Hacker News: logseman

New comment by logseman in "And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway"

logseman — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:18:29 +0000

Given the vacuum left by pinhole-sized states, Vodafone could become the issuer of propaganda itself as it would have the airwaves and the power of a large state.

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

logseman — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:59:18 +0000

It doesn't sound like a particularly large leap to think that polities as large as the Indian federal states could work as countries.

New comment by logseman in "Israel creates fake think tank in likely attempt to dupe AI chatbots"

logseman — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:53:35 +0000

Your idol wants people to die for being who they are and no other reason at all. He says so himself. What's the narrative?

New comment by logseman in "Every Fucking Website (2020)"

logseman — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:06:01 +0000

Do Not Track was the right implementation (browser-based, activate only once) and it was sabotaged by ad peddlers. It is bad policy that has been reached after every better alternative was rejected.

New comment by logseman in "New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health"

logseman — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:00:43 +0000

The "incentive" doesn't exist because by the economies of these networks everyone is at this point at the very least profiled by Facebook so that they can be targeted by malfeasant ads, and a very large majority are already enrolled. Therefore, the harm has happened without having incentivised anyone.

New comment by logseman in "Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc"

logseman — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:17:33 +0000

After weeks of discourse where the physical token of the Compact Disc had become the all-important object of the fight, it's reassuring to see that we're back at the beginning, where it was clearly understood that you don't meaningfully "own" a game if you need to be online to use any of it.

New comment by logseman in "LLMs reward expertise"

logseman — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:40:36 +0000

If LLMs are good at busy work, and it is expertise that lets you distinguish between busy work and valuable one, then it makes sense that they reward expertise.

New comment by logseman in "Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)"

logseman — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 15:41:40 +0000

Given that working class rubes like myself who finished college in a place my man can't even find in a map are somehow able to know what “cultural appropriation” or “gendered” or “heteronormative” mean, and do that by the same means as everyone else (reading about it) I'm going to presume that the good man has a very peculiar understanding of what "elite" means.

New comment by logseman in "Axon Ditches Plan for Weaponized Taser Drones (Majority of Ethics Board Resigns)"

logseman — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 00:02:53 +0000

Your McGyver weapon, if it were to work and not get jammed, is not going to be able to fire more than a bullets per second like a bump stocked AR 15 can.

New comment by logseman in "Axon Ditches Plan for Weaponized Taser Drones (Majority of Ethics Board Resigns)"

logseman — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 23:55:30 +0000

The entire point that is being sidelined by that is an active shooter is 1) armed 2) surrounded by unarmed people 3) has the element of surprise to their side

Even a single soldier that catches the enemy by surprise while they’re resting or asleep is going to make an absolute carnage. This is known in the military since warfare is a thing and has been used by many successful generals.

It must not get to the point of an active shooter being on the loose, and somehow in other countries it manages to be a very strange occurrence, where the guns have been smuggled by a foreign enemy power, the gunners have been indoctrinated by whatever cult got their turn today, etc.

You also managed to skirt the other part that has been mentioned. If they are ever deployed, these toys will eventually kill the wrong person, which could be a child. Given that all you are interested about is in stopping the active shooter, will you deem this death justified, and agree that there is no liability because “the code did it”?

New comment by logseman in "Axon Ditches Plan for Weaponized Taser Drones (Majority of Ethics Board Resigns)"

logseman — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 22:23:45 +0000

There were a bunch of police who’d just done training on stopping an active shooter and simply refused to follow the training. What is the point of reactive measures if they are flat-out disregarded? In this example, this drone could be deployed but it could not attack the shooter, or it could attack the kids instead. Considering that everyone would reject any liability just like the Uvalde PD has done, it would not help at all.

New comment by logseman in "Australia to make Facebook, Google pay for news"

logseman — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 11:54:11 +0000

Not sure how this is "world first" when Spain already did this (and Google withdrew the News service as a result).

New comment by logseman in "To Fix the Social Sciences, Look to the “Dark Ages” of Medicine"

logseman — Sun, 16 Jun 2019 09:44:19 +0000

I’m not sure how that’s a good control. Certain academic paths lead to much more lucrative private employment than others, so the degree holders have a huge incentive to go there instead of academic administration.

New comment by logseman in "The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back"

logseman — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 10:06:21 +0000

Sci-Hub isn't exactly easy to use or recommended by the larger community a grad student is likely to encounter.

New comment by logseman in "Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty"

logseman — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 09:36:22 +0000

There doesn't have to be a "conspiracy" when the incentives of several powerful institutions with a lot of real estate property (banks, Church, big families with relatives in the Town Hall, regional and national parliament) align like that.

New comment by logseman in "Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty"

logseman — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 09:22:25 +0000

Article 33.3 of the Spanish Constitution:

"3. Nadie podrá ser privado de sus bienes y derechos sino por causa justificada de utilidad pública o interés social, mediante la correspondiente indemnización y de conformidad con lo dispuesto por las leyes."

"No one shall be deprived of their goods and rights but for a justified reason of public utility or social interest, with fitting compensation and conforming to applicable laws".

It's the exact same: social interest and public utility are enshrined in the constitution for the exercise of eminent property.