uselesswords (u/uselesswords)

uselesswords commented on Texas police invested in phone-tracking software and won’t say how it’s used texasobserver.org/texas-p... · Posted by u/nobody9999

ninkendo · 23 days ago

Yeah we’re not supposed to talk about how “HN is turning into Reddit”, but it already has. For years now. A typical comment here has been indistinguishable from a typical Reddit comment for many years, with the exception that humor is a lot less common here (although even that has changed a ton.)

The argument is that “HN is turning into Reddit” has been said since the beginning of HN… but that doesn’t make it wrong. To me the transformation is already complete. Regression to the mean is unavoidable.

uselesswords · 22 days ago

Its the inevitable result when you allow politics to enter a forum. It used to be posts that were overtly political were considered off-topic, but that has become more normalized. Hell ignoring this post, the top story right now is "American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis" which is just another political post masquerading. I wish we would just ban politics or maybe find a middle-ground like allowing overtly political posts one day a week. It's probably too late to save HN though, the community has already normalized these posts.

uselesswords commented on American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis kielinstitut.de/publicati... · Posted by u/47282847

notahacker · 22 days ago

Ask your question the other way round? How did Chinese companies absorb the cost of the 125% tariff, were they selling it at less than half price or giving it away for free?

Answer is they didn't: if the US buyer wanted it that badly they picked up the tab or otherwise they waited for the tariff to come down to 10% or went without. Also, very few goods in the US (probably none in the CPI representative basket of goods) are bought directly from Chinese vendors, they're bought from US retailers. Those US companies can eat the tariff cost if the exporter won't and they can't sell at a higher price. That obviously affects their margins, their sales and their hiring.

uselesswords · 22 days ago

Yes exactly, if the exporter is not absorbing the cost, and the consumer is not absorbing the cost (for the most part), the importing company must be absorbing the bulk of the cost.

uselesswords commented on I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool evanhahn.com/i-set-all-37... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

jrm4 · 22 days ago

This feels like the "wrong" direction today with the advent of AI? Just seems like in the realm of "bending yourself to the tool vs bending the tool to yourself," it's the LATTER that's about to get a whole lot easier, if it isn't already.

So, sure, there are probably things you can learn, but e.g. I'm much more about "I think it should be THIS way so how do I make it do that."

uselesswords · 22 days ago

You are getting downvoted quite heavily but I do wonder what percentage of people are growing more and more accustomed to the latter.

I say this someone who was dedicated to (neo)vim for a decade. With AI I spend a lot less time writing/editing pure code these days, and all the VSCode based IDEs have become so essential to my workflow/productivity that using vim only would be masochistic. I still enable the vim binds in my editor and while they’re never a perfect 100% replacement I get so much value out of other tools I can’t see myself going back.

uselesswords commented on American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis kielinstitut.de/publicati... · Posted by u/47282847

notahacker · 22 days ago

Imports seeing large tariff changes aren't a particularly large part of the CPI basket, and domestic substitutes exist. Expected responses from US manufacturers putting their own prices up are lagged, and tempered by some of the consumer response being simply buying less stuff.

The Fed predicted it added 0.5 points to what inflation could have fallen to with the expected effects only partially visible. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/oct/how-tarif...

uselesswords · 22 days ago

How can it be possible that consumers are paying 96% of tariffs that range from 25-100%. Yet inflation has only risen by 0.5 points? Consumption would have to be less than a fifth of what it was a year ago. And why haven’t there been such equally drastic price changes on shelves if whats functionally the entire cost is being passed to consumer?

uselesswords commented on MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies bbc.com/news/articles/cly... · Posted by u/mosura

acdha · 2 months ago

Reporters tend to be very careful about this in the context of things like deaths, embarrassing scandals, etc. where they might be sued. If you note, the kind of stories you’re referring to tend to be referencing what someone else said—a source in law enforcement, neighbors, friends, etc.—because that makes it clear that there are not the opinion of the news organization itself.

uselesswords · 2 months ago

I agree with everything you said, but the news organization's decision to include or not include a quote or speculation from someone is fundamentally a narrative choice. And every news organization makes those choices at their own discretion and it can result in uncritical reporting.

