Hacker News: dyslexit

How urban planners' preference for male trees has made hay fever worse (2020)

dyslexit — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 14:59:01 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urban-planners-preference-for-male-trees-has-made-your-hay-fever-worse

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47297853

Points: 7

# Comments: 0

New comment by dyslexit in "We Will Not Be Divided"

dyslexit — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 03:12:07 +0000

You're making it sound like this is commonly practiced and a standard procedure for the DoD, yet according to Anthropic,

>Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action—one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company.

Some very brief googling also confirmed this for me too.

>Everyone is fixated on the name of the rule (and to be fair: the administration is emphasizing that name for irritating rhetorical reasons), but if they called it the "DoD vendor exclusion list", it would be more accurate.

This statement misses the point. The political punishment to disallow all US agencies and gov contractors from using Anthropic for _any _ purpose, not just domestic spying, IS the retaliation, and is the very thing that's concerning. Calling it "DoD vendor exclusion list" or whatever other placating phrase or term doesn't change the action.

New comment by dyslexit in "France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US"

dyslexit — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 20:55:07 +0000

> This software dependency that Europe has on the USA is very, very bad - no just with regards to Zoom, but literally anything.

More to this point, the article points out that one of the drivers of all this is when Microsoft killed one of the emails an ICC prosecutor's email because the US administration sanctioned them:

> A decisive moment came last year when the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor after the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of President Donald Trump.

> The sanctions led Microsoft to cancel Khan’s ICC email, a move that was first reported by The Associated Press and sparked fears of a “kill switch” that Big Tech companies can use to turn off service at will.

New comment by dyslexit in "Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws"

dyslexit — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 22:46:24 +0000

I think you might have a different definition of "merit" than OP. "Merit" to me means how much value the company brings to society. If I'm reading correctly about your point of it being legal, to you it seems like "merit" means how much value they bring to their investors.

Social media companies becoming more consolidated and influential might be legal and good for their stakeholders but it doesn't mean it's a net positive for the rest of the world. And unfortunately, as much as so many people like to believe otherwise, being a net negative to society absolutely does not lead to a company becoming irrelevant.

New comment by dyslexit in "The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia"

dyslexit — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 19:52:54 +0000

The article also points out that some states and a lot cities require retailers to provide exact change. Congress would need to pass legislation to allow rounding nationally. I'm guessing in the meantime they'll continue holding pennies from previous years?

New comment by dyslexit in "The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return"

dyslexit — Thu, 29 May 2025 20:11:27 +0000

This is exactly what the article is arguing people are doing when betting on the Jesus thing:

> [Time Value of Money] The Yes people are betting that, later this year, their counterparties (the No betters) will want cash (to bet on other markets), and so will sell out of their No positions at a higher price.

...

> Has this galaxy-brained trade ever gone well? Yes! In late October of last year — a week before the election — Kamala Harris was trading around 0.3% in safe red states like Kentucky, while Donald Trump was trading around 0.3% in safe blue states like Massachusetts. On election day, these prices skyrocketed to about 1.5%, because “No” bettors desperately needed cash to place other bets on the election. Traders who bought “Yes” for 0.3% in late October and sold at 1.5% on election day made a 5x profit!

New comment by dyslexit in "I hacked a dating app (and how not to treat a security researcher)"

dyslexit — Mon, 12 May 2025 20:56:39 +0000

I'm pretty sure the comment was sarcastic. The grandparent comment was so over the top with its moral outrage that sarcasm feels like about the only appropriate response.

FBI warnings are true–fake file converters do push malware

dyslexit — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 17:01:33 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fbi-warnings-are-true-fake-file-converters-do-push-malware/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43463119

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

New comment by dyslexit in "SEC Declares Memecoins Are Not Subject to Oversight"

dyslexit — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 15:03:55 +0000

This opens the door for fully legalized bribery. Which is already happening. The SEC recently asked a judge to halt its own investigation into Justin Sun for fraud after he bought $75 million worth of Trump's WLF coin, $56 million of which went directly to Trump, immediately after the election. The case now will likely get dropped completely.

What's to stop foreign governments from doing the same thing, if they aren't already?

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/sec-fraud-prose...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-26/justin-su...

New comment by dyslexit in "Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI"

dyslexit — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 05:00:00 +0000

The only reason he tried to get out of it was because tech stocks tanked shortly after the bid and he knew he could have gotten it for far cheaper than the $44B. The entire time it was happening I was convinced that if he could get out of the bid he would immediately make another one for around $30B and still buy his favorite addiction. People like him and their motivations aren't that hard to read.

