This year I spoke at HOPE - Hackers On Planet Earth. The topic was "Hacking ATMs: past and present". I really enjoyed it, it took a lot to prepare though. I haven't gotten any monetary benefit from it, but I would definitely do it again.
HOPE is one of the best hacker conferences, and it's somehow [subjectively] friendlier than other. Feels like home, so if you're on hacker news, I guess you wanna speak at hacker conference or contribute to 2600? ^_^
Having this RAG layer was always another thing to try for me. I haven't coded it myself, and super interested if this gives a real boost while working with Claude. Curious from anyone who have already tried the service, what's your feedback? Did you feel you're getting real improvements?
Wouldn’t call it just RAG though. Agentic discovery and semantic search are the way to go right now, so Nia combines both approaches. For example, you can dynamically search through a documentation tree or grep for specific things.
It's both good and bad. On one hand, it's sad that there's no access. On the other hand, it increases the diversity of tools and services worldwide. Google, for example, is well known for buying startups just to kill them.
In Russia and China, they have their own search engines, social networks, eBay/Amazon alternatives, and so on. These companies have produced great free software like LLMs, databases, development tools, etc.
Seeing a corporation lose control over the Internet is usually good news for us, the small people - even if that change is coming from the government.
What form of government do you think we live in? Where laws are routinely ignored by our "leadership" and bribery is essentially legal and we have our own "oligarchs"?
The US initiates wars and supports war crimes as policy - dictatorship? We're far beyond that.
Considering the Biden administration pressured Facebook and Twitter to shadownban people/organizations they didn't like, TikTok being forced to sell to a US company, which has a literal shitton of goverment contracts and CIA ties.. the US is not that far away from Russia. Russia is just more open about it.
It is funny that you are comparing the scope of covid misinformation bans to Russia's broad censorship of international media. Ultimately, though, you should evaluate the system rather than the efforts of a single individual. Because the social media bans were litigated.
Wouldn't TikTok being sold to a company that the government trusts be an indication that the concern over access to Americans' data (rather than the message) is a genuine one?
They're both censoring what individuals and organizations are allowed to say online and what their citizens are allowed to read/hear..? Just because they took a different approach and pressured companies without telling the public doesn't change that fact.
So you think the government forced TikTok to sell it's US operations to Oracle, the company with CIA ties, that has been caught spying on it's customers data before, and who's CEO proudly said "Citizens will be on their best behavior,” and “because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.” is about" data privacy"?
If your position is "all censorship is equivalent" then I don't have much to say.
The TikTok legislation was about protecting Americans' data from foreign ownership. Oracle was not named in the legislation. Regardless of how corrupt the subsequent events have been, I don't think anyone on the platform has been censored as a result.
A rich billionaire can still be affected by shareholders. If they stop providing shareholder value (due to mass boycotts or public scandals), they have to change.
If it's a Putin-style dictator who has spent a quarter century digging his claws into every facet of the country, there's literally nothing you can do that doesn't involve physical violence to change things.
A rich billionaire has millions of times more political power than you.
You are living in a dictatorship right now. The dictatorship of capital. And just because our culture does not draw a line to differentiate capitalists and workers doesnt mean a difference doesnt exist.
Capitalists arent "just another citizen like you or me", but thats what they want us to think. It keeps the dream alive and the story going.
Oh "its us against the government". lol. Really?
Im telling you. The capitalists, the wealthy are the government.
> A rich billionaire can still be affected by shareholders.
A rich billioneaire is a shareholder.
> If they stop providing shareholder value [...] they have to change.
But we (the small people) don't care about the shareholder value. Shareholder value is often contrary to what we (the small people) value, so expect change for the worse.
> due to mass boycotts or public scandals
Sorry, what?
> has spent a quarter century digging his claws into every facet of the country
Well, capitalists (as a group) spent 100+ years doing the same, so ...
It's baffling for me living in Russia that modern western societies see everything wrong with dictatorship from a goverment but nothing or almost nothing wrong with dictatorship from big capital. E.g. you can't change your break pads unless you go to authorized repair (literal control over your private property and how you use it) and big platforms banning you from multiple public forums because you said a big no-no word (deplatforming and cross-platform restrictions are a thing)
You don’t have to look very hard to see an enormous number of people expressing discontent at the latter.
To speak to your examples, the right to repair, farmers vs John Deere, the exodus from X to Bluesky, the rise of alternative messaging platforms, the outright murder of CEOs on the street and the beatification of the primary suspect on social media…just to scratch the surface
These are all headlines straight from HN and the fact that you even know about them is the difference.
The fundamental difference is while we both lack any real power to change this, under an actual dictatorship people get jailed or worse for that expression.
