Hacker News: ilamont

New comment by ilamont in "Disney erased FiveThirtyEight"

ilamont — Tue, 19 May 2026 20:22:27 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by ilamont in "Disney erased FiveThirtyEight"

ilamont — Tue, 19 May 2026 19:44:03 +0000

A Pew study of a random sample of Internet links conducted in October 2023 found significant “link rot”: almost 40 percent of links that had been active 10 years earlier were broken. And that’s probably an underestimate: the study was based on the Common Crawl web archive (the same one that AI labs use to train their models), which is quite comprehensive but probably contains some bias toward more prominent sites.

"Random sample of Internet links" is going to include a lot of absolute garbage.

If we're talking about news sites, or commentary, or blogs, or magazines, or newspapers, or other publishers, the number of dead links will be far higher. Those are the types of sites that are likely to fail, be acquired, get migrated, or become paywalled.

I worked as a technology journalist for years starting in the late 90s. I did a lot of freelance work as well, and almost nothing survives online. There were media brands that were shut down, content migrated to another site, the CMS was migrated from Drupal to Wordpress to something else, there were two or three acquisitions, and so on. Last week, I checked some articles that I worked on between 3 and 10 years ago and they were either 404s or paywalled.

When I left one of the higher-profile pubs in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, I knew my articles wouldn't last even though they were migrated to a sister publication. I made PDF copies of every single one. I still have them in a folder somewhere, not sure what to do with them.

My personal blogs are still up, but even those will die at some point.

New comment by ilamont in "Show HN: Auto-identity-remove – Automated data broker opt-out runner for macOS"

ilamont — Mon, 18 May 2026 13:54:44 +0000

> I don’t think it ever materialized but we had a good chuckle about the emergency meeting the Yellow Pages web devs would have had and at what percentage of opt outs.

They would just pretend they didn't receive the opt outs, like half of the direct mailers and spammers out there.

I've gone through the trouble of trying to get Uline to stop sending gigantic paper catalogs to my PO Box two or three times per year. They have a form, they just ignore the requests:

https://www.uline.com/CustomerService/ULINE_FAQ_Ans?FAQ_ID=4...

The day the Pintupi Nine entered the modern world (2014)

ilamont — Wed, 13 May 2026 19:17:10 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30500591

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48126187

Points: 30

# Comments: 2

C-suite exodus at Boston Dynamics

ilamont — Wed, 13 May 2026 18:55:53 +0000

Article URL: https://www.semafor.com/article/05/01/2026/c-suite-exodus-at-boston-dynamics

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125936

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

State Strategies to Subvert Fraudulent Uniform Commercial Code Filings [pdf]

ilamont — Wed, 06 May 2026 19:18:28 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nass.org/sites/default/files/reports/updated-ucc-fraudulent-filing-report-july2023.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48040431

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

NPR finds "no sign" of Polymarket at its Panama HQ address

ilamont — Tue, 05 May 2026 21:50:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/05/nx-s1-5807918/polymarket-panama-prediction-market

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48029114

Points: 262

# Comments: 137

The KLF: Return to Trancentral

ilamont — Tue, 05 May 2026 13:39:24 +0000

Article URL: https://www.discopogo.co/posts/the-klf-return-to-trancentral

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48022416

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

What Is Authorship When Machines Can Write?

ilamont — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:40:23 +0000

Article URL: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/what-is-authorship-when-machines-can-write/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47962300

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by ilamont in "HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing"

ilamont — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 04:18:24 +0000

“Court judgments are not self-enforcing. Solvent or honest debtors will want to pay soon after judgment is entered. A judgment will show up on credit reports and will be a matter of public record. This will be a problem for any judgment debtor attempting to borrow money. Most banks will require any unsatisfied judgments to be paid before they will lend new money. …

If the judgment debtor has only personal property and no real estate, the situation is very different. Personal property depreciates with time, can be damaged and can be easily hidden. Real estate is not going anywhere. One of two things will eventually happen with a judgment lien on real estate. If the debtor is financially viable, he will eventually have to pay off the judgment lien in order to sell or refinance the property. One day, the telephone will ring and someone will want to know where to send the check.”

https://fullertonlaw.com/enforcement-of-judgment

Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey

ilamont — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:09:03 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/i-can-never-talk-to-an-ai-anonymously

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47951295

Points: 472

# Comments: 257

New comment by ilamont in "Bankruptcies increase 11.9 percent"

ilamont — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:22:30 +0000

If you've had credit cards in the past, your minimum payments and debt servicing will be a lot more expensive than before.

New comment by ilamont in "Bankruptcies increase 11.9 percent"

ilamont — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:57:58 +0000

I can't speak for bankruptcy filings, but I've sat through small claims sessions on a few occasions and probably half are for credit card debt. Most of the time the defendant doesn't show and assuming the bank wins, damages can be trebled in my state.

And: Credit card rates are way, way up compared to just a few years ago. Earlier this year WSJ reported average APRs in the US were over 24% (https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/the-credit-card-rate-cap...). Most people do not read the fine print on their credit card applications, or compare them to what rates used to be like.

New comment by ilamont in "If America's So Rich, How'd It Get So Sad?"

ilamont — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:34:52 +0000

Isn't that what Britain used to do? "Tax exiles" living in exotic places for years at a time?

New comment by ilamont in "In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition"

ilamont — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 22:11:16 +0000

How does the service and support part of this work in countries that have opened the door to Chinese EVs?

Do they operate like Tesla, or can indie garages handle repairs? How long are warranties?

Air Force can't quit the A-10 Warthog, extends service into 2030

ilamont — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 21:13:00 +0000

Article URL: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-a10-warthog-2030/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47854568

Points: 19

# Comments: 5

The cost for posting links using X's API increased today by 1900%

ilamont — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:26:02 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/mediagazer/status/2046268441028444223

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47850159

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

USPS Inspector General Issues Alert on Counterfeit Postage

ilamont — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:46:15 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2026/04/20/usps-inspector-general-issues-alert-on-counterfeit-postage/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835172

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Fake Claude site installs malware that gives attackers access to your computer

ilamont — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 23:08:16 +0000

Article URL: https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/scams/2026/04/fake-claude-site-installs-malware-that-gives-attackers-access-to-your-computer

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820311

Points: 22

# Comments: 1

New comment by ilamont in "Matt Mullenweg Says "The Wheels Have Fallen Off" in WordPress"

ilamont — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 17:40:59 +0000

He said open source norms intended to protect the integrity of the project, including public discussion over calls, broad consensus before decisions, and scheduling that accommodated global time zones, had created a culture that made it functionally impossible to resolve even minor disputes without a weeks-long Slack thread and a cast of dozens. ... He acknowledged he had created many of the structures he was now criticizing. In stepping back from day-to-day leadership, he said, he had deliberately delegated decision-making broadly and built committees and governance layers.

This is not just an open source thing, or a Wordpress thing. I've seen it in nonprofit operations where committees take ages to make simple, sensible decisions (and sometimes still get it wrong!).

I suspect it's an issue in large companies that operate by consensus or are hidebound to authority and protocol. How many large companies in Silicon Valley make a point of saying they want to "move like a startup"?