Hacker News: vkou

New comment by vkou in "Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights"

vkou — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:33:14 +0000

He's been a turd that any reasonable person would endorse stripping of his wealth for years.

Hasn't affected the bottom line one whit.

New comment by vkou in "Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise"

vkou — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:55:43 +0000

Their humanity does not serve the bottom line.

New comment by vkou in "My current strategy is to not read any of the code written by my agents"

vkou — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:09:48 +0000

You can both test your code for correctness, while also letting the compiler enforce correctness, and communicate important information to people reading your code.

New comment by vkou in "Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32/35 students cheating with AI"

vkou — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:07:20 +0000

The quality standard expected for most work is even lower than what's expected in school.

New comment by vkou in "Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32/35 students cheating with AI"

vkou — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:05:11 +0000

The world is quite fine taking long-term Ls for short-term gains. That's the zeitgeist of the 21st century.

The end result of that is a shit society to live in, but overall welfare is not what we optimize for.

New comment by vkou in "US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search"

vkou — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:19:43 +0000

Advance or regression is not the way you probably want to look at it. There isn't a lot of evidence for historical inevitability.

And no, we have not been a liberal democracy for 'a long time'. We have been an illiberal democracy with very limited suffrage and distribution of rights for a very long time.

New comment by vkou in "US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search"

vkou — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 04:32:19 +0000

The law wasn't in the state that you ascribe to it for the other 99% of its history if you were, say, African-American. Other less-extremely obvious examples also abound.

Liberal democracy with sometimes-fair application of it is the aberration.

New comment by vkou in "US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search"

vkou — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 04:28:39 +0000

The courts are stacked against the defense, but that statistic in itself is not proof of it.

New comment by vkou in "Jimothy the raccoon has a rare spinal condition. Here's what that means"

vkou — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 02:46:52 +0000

International attention has been on him before that debacle.

Anything to prevent us from looking up, I guess.

New comment by vkou in "Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake"

vkou — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:26:02 +0000

Microsoft is in a better position (as their b2b ecosystem can realistically be made LLM-agnostic), but Google will be fine.

New comment by vkou in "A 77-year-old Republican man is staging a solo protest against Flock cameras"

vkou — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:07:40 +0000

Do you think 70 years for an unarmed person going to a protest where some other asshole shot at a cop is justice?

That is five times the average American sentence for murder.

New comment by vkou in "A 77-year-old Republican man is staging a solo protest against Flock cameras"

vkou — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 01:23:45 +0000

There was a protest in Texas. Some protestors set off fireworks into the air. One protestor brought and shot a gun at a cop. He got 100 years in prison. Everyone else who was there got 70.

One person in their signal group, who didn't even show up to the protest... got 30.

This is Soviet Russia, or Putin Russia-level insanity. Punch a fascist, go to a camp. A fascist punches you, he gets a medal.

New comment by vkou in "A 77-year-old Republican man is staging a solo protest against Flock cameras"

vkou — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 22:02:00 +0000

Anyone with eyes can see that those killers are guilty. You don't need to split hairs on that, you can look at the video yourself.

As anyone else, though, they constitutionally deserve a fair trial where the onus is on the state to prove that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, before they can be sentenced. My assessment of their guilt has little bearing on the state's ability to do that.

Proving that guilt would be trivial if the federal government weren't actively complicit, by preventing such a trial from taking place. There's no need to cover for it, it's behavior is unconscionable and treasonous.

New comment by vkou in "A 77-year-old Republican man is staging a solo protest against Flock cameras"

vkou — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 21:54:35 +0000

The United States, the first two in Texas and the latter in Minnesota.

In that bit, an unarmed man was murdered, the killers scatter like roaches, the federal police is covering for them, while actively preventing the state from giving the guilty a fair trial and a swift sentencing and imprisonment.

(What they did is a state crime with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, and also a federal crime that carries the death penalty.)

New comment by vkou in "A 77-year-old Republican man is staging a solo protest against Flock cameras"

vkou — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 21:50:24 +0000

In a country where not attending a protest gets you 30 years in prison, and attending a protest where you set off a firework gets you 70, and where a government thug can pin you down and execute you on the sidewalk, and get recognized for his heroism and bravery... you tell me.

New comment by vkou in "Taylor Farms Called White House to Try to Delay Cyclospora Recall"

vkou — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 06:16:18 +0000

The press seems to think that someone who lies whenever their lips are moving deserves an elevated platform.

New comment by vkou in "Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI"

vkou — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 01:34:07 +0000

Biden may have been a senile fool in 2025, but he was smart enough to listen to people who knew their ass from their elbow.

And to also not burn down the furniture to 'own' his political enemies.

New comment by vkou in "Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns"

vkou — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:37:03 +0000

Sure, but it means that they managed to pick third-parties they work with that give a shit. They could have always picked ones that didn't.

When you're buying a pig in a poke (which is always the case when you're a first-time customer), this is a positive signal.

New comment by vkou in "Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns"

vkou — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:28:39 +0000

A high degree of polish was tangible evidence that someone in the organization gave a shit about their work.

New comment by vkou in "Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public"

vkou — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:26:36 +0000

Those countries were occupied by a foreign empire. You may recall what happened when they attempted regime change - the Soviets would roll in.

As soon as Gorbachev made it clear that he's not going to do that, all of the Warsaw pact states immediately overthrew their governments.

Thank you for providing an example that further supports my thesis. No government can survive very long when a supermajority of the country hates it.