<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: openasocket</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=openasocket</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 02:19:14 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=openasocket" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Short answer - yes. If you post bond, and you don't violate the terms of your bond, you get your bond back when your case is resolved, whether you were found guilty or not guilty.<p>If you do something that violates the terms of your bond, the prosecution can file a motion alleging a violation, at which point the defendedant can admit to the violation or deny and request a hearing. Then there's an evidentiary hearing, basically a mini-trial, where the judge hears evidence and determines if there was a violation. If that happens, the consequences can depend. You can forfeit your bond, your bond can be raised, new bond conditions can be imposed, etc.<p>If you were given a cash bond and can't afford it, you can contract with a bail bondsman. That bail bondsman will pay the bail for you, and in some sense takes responsibility for you not violating your bond, in exchange for some fee (usually 10% of the bond amount). That amount is NOT refunded</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:44:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389849</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389849</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389849</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For those that don't know, grand juries declining an indictment is extremely rare. A grand jury is basically a check on prosecution, that they have to have some initial evidence before charging someone with a felony. The standards are much lower than the subsequent criminal proceedings.<p>The grand jury only hears from the prosecution, there is no defense involved. Only a majority of the grand jury has to sign off, not unanimous like in an actual trial. The standard of evidence is just probable cause, not beyond a reasonable doubt. The rules of evidence are relaxed, meaning hearsay and other evidence can potentially be introduced that would normally be barred from a trial.<p>Because of the above, the rate of indictment from a grand jury is very high, over 90%. Most prosecutors will go their entire careers without getting a "no true bill" (meaning the grand jury did not sign off on an indictment). There's a saying that "a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich." So the fact that there was no indictment here is a big deal. It will probably hurt that prosecutor's career.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:01:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389182</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389182</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389182</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Geolocating a random island using geometry and CUDA programming"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It’s an effective a surprisingly old technique, being used on cruise missiles as early as the 1960s. It actually precedes GPS and satellite navigation by several decades. Im continuously blown away by what engineers were able to do in that era with such limited computing power. Take a look at SAGE, for example.<p>Fun fact: the usage of TERCOM in the tomahawk missile actually limited its ability to be used in Operation Desert Storm. Routes had to be planned to go around actual topographical features, instead of hundreds of miles of flat desert.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 16:09:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363470</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363470</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363470</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Judge relying wholly on AI in order is covered by judicial immunity, court rules"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Important to note that this was not a decision on the merits. The court didn’t find that the decision was written by AI; just that the facts alleged would be covered by judicial immunity. Proper action is to appeal, and file a grievance with the Nevada Council of Judicial Discipline, possibly also the Nevada Bar Association. Those institutions take these things seriously, and the judge can end up with her license suspended or even disbarred. A license suspension, even a short one, is very serious for a judge. A judge is forbidden from having any other employment, so a judge under suspension isn’t getting a salary and can’t get other employment. So it’s a pretty significant monetary penalty.<p>EDIT: Yeah this plaintiff is nuts. His complaint, linked by a response to my comment and in other places, is just bizarre. I would highly doubt any allegations he might make.This guy has apparently been suing a bunch of judges in the family courts in Las Vegas. A lot of those proceedings appear to be online: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsKMpjAPcB2vRRCMtdEb1v9uEj8li4fWz" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsKMpjAPcB2vRRCMtdEb1...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:54:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334076</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334076</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334076</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Israeli PR wants to answer your ChatGPT questions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ben Gvir is the minister of national security and has been for years. He literally is a representative of Israel. He may not represent the views of Israelis, but he is in power, and is using that power. That makes him a relevant example, as relevant as the day is long.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 15 Aug 2026 23:40:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49315349</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49315349</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49315349</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Whether something is “thinking” or not is really more of a philosophical question. It really depends on which of the many, often contradictory, definitions of “thinking” you choose. Sometimes we use “thinking” to describe advanced calculation or analysis, which would cover LLMs along with chess engines and many other algorithms. Other times we use “thinking” to describe what conscious beings (which is ALSO a philosophical term with many different interpretations) do, and I think most people would agree LLMs aren’t conscious. And then there’s a whole spectrum in between. We’ll probably need to come up with a whole new set of terms to describe the new and evolving capabilities of LLMs.