Let’s touch base on this again when Dictatorship from big capital means Disney puts me in prison for dissent against the mouse and then offers me clemency if I go to the front lines in their next special military operation.
oh boy. you served GP a portion so generous they'll have plenty left over to take home and chew on for a while.
that last sentence rung like a bell & will reverberate until Larry Ellison's police drones follow you home because you blocked the drive-in of a Larry-owned fastfood franchise by way of a peaceful sit-in, protesting the mistreatment of human workers by robot overseers at Larry's Lasagna, nation-wide.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the other hand, developments like Deepseek are clearly marks of progress and practically a gift to the society, and it's a good thing. The Chinese are also creating and maintaining many valuable open source projects (although they might not be that popular in the West due to security concerns, which is a different lengthy topic). So everybody wins, right?
On the other hand... People in the West rarely get the taste of what happens if someone deeply immoral gets to the top. The closest we got is Trump who might be an arrogant egoistic asshole, but he's very far from deciding to kill thousands of people to fulfill his ambitions. Nevertheless, normal sensitive people feel abhorred when they hear or see how immigrants are treated and so on. Imagine this developed decade after decade, also using modern tech, into a cold machine an ordinary person is powerless against.
It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it but imagine your whole life, and often of your family, can be destroyed in an instant because you found yourself in a wrong place, you made a wrong comment, you expressed your opinion too openly. You were relaxed because maybe you did similar things in the past but you still lived a normal life; then at that particular moment it ended abruptly and there is no recourse. Nobody can save you and you know it's all finished. In the West there is nothing close to that.
Well, actually, the whole cancel culture dynamic is a softer alternative to what you just described. And it doesn’t even require you to be the actor — it can be your spouse, your child, whoever. One tweet and you can lose your job, your house, your marriage, especially in an economy like this it hits hard. It really is the same idea: "your whole life, and often your family’s life, can be destroyed in an instant." You won’t go to jail, but your life can still become miserable.
Of course, the big difference is jail time — and that matters. I'm familiar with cases where a 30-year-old woman was sentenced to more than 10 years just for donating $20 to Ukrainian forces (she was traveling to her mom's funeral and got caught).
And at the end of the day, all of this is politics. If you're smart enough and in Russia or China, you can learn to navigate it. But there's never a guarantee. You can still end up as "лёд под ногами майора" ("ice under the major's feet"), as the famous Russian punk rock singer put it.
I'm the owner of one of these laptops. I paid like $2-3k or even more for the laptop. The screen got broken almost on arrival. I think few days later it started glitching. It was intermittent, so I thought it would go away. I didn't. Over time it started glitching more and more. I reached out to the person in China who sold the laptop. In broken English he told me that I should replace the screen and sent me a link. I bought the screen, actually two of them, since for some reason you can't buy one. Turned out that the screen doesn't fit, and I cracked the first one while trying to install. So now I have a laptop without a screen, and it just doesn't work.
I bought Macbook Air for $1k just one week ago. I can't be more happier. Fuck these ThinkPads.
I think parent poster had an X1 or something and assumed the conversation was about a similar contemporary device.
I'm a little sad this board isn't for my X220 ... I would be sorely tempted if it were - but like other posters I'd have some reservations about things like battery life even so.
By the (contemporary) by, a Mac Book is probably a better buy if you like Mac OS (I don't) because the hardware really is excellent. One physical point in favour of the modern Thinkpad though is weight - a MacBook Air is about 1.2 kg, whereas the X1 is not quite 1 kg.
You paid how much? I use my x200 every day and love it but never considered I could sell it for so much. Is that really a normal price for such an old model? My screen works perfectly too.
For that purpose I do not update my book on LeanPub about Ruby. I just know one day people gonna read it more, because human-written content would be gold.
Don't forget it's free in some countries. My degree was 100% free. And don't tell me it wasn't. There has been a lot of free stuff in post-Soviet era. In Soviet Union people had more than most of the folks who are pretty much jobless and desperate now at the moment. My family gotten free 3br apartments from government. My mom and dad were high school teachers.
Nothing the government provides is free. It's paid for with taxes that are forcefully collected and would have been spent or invested privately otherwise. I'm not someone who's against taxes but it's a myth and propaganda that the government can just magically provide free stuff. I'm ok with the government providing things but I want them to be honest about what the costs are.
They are being honest, you're just being pedantic. The fact that everyone pays taxes which ultimately pay for e.g. socialized health care/insurance or college-level education doesn't alter the fact that for the person receiving it, said good comes with no invoice, which is a conventional meaning of "free".
The fact that paying taxes is required of all members of the community that organizes, collects and distributes resources in this way doesn't change the relationship between the person and the service at the point of service.
If we’re talking about social costs and social benefits then it does matter. Different countries can have wildly different costs for delivering the same education, an education whose value to society (or lack thereof) needs to be taken into account.
