a place where people want to participate becuase enough people make the effort to raise the standards rather than drag them down. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon A coffee shop owner used AI to make a menu poster. Then came the angry DMs

Please don't sneer like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon 4chan/Kiwifarms lawsuit against OFCOM dismissed for lack of jurisdiction

Please don't post angry snarls at groups of people like this on HN. Yes I know, anyone can point to egregious things that happen on sites like that and assert that they deserve it. That's not the point. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here, regardless of what happens on other sites. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon Microsoft says AI rival Anthropic could have 'disastrous impact' on humanity

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49727580.

tomhowon Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting abusive comments and ignoring our appeals to stop. This is not what HN is for and it destroys what HN is for. We work hard to make HN a place where everyone's point of view can be expressed, no matter what side or identity they're advocating for. But the guidelines have to apply to everyone. If you don't want to be banned, you can email us and demonstrate an intention to observe the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon Australia 'on the same page' as Canada as it seeks deeper EU alliance

Please don't engage in politicial/ideological battle on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon Most people prefer traditional architecture

Please observe the guidelines if you want to keep participating here, particularly these ones:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

We've banned this account.

tomhowon A single firm is behind OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta hacking scandals

We've banned this account.

tomhowon Let's make quality the norm again

We've asked you before not to post slurs against groups of people on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. Please stop. We have to ban accounts that do this habitually. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon An update on Wayback Machine access

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716735 and marked it off topic.

tomhowon GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?

Please omit internet tropes on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

> I admit I reacted unfairly

Thanks for that!

> You are likely privy to more information than me

Not in this case; I have no inside knowledge about this company, and everything I know is via their public posts, and on this particular topic (the FBI non-report), everything I know is what I could find via Google (sorry if the link seemed snarky; it was my way of pointing out that you have access to all the same information that I do).

What I do have, by virtue of doing jobs like this for a long time, is a well-honed sense of “that can't be right”, and a vigilance about double–checking things before accepting the populist ragey narratives about any topic. And no, it doesn’t make me fun at parties.

tomhowon Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

You didn’t take the article at face value. You overlooked the part where they were clearly pointing out the absurdity of the “report” and went straight into scold mode, across at least four comments. That’s clearly against the HN guidelines.

tomhowon Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

Can you please quit with the snarky interrogation? HN is for curiosity, not curmudgeonliness.

Nothing gets “rescued from” the second chance pool. Posts get selected for the second chance pool if moderators (or others with SCP-picking responsibilities) think they may be interesting. It’s worked like this for over a decade.

tomhowon Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

They didn't file false (or, any) reports.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49701814.

tomhowon Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

The story has been widely discussed on the web for over a year [1]. It's happily shared in this post because the email it generated was patently ridiculous. No report was filed to the FBI and if it was it would have gone straight to the trash.

Obviously it would be bad if a serious report was filed; the company shows every sign of being aware of the dangers of this.

It would have been easy to look into this before posting all these scolding comments. We're really not meant to be so humorless on a site called “Hacker News”.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22URGENT%3A+ESCALATION+TO+F...

tomhowon Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

They're entitled to defend themselves against accusations of things they haven't done, and also to respond to questions or assertions about their project. We encourage project creators to engage in the discussions about their projects. This is a normal part of building and launching a project.

tomhowon Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

The submitter's replies are defensive because people are accusing them of coordinated voting, which is not evident to us. The post hit the front page due to the second chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), then quickly got upvotes that seem completely authentic.

tomhowon Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700834

tomhowon Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

The post was placed on the front page via second chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308). This happens all the time on HN.

The voting is legitimate; there's no evidence that the voting is from sockpuppets or anyone else connected with the team/project. We always monitor the discussion and the voting, and if the discussion is not of sufficient quality, the post will not stay on the front page for long.

tomhowon Making Startups Powerful

Please don't post such contemptuous comments on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhowon XCancel suspended "due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings"

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694296.

tomhowon Getting 50 GB/S Back from the Apple Neural Engine

It would be crossing a line for us to ban or penalize sites in response to complaints about the back button.

In this particular instance, it works fine for me on Chrome. When I test it in Safari, I can see the same behaviour that people are complaining about, but I also find that if you double-click the back button, it takes you back to HN.

I point that out because it seems clear to me that the site author has not set out to implement a “dark pattern” to trick visitors into staying on their site against their will; they've just tried to implement some in-page navigation, and perhaps only tested it in Chrome.

That's outside the boundary of reasonable grounds for us to penalize a page or site. It puts us in the position of having to investigate a page's behaviour in different browsers and to adjudicate on the severity of the dysfunctional browser behaviour and the author's intent (i.e., their inner thoughts). We clearly can't be getting into that; it takes up too much time and we will never be able to consistently reach fair decisions.

I can understand the frustration, but as well as asking HN users not to fixate on offtopic distractions like this, we also ask people to "assume good faith", and I see no reason not to follow that guideline in this case.

A quick email to the author would have more likely led to a favourable outcome than this meta-subthread.

tomhowon Mexican student creates an acoustic fire extinguisher to put out fire in seconds

Do you intend to observe the guidelines or not?

tomhowon Mexican student creates an acoustic fire extinguisher to put out fire in seconds

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.