Hacker News: phs318u

New comment by phs318u in "Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border"

phs318u — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 22:18:38 +0000

I agreed with everything you said up until “he’ll be convicted”.

Not a snowflake’s chance in hell unless the DSA metaphorically push the doddering old guard down the stairs.

New comment by phs318u in "Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border"

phs318u — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 22:13:58 +0000

From the article:

“ he has been ensnared by National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, or NSPM-7, a sweeping directive issued by President Trump last September that expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include crimes like getting in the way of immigration enforcement. His prosecution is one of the earliest known instances of the federal authorities charging a person with destroying evidence using a program designed to wipe a device clean after a specific code is entered.”

So, while “no privacy at the border” has always been a thing, the re-categorisation of this as “domestic terrorism” is new.

New comment by phs318u in "Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border"

phs318u — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 22:10:30 +0000

Doing nothing is surrender. So what do you propose people do? What are you doing? Is it effective?

New comment by phs318u in "Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border"

phs318u — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 22:05:48 +0000

Yes but many who support him and bankroll him do. They use him as a public thermostat to keep upping the heat to see if any of the frogs jump.

New comment by phs318u in "Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma"

phs318u — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 22:00:44 +0000

Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Dogs_and_Englishmen_(song)

New comment by phs318u in "OpenLogi"

phs318u — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:59:03 +0000

You’re right. They didn’t bother.

They did bother to do the thing they loved doing - the thing of value - and didn’t bother doing the boring thing. Instead of finding it within yourself to offer some thanks or encouragement you find an unimportant “blemish” to pile on. If that ain’t virtue signalling I don’t know what is.

It’s also an emphatic reminder of the truism that you just can’t please some people.

New comment by phs318u in "Meta Files Patent for Facial Recognition, Automatic Recording of People"

phs318u — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:54:18 +0000

Rupert Murdoch was/is one of the best, most direct, most prolific (thanks to his massive media ownership) manipulators of public opinion for precisely this purpose. This cartoon nailed it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGtZG6aFPtQ/

New comment by phs318u in "First human trials of designer protein therapies stun US neuroscientists"

phs318u — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 23:01:29 +0000

As a non-USian but a fan of your republic’s ideals, I understand. I feel incredibly saddened at the slow-motion self-immolation that seems to be consuming your country. I read this article yesterday and couldn’t believe what I was reading. I had to double check it wasn’t a gag.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-14/donald-trump-us-navy-...

It’s not necessarily that China is “better”, but they clearly have an intentionality to the directions they are pursuing. Sadly, it seems so does the US.

New comment by phs318u in "Europe's scorched landscapes seen from space after summer heatwaves"

phs318u — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 21:35:45 +0000

Lol. Firstly, how we live now is far different to how we lived 100 years ago (people ate far less red meat than we do today for example). Secondly, how the bulk of humanity lives is inevitably going to change drastically. The choice we have is to do it voluntarily and perhaps control how it changes, or wait until core crops start failing in a big way and livestock die off due to prolonged drought and heatwaves.

New comment by phs318u in "Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out"

phs318u — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:24:41 +0000

> I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the need for human moderation here

Bingo. As anyone that’s tried to run a Mastodon instance for more than just family and friends will tell you.

New comment by phs318u in "US sells 30-year bonds at highest borrowing costs since 2001"

phs318u — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 03:45:20 +0000

> It’s going to paying for an aging demographic and medical care

Is it though? I thought US life expectancy was falling behind the rest of the world?

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/why-american...

New comment by phs318u in "Free Ideas (to hopefully make the world more interesting)"

phs318u — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:51:55 +0000

Love it. A great rabbit hole. Spent way too long reading some of the wacky and reasonable ideas. Loved the study-assist use case for Suno.

New comment by phs318u in "Zuckerberg: The Future Is for Everyone"

phs318u — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:25:22 +0000

Full. Of. Shit.

When I read anything written by an LLM, I feel either indifferent or annoyed.

When I read the self-serving, reality-dissonant, vacuous tripe that Zuckerborg writes - knowing that its impact will be outsized and that he means none of it - I feel a visceral rage that’s hard to adequately convey.

New comment by phs318u in "How Americans View Capitalism, Socialism and Free Enterprise"

phs318u — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 13:12:51 +0000

I always thought that those that can deny something control it. The workers, by withdrawing their labour, have effective control. However it’s rarely exercised and I think that’s partly because of lack of belief that it’s true.

These days of course, workers’ days are numbered as automation will eventually make them extinct.

New comment by phs318u in "Schools are adding pepper-spraying drones to help combat active shooters"

phs318u — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:40:22 +0000

Because their CEO's all want to be Sauron (or Morgoth).

Vote #1 Aragorn.

New comment by phs318u in "The Effect of AI on Dunning Kruger"

phs318u — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:13:49 +0000

I’ve often thought that one of the downsides of being a billionaire is being surrounded by people eager to tell you exactly what you want to hear, remind you how awesome and always right you are, and mortally afraid to tell you anything that will piss you off. Becoming detached from objective reality while being so convinced of their own genius eventually leads to bad outcomes (whether in business or personally).

Now, for the first time, us plebs can enjoy that same experience for the low, low price of $20/month.

New comment by phs318u in "AMD attacks the rack with Helios systems that rival Nvidia's"

phs318u — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:52:40 +0000

"...the combination is expected to boost the number of tokens per second generated per watt of electricity consumed by as much as 5x."

If that actually pans out that's pretty big. I'm imagining competing data-centre proposals being put before municipalities. A lot easier to say yes to the one that'll suck 5x less power, use less water and make less noise.

New comment by phs318u in "The Visual 6502"

phs318u — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:31:36 +0000

High 60's to 70 on a Firefox|Fedora|Ryzen AI 9 HX.

New comment by phs318u in "DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16"

phs318u — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:18:58 +0000

> capitalism is a better contender. It's a self-healing, self-organizing system that has its own logic and seems to have escaped the desires of its human creators. It treats individual firms as the cells within it, individual humans as its DNA molecules, and it even has a form of tissue differentiation via industries

This is not a new idea. Howard Bloom (author of The Lucifer Principle [0]) developed the idea that among intelligeng beings "memetic evolution" > "genetic evolution" i.e. the unit of selection is the "idea" as expressed in social/political groupings. In this view of the world, the survival of individuals are less important than the survival of the "group concept" (not the set of genes i.e. the tribal "badge" > the tribal genes). e.g. Judaism, mercantilism, Catholicism, free-market capitalism etc etc.

Definitely worth a read.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucifer_Principle

New comment by phs318u in "Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time"

phs318u — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:05:18 +0000

I love this so much. Did you ever take it further? Did you find anything close to ARexx?