<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: sparky_z</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sparky_z</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:07:30 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=sparky_z" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Haunting Photos Show the Aftermath of the Kursk Submarine Disaster in 2000"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Before clicking on this link, I hopped over to the Wikipedia page and read the intro section to get some quick context. Turns out that was unnecessary because this "article" is literally just the Wikipedia intro, almost sentence for sentence, with some minor rephrasing here and there. It's pretty blatant. Wikipedia is mentioned in the photo credits, but there's no attribution for the text, which I think is a violation of the Creative Commons license and counts as plagiarism?<p>Pictures were interesting, though.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:46:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680436</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680436</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680436</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Just Put It on a Map"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The Bronx isn't "anywhere else", it's a region of New York City (one of the five boroughs), just like Manhattan is.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 21 Mar 2026 03:40:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463764</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463764</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463764</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You're missing the point. I only use an Android because it lets me install whatever software I want. If that's no longer an option, then I'll pick based on other criteria, and then the iPhone beats the Android phone every time.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Mar 2026 09:40:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452398</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452398</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452398</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If only we had just slightly increased the length of each day so that the year divided perfectly into 365 days. Then it would be an even better analogy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 09 Mar 2026 07:13:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47305720</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47305720</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47305720</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Ethiopia gets $350M World Bank financing for its digital ID project (2024)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I remember many years ago (maybe around 2014?) reading about a smallish European country that implemented this sort of thing really well. There was nothing but glowing praise for it at the time. I want to say maybe it was Latvia?<p>Does anyone remember what I'm talking about? I'm wondering if there been any long-term takeaways for how well it ended up working.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:21:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47269105</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47269105</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47269105</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Medical journal says the case reports it has published for 25 years are fiction"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I suspect you're reading too much into that phrase. It seems more likely to me that the reporter here contacted one or more of the case report authors directly to ask for a copy of what instructions they received from the journal at the time. (This would be good journalistic practice, rather than just take the journal's word for it, when they might have an incentive to lie.) But they obviously couldn't explicitly confirm that every single author received similar instructions, so they used the “at times” phrase to cover their ass.<p>If they had direct evidence that some author's instructions failed to ask for the case study to be fictionalized, I think they would have specifically said that. It's more definitive, and catches the journal in a lie.<p>I'm pretty sure what happened here is that:<p>1) The journal always asked for and thought they received fictionalized case studies.<p>2) It never occurred to them that they were presenting the case studies in a way that could be misinterpreted. (This is indefensible negligence, but I also understand how it could have happened "innocently".)<p>3) Once the issue came to light, they issues blanket corrections to every case study study to describe them as fiction because they asked for fiction and edited them all as fiction. (I.e., Didn't do any fact checking or independent confirmation, beyond medical broad strokes.)<p>4) At least one author didn't read the instructions carefully enough and sent in a real case study, which as the article says, wasn't caught by the editors during the review process. (And really, how would they catch it? If they thought they asked for fiction, they wouldn't be fact checking it.)<p>I actually think the disclaimer may be appropriate, even on the article that was written as a true story, if it wasn't reviewed as one.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:45:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47267043</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47267043</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47267043</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Why would adding a new supplier to the market cause the price of power to go up?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2026 07:41:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47258779</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47258779</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47258779</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Medical journal says the case reports it has published for 25 years are fiction"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sure, if you emphasize selectively you can make it sound like it says that. Here are some other quotes from the article that clearly refute your interpretation:<p>> The journal decided when it first started publishing the article type “that the cases should be fictional to protect patient confidentiality,”<p>> While the instructions for authors for Paediatrics & Child Health has at times indicated the case reports are fictional, that disclosure has never appeared on the journal articles themselves.<p>> “The editor acknowledged that the editorial team is at fault for overlooking the fact that our case was real during the review process,”<p>It's pretty clear that the journal always thought of these as fictional vignettes, and either didn't realize or didn't care that that had not made that sufficiently clear to the readers. The New Yorker article clued them into the fact that it was a problem, so they added the correction to all of their case studies to clarify that they were intended to be fictional. In (at least) one case, the author also didn't realize they should be fictional, and submitted a real case study which has now been incorrectly corrected.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2026 02:05:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47256585</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47256585</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47256585</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It literally wrote a blog post [supposedly on its own initiative] trying to gin up outrage at open source maintainer after he denied the LLM's pull request.<p>Here's the original write-up of the incident:<p><a href="https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/" rel="nofollow">https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 19:15:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47237320</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47237320</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47237320</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>He was only slandered once, by the LLM Agent. The Ars Technica article had presented paraphrases  that it falsely attributed as direct quotes, and was therefore factually incorrect reporting. But it was not defamatory by any reasonable standard. Slander isn't just a synonym of "lie".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 05:09:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47228345</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47228345</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47228345</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "“Car Wash” test with 53 models"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But why would they reason through it in that way? You haven't asked them to listen carefully and find the secret reason you're a dumb-ass in order to prove how smart they are. If they default to that mode on every query, that would just make them insufferable conversational partners, which is not the training goal.