Hacker News: vvpan

New comment by vvpan in "Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)"

vvpan — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 23:00:50 +0000

Except Pavel Durov has been caught lying before and in general is not a great source of information.

New comment by vvpan in "Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)"

vvpan — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:57:58 +0000

Somebody already posted it but I wanted to mention it again, investigations that Telegram has not been able to dispute have revealed that Telegram's infrastructure is managed by a person who is also managing infra for FSB. And this is happening unbeknownst to Telegram employees.

https://istories.media/en/stories/2025/06/10/telegram-fsb/

New comment by vvpan in "Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)"

vvpan — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:50:42 +0000

The Insider also did an investigation disproving his claims that he "fled". He consistently visited Russia afterwards.

Edit: it's another iStories piece, not Insider, Insider only re-reported it.

https://storage.googleapis.com/istories/en/news/2024/08/27/p...

New comment by vvpan in "Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers"

vvpan — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:42:55 +0000

It's a great an telling investigation. Dropped in to share it as well. Telegram deserves no trust from us.

New comment by vvpan in "I'm a USB-C Maximalist"

vvpan — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:31:23 +0000

I think one thing that we have come to think as electronic consumers, or just consumers in general, is to expect the absolute best modern version of everything (plug, AI model, car...). I think it is pure conditioning and we forgot the simplicity and convenience of things just working even with apparent downsides relative to acme version. Could USB-C be better? Probably. Is just settling on a standard so you don't have to think about it preferable? I think so. Consider USB-C standardization as an expression of a specific system of values.

New comment by vvpan in "New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices"

vvpan — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 20:25:23 +0000

A complimentary complaint is that payments are a "pull" operation with subscriptions. You can't decide who gets your money. How retro is that!

New comment by vvpan in "The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting"

vvpan — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:01:01 +0000

Free speech for them, "woke propaganda" for you.

New comment by vvpan in "Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors"

vvpan — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:23:39 +0000

Do we have any hard data about AI improving any business metrics yet? I am not skeptical that it might, but I have yet to see anything.

New comment by vvpan in "Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors"

vvpan — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:22:25 +0000

Steer towards that Fully-Automated Luxury Communism.

New comment by vvpan in "Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors"

vvpan — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:20:23 +0000

Humans?

New comment by vvpan in "Vacation With An Artist – Mini-Apprenticeships with Artists in Their Studios"

vvpan — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 21:50:18 +0000

I am sure they are. But afaik some european countries have much stronger institutionalized trades programs.

https://www.aasa.org/resources/resource/Youth-Apprenticeship...

New comment by vvpan in "San Diego photologs from the 1970s"

vvpan — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 21:42:09 +0000

When I look at those people first thing I think is that they have never seen a cell phone and I am bit jealous.

New comment by vvpan in "There are no instances in ATProto"

vvpan — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 17:01:09 +0000

An average user does not need to run their own node for decentralization to work. It just needs to be cheap and easy enough for enough of technical users to run

New comment by vvpan in "There are no instances in ATProto"

vvpan — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:57:48 +0000

People have set up relays for like $15/month.

New comment by vvpan in "Vacation With An Artist – Mini-Apprenticeships with Artists in Their Studios"

vvpan — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:46:48 +0000

Was wondering and discussing with somebody yesterday why USA does not have a strong apprenticeship culture like Europe does.

New comment by vvpan in "The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars"

vvpan — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:40:19 +0000

It is all about the system of values. The system of values that the stereotypical high powered CEO billionaires have is unfathomable to me. Do they have time to breathe? Do they have friends? Their lives sound boring and unfulfilling.

New comment by vvpan in "The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars"

vvpan — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:24:01 +0000

One of the effects of giving is de-concetrating power and diminushing your political leverage.

New comment by vvpan in "The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars"

vvpan — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:12:54 +0000

I've been told that it is a regional thing.

New comment by vvpan in "Rio de Janeiro's "homegrown" LLM appears to be a merge of an existing model"

vvpan — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:17:56 +0000

Gross historical ovesimplifications aside I am wondering why one would use this as an opportunity to belittle a whole continent.

New comment by vvpan in "Rio de Janeiro's "homegrown" LLM appears to be a merge of an existing model"

vvpan — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:13:43 +0000

I think that's unfair to "vibe coding". If anybody explicitly claims to vibe coding something than they are admitting to low supervision of the code. And on the contrary you can also AI-produce code that you have supervised highly. I suppose there are people who both AI their code and push it as bespoke but I, for one, have not met such a person at our outside of work.