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I get scammers using my email to sign up for websites, but they very obviously cannot login to my account. I often wonder what is in it for them. I'm sure someone on HN can tell me!

Commission schemes, possibly. Sign up with their code and they get something out of it. So they submit 10000 harvested addresses, and hope some small % of them think it's something they signed up for and complete the registration process.

You'd think big companies would know better than enlisting spammers to spam on their behalf, but I'm pretty sure Netflix had a scheme like this a few years ago. "Grow at any costs" sites like streaming or social media are probably happy with a tiny bit of plausible deniability for their spamming.


I assume they just need a valid email address to put in and hope they can use the service without email verification.

You write in the style of.. anime dialogue.

It's fascinating. I can almost hear the character speak it aloud.


Hm, I wasn't trying to. Baka baka baka, jim-kun!


Hard disk drives were the size of washing machines. I don't see how they will ever be practical!


Not comparable at all. Autonomous driving isn't obviously a viable business. It's not because computer programs can't drive well, it's because the and workforce infrastructure required to maintain and operate the expensive fleet may be less efficient than a human maintaining their own vehicle.


Isn’t the implication there that Uber works because the drivers shoulder more costs and make less money, but Waymo won’t work because they have to shoulder all the costs?


I'm implying that drivers are more efficient at cleaning and maintaining, refueling, storing, repairing, and replacing their cars they own than the complex systems of personnel maintaining a much more expensive fleet of cars they don't own or give a shit about.


Are you also implying that people who maintain vehicles for a living do a worse job at it than the owners doing it themselves? I would say the opposite is true.

Plenty of companies around the world have well-maintained fleets of vehicles. Trucking businesses, bus companies, train companies, even some taxi companies with salaried drivers, ...


No, I'm implying that people who maintain their own cars do it more efficiently. The simple stuff like cleaning has to be done by someone. It's not about doing a "worse job," it's about doing a more expensive job.

Waymo is replacing human drivers with a capital-intensive fleet business, a substantially more expensive vehicle, and still a large number of remote assistance staff, fleet operators, safety engineers, incident response, operations staff, etc.

But I'm not saying they can't beat a human driver, I'm just saying it hasn't been proven that they will. It may only be that the highest demand markets will provide a sufficient enough utilization to make it economically viable.


You also have to be some completely isolated sociopath to not see the very obvious political and economic risks if this does indeed become successful

No amount of lobbying will help you win against a million drivers suddenly out of work


Well, washing machines were once the size of washing machines; and they still are.


Some technologies scale, some don't, at all. Your point is moot.


[flagged]


Not a valid analogy. At all.


All of these comments are making me realise that the US is an incredibly low trust environment, where people think horrific things are going to happen to them without the their/or their families consent.

And who am I to judge? Maybe that is the reality.


> horrific things are going to happen to them without the their/or their families consent

Indeed, that is (allegedly) the case with organ donation: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/us/organ-transplants-dono...


I highly highly doubt that by consenting to be an organ donor you are consenting to this.

Unless you live in some incredibly lawless country?

Organ donation is so very sensitive, and those who use the service are so aware of the sensitivities I think that you'd be insane to have such a reaction to this media piece.

In fact, I'll go one further. I have serious doubts you were ever an organ donor at all.


Your doubts are solidly founded; I can confirm I am not yet dead and my organs have not yet been donated.


No worries. When you die, please let me know whether they are donated or not. :p


You wouldn't know if we simulated you well enough.


Not everyone has, or needs a hairdryer!


Or hair.


I don't have one but odds are you know someone with one. Or, given the audience of hn, someone with a heat gun.


The appeals court should make a ruling on this.


Junkie by William S Burrough, while not of the beatnik genre is an excellent read.

It's set in the exact same time and place, and I think parallels the destructive nature of the Road in a more a direct way.

I think the Road is actually best read once as a teenager, once at midlife. The perspective change is enormous.


Refer to the post office scandal in Britain and the robodebt debacle in Australia.

The authorities are just itching to have their brains replaced with by dumb computer logic, without regard for community safety and wellbeing.


Lack of Accountability as-a-Service! Very attractive proposition to negligent and self-serving organizations. The people in charge don't even have to pay for it themselves, can just funnel the organization money to the vendor. Encouraging widespread adoption helps normalizes the practice. If anyone objects, shut them down as not thinking-of-the-children and something-must-be-done (and every other option is surely too complicated/expensive).


And the black box sentencing recommendation systems some US states bought into like a decade ago.


Motivation is the root of all learning in my opinion.

Every class should start with a why~!


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