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This has nothing to do with AI.

There are also a few questions that remain unanswered:

- Did she have previous arrests, and did they use booking photos to identify her? I found someone named Angela Lipps who was arrested in 2001, 2003, 2017, and 2019. The 2017 arrest was for a probation violation: https://archive.ph/CpmXu The 2019 arrest was for public intoxication: https://archive.ph/yjFL9

- Another confusing detail is that she was in jail for four months without being extradited. That is quite unusual, unless the local authorities were holding her on unrelated charges.

So this news story seems to have nothing to do with AI. It is also very light on details about the case and what actually happened. And actual criminal case here.


Appealing to authority ("The AI said it was her!") is absolutely a problem.

No. I think the core issue is that they used her 2019 booking photo (a mugshot) from a public intoxication arrest. I am not sure whether a photo like that is reliable :)

In the end, the detective compared the booking photo with the camera footage and concluded they were the same person, then presented that to the judge.

I also wonder what her “probation” was for. Maybe she once wrote a bad check and got into trouble, which might have made the detective more inclined to believe it was her.

Anyway, this does not appear to be an AI issue at all.

But it is nice scary story to remind us not to be lazy and trust it unconditionally.


Yes. Appealing to authority ("The AI said it was her!") is absolutely a problem.

I'm not dismissing the rest of what you are saying, but I don't think you should dismiss appeals to authority being a factor, either.


And? Do you agree with the point or the idea the poster said? Or not?

I remember that in the early days of HN there were people who would downvote comments just because they had grammar mistakes, without even trying to understand the idea or what the poster was trying to say.

I guess this thread looks like a bunch of grammar Nazis crying because they have lost their ammunition :)


You’re literally trying to justify using AI against the site creators wishes in a thread about not using AI.

AI will destroy HN and any hope of a similar site ever existing in the future. If you really want low quality slop posting, please go to Reddit and let the rest of us cling on for the little time HN has left.


You are missing the point here.

It is not about whether the comment was written by AI, a native English speaker, English major, or ESL.

What matters is an idea or an opinion. That is all what matters.


To follow the pattern of your comment: You are missing the forest for the trees. Like many things, the difference between theory and practice matters here. In theory the only thing that matters is the idea. In practice the context and human element matters AND a culture of ai text could very much reduce the bar for quality.

An equivalent overly-pure reductive mistake is "why do you need privacy if you aren't doing anything wrong".


Look your comment: a lot of fluff and nice sentence construction. But I have no idea what you are trying to say (missing forest from the trees? Practice and context?).

But it will be upvoted because it has nice English.

Anyway, AI is a future and this thread just shows how shallow we humans are. And we will blame AI. Because we are shallow.


If you freely admit that you struggle with reading comprehension, why would your opinion on how best to write be valuable?

I'm not saying that as an attack, but the parent comment was completely comprehensible; it doesn't seem like you have the required expertise in this area to comment.


I feel that way about business-logic code. If it works, and it's efficient, I couldn't care less if an AI wrote it.

There is no scenario in which I want to receive life advice from a device inherently incapable of having experienced life. I don't want to receive comfort from something that cannot have experienced suffering. I don't want a wry observation from something that can be neither wry nor observant. It just doesn't interest me at all.

Now, if we ever get genuine AGI that we collectively decide has a meaningful conscious mind, yes, by all means, I want to hear their view of the world. Short of that, nah. It's like getting marriage advice from a dog. Even if it could... do you actually want it?


If that is the case, you could consider a different website like chatgpt.com which will give you much more immediate feedback on your ideas.

I am here to express my ideas and opinions. They might not always be popular, but they are my opinions (that is reason that I have 3x less karma than you but I was here 11 years longer). And some people will debate my opinions and try to convince me that I am wrong. And sometimes I learn soemthing.

But if we start ignoring ideas and opinions and instead focus on superficial things like how they are written or communicated, then the whole point of HN is lost.


> I am here to express my ideas and opinions

If that is true you shouldn't have any objection to a rule against letting a chatbot express your ideas and options for you. Express yourself, because asking a chatbot to do your thinking and writing for you is not a superficial thing.

> But if we start ignoring ideas and opinions and instead focus on superficial things like how they are written or communicated, then the whole point of HN is lost.

How a message is communicated matters and always has. Even before this rule, I could express opinions here in ways that would get me banned from this website, and I could express those exact same opinions in ways that would not. Ideas and opinions still matter, but so does how we communicate them. It's a very small ask that you express your own thoughts in your own words while participating here.


But we are missing the point here.

It is not about whether the comment was written by AI, a native English speaker, English major, or ESL.

