Hacker News: drweevil

New comment by drweevil in "School uses AI to remove 200 books, including Orwell's 1984 and Twilight"

drweevil — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:47:11 +0000

“Safeguarding”. How very, um, Orwellian.

New comment by drweevil in "We do not think Anthropic should be designated as a supply chain risk"

drweevil — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 14:17:17 +0000

Then don't take the contract that was offered to Anthropic.

New comment by drweevil in "Flock cameras gifted by Horowitz Foundation, avoiding public oversight"

drweevil — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 22:46:08 +0000

I sounds naive to assert that the jurisdiction of city government doesn't extend beyond just "whatever is funded by taxpayers."

Also, if someone were to destroy one of these things, the damage caused, by a similar logic, is $0, right? /s

New comment by drweevil in "Show HN: Formally verified FPGA watchdog for AM broadcast in unmanned tunnels"

drweevil — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 23:41:23 +0000

AM is a good modulation choice for low signal environments. It is used in the airbands for this reason.

New comment by drweevil in "Trump officials met group pushing Alberta independence from Canada"

drweevil — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:27:24 +0000

Trump administrators meet with traitors. And there's oil involved. Wow, what a surprise. Also, "three in 10 would vote for it..." that means 7 in 10 wouldn't.

New comment by drweevil in "The tech monoculture is finally breaking"

drweevil — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 19:20:13 +0000

> A Timex ad went viral this year: “Know the time without seeing you have 1,249 unanswered emails.”

Sometime last year I got tired of using my phone as a clock. I dug out a 2-decade old watch from a drawer, put in a new battery, and eventually realized I really missed its simplicity. It has calendar functions, and a mechanical rotating dial I can use as a timer. Its interface never changes. I never lose it. What's not to like?

New comment by drweevil in "Booting from a vinyl record (2020)"

drweevil — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 18:40:58 +0000

I used to have a cassette storage device for my Atari 800. This is totally geeky and awesome!

New comment by drweevil in "When employees feel slighted, they work less"

drweevil — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 18:33:46 +0000

The subject may sound silly, but we evolved this way. For the greatest part of human existence we were part of small social groups. We each took part in every activity. Our 'work' was for the group, and for ourselves. Those we worked with, we lived with, so in order to maintain group cohesion (and to not get stabbed in our sleep) we learned to get along. Current work practices violate a lot of those deeply set social mores. I'd love to see a study that looks into this hypothesis. Could explain a lot of the misery and depression in our modern life.

New comment by drweevil in "Trump says the USA will indefinitely "run the country" of Venezuela"

drweevil — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 18:21:43 +0000

>Venezuelans in the capital have voiced mixed reactions to the US’s operation, with some celebrating the “positive change” and others saying Maduro’s capture creates “an even worse conflict.”

A claim backed up by...a link to itself? What? (as of now, the link is in the phrase "voiced mixed reactions".) Our media is showing us how much rot actually prevails within the large news orgs. How did they arrive at a framing like "some do, some don't"? Did they have reporters on the ground?. Or is this an unfalsifiable phrase designed to sow doubt? (fwiw, the only ones I can think of who would approve are members of the old ruling class, who form a small minority of the country's population.)

New comment by drweevil in "Donald Trump says US is 'going to run' Venezuela after overnight strikes"

drweevil — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 18:06:07 +0000

This is a result of legitimate elections, right? /s

New comment by drweevil in "Nationwide Tax Strike"

drweevil — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 20:07:18 +0000

It is. It is very reminiscent of the 2009 ACORN hatchet job by Breitbart et. al. Same features: undercover, video, practices that are not up to journalistic standards, etc. It feels like deja vu all over again.

Wikipedia on the ACORN takedown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN_2009_undercover_videos_c...

Minn. Public Radio on Shirley: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/12/29/youtuber-nick-shirl...

New comment by drweevil in "You Can't Trust Your Eyes to Tell You What's Real Anymore, Says Instagram Head"

drweevil — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 18:17:26 +0000

Anymore? Photos have always been imperfect approximations of the truth that should be considered with appropriate skepticism. Photographers choose when, where, and what/who their subjects are, when they frame their image and release the shutter. Editors choose which ones to include in a story. AI may be doing us a favor by making this more obvious.

As with other media the solution has been and still is corroboration. Are there several, independent photographs of the same event? Great! Otherwise, treat with due skepticism. This is good news, as it doesn't require all the tech ("fingerprints and cryptographic signing of images from the cameras that took them") that Mosseri proposes.

New comment by drweevil in "DHS Says DHS-Certified Real IDs Too Unreliable to Confirm U.S. Citizenship"

drweevil — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 17:23:55 +0000

> ...when our Fourth Amendment rights are eroded, there is no evidence or piece of plastic that will suffice to overcome an officer's "reasonable suspicion" once the government decides you're a target.

This is the real issue here. The government is choosing to act in bad faith, and no legislated law can prevent this if the courts fail to enforce the law.

New comment by drweevil in "Poll HN: How do you feel about AI generated images on blog posts?"

drweevil — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 16:35:40 +0000

This. Every time I catch myself thinking "depends on its purpose..." I have to remind myself of this. The negative social and environmental costs of AI overwhelm any supposed benefit.

New comment by drweevil in "Tech billionaires threaten to exit California over proposed wealth tax"

drweevil — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 02:27:41 +0000

Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

New comment by drweevil in "Why did we use leaded petrol for so long? (2017)"

drweevil — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 00:25:25 +0000

And yet, tetraethyl lead is a deadly poison. Surely that is a factor worth considering?

New comment by drweevil in "Ask HN: What did you lose forever because you had no backup?"

drweevil — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 04:29:30 +0000

I lost some DSP code I was working on (DOS, ca. '95). I wanted to recompile it, so I did something like 'del *.obj'. Or meant to. I typed 'del * obj' instead. Lost a day’s worth of work. (DOS even asked me if I was sure. “Of course I’m sure”, I thought as I mashed the Enter key.)

Result? I learned how to use make. (Borland had a nice one). I also started using my first VCS tool, sourcesafe (pre-Microsoft).

New comment by drweevil in "Inside CECOT – 60 Minutes [video]"

drweevil — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 02:39:46 +0000

My own experience is that they've been solid throughout. Certainly better than many other options, at a time when the technical press has been generally disappointing.

New comment by drweevil in "Why did we use leaded petrol for so long? (2017)"

drweevil — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:16:00 +0000

> Cynics might point out that any old farmer could distill ethyl alcohol from grain. It couldn't be patented, or its distribution profitably controlled. Tetraethyl lead could.

Were they cynics, though? As the article itself points out, the dangers of tetraethyl lead were already well know. And then there is this:

> And, as Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner point out, "For the next four decades, all studies of the use of tetraethyl lead were conducted by laboratories and scientists funded by the Ethyl Corporation and General Motors".

It doesn't take a cynic to see what was going on here.

New comment by drweevil in "Do Wasps Make Honey"

drweevil — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 23:48:07 +0000

The most interesting feeding behavior of wasps, occurring only in the social species, is called trophallaxis. Since the larva need protein to grow, the adults hunt caterpillars, bugs, etc. They chew them up for the larva and feed them. In return, the larva provide the adults droplets of a fluid rich in nutrients and sugars. Feed your babies protein, eat the sugary excrement. Yum.