Hacker News: Scaled

New comment by Scaled in "I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation"

Scaled — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:56:45 +0000

Yeah, I had no idea Microsoft thinks trust means auto run immediately a script. I always just thought it was something more pedestrian, like restricting debug launch links or something. I will probably not use vs code at all for untrusted repos now.

New comment by Scaled in "Show HN: Anypost – transactional and broadcast email API, 8¢ per 1k"

Scaled — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:59:15 +0000

I started to get interested and then realized it's yet another monthly subscription based email platform. One of the main reasons SES is popular is it is pay what you use.

In addition, it's not immediately clear if SMTP is supported, but you might want to add that if not since it's the standard. Your api might be cool but avoiding vendor lockin is cooler.

New comment by Scaled in "OpenAI and Hugging Face address security incident during model evaluation"

Scaled — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 09:28:58 +0000

In my own tests, the abliterated models perform equivalently to the same version in an apples-to-apples comparison (if you compare same quantization). Thinking is working also. The main difference is I don't get annoying prompt refusals (otherwise common due to my work on 18+ related projects). However, it's local quantized models so they're not anywhere near frontier quality.

New comment by Scaled in "Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre"

Scaled — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:43:48 +0000

Space data centers are an intrinsically cool idea, and honestly I hope we see at least one for the sheer marvel of such a project. But to be cost efficient, it has to be cheaper than rural US, cheaper than buying some island, cheaper than setting it up on a converted freighter ship and tanking the fuel in, etc.

BUT once Earth has a fully paid off space elevator the unit economics will make sense, or if we have orbital space factories and don't have any lift costs, etc. It's all possible, but at a 50 year+ timescale and immense investment. All of which I hope for because I'd like to see more space development and exploration.

New comment by Scaled in "Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds"

Scaled — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 18:26:54 +0000

Age verification is not the will of the voters. It is the will of large political donors (specifically tech companies and religious censorship groups). It is certainly not the will of adult citizens who use adult websites, who have overwhelming shown in their usage patterns they will abandon any website that tries to do age verification.

Parental controls remains the right way to do age gating. It works today and has no privacy impacts.

New comment by Scaled in "Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds"

Scaled — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 18:15:43 +0000

Didn't know ACM was anti-privacy. Glad I haven't paid dues in who knows how long if they're spending them to platform these noxious opinions.

New comment by Scaled in "Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law"

Scaled — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 10:33:55 +0000

I vaguely recall some crypto project that was 'blockchain for domain names'. I scoffed at it at the time, but maybe there is a real need for something like that after all. (Or some other system for domain names you truly own and can't be rugpulled.)

New comment by Scaled in "European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS"

Scaled — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 09:21:22 +0000

Another juicy threat vector is forcing the app stores to stealthily ship a modified version of the app that sends copies of the IDs and/or tracking data to US intelligence services.

(Reminder: we know Persona's verification software already shares verification data with the federal government. It's a leap to modifying other apps, but within the realm of possibility of US government power. There is absolutely desire from them to gather blackmail material on politically important people, and age verification systems connected to adult sites/apps are a great way to do it)

New comment by Scaled in "Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives"

Scaled — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 09:31:12 +0000

For private code, it just feels safer to self host that -- ideally behind wireguard for an extra layer of security.

For public code hosting, GitHub have banned too many people/projects for comfort. From security researchers to 18+ game devs, too many have been wrongfully banned.

New comment by Scaled in "One million passports leaked online"

Scaled — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:58:35 +0000

I had my identity stolen this way before.

Since then, I do not allow the scans anymore. It is a dreadful feeling showing up to a hotel not knowing if you'll get turned away at the last minute because you take a stand for your privacy. So far, none have been willing to lose the bookings, but I know sooner or later my luck will run out and I'll have to find last minute accomodations.

New comment by Scaled in "Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days"

Scaled — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 18:18:18 +0000

Gitea action runner has a bunch of different ways to setup and doing the isolation properly looks tricky. The documentation doesn't provide any isolation tests to administrators, either.

The biggest mitigation is that gitea documentation discourages you from using action runners from untrusted users. Not flawless security, but it's something...

New comment by Scaled in "We're making Bunny DNS free: because a faster internet won't build itself"

Scaled — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 10:39:04 +0000

I'm glad to hear the queries are free now! I somehow managed to blow through the free quota, not by like a crazy amount but enough that I started thinking in most circumstances why pay extra for basic dns when registrar's is free? Even barely used domains were getting tons of queries. And I only need the fancy failover feature on a couple domains, though it is nice for those for sure. Anyway with this I don't have to worry about it anymore, so thanks Bunny!

New comment by Scaled in "VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'"

Scaled — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 19:07:23 +0000

Lol, no. Face scans are being bypassed using video games. Meanwhile the data has shown 90%+ porn users are unwilling to do them and switch sites instead (citation: https://pornbiz.com/post/17/the_scam_of_age_verification ). The whole thing has been a complete fiasco in porn.

New comment by Scaled in "Cell-based architecture for resilient payment systems"

Scaled — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 09:49:18 +0000

I would have nope'd out so hard if they asked for face pictures.

New comment by Scaled in "Why do commercial spaces sit vacant? (2025)"

Scaled — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 09:57:00 +0000

Yes, but seems unlikely to be prosecuted... The government directly benefits from higher tax valuation.

New comment by Scaled in "A Call to Action: Stop the FCC's KYC Regime"

Scaled — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:25:45 +0000

People should file comments at that Federal Register link as well as FCC. (The FR is the official way for citizens to comment on proposed agency rulemaking. Since it's independent, it might go farther, but it's worth doing both.)

New comment by Scaled in "FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs"

Scaled — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:42:20 +0000

You can also file a comment at the Federal Register for the next 16 days -- It looks like the proposal is 2026-10407

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/26/2026-10...

New comment by Scaled in "FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs"

Scaled — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:35:32 +0000

It lets politicians see how unpopular something is and how many votes they will lose.

New comment by Scaled in "Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank"

Scaled — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:40:00 +0000

FYI for adult content, there's a standard called RTA-Label that already integrates with all parental controls and is already deployed on all major adult sites.

New comment by Scaled in "Motorola effectively bricked its entire line of WiFi routers without explanation"

Scaled — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 18:06:54 +0000

Same but in my parents case it was even worse -- there is a web portal but it's locked unless you use the app to unlock it. Tried contacting support and they could do nothing. Completely arbitrary requirement. Ended up buying a replacement on Amazon.