Hacker News: Waterluvian

New comment by Waterluvian in "Why Is Israel Running TV Ads in Iowa Ahead of the Midterms?"

Waterluvian — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 04:28:49 +0000

It’s more about being manipulable, not consequential. They want a strong position for a president that they can control. It’s just plain good strategy.

New comment by Waterluvian in "Feds suspect ransom negotiator ran ShinyHunters extortion site"

Waterluvian — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:54:24 +0000

You can have $1,000,000 in unmarked bills as requested. Or you can have whatever is in the mystery box!

New comment by Waterluvian in "Facebook Pages require paid subscription to post more than two links per month"

Waterluvian — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 16:48:41 +0000

Stepping into my wife’s shoes, it’s absolutely not a ghost town. It’s where she communicates with community members and other parents of kids at our local school. It’s how she talks about utility issues, road closures, and other local events. It's where we learned that our city was finally getting a Taco Bell!

Meanwhile I haven't used it in 15+ years and don't ever feel the need for it. Probably in part because my better two-thirds has that side of things covered.

I think "Facebook is dead" is a trap for people who can only reason about the world through their own perspective.

New comment by Waterluvian in "DeepSeek banned from U.S. federal civilian agencies under new DHS order"

Waterluvian — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:17:02 +0000

I thought you were making a joke but the average age of the House of Commons in Canada is also ~52 while the U.S. House is 59 and the Senate is 65.

New comment by Waterluvian in "Ukraine claims first drone evacuation of wounded soldier"

Waterluvian — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 01:11:02 +0000

The maths change entirely if you don’t value individual human life. Wounded and captured become liabilities. It reminds me of what I’ve seen with how the Russians prosecute a war. Humans can be a cheap renewable resource.

New comment by Waterluvian in "Ousted Savannah police officer gave ICE agent husband access to Flock system"

Waterluvian — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 12:31:42 +0000

The regime has figured out that the people don’t like certain things, but not nearly enough to do anything uncomfortable about them. Now they’re calibrating on the best ways to do things without stirring the people up too much. Apparently if you make gas cost too much that’s where Americans draw the line. And who says capitalism doesn’t work!

New comment by Waterluvian in "Ousted Savannah police officer gave ICE agent husband access to Flock system"

Waterluvian — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:55:57 +0000

And a great big poisoned tree for anything that comes from the data. But it’s not like the Americans have been following the rules when deporting people anyways.

New comment by Waterluvian in "What the heck is /pkg?"

Waterluvian — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 01:31:50 +0000

Linux is such a beautiful thing for many reasons. For those with the will, desire, and means to use it, it’s a great option.

I think from Apple’s perspective it’s the “I don’t think about you at all” meme. The users who have the will, desire, and means to switch to Linux are not their core target audience. It’s a mutually satisfactory breakup.

New comment by Waterluvian in "Dogs seem to agree with humans that 'bouba' is round and 'kiki' is spiky"

Waterluvian — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 20:52:42 +0000

When I want to avoid startling my cat I make sure that the sound of my presence is gradual and not sudden. The syllables of a bouba word all introduce themselves smoothly and not suddenly.

I’ll rush to posit something for others to poke holes in: the definition of a Kiki word is a word where the syllables have a sudden “attack” then decay. And that’s a function of sound, not language.

New comment by Waterluvian in "Anthropic's proposed AI safety bill only kicks in if 50 deaths or $1B in damages"

Waterluvian — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 15:39:51 +0000

Every play made by these companies aligns with what you’d do if you have a $1T valuation to protect against an industry that seems increasingly commoditizable.

I’m still… hopeful… that “good enough” models will be abundantly available to be run anywhere as to limit the low water mark for market capture by a few big ones.

New comment by Waterluvian in "MapQuest will now show you where Flock cameras are in your neighborhood"

Waterluvian — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 20:19:43 +0000

Sorry is this a joke I don’t get?

New comment by Waterluvian in "MapQuest will now show you where Flock cameras are in your neighborhood"

Waterluvian — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 19:34:35 +0000

It’s incredible just how quickly Google and Apple folded to the will of their country’s king renaming stuff.

New comment by Waterluvian in "Waymo in Toronto"

Waterluvian — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 21:02:51 +0000

Oh there's going to be opinions, for sure. This is the high cost, zero returns portion though. They aren't trying to go live until 2028. In a way, it becomes a bargaining chip if they've spent all this money on mapping/testing Toronto and want to start operating in earnest. Though, ideally by 2028 we don't have to behave as low and as transactionally as the current American regime.

New comment by Waterluvian in "Waymo in Toronto"

Waterluvian — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 20:55:17 +0000

It obviously makes sense to have begun this autonomy journey in much easier cities. It'll be interesting to see the incremental improvements as they navigate how to handle everything that winter does to driving. I hope the plan isn't, "just stop operating for five months." Also a bit of a jerk, I am, but I'm looking forward to the funny videos.

New comment by Waterluvian in "90% of US working hours are spent on tasks not covered well by AI benchmarks"

Waterluvian — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:32:19 +0000

Chesterson's Fence at a corporate level.

New comment by Waterluvian in "90% of US working hours are spent on tasks not covered well by AI benchmarks"

Waterluvian — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:01:25 +0000

I'm overwhelmingly convinced that this not uncommon perspective is the "what are all those construction workers even doing?!" fallacy.

Like any sizable population, there are absolutely some do-nothing inefficiencies to be culled. But most of the time it's just onlookers seeing a tiny slice of the day to be interpreted from their very limited vantage.

New comment by Waterluvian in "I love software rendering"

Waterluvian — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:01:29 +0000

Ah the software rendering era. Where I gained 10fps by adding a sound card.

New comment by Waterluvian in "Jev meets the Trolley Problem"

Waterluvian — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 13:33:34 +0000

I hear and see Jev a lot but I don't see a prevailing demo site to experiment with the way ChatGPT and Claude had set up.

How would I test the Trolley Problem with the addition that we don't and cannot know the state of the switch before throwing it.

New comment by Waterluvian in "Tesla Roadster"

Waterluvian — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 04:00:25 +0000

Hey now. Homer’s BBQ pit was a work of art, built through pure passion of emotion.

New comment by Waterluvian in "Tesla Roadster"

Waterluvian — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 03:58:11 +0000

Kind of a silly question but I want to be sure I’m piecing together a fair picture: both of those are five minute tasks you do yourself outside the auto parts store / driveway, right?