<p>But for me, for any stronger definition of “thinking,” I don’t think the output of any LLM would actually convince me. Producing a result isn’t thinking - for all you know it is just printing verbatim something from the training data. No, to conclude if it is thinking or not I would want to look inside its head, at the architecture and watch it produce those results. And because LLMs are so different it will probably take advancements in mathematics or computer science to be able to really interpret what is going on</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:42:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49297964</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49297964</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49297964</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I know exactly what you mean. Something about those AI explanations just make my eyes glaze over. Dozens of new terms and metaphors and analogies conjured out of the ether to explain even the simplest thing. And when I try making it explain with examples, or show me the code it is proposing, often it seems unrelated or even in tension with whatever it tried to say before. I’ve given up trying to assign any meaning to those weird little soliloquy’s. I’m convinced that those don’t really have any meaning under them, and when you have it actually make a code change it does the actual work.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:21:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49297783</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49297783</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49297783</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Graduate student proves a quantum uncertainty principle for fractals"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For those that aren't aware, the uncertainty principle goes pretty deep. You can actually define the uncertainty principle as an inequality involving the integral of a function vs the function's Fourier transform: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle#Harmonic_analysis" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle#Harmonic...</a> . And in a quantum system you can construct the momentum of a particle as the Fourier transform of the position (up to a constant) and the uncertainty principle falls out because of this. This article doesn't state that super explicitly. So the real interesting thing being done here is getting a Fourier transform that works on fractal spaces.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 13 Aug 2026 19:57:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49291096</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49291096</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49291096</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>With the expiration of New Start earlier this year, there are no nuclear arms control agreements in effect between the US and Russia, which hasn’t been the case since the 1960s. Russia, China, and the US are all actively modernizing and developing new nuclear capabilities. China has been greatly expanding their nuclear arsenal, building hundreds of new silos. North Korea has an expansive set of tactical and strategic nuclear systems and are in strategic cooperation with Russia. Russia is 4 years into a destabilizing land war, have developed several new weapons systems, and are now in a nuclear weapon sharing agreement with Belarus. And I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of other things.<p>We are in a period of strategic instability and an arms race that is unlike anything we have seen in the last 50 years. You can quibble with the specifics all you want, but I don’t think anyone can argue that we are at a lesser risk of nuclear war that we were, say, 20 or 30 years ago</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 04 Aug 2026 16:35:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171264</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171264</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171264</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Ask HN: Any tips for a college freshman enrolled in computer science?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Biggest thing I can recommend is to focus on the fundamentals, even if it doesn’t seem like it’s something you would use in practice.<p>Learn data structures and algorithms. Understand finite state machines and context free grammars. Learn at least some mathematics. Discrete math, Boolean logic, and statistics. Learn how operating systems work, networking, databases, compilers, machine code, low-level details like registers and the cache hierarchy. Learn more obscure programming languages: like Lisp, Prolog, Haskell, and Forth.<p>You probably won’t use those in your day job, but they will open your mind to fundamentally different ways of thinking about problems. Honestly, just try to learn as much as you can about as many different areas of computer science as possible. Don’t worry about learning version control, the latest web frameworks, or working with AI, at least not until the very end.<p>You want to come out of college with two things: the ability to learn new things quickly, and having a wide breadth of knowledge to draw upon. As someone who regularly interviews candidates, that’s what I’m looking for more than anything else.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 01 Aug 2026 17:44:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49136629</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49136629</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49136629</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>+10, I can't stand AI-generated comments. Half the time they are paragraph-length translations of every 5 lines of code into English prose, or just regurgitating whatever prompt they were given. When they actually try making high level comments they are worse than useless. It's really hard to put into words exactly why. It's something about how they are very verbose, but at the same time vague and stated in a slightly-off manner. Or they will introduce new terminology not reflected in the code's nomenclature, sometimes terms that are just synonyms for terms that the code already uses. Something about it makes me instantly distrustful of any information the comment may actually convey.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 19:40:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49114727</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49114727</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49114727</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Delayed Gratification – Proud to Be 'Last to Breaking News'"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One thing that has really frustrated me with "mainstream media" in the last few years is that the level of effort being put into journalism seems to be on decline. I feel like half of the news articles are just a collection of quotes from officials or politicians in public statements, being regurgitated without any additional effort. Outrageous claims are just taken at face value, or at best just put alongside quotes from other officials/politicians saying the opposite. As an example, how many times has the strait of Hormuz been declared open by the US, when it turns out it really wasn't? And every time these low-effort articles just echo that statement without even trying to evaluate if that is true. I mean, the transponder data on shipping is publicly available, there's a dozen websites you could use to actually see passage through the strait to verify the claim. If you don't do even the most basic follow ups, is that even a news article? Or is it just a more elaborate form of re-tweeting?