Hacker News: lithos

New comment by lithos in "US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons"

lithos — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:34:33 +0000

Hit enough transformers and it will be a very long temporary.

New comment by lithos in "Oslo bans smart glasses in schools"

lithos — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:16:56 +0000

Even if these were open source smart glasses they would be a creepy surveillance device.

New comment by lithos in "There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis"

lithos — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:40:22 +0000

Google used to have a deny/block list. But such lists are obviously very advertising unfriendly, since the companies paying for placement and running the most ads are most likely to be blocked.

New comment by lithos in "Why Big Tech's AI Spending Is $3T Higher Than It Seems"

lithos — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 21:41:38 +0000

If the MBAs/Managers/HR can not find a way to utilize their now more productive workers, they should be replaced.

New comment by lithos in "Wildfire alert backfires as public blocks all government warnings"

lithos — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 03:10:04 +0000

I turned mine off permanently after spending time in New Jersey, that region positively spammed them.

New comment by lithos in "ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children"

lithos — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:42:03 +0000

New Jersey "government-ize-ed" this quite a while with a database that's quite abused. But every US hospital does genetics testing for allergies (a few for milk and similar that are nearly a death sentence for the new born).

NJ is just ahead of giving law enforcement access whenever it wants for searches, and renting the data to whoever pays.

New comment by lithos in "What does GitHub's security team even do?"

lithos — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 21:22:09 +0000

Exec Bonuses being able to be clawed back for Security issues is just about the only fix that will have real effects. Anything else will have MBAs believing it's a "next guy" problem, and a obstacle to hitting their objectives.

Though right now the US thinks it's winning the Security Vulnerability Stockpile war, so it won't change the state quo.

New comment by lithos in "Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth"

lithos — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:50:04 +0000

Short term thoughtset MBAs.

New comment by lithos in "Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress"

lithos — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 16:27:57 +0000

I would put some blame on medical billing, and the opiods pandemic also made some fertile ground for trolls (a work injury turning family member to an addict, followed by minimal fines and zero jail time for the conspirators that grew the pandemic). Basically a perfect setup to grow mistrust.

Just a couple of decades ago both sides of the US political aisles laughed at antivax style rhetoric, and didn't see forcing the issue further than it was as worth it (us religious grounds and similar).

New comment by lithos in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

lithos — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:23:20 +0000

There's a difference between something that properly advertised itself as dangerous, and something that advertises itself as a professional authority.

New comment by lithos in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

lithos — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 04:12:45 +0000

One that doesn't maim/injure/kill you is a pretty good standard. And before you call bs, look at all the foraging and chemistry books that are for sale on Amazon that are AI.

New comment by lithos in "U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse"

lithos — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:29:10 +0000

It was a scheduled Trump win, from how demotivating Harris was. Sure Trump demotivated a little over a million or two from bothering to show up to the polls for him, Harris was five to ten times that number (depending on whose numbers you use).

New comment by lithos in "College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos"

lithos — Wed, 20 May 2026 12:27:16 +0000

AI Bros are spending too much good will being obnoxious about fancy approximation algorithms, when their purpose in real AI will be lizard brain/reflex type actions.

The next AI winter can't happen soon enough. (Note each past AI winter did give us new tools just like this one will, it's just a shame that it'll be an excuse to worsen customer support)

New comment by lithos in "Permacomputing Principles"

lithos — Thu, 07 May 2026 10:13:55 +0000

Look a Redditor.

New comment by lithos in "For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas"

lithos — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:06:18 +0000

They are scaled for politics.

Tell someone over 60 or 70 that Poland has better modular reactors than us, and they'll suddenly care.

New comment by lithos in "France to ditch Windows for Linux to reduce reliance on US tech"

lithos — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:22:49 +0000

My personal PCs have enough screens that I haven't tried. Though I do really like Windows snapping features on my work laptop (can't change OS there).

I haven't played with other windowing systems to judge too much. And just picked right from screen shots/gifs to not need to try.

New comment by lithos in "France to ditch Windows for Linux to reduce reliance on US tech"

lithos — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:56:39 +0000

If you picked XFCE as your front end you get WinXP functionality, with the nice things from win10/11 (start menu search that's actually local only, multiple desktop workspaces, and graphical settings/updates I've only needed to go to command line twice in four years).

New comment by lithos in "Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers"

lithos — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:21:50 +0000

Cooling is a very variable 30% cost. (IE: Iron Mountain's underground Datacenter with a flooded reservoir in the mine gets to brag about 5% of its cost being cooling, as the most extreme low end).

Up north comes with it's own issues for Datacenters. Winter low humidity (kills cable/wire insulation), chiller freeze protection can get pretty complex to set up properly (with failures causing complete destruction of some components that will need multi-ton cranes to replace), and multi-year construction projects are harder with real winters. Sure it's all perfectly manageable engineering wise, but why bother.

There's probably easier green energy credits down south, given the current viability of solar.

New comment by lithos in "Our commitment to Windows quality"

lithos — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 23:09:56 +0000

They serve ads in notifications. Of course start still has them. (Work computer can't go to Linux, so stuck witnessing the mess)

New comment by lithos in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

lithos — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:31:09 +0000

Happening to the NBA gambling leagues now with both players and referees.