What matters is an idea or an opinion. That is all what matters.

This is similar to when people check someones post history and if they are pro Trump, they are immediately against their idea or opinion.


True, but the BlueSky audience is not really into following professional sports. I believe there was statistics (or just rumor) showing that conservative-leaning people are about 50% more likely to follow professional sports than liberal-leaning people. Sadly, I cannot find the source, but it might be so obvious that nobody bothered to run a proper poll. Or this is just what everybody believes so everybody goes with it.

Because of this: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6079807/v1

Global warming is accelerating, yet we as a human race are doing very little to prevent it. Instead, we keep arguing about how Western countries need to match China’s approach to emissions. I kid you not, that is literally what people on HN are telling me, while China continues increasing its emissions every single year.


"12 May 2023".

China's emissions appear to have been flat in 2024, gone down in 2025. Note, same domain as your own link: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

We (humanity) need much more than that, of course, but it doesn't help anyone to use old data.

On the up side, all this is being done for nice boring economic reasons (renewables are cheaper than alternative power sources), which means energy-based emissions are likely to go away automatically all by themselves.

On the down side again, there's lots of emission sources other than energy. Cattle and concrete are big ones (even cement at 3% is still worse than aviation is), but basically everything more than grassland degradation (which is 0.1% of CO2 emissions) needs to be resolved for long-term stability: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector

Also on the down side, the correct time to have made big leaps here even with just the energy part was "about 5-10 years ago": https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-mitigation-15c


The quote from your link:

> China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the final quarter of 2025, likely securing a decline of 0.3% for the full year as a whole

So, increase of 4.7% and then (likely) decrease of 0.3% is a great progress?


> So, increase of 4.7% and then (likely) decrease of 0.3% is progress?

Yes. Obviously.

Because of why it happened, and because of how it didn't come with a recession this time.

Enough progress? I doubt it. But it is progress, and it's China doing it while still growing their economy, so it's time to end this idea that China's emissions are a reason for anyone else to refuse action.


I would rather wait for official stats before claiming victory. I think there will be a little upward adjustment from “likely” numbers because of this AI thingy.

https://www.iea.org/countries/china/emissions


> I would rather wait for official stats before claiming victory.

You sure about that?

With your recent comment history, you've been claiming victory for your rhetorical position without waiting for "official" stats (what makes a stat official?), and deny the stats which do exist as "propaganda".

That is in fact why I noted my newer reference was pointing to the same domain as you were using to claim yours.

As an aside: It's not like this is even a proper environmental victory condition yet, see my other links on that, just that the rate at which CO2 is going up (due to China) is not itself going up. "Victory" happens when atmospheric CO2 goes past 400 ppm again, this time downwards. All that can be said positively about China here is "heading in the right direction", although you seem to have a bee in your bonnet to deny even that.


The only data I trust are from IEA.

And the data they are publishing are not encouraging for the future of the world.


The IEA says China’s CO₂ emissions rose by 565 Mt in 2023 to 12.6 Gt, which it states was a 4.7% increase from 2022.

So any emission reduction done by developed countries is offset by China.


And then China's emissions declined in 2025. https://hackernews.hn/item?id=45108292

The stats for 2025 are yet official.

The quote from your link:

> China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the final quarter of 2025, likely securing a decline of 0.3% for the full year as a whole

So, increase of 4.7% and then (likely) decrease of 0.3% is a great progress?

I would rather wait for official IEA data before claiming victory: https://www.iea.org/countries/china/emissions


China creates about 30–35% of global emissions. India about 8% but it is climbing fast.

What rich countries do is they just export their factories to other countries and say: look we do not pollute.


CA buying gasoline from Bermuda, shipped via the Panama Canal, because it refuses to allow new refineries is the perfect demonstration of this.

That's also kind of a pigovian tax though, right? By making gasoline more expensive they discourage its use. I guess they're chicken to make it an actual tax

Also why wouldn't it come from other US states? Seems easier


Sadly, it does not come from other states. It comes from other countries which, amazingly, tend to have much less strict environmental regulations.

Yes, California is a little cleaner because we have fewer refineries and gas is more expensive, but globally we are probably about even.


Pipelines, the Jones Act and CA blend requirements prevent CA from getting much gas from other states.

Would someone like to explain why the Chinese (if as you say produce 30-35% of global emissions) don't appear to see a problem or at least if alluding to it as they do, fail to do much about it as major contributors of emissions? And then of course there are the countries proud of a relative lack of emissions who are merely exporting the problem to somewhere else, often enough, China.

