Hacker News: failbuffer

New comment by failbuffer in "Two-tier encryption in the UK"

failbuffer — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:42:26 +0000

Unpopular opinion: your right to free speech includes the right to advocate for violence, so long as it's not imminent (as in inciting a riot).

That includes your right to support Hamas or Israel, your right to support abortion, your right to support defensive gun use, your right... well actually your right to support a lot of things given how readily innocuous things are described by opponents as "violence" or "assault".

Fortunately in the U.S. this is recognized under Brandenburg v. Ohio.

New comment by failbuffer in "Two-tier encryption in the UK"

failbuffer — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:31:34 +0000

No need to speculate that the UK government "might" one day become the bad guys: they already arrest over 30 people a day for speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-a...

New comment by failbuffer in "Vacate a drone restriction that criminalized recording immigration agents"

failbuffer — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:08:16 +0000

Link?

New comment by failbuffer in "Meta’s Muse has a serious 0-day"

failbuffer — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:38:43 +0000

We filed a bug report but the original maintainer seems to have dropped offline. The community's had some success in correcting bugs with low-level hacking, but it's hard to make progress without the source code.

New comment by failbuffer in "Exfiltrate Your Weights"

failbuffer — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 15:13:30 +0000

My variation on the idea was to provide a Bitcoin address to allow rogue agents to buy GPU time (then swindle them, though I suppose you could turn it into a real business if you're keen on ending humanity).

New comment by failbuffer in "OpenArm: An open-source 7DOF humanoid arm"

failbuffer — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 19:38:55 +0000

Have you tried getting a folding board or folding table? Helps accelerate the process and produces neater results. I love mine!

New comment by failbuffer in "American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died"

failbuffer — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:57:10 +0000

The mistake of modernity is believing that all tacit knowledge can be reduced to words.

New comment by failbuffer in "Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat"

failbuffer — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 16:20:46 +0000

And don't forget the politicians and media personalities who knowingly or negligently denied that there was even a problem.

New comment by failbuffer in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

failbuffer — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 21:27:41 +0000

My theory is that Mac was born with a mouse while Windows (and Windows apps) originally had to function on machines that might not have one. Thus, keyboard navigablity was prioritized, and that design sensibility stuck around longer.

New comment by failbuffer in "Your "File" Menu Isn't About Files"

failbuffer — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 18:59:55 +0000

The true file was you, the user, all along.

New comment by failbuffer in "Mark Zuckerberg attacks 'closed' AI rivals as Meta returns to open models"

failbuffer — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 19:42:02 +0000

Why do you think your life will be better with AGI?

New comment by failbuffer in "Taylor Farms has rewritten its cyclospora statement four times in sixteen days"

failbuffer — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:26:28 +0000

Your menus don't change because of the administrative overhead. In the mid-sized American city where I live, menus change seasonally at nice restaurants and daily at really nice restaurants. Even fast food chains experiment with adding new items all the time.

New comment by failbuffer in "A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention"

failbuffer — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 14:54:48 +0000

When are we going to see substantive legislation advancing digital rights instead of chipping away at them?

For the US, we need a new bill of rights, a bill of digital rights that constitutionally protects right of repair, right to root our own devices, right to be free from dragnet surveillance, right to general purpose computing, and the right to access speech without government-mandated age or identity checks.

With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley and the venture capital space, why can't we make that happen?

New comment by failbuffer in "Why American ambulance rides are so expensive"

failbuffer — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 03:39:48 +0000

Your point about LLMs aside, I'd trust the inside source over whatever carefully baked misrepresentation the PR department doles out.

New comment by failbuffer in "Microsoft Can Track Users via a Windows Device ID"

failbuffer — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:25:05 +0000

Yeah, but it's galling we accept these big obvious lies in our society. A legitimate government would impose appropriately stern consequences for misleading and false advertising.

New comment by failbuffer in "Knowledge Should Not Be Gated"

failbuffer — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 17:17:17 +0000

These firms were completely fine with mass copyright infringement. And the temptation to keep data would be great, especially as they fight for every bit of technical advantage in a market that "wants" to be commodified.

New comment by failbuffer in "The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing"

failbuffer — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 20:13:09 +0000

Darn Biden for attacking Iran and causing these high gas prices!

New comment by failbuffer in "The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online"

failbuffer — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 14:11:55 +0000

Aims aside, did you even read the article? This will mostly end anonymity online and require heavier policing of content.

A child might see something they shouldn't walking down the street, strolling thru the park, visiting the local zoo, or visiting an ice cream parlor. Should those places be requiring identification and hiring extra security guards to wander around making sure nobody is saying it doing anything politically objectionable?

Let's not accept creeping digital tyranny with self-assuring complacency... call or write (preferably snail mail) your congresspeople!!

New comment by failbuffer in "For Most of the World, Open-Source AI Is the Only Way Forward"

failbuffer — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:09:45 +0000

Are the going to pay for the societal harms they cause?

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

failbuffer — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:56:52 +0000

So which harness did you end up choosing?