Hacker News: Lendal

New comment by Lendal in "Google workspace threatening to block Firefox access"

Lendal — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 17:49:32 +0000

I'm not so sure that enforcing an internal digital monoculture is a productive way to achieve innovation & resilience.

New comment by Lendal in "Law Enforcement's "Warrior" Problem (2015)"

Lendal — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 19:19:43 +0000

While I don't disagree with the sentiment, since you have a friend who's a cop I'm compelled to ask the uncomfortable question, is an otherwise good cop who protects bad cops still a good cop?

New comment by Lendal in "Law Enforcement's "Warrior" Problem (2015)"

Lendal — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 19:14:48 +0000

That doesn't explain the first ~230 years of US history though, where police weren't this way and we had the same Constitution.

New comment by Lendal in "GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values"

Lendal — Tue, 12 May 2026 11:26:33 +0000

Yep. These companies forget that we can use AI too, to unpack these ridiculous corporate statements in record time to get right down to the point: We're going to dump all our values, and not even going to pay lip service to things like integrity, transparency, or diversity anymore.

New comment by Lendal in "Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense"

Lendal — Thu, 07 May 2026 13:25:18 +0000

The American people knew who they were electing. They knew it, and they elected him anyway. Whatever damage results from that collective decision is our cross to bear.

New comment by Lendal in "Another Day Has Come"

Lendal — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:08:45 +0000

I get emotional whenever I see anyone with enough good sense to pass the baton at the proper time rather than die in office, letting it drop and clatter to the ground.

New comment by Lendal in "Another Day Has Come"

Lendal — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:05:09 +0000

Now if only members of our representative government would follow his lead to voluntarily retire when it's time, hand off the baton to a new generation, we'd all be so much better off.

New comment by Lendal in "OpenAI backs Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable"

Lendal — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:24:08 +0000

Even if they were to pass such a law which would be political suicide, it would still be up to the courts to say that it doesn't violate the Constitution. For example, a law that says anyone with a net worth of $1B can freely punch anyone in the face whenever they want and have immunity would be a clearly illegal law. That's basically what this bill is. The courts would then need to be made sufficiently corrupt to not strike down such a law as unconstitutional.

New comment by Lendal in "OpenAI backs Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable"

Lendal — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:14:38 +0000

People on both sides seem to give capitalism a lot of credit for human traits that existed long before capitalism.

New comment by Lendal in "Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI"

Lendal — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:54:03 +0000

It's okay to have two conflicting thoughts about something and both be true at the same time. AI is awesome but at the same time is promising to do evil in the future. Why? Facebook has done a lot of good for the world, like React for instance, but also done a lot of evil as well. Billionaires have initiated the development of some amazing products and services, but at the same time they're spending their money building bunkers so they can survive an end of the world scenario that they're largely responsible for, rather than using it to mitigate some of the evil that they unleashed. Why are they doing that? I don't know. It doesn't seem necessary to me.

New comment by Lendal in "University of Texas limits on teaching of "unnecessary controversial subjects""

Lendal — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:06:18 +0000

The entire tech industry is rooted in the study of subjects which were extemporaneously considered unnecessary by the average person.

New comment by Lendal in "Imagine 130M Washing Machines"

Lendal — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:04:13 +0000

Bingo. The guy has a lot of things right, but I was floored when I read "progressive consumption tax" coming from an otherwise well written essay. Consumption taxes are regressive, and no amount of progressive lip stick will make them redistribute sufficiently to achieve the effect he wants.

I would say that any tax reform that fails to reduce asset concentration will completely fail to reduce economic inequality. Let Bezos have his newspaper, if that's all he owns. Let him game the system to evade income tax. Fine. The problem is when a very small group of people own all the newspapers plus their original business empires plus their privately owned social media companies, plus their funded PACs, their psyops, etc.

All assets must be taxed directly to such an extent that concentrated assets are redistributed naturally through market forces. Tax wealth, not work.

New comment by Lendal in "Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes"

Lendal — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 03:33:18 +0000

How do we even know they're being honest? They've been lying about everything for so long, and now we're just suddenly gonna believe they're being honest only when it pertains to Venezuela? Why?

New comment by Lendal in "My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)"

Lendal — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 20:27:18 +0000

I have a file like this, several years long, but parsed with YAML so that each day is clearly separated from the next, and for list parsing, and for dictionary parsing so each project I work on is associated with a YAML dictionary key. I can go back in time and easily find notes related to specific projects or specific dates.

New comment by Lendal in "Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban"

Lendal — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 19:28:53 +0000

I chuckled when I read that, when over-16 is considered elderly.

What will we do when we no longer have the views of 14 year olds at our fingertips? Well, hopefully they will write their views down on notepaper, and in two years we'll hear all about it.

New comment by Lendal in "Autism should not be treated as a single condition"

Lendal — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 20:12:15 +0000

It's a personal decision. I haven't gotten a diagnosis because I've been able to hold a job for many years, and I'm married, so I'm mostly fine. But I have spent my life avoiding most human contact, precisely because I know I'm incompatible with them, and people often want to know why I never leave the house.

I don't think there is any treatment. I think it's just a set of skills that you learn in case you want to try to pursue activities that most neurotypicals take for granted. It seems like a lot of work to me, and maybe it would be easier to just let things be, as you're saying.

I know what my limitations are and I can observe others doing the things that I can't do, including my own wife, and I imagine what life would be like if I could do those things too. But it mainly boils down to having FOMO, and thinking about how much work you want to go through in order to be able to do some of the things that you're having FOMO about.

New comment by Lendal in "Autism should not be treated as a single condition"

Lendal — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 19:50:42 +0000

Thanks for that insight. I previously had only a vague notion of why disorder is used. One of the main reasons I don't want to have an official diagnosis is because the word disorder has such a negative connotation. I really don't want any disorders, so if I just ignore it, try not to think about it, maybe it will go away, and then I won't have a disorder.

New comment by Lendal in "YouTube is taking down videos on performing nonstandard Windows 11 installs"

Lendal — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 17:32:05 +0000

After rereading, it sounds like I meant for the two sentences to be related, but I didn't mean it that way. I was referring to the fact of Microsoft trying to force people to connect to the Internet before they can install Windows, or sign in with a Microsoft account in corporate infrastructure scenarios where that makes no sense, and so customers are forced to use Linux instead, but that's a complication being added to their overall system for external reasons.

New comment by Lendal in "YouTube is taking down videos on performing nonstandard Windows 11 installs"

Lendal — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 11:50:39 +0000

Manufacturing and automation is another big one. Think about a water plant that is air-gapped but needs computer automation software to run. These things are everywhere, in every town that has indoor plumbing and sewer. The specialized software that automates these plants only runs on Windows. It relies on industrial hardware and touchscreens that are designed for use in harsh outdoor environments. All of these types of plants rely on high school educated operators that need to understand what's going on at a simple level. Having an OS that in any way relies on Internet access is a non starter. A Linux based system would be removed within a year of operation. You could get it approved maybe if you really worked at it but it would not be accepted in the long run, after the initial startup. There are physical constraints, technical constraints, and human/political constraints that are all working against Linux.

New comment by Lendal in "US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces"

Lendal — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:58:12 +0000

It depends on what your motives are. Every evil personality you hate started out first as a subversive force. Do you know what the secret end goal of your subversive force flavor-of-the-month is?