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State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship' (npr.org)
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Extremely on brand activity for a group of fraudsters who managed to lie their way into power via a firehose of misinformation.
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This makes me happy. What would make me even more happy is if we linked our foreign policy, especially our trade and aid policies, to align with our Constitution. Other governments can do what they want, but we should prefer to interact with governments that share our values, and we should not reward or prefer governments that don’t.
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> "Trust and safety is a broad practice which includes critical and life-saving work to protect children and stop CSAM [child sexual abuse material], as well as preventing fraud, scams, and sextortion. T&S workers are focused on making the internet a safer and better place, not censoring just for the sake of it" Definitely weird to be "happy" that the government is cracking down on people who help prevent the propagation of fraud, scams, and CSAM.
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"If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible" If that sentence from the article is accurate, the parent poster's response makes complete and perfect sense. You don't have to like the current administration, to like a specific thing they are doing. Now is this actually what is happening? I don't know. And of course, that's a different conversation, and not what the parent poster was talking about.
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Is this the foreign service officers or USCIS? iirc foreign service officers have pretty wide latitude on visa approval (whose really making sure they’re checking deeply?) and have 100 other more important factors to evaluate so if that’s the case; will this really amount to many denials?
Netflix in exclusive talks to buy HBO (cnn.com)
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All this deal making drama, thats been going in media for a while now hides the fact that Content Supply has vastly overshot Demand to levels that make no sense in any other industry. Cost of tools/production/distribution have all massively dropped over the last 2 decades. Needs a more sustainable story or oscillations and chaos are going to keep increasing.
Wow if Netflix buys hbo there isn’t really anything more left in the market to compete with them. On the plus side users don’t have to worry about paying for multiple services.
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Except there's still Paramount, Disney and Hulu, and even if you get them all, there's no guarantee you can stream what you want to watch due to some bullshit regional distribution rights restrictions, which makes no sense in the digital era...
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HBO is destination television - it's the taste that Netflix lacks and so desperately needs. WB and HBO together have the franchises that Netflix has been trying to build. DC, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings (film + game rights - tv rights), West World, The Matrix, Mad Max, King Kong, all of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. What does Paramount or Hulu have? It's a lot of fluff on the same or even lower caliber than Netflix. Amazon gives some good stuff away for "free". Apple has good shows, too. Disney? Meh - they've got Andor and that's really it. If whomever buys HBO also also buys A24, it's over. That's all I need.
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Paramount/NBC/Peacock/Fox/ESPN have live sports, which are the only thing left worth paying for, everything else can be skipped or pirated.
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Which may lead to greater piracy
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Ha! I like how you don't say consumers will pay less... Just less companies asking for money.
↙ time adjusted for second-chance
After 40 years of adventure games, Ron Gilbert pivots to outrunning Death (arstechnica.com)
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This title freaked me out... I thought he was dying. Glad to hear it's just a new game!
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He mentions living through the dialog fast and says that the takeaway is that people don’t care about the story. However, I wonder if his players just read very fast. I grew up on JRPGs and read through dialog quickly, to the point that people around me don’t believe that I could possibly be following the story. But that’s just how fast I can read game dialog.
The publishing and investment climate https://www.gamesindustry.biz/ron-gilbert-cancels-rpg-project-due-to-lack-of-support-and-funding It's pretty tough getting a game funded right now.
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It's self-inflicted. The big studios are beyond terrible. The games are more about social conditioning than entertainment. See Clair Obscur. They got funding from the State of France and the French National Centre for Cinema, and the game is 100x better than the slop the big studios publish.
Blogging in 2025: Screaming into the Void (askmike.org)
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I do hope indie blogging makes a comeback. When the only objective of the post is for the author to ‘scream into the void’, it’s refreshing in this day and age.
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I gave up on reaching anyone. Now I blog for myself alone. My blog serves only 1 real purpose, which is to build and host my resume, but I enjoy writing anyways.
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Speaking about blogging, for those who run on WordPress at least, do you get lots of bot traffic from China and Singapore recently? They usually appear in pair. ( https://support.google.com/analytics/thread/378622882/google-analytics-4-bot-traffic-increase-from-china-singapore-on-wordpress-sites?hl=en ) I have two niche blogs( civilwhiz.com and mes100.com). Those bot traffics increase my visitor count in Google analytics by more than 100%. It's super annoying when the analytics are distorted by bots traffic.
BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive (evclinic.eu)
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erste mal?
People get upset when a BMW is expensive to repair, but they're misunderstanding the sophisticated German engineering. You're not supposed to repair it. You're supposed to throw it away and buy a new one.
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/s or /$ What's the best tag for your post?
After reading the blog post I had the same thought. Doing an oil change on my F650GS motorcycle required removing the plastics, draining the oil from both the top and bottom of the motorcycle, removing a plate on the side of the engine after install the BMW specified oil redirection funnel, extracting the filter and reinstalling. The oil funnel had a legit BMW part number. Most of us either just made a mess or used a piece of a milk jug. Probably 15 fasteners and 2 drain plugs. Comparable process on my Sv650: drain plug out. Drain plug in. Screw off filter. Screw on filter. Fill.
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The proper BMW oil change procedure is to remove the engine and flip it upside down.
You win some, you lose some. Comparable process on my E46 and E39: Drain plug out (potentially flipping a little dust cover out of the way). Drain plug in. Stand up because everything else happens up top. Unscrew filter housing. Replace filter element. Replace filter housing. Fill.
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E90 is the same but you’re supposed to loosen the filter because otherwise some vacuum holds in an extra 0.5L of oil. I like the top mount oil filters, less mess.
That reminds me of the Popular Science garage hint from 1963, explaining how to easily dispose of used motor oil: Dig a hole in the ground and fill it with fine gravel. Pour in the oil, and it will be absorbed into the ground before your next oil change. https://books.google.com/books?id=myADAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA166#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Different times indeed. The Swedish government created this informational video in 1964 on how to properly dispose of your trash when at sea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t03saJVFkv4 . Apparently the trick is to make the trash sink rather than float.
Yet somehow adaptive cruise is a rarity on the BMWs out there, often requiring an option package that few dealers spec. (Though I think this may be finally starting to change with the 2025 model year).
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Sadly, they’re close to 100% caught up to automatic transmissions in North America.
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Are they switching to monthly subscriptions?
From what I can tell the Chinese are targeting the bottom of the market with cars that are essentially disposable. The ones to watch, IMO, are Hyundai/Kia. If they can sort out the reliability issues there's a lot of potential there. Honestly I'm cautiously optimistic about VW, especially after they've started backing away from those awful capacitive buttons.
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From what I can tell the Chinese are targeting the bottom of the market with cars that are essentially disposable. What actual information or data leads you to believe this? All wheel drive, 375mi range and sub 4 second 0-60mph is disposable to you? I'm guessing your car is disposable by comparison. https://www.byd.com/us/car/han-ev
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Disposable as in unrepairable or difficult to repair, not disposable as in slow. Honestly, aside from people making bad faith arguments who would use disposable to imply slow? Do me a favor and stop responding to my comments. Thanks.
BYD has the world’s fastest car now. I think they are targeting the market, not a market.
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And 9 times out of 10 when BYD is brought up people are talking about their low priced cars like the Dolphin or Seagull, not their halo car.
When my buddy got his first Tesla back in 2018 he had a ICE rental for some reason and he left it running in the driveway all day once on accident.
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The complete lack of awareness with which some people operate cars never ceases to amaze me.
The sad part is that the plastics from around that time are starting to fail. That E92 M3 LCI is now a 14 year old car.
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I've got a supercharged E92 M3. I'll own that thing till I die, funnest car ever.
I would argue peak car was a little earlier, maybe the 2000-2010 decade. Fewer screens to fail, analog buttons and dials. Airbags, and ABS for safety but without the additional computers/screens.
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Entirely agree, although I think it varies by make / model. Roughly look for whenever a particular car got OBDII, which makes diagnostics way easier (and was kinda the perfect level of digitization, again in my opinion), through (as you say) whenever they started digitizing the cockpit and/or (which oddly - maybe? - coincide, in my experience) manufacturers stopped considering ease of maintenance in engineering decisions. In general late-1990s through 2005-2010. Cars since that decade (or so) are more sophisticated, at the expense of far, far shorter useful lifespans.
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Still got my E46!
