Hacker News: jzl

New comment by jzl in "My Google Workspace account suspension"

jzl — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 17:35:54 +0000

Why victim blame him for removing the phone number? He had a logical reason for doing so, and with Google supporting many forms of authentication it's perfectly reasonable to think that removing one wouldn't jeopardize the other methods.

New comment by jzl in "Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app"

jzl — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:15:59 +0000

Does the 30% cut only apply to patrons who subscribe within the app? I’m assuming yes, but just checking since I haven’t seen confirmation of this.

New comment by jzl in "OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss"

jzl — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 18:05:24 +0000

I don’t think any of these are “obvious” lies. Maybe meta offered someone a $75M package and it got reported as $100M. So they can say with a straight face that the reporting is “false”, yet they never countered with any details.

You’re ignoring my point about the legitimate reason people might be getting offers in this stratosphere. No one has debunked or refuted the general reporting, at least not that I’ve seen. If you have a source, show it please.

New comment by jzl in "OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss"

jzl — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 06:21:30 +0000

It’s debatable that it was debunked. There was squirrelly wording about some specific claims. One person was reported to have been offered a package worth a billion dollars, which even if exaggerated was probably not exaggerated by 10x. The numbers line up when you consider that AI startup founders and early employees stand to potentially make well into 9 figures if not higher, and Meta is trying to cut them off at the pass. Obviously these kinds of offers, whatever they really look like, include significant conditions and performance requirements.

New comment by jzl in "New interpretations suggest the "heat death" hypothesis might not hold (2023)"

jzl — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 17:36:27 +0000

“From Eternity To Here” by Sean Carroll has some nice discussions of it. He can be a bit much at times and could stand to have better editing (the book is 25% too long), but he does have some of the most approachable modern writing on physics out there. Lots of videos on YouTube as well.

New comment by jzl in "New interpretations suggest the "heat death" hypothesis might not hold (2023)"

jzl — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 17:28:24 +0000

Ugh, I couldn’t disagree more. Sure, LLMs can generate some really nice introductory summaries of topics. But, so far at least, they can’t even hold a candle to brilliantly written books and long form articles. Consider the classic book Cosmos. There is more insight into the universe in any few pages of that book than could be gathered by reading even a thousand ChatGPT results.

New comment by jzl in "uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind honey browser extension"

jzl — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 03:37:37 +0000

Minor quibble with the linked complaint: the GPL doesn’t require you to post source code, it just requires that you have to provide it when asked, and only to people using your software. (But you’re not allowed to restrict anything they do, like repost it.) Just follow the whole Redhat / CentOS drama for exhibit A in this behavior.

New comment by jzl in "Title drops in movies"

jzl — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 22:10:54 +0000

Yay, someone posted it before I had to. This skit is 25 years old now!

New comment by jzl in "Why Is Light So Fast?"

jzl — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:47:45 +0000

Fine tuning is a pretty broad concept and is mostly orthogonal to religious beliefs.

New comment by jzl in "Why Is Light So Fast?"

jzl — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 18:10:54 +0000

On the topic of perfectly crafted depictions of scale in the Universe, I love this one: https://youtu.be/vcJHHU9upyE

New comment by jzl in "Why Is Light So Fast?"

jzl — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 18:07:59 +0000

Search YouTube for “universe fine tuning.” Then come back here in a few years when you’ve gotten through everything. :)

New comment by jzl in "Why Is Light So Fast?"

jzl — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 17:58:57 +0000

Interesting thanks. I hadn’t seen it elsewhere myself but I could see how it’s taken off. OP’s article almost gets there, but never says that specifically. Rather it says “c is not a property of light, it’s a property of the universe.”

New comment by jzl in "Why Is Light So Fast?"

jzl — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 14:25:28 +0000

I’ll steal a line from a superb YouTube physics channel (Arvin Ash): it’s not the speed of light, it’s the speed of causality. And the universe must have a finite speed of causality. Without even getting into math and physics, you can intuitively understand how infinitely fast causality would prevent time, and therefore everything else we know, from being possible.

New comment by jzl in "Is GitHub Down?"

jzl — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 05:50:52 +0000

Same here! But a friend just texted me they can see it. Internet routing snafu right now, maybe?

UPDATE: yep, works if I turn on a vpn. And works over cellular. But my ISP can't route to it at all. Either DNS is returning a bad IP in some cases, or there's some regional routing problem.

New comment by jzl in "All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)"

jzl — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 19:59:47 +0000

I think this may have borrowed liberally from Corridor Crew’s video about the same topic earlier in 2019: https://youtu.be/b3_Abb2Vqnc

New comment by jzl in "Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon"

jzl — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 19:54:40 +0000

Apologies, I somehow missed the memo three years ago that Audible turned on in-app purchases(1). I was thinking of the pre-2021 policy.

I’m still pretty sure that if an app has zero financial interactions at all in the App Store that Apple has no limitations on how the app’s financials work outside of the app. But I can understand that once you want to do anything in app, Apple might have restrictions on hybrid models.

1 - https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/16/you-can-now-buy-audiobooks-di...

New comment by jzl in "Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon"

jzl — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 01:21:32 +0000

I strongly suspect Patreon is playing fast and loose with the wording here. Note they say “if creators on Patreon disable transactions…” but not “if Patreon were to disable all transactions.” I’m pretty sure they could still go the Audible route where they remove all mention and links to billing options off app. But Patreon doesn’t want to go that route across the board, they still want people to be able to sign up for things in app.

New comment by jzl in "Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon"

jzl — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 01:15:34 +0000

Right but just because they said it doesn’t mean they’re not playing fast and loose with the messaging. I’ve never heard of a single app where the off-app billing affected the inclusion of the app in the store. I mean maybe it’s true but that seems like it would be breaking new ground in App Store rules. I suspect Patreon is playing semantics here but would be happy to see evidence otherwise. To be clear, I’m taking about the case where Patreon could decide to show no billing details or links at all in the App Store, just like eg Audible. I think the problem is that Patreon still wants to offer billing options in the app.

New comment by jzl in "Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon"

jzl — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 01:11:09 +0000

Yes but then they get to charge a commission for anyone following the link.

New comment by jzl in "Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon"

jzl — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 01:09:44 +0000

I could be wrong, but I think you’re misinterpreting it. They could remove all billing from the iOS app just like eg Audible does. But I’m guessing they don’t want to. Patreon is looking out for themselves, not their creators or subscribers.