Feel free to sign up and deploy a VM - we are a very real VPS host!
Unlike boring corporate providers, we just actually have a sense of humor (or more accurately, the developer has overdosed on TikToks and brainrot reels).
Satirical branding doesn't mean the bare-metal servers or the kernel code aren't real.
It’s true that satire is not always bad. But I dislike that they don’t make it obvious that this article is satire. It wastes people’s time who actually take it seriously (as we can see by the other HN comments). Or if it’s serious, then why is it on a satire site? They need to pick a lane and be clear about it.
I dislike the sense of judgment from TSA officials when I don’t correctly predict which items they do/don’t want me to put in the tray. It’s not my fault that different airports seem to have completely different rules for the same items.
I've often thought that having a standardized checklist on a big board in the security line would be a big help.
Laptops: In/Out
Liquids: In/Out
Shoes: On/Off
Etc
Because yeah, it's really annoying getting treated like I'm the dummy by some agent that's only ever known this airport's rules... because this airport has rules entirely different than every other one I've flown through in this decade.
Recently had to fly with some splints and crutches and stuff and that was a whole extra set of fun difference in airport rules. First one really wanted to rub their explosives swab on my finger that was held together by exposed metal pins and had exposed subcutaneous tissue. They were a bit put off when I asked for alternate options.
My first act as a TSA agent would be to beg, borrow, or steal a whiteboard for this purpose. They seem very content to explain it to every passenger almost individually though. Which of course slows everything down as someone has to ask every minute whether an iPad is a big or small device. I wonder if there's some weird bureaucracy rule that prevents them from writing their own signs.
Doesn’t work. I was in a queue at SXF airport once. Everybody in the queue passed at least 5 whiteboard-sized posters explaining in detail that you need a 1 litre bag and what’s supposed to go in there. Also, what things you need to present at the check. Those same posters lined the walls of the hall. Yet basically every second person acted completely surprised when the security officer asked for their 1 litre bag. It’s as if those people forgot their brain at home and were all on autopilot.
Might be in part because multiple times I've seen signs/poster etc only good the agent to contradict it once you get there, adding or removing requirements. So you stop trusting it.
A whiteboard I might trust because it was likely handwritten that morning
No, from the conversations I overheard these people have never heard of those 1-litre bag rules for flights in the EU. So, they clearly haven't even looked at all those posters.
Usually airports use signs with both graphics and text for this. Removes the ambiguity unless you mistake the image of a bag for the tray and vice versa.
Which leaves me confused with GP's suggestion. Every TSA line I've been in already has these signs. Are airports in other countries worse about their signage than TSA?
My personal experience would strongly disagree with "usually" here. While I can't really be sure I've never seen one, none come to mind on my travels across US/Canada/Mexico/East Asia (though I've really only been within Canada the last couple of years).
I also go through the trusted traveler line, and the rules there are _usually_ different (but not always!) and I definitely don't recall seeing any sign specifically addressing the rules for that line at any point. Except maybe one at the start clarifying _who_ can use the line (though on that one I've also had the TSA agents go ahead and explain the rules entirely different than the sign they were standing in front of so...).
There was zero signage at the last few American airports I flew through. Four airports in 2 weeks and they all had different rules, and felt the need to yell at you for not knowing their nuances.
To me, it's not even about having different rules (which itself is stupid). It's the constant annoyed yelling. Like, can you at least pretend you don't hate yourself, the general public, and your job, for the duration of your shift?
If I worked retail and treated customers like the TSA treats passengers, I'd be fired the first day.
- Belt/Watch: leave in unless it has enough metal to trip the metal detector, then take off but we’ll yell at you for holding up the line/losing your pants.
Also: here’s a list of things we are constitutionally not allowed to require, but if you choose to opt out you have a random 1:1 chance of being selected for an invasive “enhanced” screening.
Also: here’s where you can pay your bribe^H^H^H^H*Hfee to be prescreened so the whole process is easier for you unless we decide we you should be on the list that we randomly select for “enhanced” screening. Then your children get to watch a large man put his hands all over your body in ways that they’ve been told to never let a stranger touch you. And if you speak up, we’ll do it you your minor children too.
Reading here the x-ray machine model or type might be a true technical reason why there are seemingly always different rules. Even same airport, different terminal canbe different due to different build year and machines.
What I don't understand is why people simply don't pay attention? By the time it's my turn I have seen the 3-10 people in front of me go through the motions, so I naturally preempt and prepare based on what I have observed. Not a guarantee for no issues but a solid step to not mess up completely.
One time, a TSA official told me "never take off your watch in an airport unless you want to lose it" -- which is how I learned that you can wear your watch through the metal detector just fine, which I've now done dozens of times.
Until a few weeks ago when a another TSA official berated me for thinking I could walk through a metal detector wearing a watch...
Proximity is the issue. If the watch or bracelet wrist is very physically close to the detector, it will set it off.
