Hacker News: d_theorist

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

d_theorist — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 15:10:56 +0000

They haven’t removed the government. They removed Maduro. Very different.

New comment by d_theorist in "The most banned books in U.S. schools"

d_theorist — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 23:11:47 +0000

So your problem isn’t with “banning” books in schools per se. You just have a difference of opinion over which books should be “banned”.

New comment by d_theorist in "iPhone dumbphone"

d_theorist — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 10:42:22 +0000

I just block what I don't want with screen time. My wife sets and knows the passcode. I don't. So I can't override.

New comment by d_theorist in "Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords"

d_theorist — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 09:34:20 +0000

I think the "click a link in the email" solution is more than a "tiny" bit better isn't it? It almost completely solves the attack pattern you laid out. Passing the whole link to BAD is not only more tedious but totally ridiculous. That is not the kind of thing that even totally naive users would do.

And there is a significant benefit of not needing to worry about weak or repeated passwords, password leaks etc.

Overall that pattern feels significantly better to me than a normal password system, and MUCH better than the "we'll send you six digits to copy and paste" solution.

New comment by d_theorist in "Maybe Bluesky has "won""

d_theorist — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 10:58:30 +0000

As far as I can tell, the main reason people give for moving off X is that “there’s more hate speech/misinformation/disinformation since Elon took over because he got rid of a lot of trust and safety controls”

So, how does moving to a platform with the explicit aim of being decentralised solve this? Even Elon Twitter has more oversight than a decentralised platform with zero control.

New comment by d_theorist in "M4 MacBook Pro"

d_theorist — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 09:01:19 +0000

> Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU.

People have been saying this ever since Apple added the App Store to the Mac in 2010. It’s been 14 years. I wonder how much time has to go by for people to believe it’s not on Apple’s todo list.

New comment by d_theorist in "The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends"

d_theorist — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 16:59:41 +0000

It’s extremely relevant to the question, which is what the negative nature of the image has to tell us about the relative probabilities of the two hypotheses (miraculous hypothesis vs fraud hypothesis).

In my view, it is a big problem for the fraud hypothesis because you have to explain why and how it was done. At a time when the idea of a photo negative was entirely unknown, and when there are no other examples of negative images, or even any mention of the idea of making such images, why would the fraudsters seize on the idea of making their fraudulent image a negative? There is no record of anybody even recognising that it is a negative until the 19th century. So, it’s not at all what you would expect given the fraud hypothesis. You would expect a straightforward image.

New comment by d_theorist in "The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends"

d_theorist — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 15:17:23 +0000

Why would they have done it?

New comment by d_theorist in "The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends"

d_theorist — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 15:13:26 +0000

Whatever else you might want to say about the shroud, one thing we know for sure is that it is not a painting. Analysis shows that the image is extremely superficial, only penetrating about 200nm into the fibres of the cloth. This is inconsistent with a painted image.

New comment by d_theorist in "The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends"

d_theorist — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 15:01:36 +0000

Of course they weren’t dumb, but having a great understanding of shadows is a far cry from being capable of creating a photo negative. They didn’t even have the concept of a photo negative. How would they even have thought to achieve such a thing? And for what purpose?

And, by the way, the image on the shroud is not made of paint, so contemporary proficiency with painting techniques hardly seems relevant.

New comment by d_theorist in "NASA inspector general gives damning assessment of Boeing's quality control"

d_theorist — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 14:14:04 +0000

There is a reason, because DEI introduces non-merit-based criteria for hiring, which necessarily results in less qualified hires.

New comment by d_theorist in "Civil society in Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland targeted with Pegasus spyware"

d_theorist — Fri, 31 May 2024 15:51:56 +0000

What is meant by "civil society" in this article?

New comment by d_theorist in "Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain"

d_theorist — Sun, 19 May 2024 17:32:49 +0000

How do you know?

New comment by d_theorist in "Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny"

d_theorist — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 18:03:53 +0000

I agree you need to control for other factors. But I don't think that is particularly beyond the wit of man.

New comment by d_theorist in "Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny"

d_theorist — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 17:18:59 +0000

The relevant metric should be accident rate per million miles driven. What is the rate with autopilot vs without autopilot.

New comment by d_theorist in "The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity"

d_theorist — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 18:43:23 +0000

Let me tell you how all this works: you see, Team America is funded by the corporations, so they fight for the corporations... while they sit in their corporation buildings... and they're all corporation-y... and they make lots of money!

New comment by d_theorist in "Brave Search launches own image and video search"

d_theorist — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 18:35:34 +0000

Or probably just an innocent oversight? I imagine they might have taken this decision early on when they were far too small for anybody to even think of not wanting to be crawled by them, and just never revisited the decision.

New comment by d_theorist in "Brave is a fork, not a Chromium reskin"

d_theorist — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:57:49 +0000

This is defamatory. We should all be a bit more careful and thoughtful before making unfounded accusations about people.

New comment by d_theorist in "Firefox has surpassed Chrome on Speedometer"

d_theorist — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 18:00:36 +0000

>> The two scenarios are precisely symmetrical. The only difference is that the cause on one side is one that you agree with, and on the other side is one that you disagree with.

>Yep! That's pretty much what agreeing or disagreeing with something means.

Not to me. The difference between us is that I am perfectly happy to work with people who do not share my political viewpoints.

New comment by d_theorist in "Firefox has surpassed Chrome on Speedometer"

d_theorist — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 07:09:09 +0000

You think that gay marriage is a good thing, but many people do not.

The two scenarios are precisely symmetrical. The only difference is that the cause on one side is one that you agree with, and on the other side is one that you disagree with.

You cannot decide moral questions by couching them in terms of “rights” and assuming that whichever side “advances rights” must be the correct side. Why? Because you can do that arbitrarily either way and for anything. e.g. “admitting gay marriage denies people the right to live in a society where traditional marriage is protected”.

Now what do you do? Both sides can say their cause is “advancing rights”.