wdr1

If Kevin Mitnick were still with us, I feel like he would be proud of these guys.

It's paywalled. Could you recap for us?

It’s a stupendous amount of walking, with no shade, a moop stick and a bucket

That does sound taxing. Is it volunteer or do people get paid?

Shouldn’t UAE be upset their entire economy has absolutely rammed by the war started by Israel?

It's pretty convoluted logic to blame Israel for Iran attacking the UAE.

The fact that this question needs asking tells a lot about how other countries see the current administration.

Not really. You just weren't paying attention before. To wit, countries (including Germany!) have been questioning the safety of storing gold in the United State long before the Trump administration.

Examples 2012: Venezuela Receives Last Shipment of Repatriated Gold Bars https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-01-31/venezuela...

2013: Bundesbank to retrieve $200bn of gold reserves (Bundesbank is Germany’s independent central bank) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/15/bundesbank-ret...

2014: Netherlands moves 122.5 from New York https://www.dutchnews.nl/2016/02/85796-2/

There's obviously more, but that gives you a sense of it.

We live very close to Grant. We go through this intersection to walk our kids to their schools & know the crossing guards pretty well.

This matches exactly what they said.

That kid is lucky it was a Waymo & not a human driven car.

2. EU is the easiest second market, and another step change of hundreds of millions of customers in a somewhat unified market

What about China? India?

I remember it too!

But not everyone was on dial-up. A lot were in dorms w/ (for the time) high speed connections or workplaces with it.

Remember at the time it wasn't clear that search was going to be the dominate pattern for how people found information on the web. It seems crazy now, but in the early days of the web, the space was small enough that a directory-style approach worked pretty well. It was Yahoo's directory that made it initially popular, not its search.

And so there was a fair bit of debate on which was better -- something like a directory + search (a la Yahoo!) vs just search.

It took a bit of time before search proved if it was done really well, you didn't need a directory.

I wonder why Google UX always sucked so much

It depends on how you define "suck."

When Google first launched it's homepage, its emptiness (just a logo & search box) was a stark contrast to the portal pages popular, which were loaded with content.

Some thought the Google homepage "sucked" whereas other liked it. (I was in the latter.)

Likewise, the interface for Gmail. Or the interface for Google Maps. Or the interface for Chrome.

I consider this abuse of the visitor.

Why can't anything simply be "disliked" anymore?

I get you don't like it.

But abused?

Because there's a slide-in?

On a site run by volunteers?

For open source software you get for free?

That you freely choose to visit?

Calling that abuse seems... off. I have no concerns with people saying the don't like something. But the current nature to be hyperbolic is off-putting to me.

Does this apply to political lists too? I know political calls/text are excluded from Do Not Call and hence I get a crap ton of political spam texts (most recently from "Adam Miller for Congress OH-15", despite never living in Ohio). I'd really, really like to remove myself from all these political lists.

I think we should start separating discussion of “The Economy” from “human prosperity and wellbeing.”

* Extreme poverty is at its lowest level in human history, down by over a billion people since 1990.

* More humans can read, write, and attend school than ever before, especially girls in lower-income countries.

* Global life expectancy has more than doubled compared to 1900

* Most countries continue to rise on human-development measures (health, education, income)

Yes, there's more room to keep improving, but the world keeps getting better & better.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks. I was making a joke about Powell's original location. A lot of people think it was in Portland, but it's actually Chicago (Hyde Park area).

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/alienware-55-oled-gaming-monit...

Despite spending most of youth playing the NES, I don't think I ever read a manual.

"Reliance on documentation is the hallmark of a novice & a coward."

No.

And having worked in digital advertising for 20+ years, I'd be shocked if they are anywhere as effective as often claimed.

It's mostly clickbait/outrage for the sake of headlines & clicks.

Can't you already just get an HDMI monitor, speakers & a raspberry pi?

Which one? The original one in Chicago or that other one in Portland?

I'm not sure how to express this, but you're not entitled to only see things in life that you find pleasing. You might as well complain you sometimes see ugly people.

These and other types of "unskippable ads" violate my personal freedoms and should rejected by society.

