Hacker News: oldcigarette

New comment by oldcigarette in "US Supreme Court reviews police use of cell location data"

oldcigarette — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:54:23 +0000

I am probably far more sympathetic than you can ever imagine but the antecedents are not really unique to google. The technical destination of targeting advertising just looks like this given privacy laws (well the lack thereof).

See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/eff-congress-heres-wha... or probably any recent publication about privacy rights by the eff.

Like I get it but be mad that congress is a bunch of goofy old people who give zero shits. If you can point at some lobbying by google then by all means so be it - certainly they appeared to have kissed the ring as of late. But keep in mind googlers personally direct money into the eff every year too.

New comment by oldcigarette in "US Supreme Court reviews police use of cell location data"

oldcigarette — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:59:51 +0000

No - they are an advertising company. It is to their advantage to be ahead of the game with something like federated ML if that is where society is headed. To say Google has no positive impact is absurd - engineers there generally care about protecting user data. There is probably better access controls at Google than anywhere else. Sure there are pressures like you said but a gross misplace of user trust is what would destroy them.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge"

oldcigarette — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:14:14 +0000

Citation needed - see google and project maven. Of course that is all well in the past now - but for a brief moment google was capable of taking an ethical stance.

New comment by oldcigarette in "The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter"

oldcigarette — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 03:22:11 +0000

Just s/AI/surveillance state/ and it reads pretty much the same. People in the US you should read NSPM-7 which is obviously simply targeted at this admin's out group. Things seem to be well in motion already from the outward indications we have about DHS spending and disregard for legal processes. People are just still in denial or not paying attention.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court"

oldcigarette — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 17:53:07 +0000

Yeah the resulting stigma on tariffs is a bit unfortunate. You could imagine a system of tariffs that was intended to set a sort of globalized minimum wage in certain segments. The US could even have foreign entities to distribute the tariff income to the workers in those countries for example.

Tariffs are totally a reasonable tool for protecting national security interests or leveling the playing field for the American worker. Unfortunately none of that was done in a coherent or legible way.

With all the global fallout and nothing to show for it I'm really not sure I could have come up with a better way to sabotage the United States.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state"

oldcigarette — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 18:09:08 +0000

it is times like these i am reminded of https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

New comment by oldcigarette in "ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use"

oldcigarette — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 23:40:56 +0000

I remember rolling out encryption over all the DC<->DC fiber after the PRISM leaks at Google. People were pissed about it. I'm sure they comply with legal requests but I would be very surprised if they break the law (such as it is) in any way.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Lag in Cybertruck's drive-by-wire system"

oldcigarette — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 18:59:54 +0000

>muh lag

Every car for the last 150 years has had mechanical connection from the steering wheel to the tires and nobody is talking about the reliablity and safety concerns. The absolute state of hacker news.

New comment by oldcigarette in "An Anxious Asia Arms for a War It Hopes to Prevent"

oldcigarette — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 20:27:57 +0000

Don't confuse the US before the collapse of the soviet union and now. There is a reason it is in the position it is - it actually did stuff countries liked such as rebuilding the world after WWII. When the soviet union collapsed the US needed to pivot - instead a bunch of inept politicians have been doing expedient nothings for 30 years.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Mud boosts the immune system"

oldcigarette — Sat, 15 Oct 2022 15:42:23 +0000

To your point every creek in pittsburgh is still "shit creek" or loaded with amd in the spring. I wouldn't eat any mud - maybe some dirt up on a hill.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Arguing from compassion (2021)"

oldcigarette — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 11:41:57 +0000

Economics, sociology and psychology all tend to say very little with very many words to the extent that the message gets lost and people don't even know what they are discussing.

You see it to a lesser extent in software and math too though - just look at any mathematical article on wikipedia. The "dynamic programming" article is a good one for this.

I'm not sure this is a new problem.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade"

oldcigarette — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 15:44:24 +0000

Yeah this seems like a quite simple affirmation of states rights in matters which have not been explicitly deferred to the federal government. I was kind of hoping to find good discussion at least on hacker news but it's the same nonsense as every other back water shithole on the internet. At this point 4chan is having a more nuanced discussion :( I'm increasingly convinced we will see the US split - and to be honest after today I would be quite happy for that to happen since a large contingent of people don't seem to understand or even want to operate in the legal frameworks we have.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)"

oldcigarette — Thu, 26 May 2022 13:50:12 +0000

Yeah you can go and read what was in the buffalo shooters head though which is a thing. He's pretty much a schizo christchurch copy cat. Amusingly he seems mostly in favor of shootings since it intensifies the gun control debate and accelerate the schism in the united states.

Gun control is not going to fix this kind of radicalism or its impact. The dude was a straight up terrorist and IMO he made the correct observation that this sort of terrorism will be successful in driving the divide and creating more extremism.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)"

oldcigarette — Thu, 26 May 2022 13:37:09 +0000

This has been discussed at great length many many times and courts nor anyone serious about this topic agrees with you. The right is not predicated on being part of a militia in any way. Anyone who says this is pretty much immediately ignored by gun owners because they are clearly not serious at all about the topic.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Notes on Nationalism (1945)"

oldcigarette — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 17:57:34 +0000

"and then for no reason at all putin invaded ukraine"

The response has been absurdly hostile to the Russian people. The West's foreign policy is simple "escalate". Stay tuned for your daily programming.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Leaflet was created 11yrs ago by Vladimir Agafonkin, a Ukrainian citizen in Kyiv"

oldcigarette — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 15:51:56 +0000

>bringing back the old USSR satellites

This is basically equivalent to saying Putin is retarded because there is no way they can pull this off. Putin has acted exactly how he said he would act since at least 2008 when NATO membership was proposed. I'm inclined to believe the words of someone who acts consistently with them rather than your literal bandwagon fallacy.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Leaflet was created 11yrs ago by Vladimir Agafonkin, a Ukrainian citizen in Kyiv"

oldcigarette — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 15:24:31 +0000

So are we at the point where we deny the Nuland thing every happened? None of this happened under the foreign policy of Trump. I support Ukrainian self determination but this is not what happened and even if it is it is not how Russia perceives which seems entirely reasonable.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Leaflet was created 11yrs ago by Vladimir Agafonkin, a Ukrainian citizen in Kyiv"

oldcigarette — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 15:18:53 +0000

If you look at election and poll results there is a clear east/west divide in Ukraine. It is not moot and ignoring this factor is woefully uninformed about the causes and perceptions of this event in the east.

New comment by oldcigarette in "Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work"

oldcigarette — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 18:36:46 +0000

>muh generational wealth Gone in two or three generations - irrelevant to policy decisions. Handing out these (false) mental crutches is unproductive and just creates resentment in the wrong places. Some people take a risk and are rewarded for it. Some people just work hard. Some people got a shit hand. You come across as one of those load voices clamoring for some policy without any appreciation for nuance.

New comment by oldcigarette in "An expert on civil war issues a warning about America, but exaggerates"

oldcigarette — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 00:13:02 +0000

eh it's not really HN - this has been the narrative of certain elements for a long time now: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1085...

the left has become obsessed with authoritarianism under the guise of "liberalism". i don't think any of them know what the word means anymore. they rile up imaginary "injustice" to distract and sow discord. people who would do that are far more traitorous than grandma going on a larp in the capitol.