Pick a few frontpage stories from any news site you like, then see how its covered one a new source you don't like/leans the opposite way politically (short of the crazy outlets) and see how the same stories are reported. You'll see different quotes, different speculation, different choices of what to include or not include. Hell even the choice of what is covered on the frontpage will obviously vary if you just compare them. Saying that what a news outlet is reporting is "not the opinion of the news organization itself" may be technically correct in a legal sense, but that's worst kind of correct.

uselesswords commented on MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies bbc.com/news/articles/cly... · Posted by u/mosura

acdha · 2 months ago

You’re trying too hard to make that conspiratorial take: most responsible outlets don’t speculate on motives until there’s some evidence of a connection. For example, the stories I’ve read quoted his neighbors wondering whether there’s a connection to what happened at Brown, which is just an hour away and still has the killer at large. If there’s any evidence of an anti-Jewish motive, I will be shocked if it’s not an NYT headline within minutes.

uselesswords · 2 months ago

> most responsible outlets don’t speculate on motives until there’s some evidence of a connection

That is simply not true, every single news outlet without fail speculates, uncritically quotes a speculator, or leaves out warranted critical speculation at their own discretion. Pick a news site that you think doesn’t do this and I will happily find an example from their front page.

uselesswords commented on Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/nobody9999

tomp · 2 months ago

Well, your opinion is literally illegal.

You're legally (and technically) prohibited from re-programming GPS modules, GSM modules, and probably many stuff in cars as well.

(Actually, maybe contractually when it comes to GPS modules.)

uselesswords · 2 months ago

Technical point here but opinions are not illegal to have.

Besides that your point is missing the fact that you are dealing with outside services that provide a contract for their usage (GPS, GSM). You should be free to program your own devices but if you use an external service, then yes they can specify how you use their service. Those are contractual obligations. Cars on the road have clear safety risks and those are legal obligations. None of those obligations should govern what you do with your device until your device interacts with other people and/or services.

uselesswords commented on Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content theguardian.com/global-de... · Posted by u/ta988

alistairSH · 2 months ago

One possible reason. Nothing indicates that’s the only or primary reason for an escalation in shadow banning of these accounts.

uselesswords · 2 months ago

Feels a lot more like the reporter already had a problem with Meta and chose the examples most favorable to their anti-Meta slant to report in the article. Of course on HN we're all just to happy to eat it up as it aligns neatly with our little bubble. Here's some still publically available posts from Sex Talk Arabic who they directly quote in the article complaining about these shadow bans. It makes it a lot harder to trust the reporting here when these examples were so easy to find.

[1] https://imginn.com/p/ClT7Cufrk0k/

[2] https://imginn.com/p/DCmnH4WPbXa/

[3] https://imginn.com/p/C-dBMzXRqnu/

uselesswords commented on Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content theguardian.com/global-de... · Posted by u/ta988

Sanzig · 2 months ago

sigh

I know it's against HN rules to ask if people have read the article, but you clearly didn't read the article.

The "non-sexual nudity" example is at the bottom of the article. It's a stylized cartoon drawing of a nude man and woman with arms around each others' waists viewed from the back as they walk along a path. There is a heart strategically placed around waist level so you can't even see their whole butts.

It's about the tamest artistic depiction of nudity you can imagine, certainly something that is totally fine anywhere else on Facebook. Very clear that this is a bullshit excuse being used by Meta.

uselesswords · 2 months ago

[1] https://imginn.com/p/ClT7Cufrk0k/

[2] https://imginn.com/p/DCmnH4WPbXa/

[3] https://imginn.com/p/C-dBMzXRqnu/

> Fatma Ibrahim, the director of the Sex Talk Arabic, a UK-based platform which offers Arabic-language content on sexual and reproductive health, said that the organisation had received a message almost every week from Meta over the past year saying that its page “didn’t follow the rules” and would not be suggested to other people, based on posts related to sexuality and sexual health.

If you're getting a warning every week for a year, I would like to see the other 51 non cherry-picked examples that they didn't give to the guardian. Based on a quick look at some of their posts that are still publically available, I think Meta is completely justified in restricting visibility of some of these posts.

uselesswords commented on I wasted years of my life in crypto twitter.com/kenchangh/sta... · Posted by u/Anon84

rrdharan · 2 months ago

No, there actually aren’t. People just assume there are but the majority of desperate people turn to the barter system before crypto helps them.

uselesswords · 2 months ago

Yes there are. It is well documented in other countries such as Venezuela or Argentina and some vendors even prefer cryptocurrency because compared to their national currency it is more stable. In addition, there are significant remitance and cross-border payments done in crypto where banking or FX controls make dollars hard to access in countries like Venezuela and certain regions in Africa.

Day-to-day transactions at the street level may not be dominated by crypto or even a majority, but it is a growing nontrivial minority in a lot of places especially emerging markets.

[1] https://www.trmlabs.com/reports-and-whitepapers/2025-crypto-...

[2] https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2025-global-crypto-adoption...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1362104/cryptocurrency-a...