Yes, they're still burning coal and gas but China are making huge strides in non CO2 intensive electricity generation

China are the reason solar has become so affordable for the rest of the world


The latest major IEA estimate says China’s CO₂ emissions reached 12.6 Gt in 2023, up 4.7% from 2022.

On the other hand U.S. CO₂ emissions decreased slightly between 2022 and 2023. About 2–3% (from 4.79 to 4.68 Gt)

I just do not understand how we can claim any kind of progress here.


They absolutely are. You just haven't paid any attention.

Just for reference China has about 17% of the world's population, and India has about 18%.

China has also been deploying lots of renewable and nuclear energy, and their carbon emissions actually falling.

Solar and wind have gotten so cheap we should be able to forgo more fossil fuel deployment in developing nations.


China CO2 emission increased a lot over the last 20 years and it is growing every years. Not decreasing but increasing. The IEA estimate says China’s CO₂ emissions reached 12.6 Gt in 2023, up 4.7% from 2022.

On the other hand U.S. CO₂ emissions decreased slightly between 2022 and 2023. About 2–3% (from 4.79 to 4.68 Gt)

[1] https://www.iea.org/countries/china/emissions


And then in 2025 it was exactly the other way around. China's emissions decreased, the US's increased.

https://hackernews.hn/item?id=45108292


This is a CCP propaganda article. The IEA have not yet released 2024 estimates.

US is the largest historical emitter… responsible for something like 25% of all man made CO2 emissions

The entire west world contributes 28.8%. US is about 11%. [1]

[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/co2-em...


That’s a different question. The person you’re replying to was referring to historical totals and they were right:

https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2

> the United States has emitted more CO2 than any other country to date: at around 400 billion tonnes since 1751, it is responsible for 25% of historical emissions; this is twice more than China – the world’s second-largest national contributor


You’re quoting the figures for a one year

Exactly, this was the whole point of Trump calling climate change a hoax to benefit China, but somehow this got twisted by the media into not denying climate change being an anti-Trump position.

The base then started demanding this from their reps and Trump almost picked up on this himself. It took years to undo that damage and even now we're barely back at a pro-clean air, pro-solar and pro nuclear position...


This is why politicians are usually expected to choose their words carefully. Most of them know that what they say matters and has effects on the real world.

The sad reality is that much of the climate work done in the West does not matter because China, India, and the rest of the world are not involved.

That is completely wrong.

First, the West and particularly the US are still well ahead of China regarding both historical total emissions and per-capita annual emissions. And regardless of what China does in the future we still need to get our acts together domestically.

Also, China is aggressively pushing low-carbon energy sources on all fronts. Where they are now is not necessarily an indication of where they will be in a decade or two.

A large part of their emissions is the result of stuff they make for us. If we are serious about climate policy, we have to set up trade barriers proportional to greenhouse gases emissions to limit this effect. These policies must be informed by climate science.

Finally, regardless of what the rest of the world does, mitigation depends only on us and how well prepared we are.

Really, there is absolutely no scenario in which it is not a good idea to understand what the hell is going on with our climate.


If the United States stopped polluting 100%, global pollution would decrease by only about 10%. Probably even less, because much of that pollution would simply be exported through outsourcing. So what happens next?

>If we are serious about climate policy, we have to set up trade barriers proportional to greenhouse gases emissions to limit this effect.

Consumption economies can incentivize production economies to emit less.


Please remember that we are not talking about stopping climate-related policies. The point here is climate-related science. And even if you are an arch-conservative and you assume (despite all observations) that you can do fuck all about it, knowing how things are going to be is very useful if you intend to survive, never mind thrive.

You're arguing a hypothetical where the US stopped all emissions 100% and the rest of the world isn't doing anything.

The reality is that China is aggressively pushing solar and electric vehicles, and the West is complaining about it. Meanwhile the current US president's maxim is "drill baby drill".

I mean, if we don't need to stick to facts, let's discuss the hypothetical scenario where I am a powerful wizard, and when I say a magic word and I can halve the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?

OK, now where's my Nobel peace prize dammit??


So we do not need to worry. China and India will cut their emission a lot and we US just need to cut a little. Problem solved. /s

From 2022 to 2023 (lates report), China increased their emission from 11.9 Gt to 12.6 Gt. The US decreased from 4.79 to 4.68 Gt. So we (US and China) increased emission by 0.6 Gt.

So we (the world) are polluting more and more and you are telling me that we are on a great trajectory.


Bear with me, I'm adding some nice pictures to this thread.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/gallery/2026/mar/05/pict...


Hilarious take. China and India have historically emitted much less carbon than many western countries, per capita they emit less Co2, and a large part of emission is to produce for western countries, which have effectively outsourced their emissions to other (poorer) countries.

