Hacker News: mistrial9

New comment by mistrial9 in "I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program"

mistrial9 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:26:13 +0000

the way this has been addressed in complex product liability in the past in the USA is that the public-facing Brand Owner has certain legal liability for the product, despite contractors or supply chains. In this case, it appears that the Flock company is the brand owner and is public-facing.

New comment by mistrial9 in "Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out"

mistrial9 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:27:26 +0000

great works! hope this gets more attention soon. Unfortunately I do not care for the graphic at the top of article (that casual readers will be impressed by) since it conflates spiritual imagery with spying.. People with little education in either easily conflate the two.. People who are hostile to spiritual topics can quickly amplify the vilification of it.. so, please consider not using that kind of symbol in media campaigns and public outreach. thx

New comment by mistrial9 in "Caffeine, cocaine, and painkillers detected in sharks from The Bahamas"

mistrial9 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:52:12 +0000

OK - but had you been to the Bahamas recently when you decided to do that....

New comment by mistrial9 in "Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user"

mistrial9 — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 19:29:42 +0000

> your lifetime customer value is less than the cost of a single support call

yes that is the pattern, pioneered by Google here in California

New comment by mistrial9 in "We have a 99% email reputation. Gmail disagrees"

mistrial9 — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 13:52:34 +0000

an old quote .... ".. having mastered the game of five card stud in the Pacific theater, the victorious Allies declare the game of Poker to be illegal"

New comment by mistrial9 in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

mistrial9 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 13:32:28 +0000

a French; an American; a Brit, or a British

sounds casual but correct to me

New comment by mistrial9 in "Penguin 'Toxicologists' Find PFAS Chemicals in Remote Patagonia"

mistrial9 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:10:33 +0000

you missed the full jab -- "most people" did not care about lead pipes for drinking water. It does not take much effort to blankly state that the public "does not care" and proceed to spend less than one minute of thinking capacity to self-confirm and move on. IMHO That is what you see in some of the comments here -- "ignorance" in true form, on display here in a erudite and modern forum. Functional definition of "ignorance" for this topic? I do not know that and I do not care, end of discussion.

New comment by mistrial9 in "Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI"

mistrial9 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:40:36 +0000

> what kids are being told

"kids" you mean people under 30 taking jobs to have their own financial life?

New comment by mistrial9 in "Show HN: 41 years sea surface temperature anomalies"

mistrial9 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:33:39 +0000

"those three ants there ruined my picnic" ?

New comment by mistrial9 in "John Deere to pay $99M in right-to-repair settlement"

mistrial9 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 02:45:57 +0000

no the settlements include many other conditions, but I agree the financial penalties should be larger

New comment by mistrial9 in "81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone"

mistrial9 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:46:59 +0000

what about the payment method?

New comment by mistrial9 in "AI Singer Now Occupies Eleven Spots on iTunes Singles Chart"

mistrial9 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:30:27 +0000

the main article is about marketing/influencer noise completely replacing the artists, enacted by companies close to the search process

New comment by mistrial9 in "France pulls last gold held in US"

mistrial9 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:40:58 +0000

France is currently contacting selected partners to build a collective nuclear weapon coalition, probably focusing on Norway due to their location and recent oil wealth. Given recent events, reasonable people may disagree strongly on the directions that is leading.

New comment by mistrial9 in "LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation"

mistrial9 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 23:38:58 +0000

curious that item zero is missing.. for specific example, long ago.. Brazil was in the middle about modernizing using desktop computers, language translations, support, and a large dose of polarization about depending on American products. So many kinds of Office software were being tested, including of course the MSFT products. This story is from the late 90s.

One day, as much as I am aware, the entire national phone company of Brazil switched to using MSFT Office only, by decree from upper management. Why? much later, some correspondence between upper management / C-Suite at the company, and Brazilian attorneys hired by MSFT to negotiate, showed large, opaque payments, long-term discounts, and added support services, in exchange for changing to ONLY MSFT Office products. The change did in fact happen.

Use your own brain and understand that MSFT has able legal and business teams, hired in the target country, that have large incentives based on closing sales. Those sales are closed using negotiation language and incentives that are appealing to the C-Suite and their banking and legal partners, period.

I do not see this reality reflected in the too-neat summary of drivers there.

New comment by mistrial9 in "The most-disliked people in the publishing industry"

mistrial9 — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 15:00:50 +0000

no - capital intensive business has very different patterns than popular media business. The visibility of the VCs and the visibility of publishing houses has some small overlap. Day-to-day and implementation details, timelines for success.. audience, partners.. so many things are starkly different IMHO

New comment by mistrial9 in "Big-Endian Testing with QEMU"

mistrial9 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:02:05 +0000

"memory lane" !!

New comment by mistrial9 in "LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer"

mistrial9 — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 15:59:35 +0000

you are not alone, people seriously proposed one thing after another in the early 2000s.. same time frame as RSS, roughly. Somehow, these proposals were undermined and slow-walked? merger and acquisition in Silicon Valley was aligned with very different things

New comment by mistrial9 in "Last gasps of the rent seeking class?"

mistrial9 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:12:20 +0000

almost.. you missed this part

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery

New comment by mistrial9 in "Order Granting Preliminary Injunction – Anthropic vs. U.S. Department of War [pdf]"

mistrial9 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 01:25:25 +0000

maybe Judge Lin is showing that she does get where they are coming from..

New comment by mistrial9 in "Order Granting Preliminary Injunction – Anthropic vs. U.S. Department of War [pdf]"

mistrial9 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 01:21:40 +0000

great! this is the accompanying opinion

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...