Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | Dylan16807's commentslogin

A system being an entire day off after suspend is hopelessly broken and we shouldn't expect browsers to fix it with their own time sources.

Let's encrypt issues certificates with "notBefore" set an hour in the past to compensate for incorrect clocks. An hour is plenty of compensation.


They will, but Sectigo forcing faster renewal doesn't make Let's Encrypt into a central failure point. Central failure point was the worry above.

> I don't know how old "letsencrypt-renew" is and what it does.

It's the five lines below "the script:"


I'd be significantly more suspicious by default of ISPs that charge no money.

> That's why TLS exists, after all.

That protects you if you're using standard methods to connect. Installed software gets to bypass it.


And that's why I, personally, rent a VPS, run "ssh -D 9010 myvps" in a background, and selectively point my browser at it via proxy.pac (other apps get socksified as needed; although some stubbornly resist it, sigh).

But it's cumbersome.


8 million users on sketchy VPN extensions.

70 thousand users on what I would actually call "privacy" extensions.

Bit of a misleading title then.


How much are they actually changing though? We could imagine they take literally the same design and stick a generator in the corner. Making that mandatory would not be "killing" the Lightning. At the other end is a total redesign that cuts most of the battery, which would be killing it.

That version of the i3 definitely is one. Though the way it limits the gas tank and won't let you control it manually in the US for tax purposes sucks.

What anti-market tactics? My understanding is they poured money over the whole market in a way that helped it grow faster, but didn't pick winners and doesn't subsidize the current pricing.

Yeah this is an outdated talking point, because people can’t accept how far ahead Chinese auto are. They now just have a more advanced, innovative & competitive auto industry, with little subsidies.


Don't like posting a long comment, but re-posting a high-level chronological view of the problems past 15 years:

1) forced technology transfer/IP theft -- all foreign automakers/EV battery producers forced to give up IP to access China's market (and subsidies). This was litigated before the WTO by the EU in 2018 (see WT/DS549):

  Hybrid in a Trade Squeeze, Keith Bradsher, Sept 5, 2011, NYT

  ... The Chinese government is refusing to let the Volt qualify for subsidies totaling up to $19,300 a car unless G.M. agrees to transfer the engineering secrets for one of the Volt’s three main technologies to a joint venture in China with a Chinese automaker, G.M. officials said.
2) Once foreign battery producers made IPR/IP concessions to access China's growing EV market and significant investment in battery production in China, they were effectively banned. All domestic, foreign automakers were likewise forced to switch to local champions, namely CATL/BYD, promoted under MIIT's 2015 "Regulation on the Standards of the Automotive Power Battery Industry”:

  Power Play, Trefor Moss, May 17, 2018, WSJ

  ... China requires auto makers to use batteries from one of its approved suppliers if they want to be cleared to mass-produce electric cars and plug-in hybrids and to qualify for subsidies. These suppliers are all Chinese, so such global leaders as South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd and Japan’s Panasonic Corp. are excluded.
  ... Foreign batteries aren’t officially banned in China, but auto executives say that since 2016 they have been warned by government officials that they must use Chinese batteries in their China-built cars, or face repercussions. That has forced them to spend millions of dollars to redesign cars to work with inferior Chinese batteries, they say.
  ... “We want to comply, and we have to comply,” said one executive with a foreign car maker. “There’s no other option.”
3) Picking winners and losers: made sure no Chinese consumers had access to EVs with batteries from foreign EV battery producers effectively creating a captive market of buyers for CATL/BYD.

  Why a Chinese Company Dominates Electric Car Batteries. Keith Bradsher and Michael Forsythe, Dec 22, 2021, NYT

  The government soon said electric car buyers could get subsidies only if the battery was made by a Chinese company. G.M., which had not been notified of the rule, started shipping Buick Velite electric cars in 2016 with batteries made in China by LG, a South Korean company.
  Angry consumers and dealers complained that local officials were denying them subsidies, people familiar with the episode said. G.M. switched heavily to CATL for the huge Chinese market.
4) another fairly recent example of China's arbitrary regulatory barriers to keep out foreign competition, which was later dropped after the gov't found out their local "champion," CATL, couldn't pass the EV battery safety test:

  Why a Chinese Company Dominates Electric Car Batteries.  Keith Bradsher and Michael Forsythe, Dec 22, 2021, NYT

  ... A rival had released a video suggesting that a technology used by the company, CATL, and other manufacturers could cause car fires. Imitating a Chinese government safety test, the rival had driven a nail through a battery cell, one of many in a typical electric car battery. The cell exploded in a fireball.
  Chinese officials took swift action — by dropping the nail test, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. The new regulation, released two months later, listed who had drafted it: First on the list, ahead of the government’s own vehicle testing agency, was CATL.
Then, you also have China weaponizing their EV raw-material supply-chain, such as EV-grade graphite used as battery's anode material. China torpedo'ed Swedish battery company, Northvolt, with an export ban in 2020 because Sweden protected Chinese dissidents and called out human rights violation. Northvolt went bankrupt last year.

re: subsidies. China's consumer direct purchase subsidy ended in Dec 2022, but was extended again as tax credit for another 4 years in Jun 2023. Just to be sure though, there are many other subsidies besides the consumer subsidies at every layer of China's EV/battery supply-chain. The EU's anti-subsidy probe last year (see Regulation 2024/1866) for instance evolved around "export subsidies."


1) I'm unsure if that's more anti or pro market to be honest.

2,3) Okay, yes, half-separating China from the rest of the world is anti-market. But then they did a lot inside the country that was pro-market. With a population of over a billion, I don't consider that picking winners.

4) That's obnoxious of them but doesn't really affect what I was saying.

subsidies) I was unaware of extensions, and I thought the supply chain subsidies were already gone? But okay, let's assume this is accurate, 17% duty on BYD. Man. As I've said before when Trump was talking about 25% on everything, I wish the US was putting 25% tariffs on Chinese EVs instead of whatever dumb number it is.


1) anti-market. China was likewise taken to the WTO in 2018 and agreed to end their restriction on market access/forced tech transfer, implemented in 2020/2021. Tesla is however still the only foreign automaker operating without a forced JV to this date.

2) restricting market access (and subsidies) to foreign automakers isn't exactly pro-market -- especially to those who were already in China and manufacturing products that local "champions" weren't able to mass-produce. All domestic, foreign Automakers forced to source inferior, yet also costlier, batteries. ie, anti-market.

3) demonstrates Chinese consumers wanted GM Velites with LG, but their choice was denied. Limiting 1.5B consumers' choice in the name of promoting national "champions"? anti-consumer and anti-market. Definitely picking winners and loser, or foreign over domestic.

4) just another example of arbitrary safety regulation restricting market access to foreign companies. ie, anti-market.

re: subsidies. China's EV subsidies have been around since 2009; renewed/extended every 2-4 years. That's also in addition to provisional subsidies thrown around time to time, eg, ICE-to-EV conversion subsidies between May-Dec 2024 to prop up slowing EV sales.

EU is quite silly with countervailing measures against China's dumping/anti-subsidies. Despite 100+ ACTIVE counter measures, the EU Commission still think the targeted approach against China's anti-market/mercantile practices can work. The EU should also consider imposing country-specific tariff rate of 100%, akin to Biden's tariff.

China's export ban against Sweden has shown that their NEV initiatives aren't really aimed at addressing environmental problem or benefiting their population.


1) Getting in trouble doesn't make it anti-market. If you give stolen data to enough companies, you encourage competition more than you hinder it.

2) Restricting subsidies reduces the pro-market effect, but overall providing subsidies to such a big number of companies was pro-market.

3) Yes that's anti-market but when you're splitting up such a big market into two still very big markets it's not hugely anti-market.

4) It exposes corrupt motives more than it actually affects the market.


1) it was anti-market and that's why they were taken to the WTO, not the other around. This violation is also explicitly spelt out in Section 7 Non-Tariff Measures of China's 2001 WTO Accession Protocol. Not sure what point you are making with "stolen data," but subsidies must be given to all or none -- no picking winners or losers. The key idea here is a level playing field.

2) Restricting subsidies to some, but not others based on "local" vs "foreign"?-- ie, anti-market. All NEV subsidies were further conditioned on using Chinese batteries by local Chinese battery "champions" only to funnel them back to local battery industry is an industrial policy, definitely anti-market and anti-consumer.

3) what "two" markets? We are talking strictly about China's internal EV market and the Chinese gov't's anti-market policies; not the rest of the the World.

4) Sure, and the Chinese govt makes the "market regulation" in China. China's NEV market is likewise anti-market, anti-consumer, and corrupt.


1) Let me make a hypothetical. If you take tech from 2 companies and give it to 50 companies, that is both pro-market and something you will get sued for and lose.

2) You seem to be refusing to acknowledge that some actions have mixed consequences. Having many of those subsidies helped the market. Restricting them hurt the market compared to not restricting them. You can't look at just the restrictions to make the judgement, you have to look at the whole picture. Without the restrictions, they wouldn't have enacted the same subsidies.

3) If we're looking at just the internal market, then those policies made many more companies prosper and compete. I don't see how you can possibly say that they hurt the internal Chinese market! The EV market internal to China is far stronger than it would have been if the Chinese government sat there and did nothing.


But that "yes" is so unlikely that your expected/average information is still 1 bit or less.

The claim was that one bit was the maximum amount of information you could gain, which is clearly false.

Just to make this unambiguous: If you ask me to guess a number between one and one billion, and by fantastic luck I guess right, your “yes/no” answer obviously gives me more than one bit of information as to the right answer.


> The claim was that one bit was the maximum amount of information you could gain, which is clearly false.

That's not what I see.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46282007 They have an example that calculates the expected information gained by truth booths and all of the top ones are giving more than one bit. How can this be? It is a yes/no question a max of 1 bit should be possible

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46282343 the expected information (which is the sum of the outcome probability times the outcome information for each of the two possible outcomes) is always less than or equal to one.

The specific comment you replied to had one sentence that didn't say "expected" or "average", but the surrounding sentences and comments give context. The part you objected to was also trying to talk about averages, which makes it not false.


If both of these are equally likely, you gain one bit of information, the maximum possible amount. If you already have other information about the situation, you might gain _less_ than one bit on average (because it confirms something you already knew, but doesn't provide any new information), but you can't gain more.

Can’t gain more!

The core confusion is this idea that the answer to a yes/no question can’t provide more than one bit of information, no matter what the question or answer. This is false. The question itself can encode multiple bits of potential information and the answer simply verifies them.


> Can’t gain more!

"you might gain _less_ than one bit on average [...], but you can't gain more."

On. Average.

That's a true statement. Can't gain more than one bit on average.


I’m not arguing with that, it’s basic information theory.

One bit, however, is not “the maximum possible amount” you can gain from an oracular answer to a yes/no question. The OP covers exactly this point re: the “Guess Who?” game.


The start of this comment thread was a complaint that OP is showing more than one bit expected for certain yes/no answers. Not best case, expected.

That's why people are talking about the maximum expected value.


Sort of valid today.

But the more sites that require a residential VPN for normal use, the less legitimate that argument becomes.


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

Search: