Hacker News: phs318u

New comment by phs318u in "Leak Exposes 41,000 Homeland Security Workers–Including Undercover ICE Agents"

phs318u — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 02:24:22 +0000

Not sure whether your or my having heard of a site before necessarily discounts it, especially given the closeness (or at least fear) of many larger media outlets with this administration.

Having said that, I couldn’t see the full article on Wired. I don’t have an account and I suspect many don’t. I could see it via archive.is.

New comment by phs318u in "Leak Exposes 41,000 Homeland Security Workers–Including Undercover ICE Agents"

phs318u — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 21:49:20 +0000

Yes really.

New comment by phs318u in "Leak Exposes 41,000 Homeland Security Workers–Including Undercover ICE Agents"

phs318u — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 21:24:48 +0000

The data is said to have been “vetted and cleaned up” and the front end is designed to navigate the hierarchy.

The leak was via a compromised Okta SSO login (why anyone still uses them is a complete mystery to me).

New comment by phs318u in "Leak Exposes 41,000 Homeland Security Workers–Including Undercover ICE Agents"

phs318u — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 21:19:34 +0000

This is a dupe. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50280691

The Techdirt article also links to the searchable front end to the dump.

https://icepi.cx/

New comment by phs318u in "Code-execution flaw in UEFI firmware threatens most servers on planet Earth"

phs318u — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 20:56:05 +0000

I get that a lot of folks were traumatised by the shift from init based systems to systemd. However the architecture is sound and relatively straightforward given the inherent complexity in managing a diversity of system processes.

EDITED TO ADD: If you’re looking for a UNIX anti-hero regarding “do one thing and do it well” (that predates systemd), look no further than emacs.

New comment by phs318u in "'If Anything Happens to This Guy Everyone Is Screwed'"

phs318u — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 21:49:36 +0000

Obligatory XKCD.

https://xkcd.com/2347/

New comment by phs318u in "Trump Says He Has 'Right' to Run for Third Term: 'They Cheated Us'"

phs318u — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 21:37:46 +0000

lol. Even among a party crowded with self-serving grifters and imbeciles, who would be insane enough to nominate Trump as VP? The mind boggles at the thought.

New comment by phs318u in "Tell HN: The Amount of Irrelevant Content on Here Is Insane"

phs318u — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 21:32:20 +0000

> please stop chatting with me and vice versa.

Dude submits on HN knowing full well that submissions attract comments. Responds to comment with please don’t comment on my submission and I won’t respond to your comments either. Is there a name for this kind of illogical behaviour? Where saying a thing instantly negates the thing you’re saying?

New comment by phs318u in "Florida officer found dead man, impersonated him for years, renovated his home"

phs318u — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 21:21:59 +0000

You forgot the /s

New comment by phs318u in "Mini brain organoids ‘reading’ Braille key step towards biohybrid computing"

phs318u — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:20:06 +0000

Which is an interesting argument because: do neurons somehow create a soul (as you mentioned), or are do neurons somehow attract souls, or do souls choose what to inhabit. In the first case it posits that a “soul” is purely a function of biology. In the others that there’s some sort of inextricable link between the two (which in the absence of any theory of soul or how these are linked to biology, seems rather far fetched, unless of course souls could choose to inhabit anything with sufficient degrees of freedom: a brain, a mega computer, a planet, a galaxy)

New comment by phs318u in "Mini brain organoids ‘reading’ Braille key step towards biohybrid computing"

phs318u — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:15:50 +0000

I agree that as per current understanding, the functional biological base units have more degrees of freedom and a greater functional diversity as a result, but that’s merely a quantitative difference not a fundamental distinction. One could imagine equally more complex silicon base units beyond what we have now. Whether they need to follow the same pattern/modes as the biological units remains to be seen (but it’s pretty hard to argue against evolution as an efficiency maximiser).

New comment by phs318u in "Mini brain organoids ‘reading’ Braille key step towards biohybrid computing"

phs318u — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 22:08:48 +0000

I get the sense that there is a school of thought I’d call “biological exceptionalism”, a belief that somehow constructs made up of many functionally simple units, is fundamentally different and special compared to a similar construct composed of silicon units. I can’t see how someone could hold this belief and be a materialist (I’m not implying you are btw). Biological exceptionalism surely implies the existence of a “soul” or “spirit” (which raises a whole bunch more questions).

New comment by phs318u in "Mini brain organoids ‘reading’ Braille key step towards biohybrid computing"

phs318u — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 21:53:51 +0000

So many questions! Since we still don’t understand consciousness how can we draw a line to stay on the right side of? Is consciousness correlated with intelligence or independent of it? What if we keep growing these organoids until they are near-human-brain sized. We know that such things can host a consciousness yet not always eg. “brain dead”.

What if the only reason we don’t believe they are conscious is because they have no mouth to scream with?

Also, it occurs to me that a right-to-lifer would have to be against such biotech to remain consistent.

I find it all incredibly fascinating but ethically highly fraught.

New comment by phs318u in "Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That's not a problem we need to solve"

phs318u — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 11:58:18 +0000

> Reminder that the beasts in australia also were reported to wanting to block search engines, together with Wikipedia.

“Beasts” eh? Sounds a little hyperbolic. I’m going to need a reference for the search engine and Wikipedia blocking claims.

New comment by phs318u in "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"

phs318u — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 08:43:24 +0000

Perhaps. I replied saying it worked for me on iOS from Australia. An aggressive US geoblock?

New comment by phs318u in "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"

phs318u — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 08:41:27 +0000

A lot of people are replying saying they can’t get to your blog. I just tried using stock Safari on iOS with UBO Lite and AdGuard and it worked fine. FWIW I’m in Australia and not tunneling through a VPN.

New comment by phs318u in "Retired Penn professor arrested for blocking Uber Eats robot"

phs318u — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 05:54:38 +0000

And what if Superman was needed to save the world but he was immobilised by a chunk of kryptonite and this selfish protester was blocking the self-motorised claw machine that he’d reprogram (well, his agents would reprogram) into an improvised kryptonite removing device?

New comment by phs318u in "Making chicken transparent using Dorito dust"

phs318u — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 21:53:10 +0000

I understand how the kosher rules around food probably originated - basically avoiding what in those times would have been dangerous options. Do the kosher rules get updated for the modern era with respect to things like additives etc? We’ve learned that many modern additives (can) have negative health impacts. Do things like this get considered?

New comment by phs318u in "US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly $2 Trillion"

phs318u — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 21:36:21 +0000

The DOGE distraction was 100% effective.

New comment by phs318u in "Super Intelligence"

phs318u — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 21:31:08 +0000

Intelligence would be, having voted for the mango Mussolini three times against your own interests, that you’d wake up and change your vote the fourth time.

Super Intelligence would be not having voted for him at all.