At the same time, the US is the main force fighting against carbon neutrality, renewable energy and pretty much anything reasonable. By directly burning a lot of fossil fuels and by lobbying and poisoning discourse in other countries.

Meanwhile China is by far the biggest producer of anything related to renewable energies and installing more renewable energy than the rest of the world, by far.

If anything, the work done worldwide does no matter (it still does though) because USA is doing their best to destroy the planet.


China has long surpassed most countries in per-capita emissions and is still on an upward trajectory. India is on an upward trajectory but still below the world average. The US and Canada are higher than China but on a downward trajectory. The EU is on a downward trajectory and below China.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita


Those are our emissions that we have exported to china. Your TV, Phone, etc etc isn't built in NA.

You quickly start seeing people's root biases about when you bringing info like this up, "well but historically ...", "you know, the colonialism", "per capita ...", etc. I wish we could deal with the here and now and deal with this scientifically.

You're right. When I posted some facts about Chinese and Indian emissions, my post was actually flagged by someone who didn't want those facts to be known. When it comes to the climate, the Left are not interested in honest pursuit of science - they just cherry pick data that supports their neo-Marxist agenda of redistributing wealth and capabilities from the West to the East, driven by their hatred of the West and its success under capitalism.

Using the IEA’s 2024 energy-related CO₂ data, advanced economies emitted 10.9 billion tonnes out of a global 37.8 billion tonnes in 2024, which is about 28.8% of the world total.

So if developed countries completely eliminate all pollution we will reduce it by 30%. Good. Then what is the next step? War with China? Attack India?

[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/co2-em...


Let China continue to cancel fossil fuel plants as they roll out renewables and electrify at rapid scale? It’s not 1980, China is leading a lot of key technologies and they’re looking like they value long-term planning a lot more than we do.

To the extent that they need a nudge, a carbon tax would be very effective for correcting export market incentives, too.


They are doing so good that they increased their emission by 4.7% from 2022 to 2023. /s

Which was part of a slow down which recently hit the crossover point:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

This isn’t a video game where you buy “clean factories IV” and everything stops polluting on the next turn, it takes time to change industrial plans which are years in the making and involve non-trivial supply chains.

China is far, far from perfect but their emissions are going down at a time when the President of the United States is lying about fake emergencies and forcing utilities to run at a loss just to keep emissions up, so China is not the nation most deserving of pressure.


Western efforts matter because they allow less wealthy nations to follow along a proven path towards sustainability.

Nnobody is going to follow a hypocrite, and no one in east asia is gonna cut back on consumption/growth/lifestyle if rich westerners can't even pretend to put in some token effort for the same cause.

Solr and wind power is arguably a huge success story (looking at china specifically) because it was arguably enabled and triggered by western efforts in research, development and commercialization.


The technology will get cheaper as we start to use it. Solar is getting ridiculously cheap but China is leading the way on that

Keeping one's side of the street clean is the right move, regardless of what anyone else does.

I hope this war will be short. And that the result will be Iran becoming a democracy that fully joins the global community. The Iranian people (Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, and others), deserve better.

It would benefit the entire world to see Iran integrated and engaged internationally.


I know a lot of the responses are skeptical (for good reason), but the opportunity is certainly there. The pro-regime population is aging out, with the more secular youth taking hold. There has always been an appreciation for American culture (specifically) amongst the general population. This was true when I was there in the 80s and increasingly more true over the decades since. Concessions by the regime over the hijab laws is one example of the society drifting more towards Western norms. Alcohol and western style parties are way more present in the society than ever before. Basically, the foundation for it is certainly there.

Furthermore if Reza Pahlavi does manage to integrate into the society, he will most certainly use his business and political ties here in the US to westernize the society. He's said as much. Some of the more well known Iranian-American business leaders here in the US (CEO of Uber, CEO of intuit, founder of eBay for example) I'm sure would contribute to work towards this also.

There will be push-back from rural areas (just like anywhere else) and the regime will not go away overnight, but the possibility does exist for this outcome. I think the biggest roadblock would be America and Israel intentionally preventing this outcome for the reasons that suit them geopolitically.

EDIT: should have mentioned that after decades of widely known voter manipulation and more or less "mock" elections, Iranians would be happy to finally participate in actual democratic processes where their votes and voices matter


> And that the result will be Iran becoming a democracy that fully joins the global community.

You can hope that (and I can hope that), but the powers that are driving this military action completely do not care about this outcome. Which makes it exceedingly difficult for me to think this will happen.

