holmesworcester (u/holmesworcester)

holmesworcester commented on The Codex App openai.com/index/introduc... · Posted by u/meetpateltech

pydry · 6 days ago

>You reduce development effort by a third

Done by the company which sells software which is supposed to reduce it tenfold?

> You don't casually give up massive abstraction wins

Value is value, and levers are levers, regardless of the resources you have or the difficulty of the problem you're solving.

If they can save effort with Electron and put that effort into things their research says users care about more, everyone wins.

holmesworcester commented on Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/voxadam

cdrnsf · 18 days ago

Pretty ironic considering they bootstrapped the service with pirated music. But they've never actually cared about music — they started as an ad platform and music was the cheapest option for them to attract eyeballs.

holmesworcester · 18 days ago

"Spotify" literally means "put ads on things".

It's not obvious to US English speakers but "spot" was ad industry jargon and became the word for "TV commercial" in several European languages. It's so gross that this ever slid through as a brand for a music app. We've descended so far...Music app branding started with Wesley Willis jokes!

holmesworcester commented on Fighting the age-gated internet wired.com/story/age-verif... · Posted by u/geox

1vuio0pswjnm7 · 2 months ago

It was less commercial then. It was not as much "occupied" by intermediaries who think the internet exists for their commercial gain and anyone who uses it owes them something

I think it is amusing how these commercial third party intermediaries today are trying to frame things like "chat control" and "age restrictions" as attacks on internet users' rights rather than attacks on their intermediation "business model"

Generally, there is no age restriction on subscribing to internet service. However third party intermediaries that have now occupied seemingly every corner of the web, so-called "tech" companies, want everyone to believe that intermediaries _are_ the internet (as opposed to middlemen who seek to surveil as many internet subscribers as they can)

I am glad I grew up before the internet so that I understand and appreciate the only service that matters is _internet service_. People today take internet service for granted perhaps but I can remember when it was a new frontier

With internet service, there were so many possibilities. Today, so-called "tech" companies portray internet service as a given, apparently useless on its own,^1 whilst they advertise themselves as offering "services" (usually for free, a Trojan Horse for commercial surveillance). They utilise bandwidth paid for by the internet subscriber to transfer encrypted surveillance data to themselves

1. For example, when Mozilla claims something like without an online advertising "ecosystem" the internet would be worthless. The greed and self-entitlement behind this framing is both absurd and hilarious

holmesworcester · 2 months ago

I think it's important to not throw babies out with bathwater here.

One can disagree with Mozilla and think advertising sucks, and use tools to block it or FOSS products that don't force it on us, while also seeing how e2ee encryption bans ("chat control") and age verification rules are a restriction of both the rights of service providers and the rights of users.

Another way to put it is, just because a regulation is a restriction of the rights of a service provider does not mean it isn't also a restriction of the rights of a user.

The former does not make the latter true, but in some cases both are true.

I'd also add that if we can't stop bad laws that restrict the rights of (and piss off) both service providers and users , we have no hope of stopping similarly bad laws that only restrict the rights of users.

(Service providers, even small ones if they take the time to speak with their member of Congress, can be very credible, sympathetic, and persuasive stakeholders. When we can fight on the same side--realizing that sometimes we will fight on opposite sides--it's better for user rights that we do so. One of the tragedies of the left and parts of the right in the Trump era is that they see any regulation that hurts Big Tech as a win, even if it also hurts user rights. User rights are safer if we can distinguish between regs that hurt Big Tech and users from regs that don't hurt users.)

holmesworcester commented on Fighting the age-gated internet wired.com/story/age-verif... · Posted by u/geox

TheCraiggers · 2 months ago

I consider myself lucky to have grown up before the internet, but after local BBS' were a thing. My parents had absolutely no idea what went on in those systems, and I found the freedom incredible. Being able to explore and spread my wings a bit was a huge part of my childhood and teen years, and it wouldn't have been possible if my parents were hovering over my shoulder, or if I were unable to make an account because I wasn't 18.

