Hacker News: sib

New comment by sib in "The EU is about to sell our most sensitive data to the US for visa-free travel"

sib — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:20:27 +0000

I spent around 20 minutes arguing with ChatGPT when I asked the question and we eventually came to this conclusion... It's a visa that's not a visa.

New comment by sib in "Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database"

sib — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:15:46 +0000

There are many examples of important paper records (property, birth/death, etc) being lost in fires or floods, so it's not the case that "everything worked perfectly fine" in those days either.

New comment by sib in "Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? (2025)"

sib — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 15:59:55 +0000

Podcast: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/car-colors/

New comment by sib in "Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid"

sib — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 12:22:23 +0000

>> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job >> If knowledge and prestige is all that matters

I disagree. The primary purpose of the college degree is the job. If you don't need a job (which derives from the signaling factor of the degree == the prestige), you can just study the same material and gain the knowledge by yourself without getting a degree.

New comment by sib in "List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work"

sib — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:46:20 +0000

When all the "simple solutions" are "not that simple," maybe it's a problem with the regulations, not the solutions...

New comment by sib in "List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work"

sib — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 12:21:40 +0000

Which is actually a good reason for entities subject to GDPR to forbid use of personal messaging apps on work devices... (And to forbid users to use work / official apps for personal messaging.)

New comment by sib in "PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts"

sib — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:20:42 +0000

So... I used to work in the "digital movie & TV selling" industry. Our product detail pages, like pretty much all our competitors, had language on the call-to-action buttons that said "purchase" (and also, as an alternative, "rent," for 48- or 72-hour viewing).

At one point, about 10 years ago, one of the major Hollywood studios came to us and required us to change that because they believed that exactly this sort of thing would happen and we would all be setting ourselves up for liability because consumers would rightfully assume that that meant they owned the movie "forever."

New comment by sib in "Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads"

sib — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 19:00:08 +0000

You can fit about 8,000 MacBook Pros into a 40-foot container in their retail packaging. If the cost of shipping a container went up by USD8,000 (a very large amount), that would be about USD1 per MBP. It's not the shipping that's driving the price increase.

Year Average Spot Rate (USD)

2006 $1,825

2007 $1,775

2008 $1,383

2009 $1,350

2010 $1,900

2011 $1,450

2012 $2,000

2013 $1,750

2014 $1,900

2015 $1,125

2016 $1,350

2017 $1,525

2018 $1,775

2019 $1,490

2020 $3,008

2021 $8,608

2022 $5,500

2023 $1,575

2024 $4,740

2025 $3,150

2026 (YTD) $3,835

New comment by sib in "Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads"

sib — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:49:12 +0000

A strategic reserve of a commodity that (historically) depreciates at ~50% per year is a terrible trade for occasionally avoiding demand-driven price spikes.

New comment by sib in "Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI"

sib — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:06:12 +0000

Is that relevant here,

given that Google was creating an official thing

quite close to his thing

at the same time?

(And why are we writing like this?)

New comment by sib in "Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI"

sib — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:04:37 +0000

Pretty sure that the agreement that Google employees sign (a "contract") when hired reflects exactly that. At least at did when I joined (I left > 3 years ago, speaking here only for myself...)

New comment by sib in "Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers"

sib — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:04:19 +0000

I mean, if you look at it that way, it's already named 100% after a single company...

New comment by sib in "Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics, Atlas humanoid to be used at vehicle plant by 2028"

sib — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 17:59:15 +0000

>> how can a general purpose robot perform them better

Better than what? It seems that as long as they perform the tasks "better" (cheaper / faster / lower-error) than the humans that are currently performing them, that is an improvement for the factory owner.

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

sib — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 18:04:54 +0000

You could try SmugMug - I was a happy customer for almost 20 years

New comment by sib in "'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York"

sib — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:15:48 +0000

Sorry, but why is that a problem? If they didn't find someone, they closed the posting, then reopened it later, what is the issue?

Or, as in some cases, perhaps they did find someone? I've been at companies where we hired many engineers sequentially over time using the same job description. Should we just have arbitrarily changed the JD?

New comment by sib in "I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer"

sib — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:09:25 +0000

There's a story along these lines about all the scientists / physicists involved in the Manhattan Project, ending with the answer being John von Neumann.

New comment by sib in "Lost Images from the 1945 Trinity Nuclear Test Restored"

sib — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:53:26 +0000

While rocketry is older than Newton, even in 1920, it was widely believed that rockets would not work in space (and therefore couldn't get us to the moon).

https://www.astronomy.com/today-in-the-history-of-astronomy/...

Luckily, the Times did issue a correction - almost 50 years later, on July 17, 1969. The day after NASA launched the first mission to the moon.

New comment by sib in "Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request"

sib — Sun, 17 May 2026 20:34:36 +0000

I've seen plenty of waiters, taxi drivers, etc., be quite happy to receive tips in USD in many countries where USD is not the official currency. In fact, I can't think of a single time when I've seen such a tip be rejected because of its currency.

That's quite different from trying to pay a bill (invoice) in USD in those countries.

New comment by sib in "UK Fuel Price Intelligence – Market analytics from reporting stations"

sib — Tue, 05 May 2026 00:18:34 +0000

I'd say that a 2022 Subaru Outback is not a "big SUV" - the EPA classified it as a small SUV (medium starting 2026), and it had a crossover station wagon body style.

Now I do wonder about those people who buy a Chevy Tahoe, Ford Expedition, or Toyota Sequoia and then complain about gas consumption...

New comment by sib in "Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027"

sib — Mon, 04 May 2026 18:19:29 +0000

>> I think you may need to think out your entire post before typing such contradictions.

Ships != Boats