Whether an education is paid for by loans or by higher taxes, the cost is ultimately borne by someone. In neither case is it free and in both cases its cost-benefit difference should be scrutinized.
> The fact that paying taxes is required of all members of the community that organizes, collects and distributes resources in this way doesn't change the relationship between the person and the service at the point of service.
That’s irrelevant to the point the grandparent comment was making, which is that these resources don’t just fall out of the sky and that “I got it for free and I liked getting it for free,” isn’t a good basis for policy.
Anybody who imagines that the use of the term "free" in connection these resources/services means that they fall out of the sky should stay as far away from public policy decisions as possible.
I went to school (K-BS(c)) in the UK, and it was entirely normal to talk about that as "free", despite the fact that in dozens of conversations my parents would discuss the way in which their local taxes funded all of it, including my university education. People are not that stupid ...
> "Free" doesn't mean "has no cost paid by anyone" and never has in these discussions.
Calling these programs “free” obfuscates the issue because there are people (even college-educated people) who genuinely believe the government can just make something appear from nothing; they genuinely don’t understand that the resources have to come from somewhere, which means someone else who does not necessarily benefit from the program pays for it now or those benefitting from the program have to pay for it later.
> Apologies if English isn't your first language.
I would encourage you to review the site guidelines. These kinds of quips are discouraged here.
>there are people (even college-educated people) who genuinely believe the government can just make something appear from nothing
Untrue.
>These kinds of quips are discouraged here.
"Free" has a specific meaning in English, and someone who doesn't speak it fluently might think that it means, for example, "appearing from nothing". Whereas a fluent English speaker of sound mind understands that "free" refers to the price in a transaction. No one thinks that the "free pizza" at an event was created at no cost to anyone in the supply chain that brought it there. They just understand that it means that they won't be charged for consuming it. But for some reason, I never hear people make a big deal about how "I can't believe you'd say free pizza when I know that your organization had to pay for it!" It's always when it comes to reactionary opposition to social services where this simple word immediately becomes so much more nuanced and impossible to comprehend for the layperson.
You know these people exist. Try asking them where the money is going to come from to finance this education and see if more than 10% of them can explain it to you.
> "Free" has a specific meaning in English
You’ve made a few allusions to the idea that the people pushing back on this reading of the word “free” speak English as a second language when there’s been no indication that this is true; it’s just something you’re saying to imply that these people are less intelligent than you. I would again encourage you to read the site guidelines. Posting like this is contrary to the spirit of the forum.
> Whereas a fluent English speaker of sound mind understands that "free" refers to the price in a transaction.
The price for whom? If a parent pays for their child’s education, it would be very uncommon for the child to say that his education was “free.”
Similarly, state-funded education is free to the college student. It’s not free for taxpayers who don’t attend the college. They are a party to the transaction because they are the ones paying for it.
Obviously. But part of a democracy is voting on politicians who will choose what resources are distributed. Do you think "TANSTAAFL" every time you take a road without paying a toll?
The student does not participate in a transaction that involves paying money in exchange for education. Taxes are collected and allocated as seen fit by the state. Students and others pay their taxes, but taxes are not directly transactional.
…but there is cost to the student or their family. The difference being that paying for it or not is not an option. You can’t just say “I won’t go to uni, so I won’t pay for it”
By this definition, nothing is "free"; there is always some cost, whether financial or otherwise. It's an absurd bit of pedantry that does nothing but derail discussion. Free tuition is free at the point of sale to the student, just like the interstate I drive on sometimes is free to use as compared to the toll roads, even though my taxes paid for both. It's not complicated terminology.
It's not free, but because of its unique market shaping power, the government is often the best & the cheapest way to do things like education or health care, because it has no incentives to spend money on bullshit to raise prices.
That's why there's a harpist in the hall in fancy hospitals in the US and not at Necker in Paris, or why the administration at universities in the US is multiple times the size you'll see in France. Market shaping incentives.
At the same time many families got a single room with shared anemities. Even people in skilled positions. Just because they got assigned to some factory which management didnt have as good connections. Or preferred to pocket more than take care of workers. Or didn’t ended up in some location where central government was putting in extra resources to make it more desirable.
I'm also building solo, applied to YC winter batch as solo, and I've been building solo for quite a while now.
My solo projects were on HN news multiple times getting hundreds and even 1000+ points (submitted by other folks tho). I am still building.
I didn't realize there is so many folks from HN building solo, so I literally 2 mins ago created a discord for all of us so we won't get lost after this post goes down: https://discord.gg/GaCz3qMK
HOPE is one of the best hacker conferences, and it's somehow [subjectively] friendlier than other. Feels like home, so if you're on hacker news, I guess you wanna speak at hacker conference or contribute to 2600? ^_^
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