Hacker News: robhlt

New comment by robhlt in "Google buys crashed airline Spirit's data at auction"

robhlt — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:42:16 +0000

The OP article is also wrong on multiple counts. "Customer behavior" data like call recordings and email addresses/activity is specifically not included in Google's purchase. See page 18 of the court document they link, the "Google's Data Purchase Request" column on the right lists what is and isn't included.

New comment by robhlt in "Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit"

robhlt — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:36:49 +0000

None of that customer data is included in the purchase. Page 18 of the linked court document is the source of these record counts, and on the right is a "Google's Data Purchase Request" column that lists all of this "Customer Behavior" data as "not included".

The Register is not a serious publication and completely missed this. Other outlets reporting this story do not include the claim that customer data is included.

New comment by robhlt in "Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries"

robhlt — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:41:38 +0000

It's not really the same unless the human cleaner also wears a gopro to record and archive their entire cleaning session for later review (and potential sale to data brokers when the cleaning company wants more money).

New comment by robhlt in "Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers"

robhlt — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 03:15:13 +0000

This is still a thing on Android if your work account is a Google account and uses the Work profile feature. You can pause all apps in the Work profile on a schedule (or on demand), so it includes any work apps you might have in addition to email.

New comment by robhlt in "Half-Life 2 in a Browser"

robhlt — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 14:24:26 +0000

Microsoft is not a GPU manufacturer, Apple is. The 3rd parties Microsoft left it up to are the GPU manufacturers.

New comment by robhlt in "Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning"

robhlt — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 03:36:44 +0000

Air conditioners don't need to use fossil fuels. Solar power and AC work really well together because peak solar energy is exactly when you need AC the most.

No heat is created either, that would explicitly violate the first law of thermodynamics. An air conditioner powered by solar energy (or anything solar powered) ends up releasing the exact same amount of "excess" heat as the sunlight would have if it hadn't been absorbed by the panels.

New comment by robhlt in "Steam Machine launches today"

robhlt — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 18:48:49 +0000

For HDMI CEC they've already published their user-space daemon: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/holo/linux-cec

New comment by robhlt in "Steam Machine launches today"

robhlt — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:45:58 +0000

It's a bit niche, but Steam can download games from another PC running Steam on your local network. 2.5GbE on both PCs makes that a lot faster.

New comment by robhlt in "Rent collections are down in New York"

robhlt — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:20:01 +0000

Your coop building is on the unfair side of the "eclectic sometimes regressive" property tax calculation the parent comment mentions. Large (10+) multi-family rental properties are taxed at a much higher rate than single-family and 2-4 family properties. Correcting this imbalance would lower property taxes on your coop building while still raising overall tax revenue for the city.

New comment by robhlt in "Starship's Twelfth Flight Test"

robhlt — Thu, 21 May 2026 04:17:25 +0000

That's not how it works. Probability of precipitation means exactly what it sounds like: the probability that precipitation will fall in a specific forecast area.

Here's the definition from the NWS: https://forecast.weather.gov/glossary.php?word=probability%2...

New comment by robhlt in "No more JetBrains products for me"

robhlt — Mon, 18 May 2026 21:44:10 +0000

My problems are mostly with the language servers. I've always found them to be slower, consume more resources, and provide worse results compared to the equivalent JetBrains IDE. I've tried Python, Rust, and Go within the last few months and found this is still the case. Go is the worst of them, on larger repos gopls will easily consume 3-4x more memory than GoLand with far worse responsiveness on completions.

New comment by robhlt in "US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI"

robhlt — Sat, 16 May 2026 20:17:22 +0000

Tech as a whole may not have too many employees, it's just Big Tech that has too many. If those employees were distributed among many more smaller companies the tech market as a whole would be much more competitive.

New comment by robhlt in "OpenAI is connecting ChatGPT to bank accounts via Plaid"

robhlt — Fri, 15 May 2026 19:52:39 +0000

Plaid's login flow also requires a 2FA code if your bank requires it. The same 2FA code that banks say to never provide to anyone else.

They're literally proxying the bank's login page just like a phishing site would, and I assume they're also selecting the "trust this computer" option so their access is more persistent. My bank does require re-2FA for larger transfers, but there's still a lot of damage I can do on a "trusted" computer without triggering another 2FA prompt.

New comment by robhlt in "OpenAI is connecting ChatGPT to bank accounts via Plaid"

robhlt — Fri, 15 May 2026 19:16:43 +0000

Plaid requires your bank username and password, so they have full read-write access to your account. They can do anything you can do when logged in to the bank's website, and so can anyone else who gains access to Plaid's database.

New comment by robhlt in "Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers"

robhlt — Thu, 07 May 2026 20:17:30 +0000

The same metrics any site uses to identify bot behavior. It's a closely guarded secret because if the attackers knew what metrics they used the attackers would know how to not get caught.

Another reply pointed out that AdNauseam just makes an http request to simulate a "click" and throws away the response. A real click would load and execute the response so it's trivially easy for ad networks to detect AdNauseam "clicks".

New comment by robhlt in "Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers"

robhlt — Thu, 07 May 2026 20:13:00 +0000

Basically zero ads are just static images with a link, they're dynamically loaded by JS when you open the page. The JS collects as much tracking data about you as it can, sends that off to the ad network servers which run a live auction to determine who will pay the most to show an ad to you right now, then returns that ad for the JS to display.

AdNauseam not loading the response to the "click" request makes it trivially easy to flag as fraudulent, because a real click would load and run the response.

New comment by robhlt in "Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers"

robhlt — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:54:44 +0000

These "clicks" are likely identified as fraudulent and dropped by the ad network. So you still pay the cost of downloading and running all the advertising JS and you still get tracked by the ad networks, all for nothing.

New comment by robhlt in "AI uses less water than the public thinks"

robhlt — Fri, 01 May 2026 22:19:28 +0000

Thankfully the Great Lakes Compact prohibits water from being diverted outside the great lakes drainage basin, with very limited exceptions.

https://www.glslcompactcouncil.org/program-areas/water-diver...

New comment by robhlt in "To Protect and Swerve: NYPD Cop Has 547 Speeding Tickets"

robhlt — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:48:49 +0000

The Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program was meant to deal with drivers like this, but it was allowed to expire in 2023 after the NYC DOT failed to actually implement it.

The program allowed the DOT to make drivers with more than 15 speed camera or 5 red light camera tickets in a year to take a safe driving course or have their car siezed. The DOT only took action against a small fraction of eligible offenders however.

More: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/09/22/analysis-dangerous-ve...

New comment by robhlt in "Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music"

robhlt — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:00:56 +0000

The timer on copyright starts once a work is published, not when the work is first started. So works that spend a decade or more in development would be unaffected by this.