Hacker News: lifeisstillgood

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain over blocked access to archival data"

lifeisstillgood — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 07:38:47 +0000

The situation is something we all will have to deal with as time goes on - this is an archive. If I remember rightly Facebook used to archive by just putting the old hard disks in a room. At the volume of data we are heading towards most successful companies will be in the hard position of finding some way of keeping data for the lifetime of a human being - this is hard

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "I requested a copy of my data from McDonald’s loyalty program"

lifeisstillgood — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:38:51 +0000

Probably the most important single privacy point is in my first sentence - I said “their (McDonald’s) data about you.” Of course it should be your data. Data that exists or is collected by your action or lack of action, or delay of action or plain existence should belong to you. And selling it off for free email should be … hmmm discouraged. Require a paper and wet ink sign off? Something

The actual drafting of these laws is … we need a GPL for privacy

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "I requested a copy of my data from McDonald’s loyalty program"

lifeisstillgood — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:33:30 +0000

But then that’s not McDonald’s using their data but selling it onwards for others to aggregate and use.

That’s the underlying fear and issue - and quite right.

Over the next decades we are going to gather and analyse soooo much data, and society will be dystopia or utopia based on what we let commercial entities and governments do with our data.

Not prevent them from collecting it because then all the good stuff cannot happen (epidemiology is going to rock in 2035) but preventing the bad usage.

I think a simple set of medical-like privacy laws (collect it, keep it locked down tight, use in the best interests of the citizen, do not sell onwards but share with licensed data brokers, introduce some cottage industry of data lawyers who can recover damages from dodgy data brokers)

That probably will be enough but interested in others views

Great Locomotive Chase

lifeisstillgood — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 21:25:29 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Locomotive_Chase

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49264718

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing"

lifeisstillgood — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:59:00 +0000

But this is a similar argument to “the 1950s were great let’s go back to then”.

We never really were a united society with a common set of agreed facts. And depending on which “we” we mean the difference is radical. White America and Black America is a tiny gap between the gulfs of India, USA in the 1970s and 80s.

Yet today, we don’t recognise the same facts but we do have access to all the facts all the time. And I think more of the narratives are being challenged in the “internet” -people might run from it but it’s hard not to be challenged - whereas I would be amazed if an American voter knew what the seesaw of foreign policy was doing in India US relations

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "Mars Bar from 1991 found – and it's 20g bigger than today's"

lifeisstillgood — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:18:05 +0000

Im not sure how it remained in even the same shape after 35 years. I would assume if you left a mars bar on a shelf for a few years it would rot in some fashion.

I guess perhaps we put a lot of shit on our bodies

The making of an advert before CGI – Chevy Impala 1966 [video]

lifeisstillgood — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:03:17 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VLBRvCaWIiY

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49240286

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Statistics Behind Lucy Letby – Prof John Quigley

lifeisstillgood — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:44:48 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0zoezTy-2A

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49168038

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Ok that's a better RPi project – Lego submarine [video]

lifeisstillgood — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 09:31:42 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2U5XBuQAHpA

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49142707

Points: 7

# Comments: 1

Typewriter Art [video]

lifeisstillgood — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 09:27:53 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gEoj6zURU6c

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49142682

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Jaron Lanier and DeGrasse Tyson on "There Is No AI"

lifeisstillgood — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:19:35 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_ZKYH8v_do

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49139892

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "AI financial advice is surprisingly good if you ask the right questions"

lifeisstillgood — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 23:40:32 +0000

But that’s just “normcore” - the written advice in human knowledge is all pretty similar and pretty normal.

What is interesting is how much this will chnage as the body of knowledge becomes “infected” by investment bros youtube transcripts over the years

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "Twelve Years Without a VPN"

lifeisstillgood — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 18:34:27 +0000

Forget “AI” (as in the magic pixie dust) - this is the way.

Knowing what data you have, curating it, and sharing it so others can benefit is half the battle. In order to implement beyond zero companies need to do exactly that. And that process is the killer app here - not can this person access this schema on this dbase, but knowing the schema exists, in one place and being able to use it will drive so much simplification in enterprises

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science"

lifeisstillgood — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 17:26:02 +0000

Sorry I thought that a bubble was widely accepted.

Are you arguing there is not an AI bubble, and that all the DC buildout is fine, going to be profitable etc?

I am not looking for a online slanging match - just looking for a different point of view

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "The development pipeline is a production system"

lifeisstillgood — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 14:32:47 +0000

I think I disagree

There is a production eco-system - let’s call it The Hotel. It runs, people work in it and customers pay and it makes money.

But it constantly needs changing. New rooms need to be built, the kitchen rearranged as the chef changes his mind.

So they hire an architect and building firm. Who plan the chnages and then this awesome automated robot comes and builds the extra room.

The architect firm owns and is responsible for the robot and its changes.

Not being able to make a change really really matters, but I don’t call that production because the hotel is still able to operate

Most of the misunderstanding between business and tech is a misunderstanding of are you working on the architect firm or the hotel

Eye of Sauron – detect hidden cameras in hotel room – strobe lights / detect EM [pdf]

lifeisstillgood — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 11:35:31 +0000

Article URL: https://cse.msu.edu/~caozc/papers/security24-liu.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133511

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Ohio public meeting on data centres – insightful comment[video]

lifeisstillgood — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 11:24:00 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wpoEhVuaj_s

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133430

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science"

lifeisstillgood — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:37:47 +0000

On the token limits etc - one assumes that OpenAI et al are able to “hire expert in field, and let them spend the equivalent of a million dollars of tokens” because they are not actually selling their complete compute 24 hrs a day, so the cost internally is a negligible (ish) electricity bill.

Which is very suggestive - if after everything they are not fully loaded then the next gazillion data centres being built look unlikely to be needed.

F-16 in 1991 Gulf war dodges 6 SAM missiles without chaff

lifeisstillgood — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 07:53:13 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJE5gDDnq9s

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49080735

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by lifeisstillgood in "It's not empowering to hand off the details"

lifeisstillgood — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 22:20:51 +0000

It reminds me of “magic”. I say “expelliamus” and the wand flies out the other guys hand, not his hat, or wallet or the person behind’s sandwiches.

The details always matter. There is a (fairly) good book series where it turns out we are living in the matrix and someone finds a config file and effectively becomes a Wizard, and of course problems ensue with details (like flying by adjusting one’s position one feet up every second is just vibrating a lot)

I think ultimately AI is “do what I mean” and the only reason it looks like it’s working is because AI has read all the same books as us