Hacker News: asdff

New comment by asdff in "London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 22:06:03 +0000

Yes I'm sure their police force is entirely free of any psychological problems and in no way selects for people who might be incline to abuse their position of authority.

Oh wait, this came out just yesterday:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/10/detective-respon...

New comment by asdff in "How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 22:04:44 +0000

I'm sorry but 48mp on a sensor the size of the end of a pencil is just not the same as even full frame, let alone 4x5.

New comment by asdff in "How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 21:18:42 +0000

Your phone in your pocket is not sniffing medium format film resolution. It also lacks the latitude of really any negative film stock. Color wise slide film is still supreme to this day.

New comment by asdff in "The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 21:05:19 +0000

They should have when that photo of bankers boxes worth of documents stacked up in a bathroom was released. Oh "but her emails!"

New comment by asdff in "The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 21:03:54 +0000

Yeah, cat is out of the bag now. Something like 1/10 workers in California are undocumented and you can be sure it is heavily biased for certain industries. Imagine the implications of some industry losing lets say half its workforce overnight. That would be like a COVID level shock in output and in all likelihood the industry would collapse vs somehow pull needed labor in a quick amount of time, and from where exactly, who knows? National unemployment rate is only 4% not like there is much spare labor capacity.

New comment by asdff in "The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 21:00:01 +0000

They are supposed to be using e-verify for that

New comment by asdff in "The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:56:05 +0000

Interestingly in my latino city the used car dealers catering to low income people have worked around the lack of credit for their clientelle. They will for example use proof of employment as your "credit" for financing plans rather than traditional bank metrics. This will usually be written directly on the building in spanish.

New comment by asdff in "London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:51:55 +0000

I mean lets be honest if you are up to no good and there are facial scanners, you'd just throw on your n95 mask and black hoodie, maybe stick a pebble in your shoe, and then poof this tech no longer stops the bad guys.

There are also cases where law enforcement misuses this sort of technology to stalk romantic interests. So your kids could very well be stalked by a pervert in law enforcement more effectively with this technology.

New comment by asdff in "London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:49:26 +0000

You assume it will be used in good faith which is charitable. It doesn't even need to take an authoritarian regime to pervert this technology. Abusive police officers in the US for example use Flock to stalk ex girlfriends.

New comment by asdff in "Archive of Animal Photography Reveals 18,000 Species and Counting"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:43:28 +0000

Sounds like he has to front run the upcoming species demarcations.

New comment by asdff in "Show HN: iPhone app takes simultaneous images from 2 lenses, fuses into 1 photo"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:40:13 +0000

This is why some hardware is still supreme. I've had the same Korg chromatic tuner for 20 years and would not be in the least bit surprised if it goes for another 40.

New comment by asdff in "The UK's war on anonymity has come to America"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:40:19 +0000

Isn't that what mossad is for?

New comment by asdff in "Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:32:10 +0000

Better doesn't sell. That is why there are 10+ firms. There probably is a genuinely better solution at that point. But sales departments sell, so you are more likely to get the product that has the strongest sales department than one that is actually better on its own merits.

New comment by asdff in "Toxic underground fires spreading at California landfills"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:27:08 +0000

This is clean burning? No outputs beyond h2o and heat to atmosphere?

New comment by asdff in "Toxic underground fires spreading at California landfills"

asdff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:25:22 +0000

Isn't burying in a landfill better than burning considering the carbon sequestration considerations of burning what will likely be plastic products? At least with burying we are a little bit closer to putting the oil energy back under the surface of the earth vs having it around in the atmosphere.

New comment by asdff in "Mars Bar from 1991 found – and it's 20g bigger than today's"

asdff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:33:33 +0000

I agree $7 sounds steep but go ahead and look at the grocery store and be as shocked as I was. They are stamped this way from the factory. I was shocked.

New comment by asdff in "Tl;dv: Over 180k meetings left wide open"

asdff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:17:42 +0000

Why not just pay attention in the meetings you are paid to attend?

New comment by asdff in "Tl;dv: Over 180k meetings left wide open"

asdff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:16:31 +0000

Who writes "a hour"?

New comment by asdff in "Tl;dv: Over 180k meetings left wide open"

asdff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:13:30 +0000

Ai notetaking is such as signal for stupidity but I'm not surprised that it is getting so much traction. It is basically like getting all your lecture notes from the A student so you can fuck around instead of paying actual attention to anything, and hoping the A students understanding of the lecture somehow rubs off on you.

Kind of funny how that is the pitch for a lot of these products. AI to help you take notes in meetings. AI to help you pass an interview. AI to read and write for you. AI to let you be a lazy bastard, in other words.

New comment by asdff in "Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints"

asdff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:08:58 +0000

Always surprising to me to find people in the HN comments who don't use adblockers in $CURRENTYEAR