<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: varenc</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=varenc</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 22:18:51 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=varenc" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Honda Civics and the Evil Valet"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Mere possession is also enough for someone to steal your laptop, but that still shouldn't allow them to trivially install a secret persistent backdoor, or break your disk encryption.<p>Agree that a PIN/Password would have usability problems with a car.  Since no car manufacturer intentionally permits you to install software you want, there's no standard mechanism. But if this was standard I think an owner-set PIN would be very reasonable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 15:37:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48528373</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48528373</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48528373</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That was the argument around the original 2021 rent control law! It had zero exemptions to avoid perverse incentivizes like that one. But it didn't last.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 05:22:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524433</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524433</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524433</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Honda Civics and the Evil Valet"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's not good that they allow anyone that happens to be in your car briefly root access. It'd be live having an always-on laptop in your office with a open shell on it.<p>They should have provided some mechanism for the real owner to approve updates if the updates aren't all trusted by default.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 05:17:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524415</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524415</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524415</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Important context: This paper is from 2023.  In 2025, St. Paul massively rolled back rent control restrictions.<p>Their rent control used to have no exemptions, but now it's become very similar to SF rent control. Strict limit on how much rent can go up for current tenants, but can reset close to market rate when there's a 'just cause' vacancy. And all buildings built after <i>X</i> date are exempt entirely. (X=2004 in St. Paul, X=1979 in SF). Developers argued that any rent control at all limited their ability to finance housing projects.<p>I think results of studies like this were hugely influential to the changes in rent control that followed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 03:54:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524029</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524029</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524029</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Anthropic apologizes for invisible Claude Fable guardrails"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Google has been doing the same thing for longer than Anthropic[0]. To protect their models from distillation attacks, they silently will downgrade the model's performance to essentially poison your training data without your knowledge.<p>A bit different than Anthropic refusing to assist with any AI development at all, but it's in the same vein and seems not widely known.<p>edit: reading the whole series of Google's AI Threat Tracker articles also provides some insight into threats Anthropic and others are dealing with<p>[0] <a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/distillation-experimentation-integration-ai-adversarial-use#:~:text=Google%20continuously%20detects%2C%20disrupts%2C%20and%20mitigates%20model%20extraction%20activity%20to%20protect%20proprietary%20logic%20and%20specialized%20training%20data%2C%20including%20with%20real%2Dtime%20proactive%20defenses%20that%20can%20degrade%20student%20model%20performance." rel="nofollow">https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/dis...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:28:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48493446</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48493446</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48493446</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Chrome is looking to permanently drop MV2 extension"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>partially, but it couldn't replicate all functionally. A lot of uBO rules apply to elements on the DOM. Like hiding a div with ID "#ads".  That div often isn't sent as pure HTML, but is instead added to the page via JS code executing. At the MITM-level you won't be able to have rules that apply to the rendered DOM.<p>That said, selector based ad-blocking is still supported in MV3.  So might be possible to get most of the functionality with both a MITM-level blocker and an MV3 selector based blocker.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:28:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48479656</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48479656</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48479656</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first world"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>digression:<p>It's interesting this was submitted to HN over 15 times since it was published in February: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=https%3A%2F%2Fopenai.com%2Findex%2Fharness-engineering&sort=byPopularity&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...</a><p>But this is the only submission that's had any traction. Since the content is nearly the same for all submissions, it highlights how getting to the front page can be a bit random.  (Though this is the only one that capitalized 'Leveraged' so maybe that's the secret)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 07 Jun 2026 01:13:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48430805</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48430805</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48430805</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Lockdown Mode"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Probably influenced by Apple's feature with the same name: <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120" rel="nofollow">https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120</a><p>I imagine that enterprise companies will be quite interested in this.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 03:47:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421198</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421198</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421198</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Mouseless – keyboard-driven control of macOS/Linux/Windows"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>On macOS with "Full Keyboard Control" you can navigate the system and most any official app from the keyboard. It's not an efficient experience though.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:57:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48420304</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48420304</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48420304</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Using Dropbox the Unix Way"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>(for context, Rian was one of the very first Dropbox client engineers)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 19:00:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388293</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388293</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388293</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Using Dropbox the Unix Way]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://thelig.ht/dropbox-the-unix-way/">https://thelig.ht/dropbox-the-unix-way/</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388292">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388292</a></p>
<p>Points: 3</p>