That said, I was mostly dealing with griefers in Trade Wars or LoRD, and the worst thing I could find locally was GIFs of women in bikinis (and waiting for them to download was an excellent way to learn patience). I didn't have to worry so much about the threats that exist today online.

I am so grateful that I grew up when I did and got to experience that.

holmesworcester · 2 months ago

Same, so much so!

My feelings of freedom in that era, as a teen in a small 90s US city, were what fueled me to co-found one of the organizations (Fight for the Future) cited in the article!

(No longer in the trenches, just on the board, deserve zero direct credit for any of this work--it's all them!)

holmesworcester commented on CBP is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with suspicious travel patterns apnews.com/article/immigr... · Posted by u/jjwiseman

ActorNightly · 3 months ago

I mean, its possible to subpoena cellphone records and geographically track your movement based on which cell towers you connect to.

But regardless, I always find it funny that most of the rhetoric for personal liberties revolves around being able to do illegal things.

holmesworcester · 3 months ago

The most important reason for privacy is that without it, social norms calcify.

If a norm is outdated, oppressive, or maladaptive in some way and needs to be changed, it becomes very difficult to change the norm if you cannot build a critical mass of people practicing the replacement norm.

It is even harder if you cannot even talk about building a critical mass of people practicing the replacement norm.

For many norms, like the taboo on homosexuality which was strong in the US and Europe until recently and is still strong in many places today, the taboo and threat of ostracism are strong enough that people need privacy to build critical mass to change the norm even when the taboo is not enshrined in law, or the law is not usually enforced. This was the mechanism of "coming out of the closet": build critical mass for changing the norm in private, and then take the risk of being in public violation once enough critical mass had been organized that it was plausible to replace the old oppressive/maladaptive norm with a new one.

But yes, obsolete/maladaptive/oppressive norms are often enshrined in law too.

holmesworcester commented on The Case That A.I. Is Thinking newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/ascertain

deadbabe · 3 months ago

There is truly no such thing as a “black box” when it comes to software, there is only a limit to how much patience a human will have in understanding the entire system in all its massive complexity. It’s not like an organic brain.

holmesworcester · 3 months ago

You wouldn't say this about a message encrypted with AES though, since there's not just a "human patience" limit but also a (we are pretty sure) unbearable computational cost.

We don't know, but it's completely plausible that we might find that the cost of analyzing LLMs in their current form, to the point of removing all doubt about how/what they are thinking, is also unbearably high.

We also might find that it's possible for us (or for an LLM training process itself) to encrypt LLM weights in such a way that the only way to know anything about what it knows is to ask it.

holmesworcester commented on Trump pardons convicted Binance founder wsj.com/finance/currencie... · Posted by u/cowboyscott

Alifatisk · 4 months ago

I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader? He even does this bizarre maffia like deals out in the open for his own interest, that's how confident he is no one will say anything

The message is clear from his circus administration, you can do anything as long as you bribe them

holmesworcester · 4 months ago

I know HN viscerally hates crypto, and yes Trump is embarrassingly corrupt, but the charges against CZ were a greater wrong than whatever quid pro quo happened in the pardon.

This is the most embarrassing part of all of it. The US is ping ponging between two very different ways of misusing state power.

CZ was charged with violating a highly technical US securities law that is not common to most countries despite not being a US citizen or ever setting foot in the US. His crime was letting his employees (also non-US and under no affirmative obligation to learn the laws of every country in the world just because they run a website) tell crypto whales they could use VPNs to get the non-US, non-nerfed version of Binance.

The public's interest in protecting crypto whales from Binance is extremely tenuous. Unsophisticated users would hit the geofence. These were whales using Binance because they wanted to, not because they were tricked.