It's funny you keep bring up unskippable ads. I remember when YouTube invented the skippable ad format about ~15 years ago. How quickly it became a right & a guaranteed personal freedom.

Freedom from ads seems like a fundamental human right, and necessary for freedom of thought.

This doesn't make any sense to me.

Given that people currently are not able to choose to be free from advertisements in any practical way, even if abstaining from luxuries

Sure you can.

You can get a more expensive Netflix tier.

You can pay for YouTube Premium.

You can choose not engage with businesses that have a monetization model you dislike.

Time to ban all adverts everywhere. I'm not the only one who is fed up with ads.

This is a terrible idea. Users should have choice & control.

I'll say something that on the surface level seems controversial, at least to HN: Some users prefer ads. And those users should be allowed that choice.

Ads are part of a value exchange. It's disingenuous, imho, to frame the question as "Do you want 'X' with or without ads?" Absent any other criteria most people would naturally say without ads. But I feel it's disingenuous because it overlooks the value exchange.

A better example: Would you prefer Netflix with ads for $7.99/month with ads, or $17.99/month without ads?

A lot of people are choosing the ads tiers. It's the fastest growing tier. Personally, I have the ads-free tier, but I can make that choice for myself. The people wanting the ads tier should be able to make that choice too. I don't see the value in taking it away from them.

I don't deny there are bad experiences. I do think Samsung is making a mistake & damaging customer trust with the refrigerator thing. I likely won't be buying one in the future.

Like anything, advertising can be done well or it can be done badly. I don't use Instagram myself, but I have a lot of friends who love fashion who do & say they're on their to follow brands & find deals. They find the ads a good way to discover some new fashion product & snag a good discount.

Likewise Amazon sent a catalog to my house. My kids are using it to think of what they want to ask Santa. A catalog is basically a book of ads.

All bookings in popular places or on popular dates are NON REFUNDABLE. As in "click and you will never see any of this money again" non-refundable. Very non-refundable. If I have to cancel, I lose all my money.

The Atlantic recently wrote on how hotel policies have changed, with many no longer allowing free cancellations.

Why Hotel-Room Cancellations Disappeared

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/11/hotel-room-ca...

TL;DR: Hotel aggregators (e.g. Booking.com, Expedia) adopted a "cancel-rebook" strategy, where the aggregators would monitor hotel prices & rebook if the price dropped.

One nice thing about Starlink is it gives an alternative to what used to be monopoly ISPs.

TP-Link's Headquarters are in California, they have a branch in Singapore and they manufacture in Vietnam

"TP-Link is a Chinese company that manufactures network equipment and smart home products. The company was established in 1996 in Shenzhen. TP-Link's main headquarters is located in Nanshan, Shenzhen; there is a smaller headquarters in Irvine, California"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP-Link

Democrat governments don't seem to purge information.

This flies in the face of what we all lived through during the Biden administration.

All the major tech outlets[1, 2, 3] have come forward to say that Biden administration pressured them to remove content, including things like the negative impact on children of school closing during COVID.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/zuckerberg-says-biden-adm... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files [3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/google-says-biden-admin-...

Paying is necessary

Donald Trump would like a word.

Indeed.

The U of C is affiliated 101 Nobel Laureates (amongst the highest in the world) -- not to mention 10 Fields Medalists, 4 Turing Award winners, 58 MacArthur Fellows, 30 Marshall Scholars, & 55 Rhodes Scholars.

If you take it as profit over people, you've grossly misunderstood it.

Friedman explained numerous time how he went from a New Deal left (having grown up in the Great Depression) to an fervent free market capitalist because he believed capitalism was more effective in helping people.

Now you may disagree, perhaps vigorously, but you should still be honest over their motivations.

Harvard perhaps, but definitely not MIT.

U of C notably does not have an engineering program. When I attended (in the 90s), the rumor was that, over the years, several alumni had offered to make significant donations to start one, but it was always rejected for being "too applied."

We didn't even has a CS major for a long time, instead having "Mathmatics with a emphasis on computer science." When CS was introduced as a major, it was still very heavy in theory. I would estimate I didn't touch a computer for half of my classes?