<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: paltor</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=paltor</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 22:34:12 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=paltor" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by paltor in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Different technologies may selectively amplify existing power. If the actions that it enables are disproportionately evil, it may at the very least be considered very useful for evil.<p>Suppose someone invents a mind-reader that lets the user read the thoughts of anybody else in range. But the mind-reader requires great up-front costs to produce and also allows people with stronger readers to remotely destroy weaker readers, where strength is basically a function of cost.<p>In a vacuum, the mind-reader is "just a technology". But it aids autocratic surveillance much more than it aids citizens who want to surveill back. It's "neutral" but its impact is decidedly not.<p>TPMs and remote attestation enable entities with power to enforce their existing power much more effectively. In contrast, a general-purpose computer does the opposite because anybody can run whatever code they want, they can adversarially interoperate with anybody they feel like, and so on.<p>One of these is more evil than the other, even though they're both "just technologies".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 12:53:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094350</link><dc:creator>paltor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094350</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094350</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by paltor in "The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't think that would be much different from "renting a billboard to place whatever you want on it".<p>If what you put up on that billboard is an ad, then it's advertising and would be covered. If not, it wouldn't. So you could rent a spot on the website, but you couldn't put promotions on it.<p>This would be distinct from ordinary web hosting because you're not just renting a space on a site, you're also renting exposure (a spot on some other website).<p>Sure, you could probably find edge cases - "what if I put a table of contents on my page with every page URL on every site on my web host on it" - but the distinction would be clear most of the time.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:19:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47014731</link><dc:creator>paltor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47014731</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47014731</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by paltor in "Frontier AI agents violate ethical constraints 30–50% of time, pressured by KPIs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In a trivial sense, any special property can be incorporated into a more comprehensive rule set, which one may choose to call "physics" is one so desires; but that's just Hempel's dilemma.<p>To object more directly, I would say that people who call the hard problem of consciousness hard would disagree with your statement.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 10 Feb 2026 13:38:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959569</link><dc:creator>paltor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959569</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959569</guid></item></channel></rss>