Hacker News: ivell

New comment by ivell in "A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome"

ivell — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:50:03 +0000

> I’m pretty sure the cows I’ve seen milked in rural Nepal would agree.

I am not sure any species are going to appreciate being enslaved. And since we can't actually ask the cows, we can only assume based on how we feel about it.

In any case we are talking about ethics here, and cows definitely cannot consent being born and bred in captivity. So even if we are doing this out of kindness (which is of course not), it is still non-consensual.

> In my experience not milking a dairy cow of the excess would be considerably more cruel than milking it, even if you kept the milk exclusively for the newborns

Why don't we then help other mammals? Why do we help out only cows? It is obvious that we like the milk and we are trying to justify enslaving a whole species for it.

I see this kind of argument in many discussions. It basically boils down to what is your comfort zone of empathy. Jains have drawn it at killing and suffering but not enslavement. Vegans have included enslavement in their ethical framework but not plants and so on.

New comment by ivell in "A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome"

ivell — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:09:42 +0000

If we are really into an ethics discussion, enslaving a species to drink milk meant for their newborns would be an issue.

New comment by ivell in "A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome"

ivell — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:35:49 +0000

AFAIK, Jains consume diary products.

New comment by ivell in "Mojo 1.0 vs. Jac, a Roadmap"

ivell — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 07:16:48 +0000

Just a quick note. Some of the keywords are now renamed.

https://ruhati.net/mojo/_ownership_and_lifecycle.html

New comment by ivell in "A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome"

ivell — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 06:14:37 +0000

With this code, the only things we can eat would be fruits where we diligently plant its seeds (plants are also living things and fruits are the offerings in return we should sow its seeds) :-)

New comment by ivell in "India has paved the way for charging merchants a fee on UPI transactions"

ivell — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:31:36 +0000

Tourists can get prepaid UPI.

https://www.npci.org.in/blog/upi-one-world-your-digital-pass...

New comment by ivell in "India has paved the way for charging merchants a fee on UPI transactions"

ivell — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:25:39 +0000

I think you overestimate how many millionaire farmers we have. Most of Indian farm sector is small holdings and they need the subsidies. Most of the power is with intermediaries and not farmers themselves. The intermediaries fund the farmers through high interest loans and additionally they provide distribution. The situation is much more complex and needs a thorough rework.

New comment by ivell in "India has paved the way for charging merchants a fee on UPI transactions"

ivell — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:12:38 +0000

AFAIK, in India, payments more than Rs. 50k is tracked.

In anycase, the governments have the capability, what remains is just the intend. And we see how intends could change at the whim of a leader.

New comment by ivell in "We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility"

ivell — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 19:53:37 +0000

Sometimes original owner does not know that it is a first edition single copy. For them it is an old book. There have been many cases where owners did not know true value of their antiques.

New comment by ivell in "More German than many Germans"

ivell — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 19:44:42 +0000

Swiss voted against tax reduction in the past. I do not know of that many countries, where people would have done that. So the way they think is a bit different.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/poison-withholding-tax...

Android rolls out local 'Documents' backup that syncs to Google Drive

ivell — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:54:38 +0000

Article URL: https://9to5google.com/2026/07/30/android-documents-local-backup/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49122512

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by ivell in "Substack writers, you need a website"

ivell — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:58:01 +0000

It is just risk assessment and mitigation. Some risks are acceptable for some people and they do not need the mitigation. But for others it is not acceptable and they would find solutions.

New comment by ivell in "Fields Medals 2026"

ivell — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:58:11 +0000

There was an article on Rudi Mandl who pestered Einstein into working on gravitational lensing.

This happened because Rudi was persistent and Einstein was kind enough.

In future, citizen scientists have a chance to work on their ideas using AI, eventhough they don't have the deep domain skills. Of course, an expert would still need to review it as usual. But it is a useful tool to democratize science further.

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/amateur-who-helped-...

New comment by ivell in "Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude"

ivell — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:51:00 +0000

People make art to also get recognized for that art. Otherwise they would keep that art secret at home.

Without copyright, anyone can copy the art and call it their own. What is then the incentive for the creator to share the art, if there is neither monetory gain and nor fame. And worse than them being recognized, they might even get accused of copying their own art if someone else became famous due to a copy.

Society would miss out a lot.

New comment by ivell in "ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125M to Find Voter Fraud"

ivell — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:00:50 +0000

Because there are no consequences of Trump's actions, he would continue to commit offenses.

Neither Biden's administration, nor the judge presiding over Trump's crimes did what should have been done.

The checks and balances failed both when Trump was in power and when he was not in power.

New comment by ivell in "Microsoft has released software updates to plug at least 570 security holes"

ivell — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:05:21 +0000

I don't see why AI would deskill what you love to do. People still do embroidery even though mass manufacturing exists. If you love something you would continue doing it irrespective of automation.

New comment by ivell in "World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made"

ivell — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 10:27:40 +0000

On the way it seems.

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-crystal-...

https://raksha-anirveda.com/indigenous-aerospace-leap-drdo-p...

New comment by ivell in "Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family"

ivell — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 14:33:52 +0000

> Being forced to work on top of that is the slavery.

Why is it not part of the punishment?

I think it is dependent upon interpretation. Otherwise arresting and locking up can be interpreted as kidnapping and so on.

I do agree that they should be fairly compensated though.

New comment by ivell in "SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth"

ivell — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 13:12:06 +0000

Progress is a very human centric view. But if you consider earth as a whole system, we have over optimized the system for our benefit while the other parts of the system hugely suffered (other species, environment etc.).

We need to ensure our progress is balanced taking into account the whole system instead of just one part.

Bacteria turn dissolved uranium into stable compound in 130 days

ivell — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:37:59 +0000

Article URL: https://phys.org/news/2026-07-bacteria-dissolved-uranium-stable-compound.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48863568

Points: 4

# Comments: 0