Hacker News: pastor_williams

New comment by pastor_williams in "LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'"

pastor_williams — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 16:45:39 +0000

If you live in the United States you should find out who your state senator and representative are and write a letter to them asking them to propose, and support legislation prohibiting spying and increasing consumer privacy protection.

Kentucky passed HB 692 unanimously requiring smart TVs to ask permission if they are going to be spying on us. Ask your state legislature to follow their lead and pass some very popular consumer privacy protection.

New comment by pastor_williams in "Show HN: iPhone app takes simultaneous images from 2 lenses, fuses into 1 photo"

pastor_williams — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 19:16:29 +0000

This sort of nonsense is what I think will drive adoption of AI for personal apps. Tell it to create a ukulele tuning app and you get one without ads without subscription that you can make work exactly how you want. I wonder whether this is something that only privacy and tech oriented folk will do and care about our whether it will be adopted generally.

New comment by pastor_williams in "Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet”, is retiring"

pastor_williams — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 18:52:08 +0000

He doesn't need to work, and he isn't really retiring even now. He is leaving Google but will be working on the interplanetary internet

New comment by pastor_williams in "Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet”, is retiring"

pastor_williams — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 18:46:05 +0000

I don't know if he had to do technical interviews (I'd imagine not) but what he described was Eric Schmidt approaching him and asking him to leave MCI to work at Google. They asked him what his title should be and he (I think he) jokingly suggested Internet Pope. They eventually settled on Chief Internet Evangelist.

New comment by pastor_williams in "Top researchers leave USA for the Netherlands (in Dutch)"

pastor_williams — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:14:33 +0000

From what I can tell

AI, quantum, vaccines, cancer, Alzheimer's, mental health, nuclear energy, climate, food security, astrophysics, democratic resilience

There isn't a full list of fields or researchers because of privacy or not all researchers have told their current institutions about the change.

New comment by pastor_williams in "Want your images back? That'll be $5"

pastor_williams — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:48:07 +0000

Fair enough. I don't use Facebook at all because I don't respect or trust the company or it's mission. I do use Gemini and Claude though.

New comment by pastor_williams in "Want your images back? That'll be $5"

pastor_williams — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:08:16 +0000

It isn't just out of the kindness of their hearts that they don't do this. There are laws and regulations. There is also legal risk and reputation. I have to go through a legal and privacy process at my big corp job whenever I want to record a new timestamp and I need to ensure that the data is used appropriately and that it is wiped later. I've only seen these compliance requirements become more onerous over the past ten years and I expect that to continue.

New comment by pastor_williams in "Fox to buy Roku"

pastor_williams — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 13:50:38 +0000

A year ago I started moving away from Roku. I think they've always had ads on the home screen which I blocked with a DNS blocklist but the seasonal ad sections that continued popping up in the menu despite my continually blocking them wore on me. I've upgraded to an nvidia shield using projectivy launcher which allows me to set a customized and very clean interface with the just the apps I use and nothing else. I definitely recommend it.

New comment by pastor_williams in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

pastor_williams — Sun, 31 May 2026 21:46:21 +0000

At my work at also got rid of build cop because that was considered offensive.

New comment by pastor_williams in "DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode"

pastor_williams — Wed, 27 May 2026 19:48:49 +0000

I've also seen water usage concerns.

New comment by pastor_williams in "Claude Mythos Has Found 271 Zero-Days in Firefox"

pastor_williams — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:38:04 +0000

Previous discussion on the article linked from the blog post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47853277

Claude Mythos Has Found 271 Zero-Days in Firefox

pastor_williams — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:02:59 +0000

Article URL: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/04/claude-mythos-has-found-271-zero-days-in-firefox.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947790

Points: 8

# Comments: 1

New comment by pastor_williams in "The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books"

pastor_williams — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 12:15:22 +0000

When I was searching for a good copy of The Wizard of Oz to read to my kids it was impossible to use Amazon. Since the book is out of copyright but still popular the results are for terribly formatted print on demand paper backs that don't include the illustrations. It's out of copyright, spend a little effort and do a good job!

I eventually found the series in hard cover from Books of Wonder. I buy from them or seek out used hard cover books for out of copyright books now. Abebooks is still useful though they are owned by Amazon so who knows for how long that will last.

New comment by pastor_williams in "If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design"

pastor_williams — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 14:18:36 +0000

I don't know if you can change the icons with the default launcher, but you can with Nova Launcher. I changed pocket's icon to a taco. Not to make it visually distinct but because the placement of the icon on the background made it look like it was going into someone's mouth and I thought it was funny. Anyway, opportunities exist to improve your phone experience without needing to depend on Google to come to its senses.

New comment by pastor_williams in "UK Officials could face US entry ban over Twitter policy"

pastor_williams — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 13:26:45 +0000

Quick search says it does not. What is your source for this claim?

New comment by pastor_williams in "Local Journalism Is How Democracy Shows Up Close to Home"

pastor_williams — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 14:24:28 +0000

This is why I subscribe to my local city and regional newspapers. Similar to emailing my representatives about political issues that are of interest to me. It isn't much and I'm just a drop in the ocean but at least it is more than complaining into a void or just reading other's complaints online and getting depressed.

For more local issues I can really feel like I am making a difference. We have sidewalks all the way to my kids' school and a crosswalk now a year after I made it my cause and messaged city planners and councilmen.

America must embrace the Electric Age, or fall behind

pastor_williams — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 14:49:57 +0000

Article URL: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-must-embrace-the-electric

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46554446

Points: 32

# Comments: 29

New comment by pastor_williams in "Happy Public Domain Day 2026"

pastor_williams — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 19:09:50 +0000

Why are you choosing to compare inventing math to producing a movie? How does that help you advance your argument that it is reasonable for one to be under copyright and not the other?

Movies absolutely can be created with one computer. There was a movie shot entirely on an iphone. They can be edited on an iphone too. Heck, movies can be created without a single computer. That was the only way to make movies for many decades.

New comment by pastor_williams in "Standard Ebooks: Public Domain Day 2026 in Literature"

pastor_williams — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 19:05:26 +0000

Why don't the ebooks include any of the original illustrations? This makes the children's books in particular very unattractive.

New comment by pastor_williams in "Happy Public Domain Day 2026"

pastor_williams — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 14:30:14 +0000

You're comparing apples and really big complicated apples. Books are protected by copyright and they only need a computer and 2 sqm of space, right? People make copyright protected videos with 2 sqm of space and a phone that get as many views as many large budget movies.

I think the differences between inventing a story or song and inventing a theory are not as great as you pretend.

The big difference really is status quo and tradition.