I know the US proxies keep blabbering about 'regime change', but there's zero intentionality behind the political work to do that. My guess is balkanization, which won't really go how the US/Israel wants it to go


This is unlikelly because Iranian regime is going to execute false flag operations against their people to steer public opinion in their favour.

Not if the US kills the whole regime. They certainly have the firepower. And Israel has the intelligence.

I can't believe that people are so naively optimistic - it's not too long that we fought endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to what end?

The Taliban ruling Afghanistan and an unstable coalition in Iraq.

You know how much we spent? $5.8 to $8 trillion.


There is zero likelihood of that. The IRGC and Iranian forces are a million strong and have a loyal base of support among the population. Without boots on the ground, relying on air power and 'moderate rebels' you are looking at at least a decade of war (using Syria and Libya as best-case-scenarios examples; Assad regime was nothing like the Iranian). The Israelis are dividing the opposition by pushing the out-of-touch monarchists as their would-be puppets and the Trump regime are backing them too. Which means they are not even seriously pushing any viable or credible alternative. They are likely arming the Kurdish and other ethnic factions in the region and stoking ethnic conflict. It is in Israel's interests to prolong the conflict , to degrade Iran's military and economy (like they did in Syria) and even break it up into smaller manageable parts. The monarchists are a moon-shot; Reza Pehlavi is not his father (who also was a US puppet) - Israelis like him because he will be weak and pliable and completely dependent on foreign patronage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinon_Plan


Interesting point on Israel pushing for the monarchy to come back.

Democracy in the middle-east does not result in Israel or US aligned governments, but the monarchies have proven more interested in preserving their autocratic dynasties and quite easy and eager to work with Israel and the US to preserve themselves.


Aside from Israel are there any democracies in the Middle East?

My observation was that more democracy in the Middle East is not what Israel or the US is interested in, given that the people's choice there would be overwhelmingly against Israeli and US interests.

They replaced the last democratic choice in Egypt with another military dictator, they keep the widely unpopular autocrat in Jordan on his throne with military and intelligence subsidies, have established and propped up a network of autocratic Gulf states that toe the line...

So yeah, I would not be surprised that Israel and the US would be more than happy to but a scion of the previous Iranian autocratic dynasty back on the throne there.


Lebanon is democracy. It is true that system is sectarian (power-sharing among religious groups) but still a democracy.

Iran elects their President. Is it a shining example of a democracy, no, but it has a much stronger democratic tradition than say Saudi Arabia. If the US and British hadn't been meddling there for the last 70 years it would probably be a secular democracy now.

They elect someone from a short list approved by the supreme leader...who will execute policy dictated to him by the supreme leader. Plus thousands of Iranians are executed yearly for crimes against the regime (make it tens of thousands in 2026). Calling Iran a democracy is a joke, it's a brutal dictatorship.

Did I call it a democracy?

Anyway, democracy is not a binary. You'd be unlikely to call ancient Athens a democracy by modern standards and yet...


Israel's a democracy the way the 3/5ths compromise promoted democracy.

There is virtually zero recent historical precedent supporting your wish, and plenty of precedent suggesting the opposite will happen.

I wonder why that is.

We saw significant success with Germany, Japan, South Korea, and other countries in the past. But more recently, similar efforts seem to have ended in failure.


We fully went into those countries and were willing to spend decades rebuilding them.

They’re also nice countries, with governments and organisation. Places like Afghanistan have nothing. You have to try and start civilisation from scratch, in a hostile land.


> They’re also nice countries, with governments and organisation. Places like Afghanistan have nothing. You have to try and start civilisation from scratch, in a hostile land.

Iran has a lot though so it could work there.


They didn't have any natural resources that could be exploited.

> Fully joins the global community

If by that you mean that Iran will become a toothless vassal state of the U.S.-Americans, then God forbid.


What do you mean by “toothless”?

I was thinking more along the lines of Japan or South Korea. Militarily restrained, but prosperous and strong.

I understand that recent military actions have often made things worse, not better. I am just trying to stay optimistic. From what I know, many Iranians are not enthusiastic about religion controlling law and politics.


Does the us have any toothless vassal states?

We literally just went through this with Venezuela. They replaced the dictator with the assistant dictator. The Iranian face of regime change making the rounds in Western media is the son of the last Shah.

This scenario always imagines that the people getting bombs rained down on them will somehow determine that their actual friends in the world are those dropping the bombs.

Even accepting this, how exactly are these peaceful, western friendly civilians going to withstand a war better than their country's army?

It's very depressing to see this playbook credulously trotted out yet again. When has this worked?


the drones just have to fly slower for the kids and schools…”Easy, you just don't lead 'em so much”

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