You're supposed to the watch/bracelet, but you do have to hold your wrist close to your body. You kind of want to hold your hands in front of your body as if you're about to grab one of your wrists with your other hand.
Watches and other jewelry are basically right at the cutoff of detection. They want to detect small knives but not earrings.
This is all absolutely tribal airport knowledge. I had been traveling for work for years, taken hundreds of flights, but I only found this out when my partner tried to go through a metal detector with a semi-permanent bracelet that requires a small screwdriver to take off, and the TSA person mercifully told her exactly how to pose as she walked through the detector.
I just put my watch, wallet, phone and other loose or pocket belongings in my backpack or jacket that's already going in the tray. No chance of losing anything.
I was told this about my passport and wallet once. Then the other day asked if I could keep a tissue in my pocket and was told to put it in the tray. I think it depends on the scanners (if you’re going through a metal sector it’s fine, if its one of the more fancy scanners they need everything off your person.
At some point I grew tired of taking my belt off in airports so I bought one with plastic buckle. I still had to take it off in some European airport because their new advanced scanner scans volume instead of metal...
My wife and I just habitually empty our hands and pockets into the bin.
Most recent flight we took, she couldn't find her passport for the extra security check right before the gate. It took us about half an hour to get around to having the security open up the (now closed) bag scanner, which lo and behold, had somehow eaten her (securely places in the bin) passport. The tech was shaking his head, saying "See, this is why you don't put your passport loose in the bin" as if that's a normal thing everyone already knows specifically to avoid.
Even different lines in the same security area can have different rules. If you travel a lot you start to recognize which machines require laptops out of bags and which don't, for instance.
It is really anxiety inducing overall though. Not to mention the ritual of getting partly undressed before the stupid thing then trying to put everything back on and in pockets on the other side.
There’s a fundamental issue with people, which is that it’s difficult to treat masses of people as separate individuals.
After the 20th time you ask someone to take out their laptop, there’s a part of you that’s screaming, “we’ve done this 20 times, you should know this by now!” Of course, “we” haven’t done this 20 times, only one side of the interaction has the repeated experience. But it’s natural to project that onto the other person, and get into a mode of, “I’ve told you before.”
Obviously this can be overcome, I'm not sure TSA hires people with enough self awareness to even see the problem.
Even at the same airport they can’t seem to get it right amongst themselves. Recently had one TSA person yelling at me to keep something in my bag and then the next person down the line yelling at me for having it in my bag.
When I pointed to the other agent and said “your friend over there told me to do the opposite, that’s why it’s in there!” they just sort of scowled at me.
I just smiled and went about my day, but yes the TSA is often just a total dumpster fire. Some folks are very nice but too many of their folks have a giant chip on their shoulder about something.
> When I pointed to the other agent and said “your friend over there told me to do the opposite, that’s why it’s in there!” they just sort of scowled at me.
Recent fun experience in Amsterdam:
security line was moving veeeery slowly. Almost every bag got flagged for inspection. As I’m waiting for my bag to get checked, I see two agents briefly mutter in each others ears. One of them walks up to the lady manning the xray machine, taps her on the shoulder, says something in her ear and they swap places. He goes on xray machine, she start checking bags.
Almost every bag after that passed the xray test. Line started moving quickly
My personal positive experience in English speaking country (but not US or UK obviously) was the staff said that passengers don't need to take out stuff from hand luggage for security scanning because they have "the new kind of machines" although the machines didn't look exactly new.
The “new” machines are more like a CAT scanner vs just a 2D x-ray so they allow for easier examination of bag contents and more insight on the composition of materials.
That 'something' is probably dealing with thousands of people all day long, many of whom don't follow basic instructions. It's crazy how many of you can't comprehend that their job continues on, dealing with people after you pass through. And they have to do this everyday knowing people like you look down on them for having that job.
TSA PreCheck means I don't have to worry about those rules. Completely worth it. I haven't taken off my shoes, belt, taken out my laptop or liquids in a decade.
Except sometimes the TSA precheck and regular lines are the same and they give you this little placard that sometimes a guy behind the conveyor belt will agree means you don't need to take off your shoes and belt...
I used to travel for work. 100ish flight segments a year all over the country, typically carrying two laptops - corporate and client.
In one airport, I had a TSA agent yell at me that I'm not allowed to bring two laptops through precheck in my bag. That they had to go through separately. I complied but asked if that was this airport's policy because no other airport seemed to care. She swore up and down that this was national TSA policy and I should know better if I flew so much.
When I look at the TSA's success rates in audits, I tend to agree with the claim that it is more a government jobs program than a security agency.
And, to be clear, it's a crappy job. Get up ungodly early to travel to a work site in the middle of nowhere to shepherd thousands of jumpy/tired strangers* through arcane procedure (possibly in a language that they don't exactly have a firm grasp of) in the hopes of catching the one-in-a-million who has shown up specifically with the intent to kill you and as many other people as possible (or so your training says).