He wasn't _forced_ to buy anything. He was forced to pay what he promised for it.

New comment by dyslexit in "Bouba/kiki effect"

dyslexit — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 18:05:15 +0000

I wonder if this effect can be explained by the we form the "bouba"/"kiki" sounds when we speak them. "Kiki" has a sharper enunciation when using your tongue and mouth to form it, while "bouba" feels more like an open round one.

New comment by dyslexit in "Stable Diffusion 3"

dyslexit — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:52:58 +0000

As I said, it means parents who don't want their young children seeing porn (whether you agree with them or not) would no longer be able to let their children use SD. I'm not making a statement on what our society should or shouldn't allow, I'm pointing out what _is currently_ the standard in the United States and many other, more socially conservative, countries. SD would become more heavily regulated, an 18+ tool in the US, and potentially banned in other countries.

You can have your own opinion on it, but surely you can see the issue here?

New comment by dyslexit in "Stable Diffusion 3"

dyslexit — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 21:05:42 +0000

This question narrows the scope of "safety" to something less than what the people at SD or even probably what OP cares about. _Non-random_ CSAM requests targeting potentially real people is the obvious answer here, but even non-CSAM sexual content is also a probably a threat. I can understand frustration with it currently going overboard on blurring, but removing safety checks altogether would result in SD mainly being associated with porn pretty quickly, which I'm sure Stability AI wants to avoid for the safety of their company.

Add to that, parents who want to avoid having their kids generate sexual content would now need to prevent their kids from using this tool because it can create it randomly, limiting SD usage to kids 18+ (which is probably something else Stability AI does not want to deal with.)

It's definitely a balance between going overboard and having restrictions though. I haven't used SD in several months now so I'm not sure where that balance is right now.

New comment by dyslexit in "Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis"

dyslexit — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 01:29:51 +0000

I don't know, but even if I did you're making a weak argument. You're comparing temporary pain relief for lost and destroyed lives.

New comment by dyslexit in "Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis"

dyslexit — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 17:03:50 +0000

> The harm to society of people who need them not getting pain drugs far outweighs the pain to society of those who don’t need them abusing them.

How do you measure that? Opioid overdoses accounted for at least 72,800 deaths last year [0] and there are countless more addicts out there whose entire lives are ruined because of that addiction. Many of those people, if they ever recover, will never take opioids again for any real medical pain relief like you did for your wisdom teeth because of the very real risk of relapse. Additionally, opioid withdrawal is, according to almost everyone who's gone through it, is one of the worst experiences you can feel.

I'm not taking the side that it definitely doesn't outwheigh the need of those who genuinely need them. On the whole I actually probably agree with that. But stating that so confidently and ignoring the very real pain, lost lives, and broken families caused by opioid addiction because you had your wisdom teeth pulled and wanted opioids feels pretty dismissive and not a serious argument.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7226a4.htm

New comment by dyslexit in "HPV vaccine study finds zero cases of cervical cancer among women vaccinated <14"

dyslexit — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 20:40:43 +0000

The incidence rate is per year and the study was over an average of 32 years per patient. At that rate you'd expect around 105 incidents instead of 4, although there are other considerations like age to take into account.

New comment by dyslexit in "The pro-Israel information war"

dyslexit — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 16:34:49 +0000

You can argue whether or not Palestinians deserve the response, but what makes you think Hamas does not represent Palestinians? A recent poll by the Arab World for Research and Development shows that 75% of Palestinians support both the October 7th attacks and Hamas's vision of a single, Palestinian-only state. And Hamas's vision to achieve this state is actual, literal genocide.

New comment by dyslexit in "Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm"

dyslexit — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 20:35:09 +0000

For what purpose? Do we know what this is used for?

Major shake-up coming for Fermilab, the troubled U.S. particle physics center

dyslexit — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 15:08:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.science.org/content/article/major-shake-coming-fermilab-troubled-u-s-particle-physics-center

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35303391

Points: 247

# Comments: 144

New comment by dyslexit in "The Supreme Court’s Latest Decision Is a Blow to Stopping Climate Change"

dyslexit — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 05:50:35 +0000

Unfortunately for the rest of the world climate change doesn't wait to see what a Congress hamstrung by one political party that denies its very existence is going to do. That change has no political reality of coming from that branch, neither now not in any reasonable future that's going to matter.