Hacker News: usefulcat

New comment by usefulcat in "Google Gemini routes personal Drive files and emails to human annotators"

usefulcat — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 22:40:18 +0000

"Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans."

New comment by usefulcat in "Claude Code sends your email address to websites"

usefulcat — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 01:06:40 +0000

> Claude himself

itself

New comment by usefulcat in "We can do better than line-buffered output"

usefulcat — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 18:12:38 +0000

This is true, although neither of those by them selves will achieve what the author is aiming for.

New comment by usefulcat in "Sshole"

usefulcat — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 14:53:21 +0000

By way of NeXTSTEP

New comment by usefulcat in "The SEC Should Block Anthropic's IPO to Protect the Public"

usefulcat — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 01:40:20 +0000

Agreed. However, “the government” is very much not a monolithic entity.

New comment by usefulcat in "Binance-hacker-1029 – $5.6B stolen from Binance"

usefulcat — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 01:33:50 +0000

A long time ago (maybe 2008-ish?) I saw a video called “Money is Debt”. Now I won’t claim that it’s 100% right about everything, but as I recall it was right about a lot of things, and what it did for me is to fundamentally change and greatly expand my understanding of banks and the financial system.

New comment by usefulcat in "Google Search is now less than half of Alphabet’s revenue"

usefulcat — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 18:50:29 +0000

Notice how for both "search" and "everything else" there's a peak at almost every year boundary. Trying to juice the EOY numbers, I guess?

New comment by usefulcat in "MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch"

usefulcat — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 21:37:04 +0000

> and almost begin to pinch zoom something

I dislike fingerprints too much to feel that temptation, but when using a phone I do feel a kind of dread every time I want to select some text or precisely position a cursor.

New comment by usefulcat in "Evidence of a spying operation by ICE against left-wing social movements"

usefulcat — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 13:44:42 +0000

> Or, more appropriately, on an election's notice.

That depends entirely on the degree to which those in power will respect the results of an election.

New comment by usefulcat in "Microsoft offers mass buyouts for roughly a quarter of its workforce"

usefulcat — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 00:39:29 +0000

Oh don’t worry, a company representative will definitely be standing next to you as you’re walked out the door.

I mean, two out of three isn’t bad, right?

New comment by usefulcat in "Microsoft offers mass buyouts for roughly a quarter of its workforce"

usefulcat — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 00:31:10 +0000

I dunno, as someone who’s lived their entire life in the southern US this sounds really pedantic. At best.

Also, is it just me or does that Wikipedia entry have zero citations? I thought Wikipedia was allergic to citation-free claims..

New comment by usefulcat in "Investor-owned utilities charge 23% more for electricity than public providers"

usefulcat — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 15:27:07 +0000

In the case of the US, "legally required" is a myth. A common one, but a myth nonetheless.

> To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

New comment by usefulcat in "Woman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name"

usefulcat — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 16:36:35 +0000

I'm well aware of that. I was speculating that the prosecutor may think that they could prevail vs a court appointed lawyer.

New comment by usefulcat in "Woman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name"

usefulcat — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:52:10 +0000

Don't they also hate to lose though? This seems an unlikely case for a prosecutor to win. If it were a civil case, sure, the standard is much lower there, but for a criminal case the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt".

I guess they could be gambling that she can't afford a good lawyer; many people can't.

New comment by usefulcat in "EA is shutting down BioWare"

usefulcat — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 02:24:55 +0000

low pay (for tech) + poor working conditions (for tech) = more turnover

ETA: That was a bit terse. My point was simply that it's more difficult to do institutional knowledge transfer when turnover is high, which may be a problem in the games industry.

New comment by usefulcat in "Meta ordered to pay $25B penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case"

usefulcat — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:00:55 +0000

Can they appeal it?

New comment by usefulcat in "Sixteen years after Deepwater Horizon, deep sea life shows few signs of recovery"

usefulcat — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:56:28 +0000

According to Yahoo Finance it was around $59 at that time, not $100+.

New comment by usefulcat in "Sixteen years after Deepwater Horizon, deep sea life shows few signs of recovery"

usefulcat — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 20:45:55 +0000

> $140 billion if you include total financial cost to BP.

That's more than their current market cap ($127B), and the stock price right now is not that far from where it was just before the spill ($49 now, around $59 just prior to the spill).

I'm just curious how that was accomplished, given that it would not have been a great time for them to be borrowing or issuing new shares, for obvious reasons. Maybe if it was spread out over like 10 years it could be more doable, but still that seems like a lot.

New comment by usefulcat in "Why do we have so many meetings?"

usefulcat — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 16:29:35 +0000

A highly profitable company can be poorly run and still survive exactly because there is so much more margin for error than for a company which is barely profitable (or worse).

Granted, that kind of situation is unlikely to continue indefinitely, but it certainly can happen.

New comment by usefulcat in "Ukraine claims first drone evacuation of wounded soldier"

usefulcat — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 19:35:47 +0000

> even Republicans are beginning to wonder what dirt Putin has on Trump.

What dirt could they possibly have on him that would actually matter to the voters that voted for him last time?

Not trolling or rhetorical; that's a completely sincere question. Even if something "bad" were to surface, his supporters would simply deny it and/or ignore it, same as they've done for all the other things he's done that are already known.

You can pretty much divide American voters into two camps right now: the ones who loathe him and the ones who DGAF (non-voting voters being in the latter category).