Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | zimpenfish's commentslogin

> companies started using SSNs like an identity verifier

Probably because USGOV said it is[0]

"In 1943 a presidential executive order directed the military and other government agencies to use the number for identification purposes, and in 1961 the Internal Revenue Service began using the number for taxpayer identification."

[0] https://www.straightdope.com/21341325/why-does-my-old-social...


> It no longer says this, and has not for a long long time.

Don't know about "a long long time" but the feds have been treating Social Security Cards as identification since 1943 (military, some agencies) or 1963 (IRS) (cf [0])

[0] https://www.straightdope.com/21341325/why-does-my-old-social...


> An invasion of privacy is an invasion of privacy regardless of the one doing the invading.

Technically, yes, but one party (e.g. USGOV) has many more strands that it can weave together into a larger coherent picture than the other (e.g. Meta).

Also one party has guns and an almost blanket immunity to using them on people it deems it does not like via its privacy violations.

That probably tips the scales for some people.


Up until the socials get their own security forces that are deployed as the algo tells them. They have enough money to be the next Pinkertons. /s

But at this point, the government is getting the data from private companies. So if the private companies were not gathering the data, the government would not have such easy access. So I'm much more concerned about private companies for that reason. Yes, the government can do more things to you physically, but they are too dependent on what private companies provide


> I go the container route, and have only had one issue: allowing HA to access my system's Bluetooth adapter

Even without running in a container, I had huge problems with Bluetooth on Linux (it would just ... stop then not reappear or it would only talk to half the devices but a different set of devices every other day, etc.)

(This isn't specifically a HASS problem, mind; I've had countless problems with Linux Bluetooth since 2003 over many different iterations of hardware, OS and dongle.)

> I used ESPHome to make a Bluetooth proxy, which solved that issue.

Same. It's a great solution.


> Sony WH 1000 XM4 and WH 1000 XM6 both have physical off buttons

Currently wearing my XM4s and was really confused by the "physical off button" because ... I'm looking at them and they just don't? Where is it? What?

Then I realised that I'm old and, to me, "physical off button" means a sliding switch, a hardware disconnect, etc. (such as exists on my pair of Plantronics BackBeat PRO 2), not a pushbutton that triggers a software power-down (which the XM4s most certainly do have.)


> you must produce a valid tar command

Define "valid"? If you mean "doesn't give an exit error", `tar --help`[0] and `tar --usage`[1] are valid.

[0] For both bsdtar (3.8.1) and GNU tar (1.35)

[1] Only for GNU tar (1.35)


Damn, you solved it!

https://xkcd.com/1168/


> You're not concerned that someone might do ...

I mean, now you've brought it up, I am concerned about it - but the level of concern is somewhere between "spontaneous combustion of myself leading to exploitation of my domain DNS because my bugger-i-ded.txt instructions are rubbish" and "cosmic rays hitting all the exact right bits at the exact right time to bugger my DNS deployment when I next do one which won't be for a while because even one a year is a fast pace for me to change something."

(Plus I'm perfectly capable of taking my sites and domains offline by incompetent flubbery as it is; I don't need -more- ways to fuck things up.)


It is not like some cheeky kids would just DDoS the signing authority itself, or hammer bleed the host TLS library yet again.

There are also good reasons many serious admins don't trust signing authorities. If you know... you know why... =3


> don't conflate human authorship with quality

If you're thinking "crafted like poetry" implies any kind of existential "quality", I'd like to introduce you to William McGonagall[0] and you will swiftly and powerfully be disabused of any "poetry -> quality" confusions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McGonagall


Regardless of whether poetry actually has anything to do with quality, I think it's reasonable to think that the author intended "Crafted like poetry" as a positive description.

> the author intended "Crafted like poetry" as a positive description.

Yes and it's a fine way to describe a process positively! Crafting something implies care, thought, etc.

It just doesn't have anything to say about the quality of the resultant output.


> Didn't The Game Awards receive more viewers than the Super Bowl?

To be fair, barely anyone (in global terms) watches the Super Bowl.

You are correct though - [0] claims 171M for TGA with [1] claiming 125M for the Superb Owl 2026.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025

[1] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...


There's no cite for the 171 million, which is a bit hard to believe. There are cites (which I didn't check) for these claims. Maybe they are counting people watching clips on Twitter?

According to Streams Charts, the ceremony peaked at 4.4 million concurrent viewers—the most in its history and a 9% increase from 2024—including 1.4 million viewers on the official YouTube broadcast (an 8% increase) and 1.8 million on Twitch. On YouTube, the ceremony peaked at 2.4 million total concurrent viewers (a 9% increase), including a record 8,600 co-streams.[6] More than 16,500 creators co-streamed on Twitch—a record for the show, representing a 50% yearly increase—with total unique viewers and hours watched each increasing 5% from 2024.[6][114] On Twitter, posts about the show increased by 12%, with more than 1.79 million posts from December 10–12, while the broadcast and related videos received over 60 million views.[6]


You also have to count that people often view these events together in front of the same client. Superbowl isn't shown on that many TV's, its usually a lot of people watching each screen, so you have to count the same way for the game awards.

The Twitter Files contingent are awfully quiet all of a sudden.

What do you mean? “all of a sudden”? They’ve been dead silent ever since the election. Their mission was accomplished successfully; nothing more to do.

> They’ve been dead silent ever since the election. Their mission was accomplished successfully; nothing more to do.

A fair point, well made.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: