Hacker News: Thiez

New comment by Thiez in "OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future"

Thiez — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:39:19 +0000

Of course! For example, luck may be the difference in being in good health or not, or having people that depend on you being in good health or not. If you are suffering from a depression, or (undiagnosed/untreated) ADHD, or a broken leg, or blindness, or you have to take care of a sick loved one, those are all things that you have little control over but they affect your ability to do household chores. And if you are disabled but you also happen to be rich due to a large inheritence (so luck), then you can hire a housekeeper. There are so many factors that can influence your ability to complete household chores that are outside your control, that we should surely include luck as a factor.

New comment by Thiez in "Do we just want slaves?"

Thiez — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:14:58 +0000

The slaves were sentient at that time. AI, as it stands now, is not.

New comment by Thiez in "Show HN: Gravity – Interactive solar-system simulator, from Newton to Einstein"

Thiez — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:30:05 +0000

It's not as lucky as you think. We formed from the same cloud that made the sun, so the material that made the earth was already in a fairly stable orbit.

New comment by Thiez in "The Green Side of the Lua"

Thiez — Thu, 28 May 2026 23:10:52 +0000

It isn't. Typescript is basically javascript with type annotations. There is a shorthand for class member initialisation and for defining enums, but that's basically it. There are no extra safety checks inserted. You get compile-time typechecking and nothing else.

New comment by Thiez in "Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier"

Thiez — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:09:04 +0000

It means trust builds slowly but can be lost rapidly. It's not about horse theft.

New comment by Thiez in "A network smuggling Starlink tech into Iran to beat internet blackout"

Thiez — Sun, 03 May 2026 07:15:35 +0000

Preferably neither, but anywhere is better than Israel. Who would want to live in a genocidal apartheid state? Iran was a democracy before US and UK intervention, perhaps they will be again when they win the illegal war against them.

New comment by Thiez in "Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers"

Thiez — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 09:56:15 +0000

Literally about land, oil, rare earth minerals…

New comment by Thiez in "Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers"

Thiez — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 09:09:35 +0000

We very much do compete for resources. People die of famine, thirst, exposure, and other lack-of-resources-related causes every day. That we could theoretically feed everyone doesn't matter when people compete for more than their fair share.

New comment by Thiez in "Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers"

Thiez — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:56:49 +0000

The extreme version of this would be insects like ants and certain types of bees, where the vast majority of individuals are biologically incapable of reproduction, and serve the one or few queens that are capable.

New comment by Thiez in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

Thiez — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:05:07 +0000

You realize that the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are different places, right? Your link does not support your argument.

New comment by Thiez in "Malus – Clean Room as a Service"

Thiez — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 19:43:31 +0000

Surely the number of people needed to maintain a reasonable throughput of the legal system scales approximately linearly with the number of offences? I don't see why a country of millions would be unable to have an efficient and functional legal system, even if the US does not.

New comment by Thiez in "Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation"

Thiez — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 14:37:12 +0000

I have seen at least one stretch of highway in Germany that has overhead power lines for trucks. I think it's a very interesting concept: the big downside of batteries is slow charging (compared to diesel) and limited range. Charging while driving on highways would largely solve these downsides.

New comment by Thiez in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

Thiez — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:12:58 +0000

Sure, I just think we if we're going to pathologize activities with intent to pass laws we ought to at least stick to a science-based approach. Right now there is no basis to conclude that even a single person is addicted to TikTok, since no such diagnosis exists.

The word 'addicted' is used informally in all kinds of contexts where it's a wild exaggeration. Just like people say they have OCD or autism when they sort something, or say they are hypochondriacs when they wash their hands more often than average. Of course people who actually have these conditions might do the same, but a lot of the time it's just perfectly neurotypical people using hyperbole and/or a flawed understanding of psychiatry.

Let's wait until psychiatrists agree on the existence of TikTok addiction and come up with a set of diagnostic criteria. Until such time we should take the existence of such addictions with a grain of salt, and refrain from moral panic.

New comment by Thiez in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

Thiez — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 20:07:36 +0000

Yes, which is why substance addictions are in the DSM-5 and internet/gaming/social media addictions are not.

New comment by Thiez in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

Thiez — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 12:34:14 +0000

The DSM-5 acknowledges only gambling as a diagnosable behavioral addiction. Being addicted to a thing means substance addiction, not TikTok or games or internet.

New comment by Thiez in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

Thiez — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 10:16:27 +0000

The VOC and EIC would like a word. While under these so-called 'Judeo-Christian values' Europe was wildly antisemitic, colonised most of the known world, and subjugated, genocided, and enslaved indigenous populations. The UK even wrote a slave bible. Slavery in the US also happened while these 'values' were held in high regard.

If your personal religious beliefs help you be a good person then that's great for you, keep believing. But historically it doesn't appear that more religious societies are more moral societies.

New comment by Thiez in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

Thiez — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 10:01:11 +0000

So do you believe that propaganda doesn't exist, or doesn't work, or that only ever accurately shows the truth? Because as I see it you must believe that people cannot be misled by propaganda to deny the possibility of manufactured consent.

New comment by Thiez in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

Thiez — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 09:56:00 +0000

Note that gambling is currently the only recognized non-substance-related addiction in the DSM-5. As a society we speak of things like 'tiktok addiction', 'gaming addiction', 'food addiction' and 'porn addiction' but none of these are real recognized disorders. That is not to say that certain behaviors cannot be maladaptive and hard to quit, but this is not enough to make something an addiction - we don't call hypochondria a 'cleaning addiction' even though it might look like one.

New comment by Thiez in "LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions"

Thiez — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 11:41:46 +0000

There isn't enough energy in the solar system to count to 2^128. Now a uuid v4 number "only" has 2^122 bits of entropy. Regardless, you cannot realistically scan the uuid domain. It's not even a matter of Moore's law, it is a limitation of physics that will stand until computers are no longer made of matter.

New comment by Thiez in "IPv6 is not insecure because it lacks a NAT"

Thiez — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 16:16:51 +0000

Surely for the people who cannot run and manage a firewall the default 'deny incoming' rule that basically every single consumer router ships with works just as well to protect from incoming traffic as NAT? I notice many comments are assuming a sanely preconfigured NAT on routers, but are also assuming either no firewall or one without any preconfigured rules. It seems like a strawman to me.