Hacker News: mulmen

New comment by mulmen in "US Military had close call after using AI for hallucinated intelligence report"

mulmen — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 19:09:46 +0000

> AI gives the military a way to cover or deflect war crimes

Huh? Who is accepting “it was AI” as cover for war crimes?

> Does a horrific war crime like My Lai[0] get scrutinized and investigated in 2026 or do people just say "eh maybe AI gave them bad intel" and ignore it?

Of course it does. The girl’s school bombing and strikes on fishermen are scrutinized. Why wouldn’t any atrocity?

We do not suffer from a lack of scrutiny. We suffer from a lack of accountability. AI is only tangential.

New comment by mulmen in "US Military had close call after using AI for hallucinated intelligence report"

mulmen — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 19:04:58 +0000

The People (as in the electorate) are doing a lot. If you mean our elected representatives then say that instead. Otherwise you’re just perpetuating the toxic helplessness that got us into this mess.

New comment by mulmen in "Salesforce Global Outage"

mulmen — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:03:02 +0000

I honestly don’t get the snark. The status page has:

Seemingly meaningful IDs

Region filter

Email update signup

Predictable URLs for instance status so they can be deep linked in runbooks

What appears to be the actual live instance status.

What appears to be the actual live service status in each instance.

An update log with frequent detailed updates.

New comment by mulmen in "Salesforce Global Outage"

mulmen — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:55:22 +0000

Could be. With a big conference going on and the updates mentioning resource exhaustion it could be a bunch of people doing demos, AI driven or not. Basically slashdotting themselves.

New comment by mulmen in "Oracle’s 6am layoff emails hit staff amid new wave of cuts"

mulmen — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 21:17:50 +0000

You claimed Oracle is offering something they aren't. I corrected you. Nobody said anything about AWS or Google.

New comment by mulmen in "Oracle’s 6am layoff emails hit staff amid new wave of cuts"

mulmen — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 07:12:01 +0000

There's a 0.0% chance I trust my credit card number to Oracle. The Free Tier page says up to 2 VMs with 12GB of RAM.

   Compute
   Arm Compute Instance

   Arm-based Ampere A1 cores and 12 GB of memory usable as 1 VM or 2 VMs

   Always Free
   1,500 OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours per month

https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/

New comment by mulmen in "Oracle’s 6am layoff emails hit staff amid new wave of cuts"

mulmen — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 21:30:25 +0000

It’s 12gb and two ARM instances now. If you can get one. They’re frequently out of capacity. They even suspended the over-provisioned legacy instances.

New comment by mulmen in "The Interim Computer Museum"

mulmen — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 20:28:44 +0000

This conversation is tiresome. It comes up every time the LCM is mentioned. Jody Allen is simply respecting her brother’s wishes.

Paul Allen had many projects. Only a handful were ever intended to outlast him. LCM was not one of them. He wanted his fortune liquidated and donated. That’s exactly what his sister is doing.

New comment by mulmen in "The Interim Computer Museum"

mulmen — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 17:09:10 +0000

Jody Allen is the executor and trustee of Paul Allens estate. She is simply complying with his wishes.

New comment by mulmen in "The Interim Computer Museum"

mulmen — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 16:34:56 +0000

Partially.

> Is this the Living Computer Museum?

> We are not Living Computers, but in May of 2024 the Living Computers Remote Vintage Systems were acquired and transfered to us.

https://icm.museum/?faq

New comment by mulmen in "The Interim Computer Museum"

mulmen — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 04:43:41 +0000

Yes, I’m surprised it has not been discussed more.

I submitted this because it appears to be something of a successor to Paul Allen’s Living Computers museum which I occasionally see mentioned in comments. I think we were all disappointed at how that ended so I was relieved to see this project is carrying the torch.

The Interim Computer Museum

mulmen — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 02:43:57 +0000

Article URL: https://icm.museum/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49679459

Points: 164

# Comments: 27

New comment by mulmen in "Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread"

mulmen — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 22:56:06 +0000

> So do you agree or not agree that mandatory penal slavery is an extension of 19th century and earlier American slavery.

I agree that mandatory penal slavery (as practiced in US prisons in the 21st century) is an extension of 19th century and earlier American slavery.

New comment by mulmen in "Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread"

mulmen — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 19:33:54 +0000

> Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

> Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The 13th amendment specifically mentions penal labor as an exempt form of slavery.

Take your criticism to the authors of the 13th amendment, not the people who bothered to read it.

New comment by mulmen in "FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses"

mulmen — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 22:05:07 +0000

They don’t know what you do.

New comment by mulmen in "Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%"

mulmen — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 20:04:45 +0000

Ignoring externalities remains popular.

We live in a society. I can’t build a helipad on my roof in the middle of Seattle. Technically that’s a limitation on my personal liberty. We accept it because of the cost to the people around me.

New comment by mulmen in ".name Termination"

mulmen — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:52:57 +0000

Or just honor the deal. The only reason for doing this is Verisign’s bottom line.

New comment by mulmen in "FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses"

mulmen — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:23:14 +0000

> If we, collectively, decide we need age-gated websites

We haven’t decided this.

> having something from the government that will say "Yep. He is who he claims."

You’re literally trading liberty for convenience.

I understand your position. I just fundamentally disagree that the tradeoff you are so eager to make is worthwhile.

New comment by mulmen in "FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses"

mulmen — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 23:02:04 +0000

Then inexplicably keeps the data and gets hacked in the most obvious way possible.

New comment by mulmen in "FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses"

mulmen — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 20:57:39 +0000

> […] ability to use the ID as a proof of age or other attribute as needed

What attributes should require proof? Where do you draw the line?

Age?

Gender?

Race?

Religion?

Political party?

Citizenship?

> We'll get there eventually, but not before we try everything else first.

We got here by trying everything else first.

The “good old days” are now. Thousands of years of progress and blood delivered our liberal societies. Don’t give it up so easily.