Hacker News: nrb

New comment by nrb in "Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit"

nrb — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 20:19:33 +0000

Players have come up with a variety of self-imposed challenge modes to make the game more dynamic, Nuzlocke being most famous: https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nuzlocke_Challenge

New comment by nrb in "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War"

nrb — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:20:42 +0000

Often offensive and also often defensive of others.. so if renaming is on the table, it’s probably most apt to call it the Dept of Security since the vast majority of what it does is maintaining the security umbrella that has helped suppress world war since the last one. Of course, facts or opinions on whether it succeeds on the security front depend on which side of the umbrella you’re on.

New comment by nrb in "Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)"

nrb — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 22:39:04 +0000

Definitely reasonable to question oneself in this way. But realistically, if someone is unwilling to engage with you about policies that negatively affect you, but instead offer their prayers, that "perhaps..." is working overtime.

New comment by nrb in "Sam Altman responds to Anthropic's "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude" ads"

nrb — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 04:31:47 +0000

Yeah the whole cognitive disconnect that advertising is anything other than serving an expensive product to rich people deserves a smirk at minimum.

New comment by nrb in "ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?"

nrb — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 07:29:59 +0000

Health is imaginary, life is imaginary, this is all imaginary. There’s no point in drawing an arbitrary line in the sand for what our purpose is or lecturing us on what we should be focusing on.

We have seen, again and again, business encroach on our quality of life and it does warrant skepticism and alertness about their motivations.

New comment by nrb in "Chase to become new issuer of Apple Card"

nrb — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 06:00:23 +0000

Some of the perks were great even for prime if you're already bought into the Apple ecosystem. 3% cash back plus 0% APR installment on Apple product purchases is a nice double dip that most cards can't touch unless you're really trying hard.

New comment by nrb in "CEO of health care software company sentenced for $1B fraud conspiracy"

nrb — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 09:25:09 +0000

Surely there’s some wiggle room in between “I just do not like businesses” and “businesses that are convicted of causing some amount of damage to society should not exist”

At some point, recovery needs to take a back seat to deterrence.

New comment by nrb in "Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests"

nrb — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 19:42:40 +0000

> So why is the city listening to hysterical idiots who assumed that ICE was accessing systems they weren't?

What have you heard or seen that gives you that impression?

According to the article “University of Washington researchers released a report Oct. 21 showing federal immigration agencies like ICE and Border Patrol had accessed the data of at least 18 Washington cities, often without their police departments’ knowing”

It seems plausible that the local government came to realize that unauthorized use of Flock data was happening elsewhere in the state and decided to act. These sort of privacy intrusions start off with the veneer of best intentions but when abuse is uncovered, people tend to get real.

New comment by nrb in "Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests"

nrb — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 19:18:50 +0000

Until the government decides someone you love needs to get disappeared, and then you want to provide no aid to them.

This technology swings both ways and as such is too dangerous to exist. We have plenty of other means to instantly and broadly raise awareness about abductions.

New comment by nrb in "Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests"

nrb — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 19:13:45 +0000

I’d start by being ticked off that my city was burning money deploying a cloud-connected mass surveillance apparatus.

New comment by nrb in "Athlon 64: How AMD turned the tables on Intel"

nrb — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:01:49 +0000

Core memories for me were my pc builds for the Athlon Thunderbird and later the Athlon 64 FX-60. What an experience it was to fire those machines up and feel the absolutely gigantic performance improvements.

New comment by nrb in "GitHub is no longer independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation"

nrb — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:10:12 +0000

Obviously not defending it, but isn’t the F1 movie produced by Apple?

New comment by nrb in "Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)"

nrb — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 19:00:23 +0000

If the distinction is that the US watercraft are military and as such are not subject to customs, then making it clear that returning astronauts are not on a military mission sends a diplomatic signal.

New comment by nrb in "US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders"

nrb — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 02:53:58 +0000

I welcome you to point out the discrepancies if I am mistaken.

Targeted classes is a common term in the context of regulations where certain bodies receive a change in protections or restrictions. This executive order is trying to overrule a law with a policy so it felt appropriate. No manipulation was intended by using a technical term.

New comment by nrb in "US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders"

nrb — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 22:08:14 +0000

Per the policy directive of https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prot... citizenship has been taken away from anyone born from parents of targeted classes as of Jan 20, 2025 with a 30-day order for all executive departments and agencies to enact the policy.

New comment by nrb in "Why does Apple make a minority of developers finance the entire App Store?"

nrb — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 18:40:15 +0000

In yet another parallel universe, in-app advertising doesn't exist and paid purchases have a flat-fee commission commensurate with the cost of providing that service.

New comment by nrb in "Dusk OS"

nrb — Tue, 13 May 2025 21:26:57 +0000

That advice sounds to me like it’s more for “an entire world where all people are in a bad situation from which they will never escape and neither will their next of kin” but if that comes to pass, the lighthearted talk of embracing the misery will probably end around the time the starvation begins.

New comment by nrb in "Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions"

nrb — Sat, 10 May 2025 14:26:07 +0000

Is it too cynical to think they’re just building this to train AI against your donated games?

New comment by nrb in "Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks"

nrb — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 18:39:40 +0000

Those quotes around monopolized are really doing some heavy lifting considering that it is utterly trivial to use alternative marketplaces on (edit: flavors of) VS Code.

Seems to me this is plainly the community wanting its cake and to eat it too.

New comment by nrb in "Mark Zuckerberg says social media is over"

nrb — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 20:34:17 +0000

Letting unchecked greed guide decision-making is not a new phenomenon that came out of Web 2.0 though. To use your metaphor, the heroin was human attention. Web 2.0 was, at best, the syringe.