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:18:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49087845</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49087845</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49087845</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Launching Health in ChatGPT to US Users"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It’s a pretty fine line, and if they want to do anything beyond just telling you things about your data, actually taking any sort of actions or communications with health care providers, they should qualify as a business associate under HIPAA. And I certainly am never going to share my healthcare data with an AI company without any sort of regulations or oversight, beyond a TOS.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:07:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49034998</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49034998</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49034998</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Launching Health in ChatGPT to US Users"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Searching in vain for any mention of HIPAA compliance…</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:02:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49034356</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49034356</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49034356</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "What does the Riemann zeta function have to do with the distribution of primes?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Funnily enough, it was almost discovered several years earlier. The science fiction author Arthur C Clarke wrote in “The City and the Stars” a passage that, as an aside, describes a mathematician looking for patterns in the primes by arranging them in a spiral grid. But he never actually tried doing this himself, and so never actually saw the pattern.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:43:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983098</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983098</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983098</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "What does the Riemann zeta function have to do with the distribution of primes?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The simplest explanation would be the fact that the Riemann zeta function is also equal to the infinite product of 1/(1 - p^{-s}) for all primes p. The proof is rather accessible, see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_the_Euler_product_formula_for_the_Riemann_zeta_function" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_the_Euler_product_for...</a> . That’s sort of the simplest result that shows a relationship between primes and the zeta function. That’s what this article builds on, but doesn’t give that actual result until about a quarter of the way through.<p>I skimmed the article, but the next third of the article seems to be devoted to using this relationship between the zeta function and prime numbers to prove the prime number theorem, which is a theorem approximating how many primes are less than or equal to any given number N.<p>The final third goes into how to get increasingly accurate approximations for the number of primes less than N, ending on the fact that Gausses approximation is in some sense the “best”, but only if the Riemann zeta functions zeroes lie on the critical section.<p>If you just want a general primer on why the zeta function has anything to do with primes, the product formula might suffice. In which case, the proof on the Wikipedia page might be a better read. The derivation in the article focuses on the general setup that is later built on to prove additional things</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:05:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982524</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982524</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982524</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Female US rower completes historic solo journey from California to Hawaii"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Curiously, I relate to both. I have a certain degree of fear or trepidation of sharks when swimming in the ocean. I feel vulnerable, and keep imagining a shark coming up under me or behind me. But I’m also a certified diver and have exactly none of those fears when diving or snorkeling! I think it’s because I have reduced awareness of what’s around me when swimming in the surface. In a sense it’s coming from the same place as a fear of the dark.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 11 Jul 2026 20:20:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48875485</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48875485</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48875485</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Grok 4.5"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Elon Musk is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, thanks to the dismantling of USAID and US foreign aid. Not hypothetical deaths in the future, people who have died in the last year because Musk cut off their supply of medication and nutrition.<p>Sure, you could argue it was going to be dismantled anyway under this administration. But I think that’s pretty close to the “just following orders” excuse. Which falls especially flat when it was a task he volunteered for!<p>And I don’t want to understate the harms of other AI CEOs, but in terms of direct, quantifiable deaths, Musk is pretty clearly the most evil.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 23:35:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48838849</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48838849</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48838849</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I don't give much credence to new allegations. Where were these allegations when he was alive<p>It’s worth noting that it’s common for it to take years or decades for victims to speak out against an abuser. Especially when the victims are children. Especially when the abuser is a prominent figure, like the literal King of Pop.<p>I’m not going to try and convince you that these allegations are credible (though I believe they are), I just want you to think about how a child victim might behave in that situation. There’s almost never any objective evidence or 3rd party witnesses of abuse. It’s almost always the word of one person against another. And it may be years before a child victim even fully understands what was happening, and years beyond that to come to terms with it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 01:30:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216684</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216684</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216684</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by openasocket in "Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That article was written 16 years ago and misses a lot as a result. it doesn’t mention the new allegations, including those documented in Leaving Neverland. It also glosses over the accusations in the 1990s. It’s papered over that those allegations were lies, but he settled the lawsuit with them for over $23M.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 23:37:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48215862</link><dc:creator>openasocket</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48215862</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48215862</guid></item></channel></rss>