EV and "driving a computer" are orthogonal chances are that you are driving an ICE computer, with all the problems driving a computer comes with. the EV itself is simpler than ICE is. fewer moving parts, and short supply chains once you actually have the thing. how much complexity goes into making and supplying your gas?
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However when you advertise your car as eco friendly, you should be forbidden to create a non-repairable apple phone on wheels
This is true. EVs are much simpler than ICE, and PHEV basically have all the complexity of EV+ICE.
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PHEV means a lot of things. Toyota PHEVs with e-CVT are simpler than a normal ICE. VW PHEVs where there’s an electric motor tucked into their DSG gearbox - not so much.
AV1: A Modern, Open Codec (netflixtechblog.com)
I understand that sometimes the HN titles get edited to be less descriptive and more generic in order to match the actual article title. What’s the logic with changing the title here from the actual article title it was originally submitted with “AV1 — Now Powering 30% of Netflix Streaming” to the generic and not at all representative title it currently has “AV1: a modern open codec”? That is neither the article title nor representative of the article content.
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For me that’s a FU moment that reminds me ‘TF am I doing here?’ I genuinely see this resource as a censoring plus advertising (both for YC, obviously) platform, where there are generic things, but also things someone doesn’t want you to read or know. The titles are constantly being changed to gibberish like right here, the adequate comments or posts are being dead, yet the absolutely irrelevant or offensive things, can stay not touched. Etc.
Well, I'm interested in AV1 as a videographer but hadn't heard of it before. Without 'codec' in the title I would have thought it was networking related. Re: HDR - not the same thing. HDR has been around for decades and every TV in every electronics store blasts you with HDR10 demos. It's well known. AV1 is extremely niche and deserves 2 words to describe it.
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I'm old (50) and have heard AV1 before. My modern TV didn't say HDR or HDR10 (it did say 4k). Agree that AV1 should include "codec". One word, or acronym, just isn't enough to describe anything on this modern world.
Amen. The mania for obscurity in titles here is infuriating. This one is actually replete with information compared to many you see on the front page.
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hacker news loves low information click bait titles. The shorter and more vague the better.
On a related note, why are release groups not putting out AV1 WEB-DLs? Most 4K stuff is h265 now but if AV1 is supplied without re-encoding surely that would be better?
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I've seen some on private sites. My guess is they are not popular enough yet. Or pirates are using specific hardware to bypass Widevine encryption (like an Nvidia Shield and burning keys periodically) that doesn't easily get the AV1 streams.
There's an HDR war brewing on TikTok and other social apps. A fraction of posts that use HDR are just massively brighter than the rest; the whole video shines like a flashlight. The apps are eventually going to have to detect HDR abuse.
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HDR has a slight purpose, but the way it was rolled out was so disrespectful that I just want it permanently gone everywhere. Even the rare times it's used in a non-abusive way, it can hurt your eyes or make things display weirdly.
Just what we need, a new loudness war, but for our eyeballs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
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What if they did HDR for audio? So an audio file can tell your speakers to output at 300% of the normal max volume, even more than what compression can do.
We gave 5 LLMs $100K to trade stocks for 8 months (aitradearena.com)
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I would love to see this run during an extended bear market period.
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It seems to me that short-term simulations will tend to underprice risk. Imagine a market where you can buy only two stocks: Stock A goes up invariably 1% per month Stock B goes up 1.5% per month with a 99% chance, but loses 99% of its value with a 1% chance. Stock B has a 94% chance of beating stock A on a 6 month simulation, but only a 30% chance of beating stock A on a 10 year simulation.
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this is so stupid i wish i could flag it twice
State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter (openrouter.ai)
>I would expect that it would be a closed tube with my privacy respected Lol hahaha
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Yeah, welcome to "AI".
Why do major LLMs block china? Isn't that a potentially huge market for them?
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I'm not sure, but my guess is that it's due to pressure (or perceived pressure) from the U.S. government.
Or maybe it’s just strange classification. I see a lot of prompts on the internet looking like “act as a senior xxx expert with over 15 years of industry experience and answer the following: [insert simple question]” I hope those are not classified as “roleplaying” the “roleplay” here is just a trick to get better answer from the model, often in a professional setting that has nothing to do with creative writing of NSFW stuff
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OpenRouter classifies content by the app that's used to interact with the llm. https://openrouter.ai/docs/app-attribution
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