Hacker News: rolandog

New comment by rolandog in "AI companies are shredding rare books"

rolandog — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:17:44 +0000

It's truly humbling how much knowledge professionals from different fields have, and how easy it is to fall into a Dunning–Kruger effect trap where a bit of knowledge — extremely extrapolated — would've led me down the path of hubris and guessing so many wrong answers. Thanks all.

New comment by rolandog in "French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time"

rolandog — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:55:57 +0000

To add to your point, it's also worthwhile to mention that there are stakeholders against solving the climate crisis of global warming (besides the usual suspects like producers of non-renewables like oil companies): some countries benefit from the climate change like the US and Mexico (they get higher agricultural yields IIRC) [0].

[0]: https://youtu.be/eRoU3whzX_Q?t=450

ETA: clarification

New comment by rolandog in "Show HN: Justif – Knuth-Plass justification and microtypography for the web"

rolandog — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:06:38 +0000

The "standard" method would be to double space after the end of a sentence. This is how "filling" paragraphs works in org-mode to avoid breaking a line in the middle of an abbreviation.

New comment by rolandog in "Texas Police Spent $4.5M on Four Chevy Tahoes"

rolandog — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:58:13 +0000

Well, the US could cut their weapons supply the moment they wanted, but I wonder why that's never been an option.

New comment by rolandog in "Why I Stopped Arguing with People"

rolandog — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:59:48 +0000

Perhaps the point isn't about arguing about something trivial that impacts no one, but about when one is arguing against dangerous ideologies for which the objectives transform things into zero-sum games; e.g. arguing against fascism (because power will be stripped against the many, and put in the hands of a few authoritarians), or against anti-feminism. The world is filled with people that have taken the bait ("pilled") and that don't realize they're (or are actively) enabling this concentration of power while they're focused on hating a small demographic (LGBTQ, feminists, black people, immigrants).

I don't think we've solved the problem of what to do with evil people that are too smart to pretend they have been rehabilitated. So, an amicable chat with them won't really win them over.

New comment by rolandog in "The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online"

rolandog — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:13:40 +0000

It should be written into law that they (the intermediary identity brokers) cannot sell or share any information with data brokers. They should be an independent organization funded by the government, but without its funding tied to yearly renewals (otherwise they would need to curry favor on a yearly manner to whomever is in power).

New comment by rolandog in "Show HN: Are You in the Weights?"

rolandog — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:41:29 +0000

So, you must be a dog! ("On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog").

Jokes aside, I wonder if people from countries with 2+ names and 2+ last names get different results. In my case, I get a lot of false positives because there's apparently a lot of people with same first name and first last name. Luckily, none of them were me.

New comment by rolandog in "AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs"

rolandog — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 21:08:45 +0000

What is it about today's tech scene that makes you think it's FUD? Do you see strengthening regulations that prevent monopolistic and anti consumer practices? Do you see more competitors and companies being split, or are have there been more consolidations and stripping and politicizing of personal rights and freedoms?

I'm all ears.

New comment by rolandog in "AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs"

rolandog — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:29:58 +0000

This doesn't matter; it's post-sale enshittification... They didn't even wait to make the next model shittier!

Also, it probably wasn't the selling point, but it was the baseline of quality, and probably documented online or in manuals.

Furthermore, accepting this as normal opens the door to further post-sale enshittification of ALL things. Next thing you know, upgrades here and there are going to degrade the quality of products and services just because it wasn't explicitly written (think post-upgrade slowdowns of mobile phones to pressure people to buy newer ones).

This is THE slipperiest slope; and it's just taking place because the deregulation mafia is turning a blind eye to these tech cartels.

New comment by rolandog in "A robot is sprinting towards you. Do you want it running on Claude or Grok?"

rolandog — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 04:35:20 +0000

Those seem to be unclear instructions that could result in Grok shoving the taco down your throat.

New comment by rolandog in "I Love the Computer"

rolandog — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:29:59 +0000

Not sure I follow; more and more what? And what do you mean by blocker ideas?

New comment by rolandog in "I Love the Computer"

rolandog — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 22:35:16 +0000

This right here. People simp for LLM companies as if their experience of using the out-of-pocket top-of-the-line "team of PhD's" paid models will be what is deployed when trying to contact your bank, insurance, etc. No,... once tech companies stop playing the "no/some revenue until we own the world" VC game, we'll all be stuck trying to talk to GlueSnifferGPT when reporting an emergency.

New comment by rolandog in "Motorola effectively bricked its entire line of WiFi routers without explanation"

rolandog — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 20:52:44 +0000

Ah, so the directors and managers that shipped unfinished games in the gaming industry found jobs in the HVAC industry?

New comment by rolandog in "Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection"

rolandog — Fri, 29 May 2026 06:56:15 +0000

(sprinkle a bunch of IIRC's) You're glossing over the fact that they have continued to sell the items in spite of a cease and desist from the brick owners which makes them totally culpable of selling other people's property, and that they're also being sued for unfair termination because the managers were calling in good faith to let them know they were going to take a job abroad.

New comment by rolandog in "AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes"

rolandog — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:42:14 +0000

We shouldn't wait for them to get their act together, as it's in the best interest of a cartel to not have competitors, compatibility, and transparency.

It should be required after a certain amount of time that schematics and code be open sourced and that anti-walled-garden measures are prevalent so we get compatibility and extensibility right out of the box.

New comment by rolandog in "FBI Arrests CIA Official with $40M in Gold Bars in His Home"

rolandog — Thu, 28 May 2026 09:35:12 +0000

In a weird reversal to Conway's law, the organizational structure of the US government has started to resemble the software it uses [0].

[0]: https://www.globalnerdy.com/2011/07/03/org-charts-of-the-big...

New comment by rolandog in "Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier"

rolandog — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:08:48 +0000

I think both ideas should be the norm: privacy by architecture and sovereignty and/or decentralization where it makes sense.

New comment by rolandog in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"

rolandog — Sat, 23 May 2026 23:57:32 +0000

Also, in some cases, you may automatically lose your original nationality if you seek an additional one (Spain comes to mind; though in their case you'd need to manually request not to lose your nationality to keep it within a certain time period, IIRC).

New comment by rolandog in "Apparently Google hates us now"

rolandog — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:22:01 +0000

I think the reading has been on the wall for some time for products that are not subscriber-funded due to enshittification. We should vote with our money and switch to better products that are customer-oriented and not advertiser-oriented.

Growing up as a teenager and young adult, I remember fondly browsing Newgrounds and being thankful to those who were paying to keep the servers running; I swore that once I got my footing and had some cash to spare, I'd be paying it forward and have been doing so for almost ten years now (took me longer than expected).

So, what I'm trying to encourage is to normalize THAT (Having X% amount of paying customers that make it possible to keep it free for those who can't pay, or to support growth), because I'm pretty sure dozens of thousands of successful careers in programming and animation were launched — or at least inspired — by wonderful sites like Newgrounds and I think that has been very much a positive net thing for society.

New comment by rolandog in "Linux security mailing list 'almost unmanageable'"

rolandog — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:10:29 +0000

That's just a security/protection racket with extra steps: "Someone is paying us to hurt your business/site; pay us money to defend your site against our attacks".