Hacker News: therealdrag0

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Someone bought 30 WordPress plugins and planted a backdoor in all of them"

therealdrag0 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 01:23:04 +0000

IME there’s a core set of very popular Java libs you can go very far without adopting obscure libraries you’ve never heard of. Eg apache-commons, spring, etc. the bar to adopt a 3p lib seems higher in some ecosystems than others.

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Am I German or Autistic?"

therealdrag0 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 06:39:43 +0000

Some fence holes are to allow wind through and reduce the sail effect. Not sure if that applies to your reference.

New comment by therealdrag0 in "US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology"

therealdrag0 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 02:58:30 +0000

Why is it just as bad?

New comment by therealdrag0 in "US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology"

therealdrag0 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 02:57:28 +0000

Why did you put axon in parens after Motorola?

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Common drug tests lead to tens of thousands wrongful arrests a year"

therealdrag0 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 02:00:27 +0000

See, this is the funny thing; I agree with everything you said, except that this phrase helps in those ways.

In other words, IME, the purpose of the system of the phrase “the purpose of the system” is to cause thought terminating moral superiority, even if _you intend_ for the phrase to highlight complexity and unintended consequences. ;)

Anyways, thanks for the full explanations of your position.

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Common drug tests lead to tens of thousands wrongful arrests a year"

therealdrag0 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:23:00 +0000

I don’t think we can agree on that.

But one last question to help me understand your position then I’ll leave you alone.

Why do people post this saying as if it has import? What point are they trying to make?

IME I have only ever heard this phrase used as a reaction against single failures as a way of maligning the operators of a system without any associated analysis or consideration of how the system actually works. Do you disagree this is the rhetorical purpose?

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't"

therealdrag0 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:03:13 +0000

Dumb questions if the fiber is open to anyone, what service does the internet provider actually provide?

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Common drug tests lead to tens of thousands wrongful arrests a year"

therealdrag0 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 01:06:13 +0000

This feels like a bait and switch. Can you define purpose for me?

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Common drug tests lead to tens of thousands wrongful arrests a year"

therealdrag0 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:09:39 +0000

I never said the stated purpose is a defense. The purpose is the purpose not the outcome. Just because you can’t know the true intent of every actor involved does not mean you’re justified in assuming the purpose is what it does. That is lazy broken epistemology.

I agree what a system does is what is important, so why dilute that fact with assumptions of intent and glib moralizing thought terminating cliches?

New comment by therealdrag0 in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

therealdrag0 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:30:39 +0000

Honestly I’m not going to review the thread to see if we got our wires crossed at some point, but I agree with your last comment!

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Common drug tests lead to tens of thousands wrongful arrests a year"

therealdrag0 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:08:35 +0000

Well duh. “A system will do what it does” is true, but that should not be conflated with its intent or purpose or design which require understanding of human intent. And humans produce unintended results all the time.

New comment by therealdrag0 in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

therealdrag0 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:06:36 +0000

Yes I’m sure I’m more productive. I have decades of experience before AI to compare to.

I can only speak to the engineering context not academia, but I would expect there’s similar patterns of busywork. Even the blog authors admit to using AI. AI cant replace thinking but it can replace menial labor, which is prevalent even among “knowledge workers”.

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Common drug tests lead to tens of thousands wrongful arrests a year"

therealdrag0 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:03:38 +0000

A systems purpose depends on its creator. Creators regularly fail to produce intended results. It’s absurd to say an unintended result is the intended result

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Common drug tests lead to tens of thousands wrongful arrests a year"

therealdrag0 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 17:24:46 +0000

That’s as dumbs as the saying “there can’t be a 100$ bill on the ground because if there was it’d have been picked up.”

New comment by therealdrag0 in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

therealdrag0 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 17:12:40 +0000

Why would bob only have time to promote llms? Strange strawman. Many uni courses always had a level of you get out what you put in, it’s the same with LLMs.

New comment by therealdrag0 in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

therealdrag0 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 17:04:16 +0000

Because I’m skilled enough to use a tool that generates plausible garbage to be more productive than those who don’t use it at making non-garbage.

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Caveman: Why use many token when few token do trick"

therealdrag0 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:50:53 +0000

We’re years into the industry leaning into “chain of thought” and then “thinking models” that are based on this premise, forcing more token usage to avoid premature conclusions and notice contradictions (I sometimes see this leak into final output). You may remember in the early days users themselves would have to say “think deeply” or after a response “now check your work” and it would find its own “one shot” mistakes often.

So it must be studied and at least be proven effective in practice to be so universally used now.

Someone else posted a few articles like this in the thread above but there’s probably more and better ones if you search. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47647907

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Solar and batteries can power the world"

therealdrag0 — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 01:45:01 +0000

Balcony solar legislation is well underway in dozens of states. But the capacity is still very small. Like 10% of a household.

New comment by therealdrag0 in "I Am Not A Number. In memory of the more than 72,000 Palestinians killed"

therealdrag0 — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 19:55:22 +0000

At least on my iPhone the theme aesthetic is great.

New comment by therealdrag0 in "Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom"

therealdrag0 — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 15:41:52 +0000

Similar to Google and Wikipedia lessons back in my day.