The US's right to enforce arcane securities law outside its own borders is also very tenuous. If every country pulls this level of aggressive enforcement of atypical law on every website (even geofenced ones!) we will have total chaos. Should China, Russia, or India be able to hunt you down for violating some arcane law? No? Then why should the US?

This is also happening in the context of an active public debate over the application of this law within the US, one cryptocurrency supporters won fairly definitively in the last election.

Whatever discretion the law provides US enforcers, they should have recognized that it was wrong to use that discretion and left CZ alone once Binance made reasonable gestures at compliance.

Instead, once their political coalition signaled that they should put symbolic heads on platters, they went about scoring career points. This is the kind of misbehavior that drove Aaron Swartz (a friend of mine) to suicide. We should be clear that it's wrong.

And here we are. A choice between venal corruption and cruel punching down at immigrants on one side, and a blind, symbolic use of power for power and ideology's sake on the other.

holmesworcester commented on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized cnn.com/2025/10/02/middle... · Posted by u/nashashmi

bawolff · 4 months ago

International law forbids the occupying power to give voting rights to occupied regions.

Its also a bit unclear what you mean by "unambiguously under Israeli control" since Palestinians in occupied palestinian territories aren't unambigiously under Israeli control, they had little control over the inside of Gaza until recently, and have some power in the west bank that is shared with the PA. Neither is "unambiguous control". The only group unambigiously under their control are the Palestinians inside Israel proper who as far as i understand do have full voting rights.

If you think military presence should equal voting rights, than i think that would imply that Iraq should be able to vote in US presedential elections.

holmesworcester · 4 months ago

I think "if their authorities can kick down the door of the house you were born in" is a good enough guide here to see the problem as distinct from other military interventions, not like the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.

The US was not established in Iraq long enough for generations of adults born in Iraq to have grown up under US control.

The border between US and Iraq is not like the border between two suburbs, and there were never Iraqis crossing that border daily to drive a taxi or clean someone's house or see a doctor.

They had enough control over Gaza before October 7th to deny Gaza a port, an airport, and even the right to do peaceful commercial fishing without getting their boats lit up.

And for whatever limited access their law enforcement institutions had to Gaza for kicking in doors, they just did missile attacks on cars or apartments instead of kicking in doors, because they had no reason to care how many bystanders they killed.

holmesworcester commented on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized cnn.com/2025/10/02/middle... · Posted by u/nashashmi

jameshilliard · 4 months ago

> Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be.

After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks.

> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.

It turns out a disproportionate response is a rather effective strategy at deterring ones enemies from attacking, it worked quite well with Hezbollah which was considered by Israel to be a much more serious threat to Israel than Hamas was.

> Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.

What other option did they have realistically? The middle east isn't a region where pacifism tends to work out well.

> Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.

Keep in mind that statements politicians make publicly about Israel are often rather different from what they really think, politicians placating various activist groups for domestic political reasons doesn't often translate into meaningful adverse actions against Israel. The Israeli stock market is at all time highs right now despite everything that has happened.

I agree Israel has been way too slow at ending the war, their reluctance to take actions to finish off Hamas(or force their capitulation/surrender) and end the war is not helping either the Palestinian people or Israelis.

> I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.

Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor, but that isn't really an entirely new issue either.

Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.

holmesworcester · 4 months ago

A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.

If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.

Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.

holmesworcester commented on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized cnn.com/2025/10/02/middle... · Posted by u/nashashmi

A_D_E_P_T · 4 months ago

Israel's response to Oct 7th has been a major blackpill.

Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be. In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all -- they lashed out wildly and extremely destructively, without a clear picture of what the post-war Gaza Strip will look like.

Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.

Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.

Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.

I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.

holmesworcester · 4 months ago

Israel's main best option is to give Palestinians, at least those unambiguously born under Israel's control, the right to vote in Israeli federal elections.

A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.

(And if your ethnic group is denied voting rights, you have a basic duty to your fellow man to raise hell until you get those rights, because arbitrary starvation is always on the table for your children until you get them.)