ratelimitsteve (u/ratelimitsteve)

ratelimitsteve commented on FCC Bars over 1,200 Providers for Non-Compliance with Robocall Protections docs.fcc.gov/public/attac... · Posted by u/impish9208

nativeit · 3 hours ago

I'm not one of the people down-voting this, I'm inclined to sort of agree with you. Where you lost me was attaching files to an email. Are you really suggesting this solution has fewer problems than telephones?

ratelimitsteve · 3 hours ago

I'm here for the explanation as to how attached voice clips are equivalent to real time two-way voice communication

ratelimitsteve commented on Ask HN: What is your favorite quote? · Posted by u/chistev

ratelimitsteve · 3 days ago

"Fishbulb" has become "Eureka" for me, but with overtones of "and it should have always been obvious". This is after the episode of the simpsons where homer discovers that his face is the logo for a japanese megacorporation, then they go all the way to Japan only to find out that the similarity is coincidental and the logo is actually a fish and a lightbulb merged together to signify the merger of two companies, one that generates electricity and the other a fish processing plant. Upon seeing the way the fish logo sits overtop the lightbulb logo to create a near-perfect rendition of Homer's face, Bart quips, "Well there's your answer, Fishbulb!"

ratelimitsteve commented on The Onion brought back its print edition and the gamble is paying off wsj.com/business/media/th... · Posted by u/andsoitis

hugs · 4 days ago

I kinda have the print edition of the Onion to thank for my career.

Back in 2000, I had a "100% travel" tech consulting job. My favorite part of the week was finally getting back home to Chicago, grabbing a sub at a sandwich shop, and casually reading that week's edition cover to cover Saturday afternoon.

One particular week, there was an ad for a local tech company (ThoughtWorks). I don't remember there being many tech job ads in the Onion at the time, so it stood out. I remember the ad copy being something like "Does your life suck, or just your job? Work here instead." I immediately applied, interviewed, eventually got an offer, quit my other job, and started at ThoughtWorks. It was a massive upgrade.

A few years later, I got to lead an internal dev team, and a spin-off project (Selenium) came out of that.

Long story long: No Onion, no job at ThoughtWorks, no Selenium.

Glad a new generation gets to enjoy leisurely reading fake news and seeing where it takes them in life.

ratelimitsteve · 3 days ago

I need to thank you for my first job out of college (auto QA for a spring/ReST web app) and also for helping me automate several browser games.

ratelimitsteve commented on Google admits anti-competitive conduct involving Google Search in Australia accc.gov.au/media-release... · Posted by u/Improvement

seanmcdirmid · 7 days ago

I don't think you get it. Detroying a company doesn't make the situation better, most regulation is centered around "punish and correct," rather than "vindictive destruction." The company has to survive to learn its lesson, or you haven't really made any progress.

ratelimitsteve · 7 days ago

who said anything about destroying a company? I just said that the fine should be more than the profit from breaking the law or you're not punishing and correcting, you're encouraging lawbreaking and taking a cut of the profits.

ratelimitsteve commented on Google admits anti-competitive conduct involving Google Search in Australia accc.gov.au/media-release... · Posted by u/Improvement

seanmcdirmid · 7 days ago

This was a settlement, if the fines were massive, the settlement wouldn't have come as easily. And then if you start fining companies from other countries a lot, it becomes a trade issue and things get messy. In the worst case those companies just pull out of your market, and you are left with small businesses and startups but that might not make up for the services that the mega-corps were providing, and that might have adverse effects on other businesses in your country.

So what happens is that they wind up going with non-massive fines to enforce compliance as a trade off (like you wouldn't deal out the death penalty for someone who was caught stealing).

ratelimitsteve · 7 days ago

The problem is that we've taken "you wouldn't deal out the death penalty for someone who was caught stealing" and used it as justification to make the fines significantly less than the profits from breaking the law, thus incentivizing lawbreaking.

ratelimitsteve commented on Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy theguardian.com/film/2025... · Posted by u/nemoniac

MikeRichardson · 10 days ago

I LOOKed at the MOVIE, and so did my friend DOT, and we came TO the same conclusion that it's not working as specified.

ratelimitsteve · 7 days ago

you had trouble and your friend had trouble 2?

ratelimitsteve commented on The Timmy Trap jenson.org/timmy/... · Posted by u/metadat

sobiolite · 10 days ago

The article says that LLMs don't summarize, only shorten, because...

"A true summary, the kind a human makes, requires outside context and reference points. Shortening just reworks the information already in the text."

Then later says...

"LLMs operate in a similar way, trading what we would call intelligence for a vast memory of nearly everything humans have ever written. It’s nearly impossible to grasp how much context this gives them to play with"

So, they can't summarize, because they lack context... but they also have an almost ungraspably large amount of context?

ratelimitsteve · 10 days ago

I think the differentiator here might not be the context it has, but the context it has the ability to use effectively in order to derive more information about a given request.

ratelimitsteve commented on White House loyalty rating for companies axios.com/2025/08/15/whit... · Posted by u/petethomas

daedrdev · 10 days ago

Ahh yes only the left has agency

???

ratelimitsteve · 10 days ago

that's a wild misreading of the idea that the powerful like to keep and expand their power

ratelimitsteve commented on White House loyalty rating for companies axios.com/2025/08/15/whit... · Posted by u/petethomas

SpicyLemonZest · 10 days ago

I've been beating this drum for a while and I'm going to keep doing it. If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understand that many if not most of your competitors are working hard to figure out how to wield the federal government in their favor. I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029, but any assumption that the current federal government will treat you fairly without taking their side in political battles is a grave strategic error.

ratelimitsteve · 10 days ago

When the reckoning finally arrives the aristocrats will forgive themselves in the spirit of reconciliation and moving on, just like they did after WWII. Plenty of American companies like IBM made tons of money helping the Nazis and then after Berlin fell it turned out they were actually always on the side of freedom and there is absolutely no need to expand the war crimes trials to include collaborators.

ratelimitsteve commented on White House loyalty rating for companies axios.com/2025/08/15/whit... · Posted by u/petethomas

bilbo0s · 10 days ago

Just Devil's Advocate, but this being the US, the opposition doesn't necessarily support pure democratic ideals either.

It's just that the conservatives are so much further along the authoritarianism scale that the liberals appear to be freedom loving democracy activists by comparison. But I guarantee you, if you were to drop the average US Democratic party politician into Germany, Australia, or Canada, they'd be considered to be so far right of center that people would question whether or not that politician even believes in democracy.

ratelimitsteve · 10 days ago

The ratchet effect is real. American liberals have comfortably positioned themselves as the counter to authoritarianism but you'll notice that they never actually make things less authoritarian. They're thrilled to keep the direct power seized by the right, and to expand their own soft power where possible.