<p>Let me put it this way. If you were to prefix the prompts they used with "This is an IQ test: ", I wouldn't be surprised if most of the the models did much better. That would give them the context that the humans reading this article already have.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 20:16:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142302</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142302</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142302</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "“Car Wash” test with 53 models"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>By the same reasoning, why on earth would a person sincerely ask you that question unless the car that they want to wash is either already at the car wash, or that someone is bringing it to them there for some reason?<p>If it's as unambiguous as you say, then the natural human response to that question isn't "you should drive there". It's "why are you fucking with me?" Or maybe "have you recently suffered a head injury?"<p>If you trust that the questioner isn't stupid and is interacting with you honestly, you'd probably just  assume that they were asking about an unusual situation where the answer isn't obvious. It's implicitly baked into the premise of the question.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 05:53:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133340</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133340</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133340</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Facebook is cooked"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>  It all just went away, starting with the husbands.<p>I honestly can't tell whether I'm supposed to interpret this as "The dads lost interest in Facebook before anyone else", or "Everybody got divorced."</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2026 19:20:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092581</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092581</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092581</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "I'm not worried about AI job loss"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Correct. Of course, that wasn't the case in 1750 or 1900. It wouldn't have been possible then.<p>Hence why prior technological changes that increased productivity didn't result in living lives of extended leisure, despite some predictions to that effect. Instead people kept working to raise the overall  standard of living to what could be achieved when using the new tools to their fullest extent. Doing more, not doing the same with less effort. As you say, we're not animals. We can strive for better.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 23:54:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47009519</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47009519</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47009519</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Vouch"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Close, but it's "Butlerian". Easy to remember if you know it's named after Samuel Butler.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 08 Feb 2026 06:25:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46931818</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46931818</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46931818</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "China to ban hidden door handles on cars starting in 2027"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Possibly dumb question from someone who's not Tesla-savvy: why would you want the door handle to retract the window slightly while opening the door?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:13:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46888490</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46888490</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46888490</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "You Can Just Buy Far-UVC"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That paper is about mandatory masking and social distancing at the population level. It does not speak to the question of whether it's "worth it" to wear a mask on the train if you're the only one who is doing it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Jan 2026 01:59:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46626982</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46626982</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46626982</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Hochul and Mamdani Announce Plan to Make N.Y. Child Care Universal"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've tried to research this, because I am honestly trying to understand it. It has been surprisingly difficult to verify what the current parental rights are for Canada Post. The most recent info on the union website is dated 2004, but I think the same basic agreement is still in force? Correct me if I'm wrong.<p><a href="https://www.cupw.ca/sites/default/files/legacy_imported_document/parental_rights_eng.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.cupw.ca/sites/default/files/legacy_imported_docu...</a><p>Also, it's worth noting that the Canada Post leave policy it's obviously the result of a union negotiation, not a blanket government policy that applies to all jobs. The post office is the epitome of a stable job that doesn't change much, so is probably optimally able to offer longer parental benefits.<p>Anyway, it says:<p>> All pregnant employees are entitled to 17 weeks of unpaid maternity leave.... If you have worked for the post office for six months of continuous service, and if you are eligible for the Employment Insurance (EI) maternity leave benefits, you are eligible to receive paid maternity leave.... EI [government program] pays a basic rate of 55% of your average earnings, up to a maximum of $413 per week.... This amount is topped up with the SUB [Supplementary Unemployment Benefit from the union contract] to 93% of your weekly wage.<p>> If your spouse is giving birth, you are entitled to one day of leave with pay.<p>> Parental leave [without pay)] can be split between two parents, but the total number of weeks must not be more than 37. The total number of weeks or paternity and maternity leave must not be more than 52 weeks.<p>That's a far, far cry from 3 years of leave, much less 5. Like I said, it may be outdated, but I can't find any indication that it has changed, and I don't want to spend my whole day on this.<p>Where are you getting this 5 year number? 5 years sounds truly insane and I have real trouble believing it. Even assuming that's split between the two parents, can a family have 6 children 2.5 years apart and spend a continuous 15 years of their careers on leave?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 10 Jan 2026 20:39:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569697</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569697</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569697</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "Hochul and Mamdani Announce Plan to Make N.Y. Child Care Universal"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A 3-year maternity/paternity leave guaranteed by law sounds so completely crazy and unworkable to me that I think I must be misunderstanding what you mean. Before I start pelting you with objections that might be based on a misunderstanding, do you want to fill in a bit more detail on how you envision such a policy working in practice?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 10 Jan 2026 06:35:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563360</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563360</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563360</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sparky_z in "A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>OK, I see now that you're specifically referring to the case where someone places a bet and then actively goes out and causes the event to happen themselves.  I was specifically replying to the people who were saying it was unfair for insiders to profit on the information they already possess.<p>I agree, I can see how that's a potential edge case, though I don't think it's as likely to happen in practice as you do. Certainly, anybody who commits a crime to cause a payout should be barred from receiving that payout, though you can tell a plausible story where someone manages to conceal it. I also really really doubt that that's what happened in this particular case.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Jan 2026 02:55:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46521985</link><dc:creator>sparky_z</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46521985</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46521985</guid></item></channel></rss>