All while gaining basically no transferrable skills.
*Also, a significant portion of these strangers are headed to destinations and experiences you could never dream of affording or having the opportunity to access.
The workers do have a choice to not take it, so it's clearly not that crappy when weighed against the pay and job security (and free doohickies they "confiscate").
I've experienced this at non-US airports where the x-ray at the entrance asks for different things to be in the tray than the x-rays before boarding. It's impossible to keep track of what goes where.
Isn’t this the point? To destabilize you, put you on your back foot, make you feel preemptively guilty and a little angry, to feel the presence of an Authority?
The point is to be seen to be doing something, so that the nervous public sees that Something is being Done, and so that politicians can say they did all they could the next time there’s an attack. Anything they actually do is very much secondary.
And annoyingly, the real, meaningful things they do do aren't sexy.
Reinforced cockpit doors are basically invisible, but they've also basically made hijackings impossible, especially when coupled with the fact that passengers will no longer assume the plane will safely land and negotiate.
This is one of my major pet peeves, and it extends well beyond TSA. Help desks, call centers, car rentals... Essentially, it's when someone expects you to be able to do their job. When you invariably don't, they treat you as if you're stupid.
The vast majority of developers have 0 need for learning SIMD. Why mislead them, and make them feel like to be a "real" developer they have to know it?
The parent comment is now YouTube famous, and apparently represents the entire Hacker News zeitgeist. Reading replies to this article, it seems... like a slight exaggeration?
It seems like its useful to be aware of at the very least. Surely every developer has written a hot loop that adds or compares simple terms. Knowing that a compiler COULD in theory optimize this for the target CPU architecture is useful in many cases.
This is the worst one for me. I can maybe think of what it means, but I never heard it before, and could easily be imagining a meaning.
Some of the other Claude-isms (quickly googling, especially 'gate' and 'canonical') I feel the issue is they sound right, but aren't specific enough to why we are doing something.
Personally my least favorite is the overuse of "quietly" (e.g. "No tricks. No marketing gimmicks. Just one company quietly outperforming the others"), and the one that makes the least sense to me is "that's the wedge."
I'm curious how these become so ingrained. Then the uncomfortable part is humans start repeating it more (a colleague said "belt-and-suspenders" during brainstorming the other day).
I heard "belt and suspenders" at least 20 years ago (meaning multiple solutions to a problem with backup in case one fails), and maybe would be longer if I were older. You could blame Claude for overusing it or importing it to other cultures maybe, but it's not in the category of invented phrases or ones that only barely mean something in the specific context Claude used them.
Claude does at least use the British English version of the phrase to me - not sure whether its picking up a language setting or reacting to my spelling etc. The American version does sound odd over hear.
"Belt and braces" (UK) vs. "belt and suspenders" (US). I'm pretty sure the phrases have the same meaning, they just use a different word to refer to the thing that holds pants|trousers up.
I don’t think saving them from spying is the main concern. Instead it’s the direct negative effects of the usage upon the kids that’s the concern. Not that age verification isn’t problematic
The possibly too subtle point of this article is that the spying is what makes the negative effects so powerful. Social media spies on what you are viewing and then sends you more of that, and send the info to other people so they can send you more of that too
Then ban underage smartphones altogether, that would probably make the single biggest improvement in child safety and mental health. Trying to police content is an utter waste of time.
Then why did curl only find one new vulnerability thanks to Mythos, and a low-priority one at that? It’s clear that other models are quite capable of finding largely the same vulnerabilities, and that the main key is simply running a frontier model in a good harness to find vulnerabilities.
> Then why did curl only find one new vulnerability thanks to Mythos
Maybe there weren't that many serious vulnerabilities in curl? It's like asking why it didn't find any vulnerabilities in fn main() {println!("hello, world");}.
> When we ran other frontier models through the same harness, they found a fair number of the same underlying bugs, and in some cases they got further than we expected on the reasoning side too. Where they fell short was at the point of stitching the pieces together. A model would identify an interesting bug, write a thoughtful description of why it mattered, and then stop, leaving the actual chain unfinished and the question of exploitability open. What changed with Mythos Preview is that a model can now take those low-severity bugs (which would traditionally sit invisible in a backlog) and chain them into a single, more severe exploit.
Exploits are created ("crafted" might be a better word), vulnerabilities are discovered. Unless you're hiding a RAT behind a public trigger in your code on purpose, I guess?
Pointing to the singular example of one of the most widely used and carefully reviewed and audited libraries on the planet is a such a weak argument that it’s hard to imagine anybody could make it in good faith.
Mythos’ ability to find vulnerabilities there provides very little signal on how effective it is in general.
This isn’t moving beyond fork and exec at all. It’s adding a complicated API for a marginal gain for a niche use case, and ignoring the actual big bottleneck of fork
