Hacker News: everdrive

New comment by everdrive in "VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'"

everdrive — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 20:08:21 +0000

Mobile browsing should be considered high risk for most users except for the most mundane activities.

New comment by everdrive in "VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'"

everdrive — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 20:05:48 +0000

I'm pretty busy and behind the times a bit on this one. What is a practical method to avoid such a ban? I'm not in the UK, but there seems to be a general anti-privacy movement that is sweeping the globe.

What can we do when such a law comes to our country?

- Route all traffic via tor, then connect to a VPN from Tor?

- Finally learn I2P?

- Something else?

New comment by everdrive in "Iran says it's closing Strait of Hormuz, accusing Israel, US of violating truce"

everdrive — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 19:57:57 +0000

The P5+1, while quite imperfect so was preferable to the current situation that's almost unbelievable. This whole invasion has been a deeply stupid move on the part of the US.

New comment by everdrive in "Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society"

everdrive — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 18:54:30 +0000

According to the NVIDIA CEO, yes. He's quite ravenous at the possibility that before he only had humans as customers, but now he is potentially opening up a new customer base where agents are customers.

New comment by everdrive in "Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society"

everdrive — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:55:16 +0000

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so)

The loneliness epidemic, a constant drip-feed of outrage -- all so that people can make a small amount of money, distracted driving. Nearly every single service becoming worse over time, etc. Since then, the tech CEOs has been sidling up to the halls of power and effectively begging to help destroy privacy as thoroughly as possible.

I certainly know that my life was transformed for the worse by social media. And I don't mean that I went down any rabbit holes -- rather common culture was hollowed out, friends were distracted, friends fell down their own extremist rabbit holes. There is no successful social media company that actually cares about the negative impacts it has had on society. They speak about things such as "providing value" where value = time spent on the platform. They do not care if they ruin lives.

So a few years ago, nearly everywhere you went people are talking about how thoroughly AI was going to transform society. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing it. Of course people are wary. Big tech has been a net negative in very loud, intrusive, and obvious ways in _most_ people's lives. And now they're saying they're going to radically reform society.

The only hope we have is that they're wrong, and their power to change things will be minimal. For sure, if they really how the power to radically change everything, they would change it for the worse and would never spend a moment worrying about the damage they had done.

New comment by everdrive in "Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?"

everdrive — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 19:17:19 +0000

>It's getting to the point where selling my soul to the highest bidder is going to be absolutely required for any big tech job going forward.

Can you expand on this? Aren't there plenty of "not-amazing-but-definitely-not-evil" organizations out there which need talented engineers?

New comment by everdrive in "Running local models is good now"

everdrive — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:50:52 +0000

What counts as a lot of memory? What could someone do with 16 GB of RAM?

New comment by everdrive in "UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts"

everdrive — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:28:07 +0000

This would only work for anyone foolish enough to attempt to access content and services with their phone. You don't own your phone. It might has well be a company-owned device.

"But everyone uses their phone all the time!" Yes, and everyone will be worse off for making the obviously worse choice.

New comment by everdrive in "Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers"

everdrive — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:58:19 +0000

I'm still confused about what makes uBlock Origin Lite less powerful than uBlock Origin. I don't use it or Chrome in any case, but I would prefer to understand the difference.

New comment by everdrive in "Russian artist and Putin critic shot dead in Poland"

everdrive — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:57:28 +0000

I agree with your points, but I would prefer a world where Putin would say "call this off, it's too risky given the enmity we've fostered."

New comment by everdrive in "Russian artist and Putin critic shot dead in Poland"

everdrive — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:21:22 +0000

Putin is uncowed, clearly. It's hard to know what the truth of things is. It's clear he's on his back heels in Ukraine and at home, but perhaps he still holds a strong position.

New comment by everdrive in "Fox to buy Roku"

everdrive — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 17:22:41 +0000

Services are really never safe. Or at best, they should be considered temporary. If you like what they provide, know that what they provide could become worse and/or more expensive. This is the likeliest scenario.

At best, you should use services on a temporary basis and never allow yourself to get entrenched. Once you're locked in, you are part of the product to be sold to advertisers. The "install base" that is used as leverage for these sorts of shenanigans.

New comment by everdrive in "New privacy frontier: Europe eyes crackdown on smart glasses"

everdrive — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:06:38 +0000

There's a mad dash right now. Everyone is sprinting as fast as possible to invent and propagate the worst technology possible. Oh, you thought smart phones ruined society? Well good news, smart glasses are finally viable. You just won't believe what they'll come up with next, and everyone will buy it, and everyone will be worse off.

New comment by everdrive in "Tell HN: Meta is down"

everdrive — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:33:59 +0000

Perhaps it caused a mini baby-boom.

New comment by everdrive in "Tell HN: Meta is down"

everdrive — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:54:33 +0000

Hopefully it stays down.

New comment by everdrive in "Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)"

everdrive — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:35:13 +0000

It's a weird social psychology quirk. For whatever reason, the entire music industry has been captured by the delusion that mixing all the sounds louder is good. No one likes it, except for those guys. For reasons I'll never understand, the movie industry has been captured by the opposite delusion; they're going to pump dynamic range so high that you can only understand about half the dialogue in the movie. And of course, no one likes this.

New comment by everdrive in "FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs"

everdrive — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:35:54 +0000

Just think about your comment if we ever see for-real 1940s-style fascism at the same time we have all these stupid tracking devices on us all the time. If we made it through to better times people have no idea how so many people could have so easily and freely given up their privacy and freedom. With no fight whatsoever. Giving it up gladly. Hoping even more freedom could be taken from them so they could be just a little bit more comfortable.

New comment by everdrive in "FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs"

everdrive — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:32:01 +0000

>I was required to install an app in order to enter and leave the Philippines

That's good to know. Me and my family will definitely never be visting the philippines. My phone doesn't have mobile data enabled at the provider level. Would have been an award search for Wifi.

>My local system is completely cashless. You can pay by phone,

It's baffling to me that anyone would want to link payment to their phone. This is one of the least intelligent self-owns of the last decade.

>or I can install an app and have my issue resolved in a few minutes. Which option do you think most people choose?

I take your point but I'd say that most people don't put much value on their freedom if they'd trade it for a couple of hours of convenience.

New comment by everdrive in "FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs"

everdrive — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:18:54 +0000

Could you expand on this? What happens at the national border? What happens if your phone just won't do a QR code? I'm not arguing with you or disagreeing with, I'm just curious what the process is.

New comment by everdrive in "CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs"

everdrive — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:17:21 +0000

It's difficult in the sense that it's rare and much of it is out of your hands. That's a very different kind of difficulty than honing a technical skill. I'm happy to call it something other than difficult, but most of those engineers would not succeed in becoming CEOs -- whether or not they would actually do a good job at it.