<p># Comments: 2</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 19:00:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://thelig.ht/dropbox-the-unix-way/</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388292</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388292</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> The first proper zero auth password reset I've seen in production.<p>In 2011 Dropbox briefly had an even easier "zero auth exploit".  For a couple hours if you typed in any email on the login page, password checking was skipped and you could login to any account.  Albeit, you still couldn't reset the user password, just login.<p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/dropbox-security-bug-made-passwords-optional-for-four-hours/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/dropbox-security-bug-made-...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 20:18:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48362079</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48362079</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48362079</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "MCP is dead?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The value is that many companies like building MCP servers much more than CLIs. For whatever reason.<p>Here's some companies that offer MCP servers but don't seem to offer an equally featured CLI:<p><pre><code>   - Asana
   - Square
   - Linear
   - Dropbox 
   - Canva
   - Slack (sorta)
   - Figma (sorta)
</code></pre>
and many more that offer both, but support their MCP more.<p>Should they all be offering CLI tools? IMHO, yes absolutely. But an MCP server gets much more interest. I'd rather encourage them to keep improving and supporting their MCP services than telling them to drop it for a CLI.<p>There's lots of things like this in technology where you end up stuck with the first thing because its popularity perpetuates itself. The QWERTY keyboard I'm typing this on is a prime example. x86 is another one.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 30 May 2026 03:30:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48332263</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48332263</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48332263</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In the macro physics sense, all energy eventually becomes heat somewhere.  My 1500W space heater is perfectly efficient and produces 1500W of heat, and my 1500W crypto mining rig does too. Thermodynamically there's no difference. Where would the energy go if not into heat? Even energy that does things like push air or emit radiation, eventually becomes heat somewhere. In the case of a power plant, that somewhere is just very far away with the end user.<p>Though there might be practical differences though between the excess heat intentionally exhausted, and other heat.  Just speaking from a very macro sense.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 20:45:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48300390</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48300390</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48300390</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This makes it seem like you think all energy consumption leads to water boiling?  At the peak of a sunny day in the american southwest, a random square mile receives over 2000 megawatts of power from the sun. In a 24-hour period that same square receives ~16 gigawatt-hours of solar energy. It doesn't all get used to boil water. And as others have said, with a closed loop cooling system, no water is evaporated that isn't also re-condensed.<p>My 1500W space heater could boil 4.32 gallons of water every hour. But it isn't.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 20:40:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48300317</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48300317</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48300317</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> that can also search the web?<p>Slight digression: Claude/ChatGPT/etc all can <i>search</i> the web, but Google's AI already has a local copy of the web. It's much faster because of Google's TPUs, but also because Google has a copy of almost the entire web available locally. I recall others testing this and they observe that Google doesn't actually make HTTP requests to sites it references. It just uses its local cache. That's an advantage that all others seem to lack.<p>Of course, I agree that when I want search, I want search. But personally I've found if I want an LLM to very quickly answer a simple question, the type of thing all of them would do an equally good job on, I prefer Google's for its sheer speed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 19:16:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48299083</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48299083</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48299083</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Stripe is friendly to “friendly fraud”"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> They told me they don’t use evidence of chargeback abuse from one merchant to create cross-merchant fraud signals, or to take action against the customer’s card, email, or other details for other merchants.<p>I'm  surprised they were able to get Stripe to actually state all of this clearly. It's nice that Stripe actually communicates details like this. But you can see the logic behind why many other big companies would just respond with an opaque message like "<i>thank you for your report, it will be handled in the appropriate manner</i>".  Because saying the truth gets people more upset.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 01:47:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48288445</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48288445</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48288445</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>end of an era! Dropbox has now fully ship-of-theseus'd itself from my perspective. (which is impressive honestly given the time frame)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 21:34:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48286301</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48286301</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48286301</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That is what the memo is trying to say. That no regulations or laws are changing, but it's simply pushing for a certain interpretation of the law that doesn't seem to have been the status quo for awhile.<p>Some stats I found online report that ~60% of greencards are granted to people already living the US.  This memo makes it seem like that route will now be much harder. So while its true that the law as written has always been true, they're definitely pushing for a change that will result in past behaviors no longer being true.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 20:03:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48260547</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48260547</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48260547</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by varenc in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The internal memo on this is interesting: <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/PM-602-0199-AdjustmentOfStatusAndDiscretion-20260521.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/PM-...</a><p>Essentially they're trying to change the rules by aggressive re-interpretation of the existing legal framework, and not actually changing any laws or regulations.<p>I don't follow all of it, but it seems to be arguing that the "ordinary consular process", leaving the country and applying for a visa from abroad, is the long-established default, and that "adjustment of status", where your immigration/green card status changes while you're already in the US, is merely an extraordinary exception and "a matter of discretion and administrative grace." Even though applying for a green card while in-country (an "adjustment") seems like the only sane and reasonable process.<p>It feels goofy watching them marshal decades of prior case law to try to frame this as just a "reminder" rather than admitting this is a real change. (Since changing laws is harder I assume)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 22:00:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48251978</link><dc:creator>varenc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48251978</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48251978</guid></item></channel></rss>