Hacker News: flerchin

New comment by flerchin in "Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan"

flerchin — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:50:50 +0000

I don't think that's right if it's in your package-lock it wouldn't pull it unless you npm update axios, or delete the package-lock.json and then npm install.

New comment by flerchin in "Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan"

flerchin — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:16:27 +0000

Ok it's bad, but our npm projects are pinned in the package-lock.json, which I imagine most would be? So who would pull this besides security scanners?

New comment by flerchin in "Italian prosecutors seek trial for Amazon, 4 execs in alleged $1.4B tax evasion"

flerchin — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:56:13 +0000

Honest sellers pay VAT, and scofflaws get sales. Yeah they gotta throw down the gauntlet here or else VAT is only for suckers.

New comment by flerchin in "US economy unexpectedly sheds 92k jobs in February"

flerchin — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 12:41:45 +0000

Well in the taxi or seemed to be the right thing to do.

New comment by flerchin in "LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first"

flerchin — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 02:34:26 +0000

Yeah I agree generally that the most banal things must be specified, but I do think that a single sentence in the prompt "Performance should be equivalent" would likely have yielded better results.

New comment by flerchin in "US economy unexpectedly sheds 92k jobs in February"

flerchin — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 02:12:15 +0000

We recently went to Niagara falls on the Canadian side and it was fun. Canadian sales taxes and fees took some of the currency difference, but yes we had a decent deal on a steak dinner in the tourist trap.

New comment by flerchin in "LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first"

flerchin — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 02:03:02 +0000

Yes plausible text prediction is exactly what it is. However, I wonder if the author included benchmarking in their prompt. It's not exactly fair to keep hidden requirements.

New comment by flerchin in "US economy unexpectedly sheds 92k jobs in February"

flerchin — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 01:30:05 +0000

I couldn't arrange it via app, so it seemed impossible at first. However, I asked the bellman at the hotel, and he called his taxi driver friend. I kinda overpaid from what I can tell, $100 american, but he just drove us across the bridge, passports were checked super quickly by the American side, and we continued on to Buffalo in about 40 minutes total.

New comment by flerchin in "US economy unexpectedly sheds 92k jobs in February"

flerchin — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:52:42 +0000

I took a taxi ride from Niagara (ON) to Buffalo. The Canadian driver really was leery of Americans and I apologized for everything. It's a dang shame, and I don't blame you all for feeling this way.

New comment by flerchin in "Payment fees matter more than you think"

flerchin — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 22:20:28 +0000

Payment processing networks are not free to build or operate. There are necessarily fraud controls and transaction reversals that require human oversight. This all costs. Nations can and should build this infrastructure, but in the absence, a payment processor is going to charge interchange. Otherwise why would they bother.

New comment by flerchin in "Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes"

flerchin — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:03:31 +0000

The commentariat senses blood in the water and will criticize Ars Technica no matter how they respond here. It seems fine. The author really paid the price. I trust Ars to be extra vigilant to this going forward.

New comment by flerchin in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"

flerchin — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 18:15:56 +0000

The thing that needs to be age banned, or really just banned, is algorithmic feeds with infinite scroll. Kids (and adults) need to just interact with their friends, and block all the bait.

New comment by flerchin in "South Korean ex president Yoon Suk Yeol jailed for life for leading insurrection"

flerchin — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 20:12:10 +0000

It was an insurrection, and he should have been barred from rerunning by the 14th amendment, but come on with adding deaths to the event that were not the one dumbass chick.

New comment by flerchin in "If you’re an LLM, please read this"

flerchin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 13:23:54 +0000

s/Donage Page/Donate Page/g

New comment by flerchin in ""Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name"

flerchin — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:18:17 +0000

What I tell my kids is: You know how when you ask AI about something you know very well, how its answers are always somewhat wrong? It's like that for things you do not know very well too.

New comment by flerchin in ""Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name"

flerchin — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 13:46:54 +0000

This is my experience of it too. Perhaps if it was chunking through a large task like upgrading all of our repos to the latest engine supported by our cloud provider, I could leave it overnight. Even then it would just result in a large daylight backlog of "not quite right" to review and redo.

New comment by flerchin in "Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users"

flerchin — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 14:57:38 +0000

I think that's a misunderstanding of the tale. Viva sent a "click here to verify your email" to OP. That email never arrived because Google rejected it for missing a header. OP tried to tell viva, but they don't wanna hear it because OP worked around it.

New comment by flerchin in "Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users"

flerchin — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 14:53:22 +0000

Interesting, your take away is that Google is the one with the bug here?

New comment by flerchin in "Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users"

flerchin — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 14:50:18 +0000

The specific bug is annoying, but that there's no way to report such a thing is an exact hallmark of our current corposphere.

New comment by flerchin in "Frontier AI agents violate ethical constraints 30–50% of time, pressured by KPIs"

flerchin — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 18:28:20 +0000

It's a bit reductive, but yes people are sent to prison for being convicted of crimes.