alt.hn

5/12/2026 at 12:37:54 AM

They Live (1988) inspired Adblocker

 https://github.com/davmlaw/they_live_adblocker

by tokenburner

5/12/2026 at 2:30:28 PM

Misread the title to mean that They Live inspired the concept of adblocking in general. Which would have been an interesting coincidence, since it did inspire one of the early Mozilla logos. [0]

[0] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/10/they-live-and-the-secret-hi...

by AdmiralAsshat

5/12/2026 at 2:36:44 PM

Did something nefarious happen to your link?

by dnpls

5/12/2026 at 2:41:01 PM

I guess JWZ has some sort of referral check that instantly black-holes any traffic coming from HN?

And interestingly, the WayBackMachine snapshots are similarly boobytrapped: https://web.archive.org/web/20260115112314/https://www.jwz.o...

So I guess google "They Live Mozilla Logo" if you want to see the article. Sorry about that!

by AdmiralAsshat

5/12/2026 at 2:48:39 PM

http://archive.is/UMMCx

by vadansky

5/12/2026 at 5:27:45 PM

dang, please block these links.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...

by cluckindan

5/12/2026 at 7:49:42 PM

what's the alternative?

by NooneAtAll3

5/12/2026 at 10:10:58 PM

archive.org

by lobocinza

5/13/2026 at 2:14:10 AM

It was just demonstrated upthread that archive.org doesn't work for this purpose.

by ameliaquining

5/12/2026 at 2:42:44 PM

Just open a new tab and paste the link in.

by matheusmoreira

5/12/2026 at 3:57:56 PM

It also sets a HN=1 cookie, so you may need to clear that or use incognito

by PhilipRoman

5/13/2026 at 1:02:56 AM

I see. I'm using Firefox's containers feature and that prevented the cookie from carrying over.

by matheusmoreira

5/12/2026 at 3:30:33 PM

Ugh... that worked, but I gave up once I got to the home page.

To quote the late, great, Ray Arnold...

"I hate this Hacker crap!"

by biofox

5/12/2026 at 3:11:54 PM

or another browser

by ge96

5/12/2026 at 3:39:25 PM

the original redirected to the softcore image and then the web archive link tried to rip my eardrums.

this kind of adversarial 'defence' (attack) is new to me, maybe i'm naive but i didn't like it.

by lukewarm707

5/12/2026 at 7:36:29 PM

He’s had that in place for years. Yes, it’s special treatment for visitors from HN.

by leephillips

5/12/2026 at 7:48:31 PM

such information leak just means your browser isn't private enough

by NooneAtAll3

5/12/2026 at 10:25:10 AM

I wish I could upvote this 10 times! I love the film - blew my mind when I saw it on cable just after it came out.

by bloke_zero

5/12/2026 at 2:54:55 PM

Track down the short story it's inspired by, Eight O'Clock in the Morning by Ray Nelson. I had read the short story somewhere, maybe in a compilation, and was delighted when the movie turned out to be obviously inspired by it. Helped me get even more enjoyment out of an already wonderful movie.

by godshatter

5/12/2026 at 3:12:35 PM

The fighting scene was so funny PUT ON THE GLASSES!

by ge96

5/12/2026 at 7:37:55 PM

Hilarious because it never ends.

by leephillips

5/12/2026 at 12:21:45 PM

One of the messages has changed of course. Nowadays it tends to be "stay fearful and do not reproduce".

by nephihaha

5/12/2026 at 2:16:39 PM

Nah the ruling class still wants poor kids who can grow up into wage slaves and soldiers, that's why they keep making contraceptives and abortions harder to access.

by ryanmcbride

5/12/2026 at 6:04:09 PM

I can get hold of "free" condoms from multiple sources. It is not hard to access contraceptives in much of the developed world except in remote locations.

by nephihaha

5/12/2026 at 2:54:59 PM

Given the government trying incredibly hard to ban abortion and the Supreme Court musing they should overturn Griswold I don't their ideas are "do not reproduce".

by vel0city

5/12/2026 at 6:03:03 PM

I don't live in the USA.

by nephihaha

5/13/2026 at 2:55:59 AM

Now I'm curious where you are that you are being told not to reproduce.

by amanaplanacanal

5/12/2026 at 7:57:22 PM

I think you're several years late with this(?)

no reproduction was indeed part of general transhumanism left (individuality doesn't work with parenthood obligations)

but now with Europe and US economies on slowdown and with possibility of war looming, "your life for the country, your labor for the economy" starts to get steered/pushed towards by the elites (edit: pun not intended)

by NooneAtAll3

5/12/2026 at 10:39:46 PM

With automation, the masses will have no jobs and the rich will need to stay on top. It is not beneficial for them to have a large angry underclass.

by nephihaha

5/12/2026 at 1:27:14 PM

No it doesn't.

by rschiavone

5/12/2026 at 6:05:27 PM

Stay fearful is the constant message of the mainstream media. I could name dozens of such stories. There is always a story or two in the media at any given time to spark fear and anger and primal instincts.

We are encouraged to sleep around, and both workplaces and pop culture discourage having a family by differing means.

by nephihaha

5/12/2026 at 5:51:27 PM

Back in the late 90s I stood up a webserver in my office that returned fake banner ads for 404's. I used the in-house DNS server to vector "*.doubleclick.net" over to it.

We'd get amusing banner ads for things like cocaine-based nasal spray, renting pigs, and other vaguely off-color things in place of real ads. It was very, very amusing. I didn't tell anybody I was doing it and got some real laughs when people submitted helldesk tickets asking about the ads.

It got the axe when a technician printed some Mapquest directions that included off-color ads and left them laying around at a Customer site.

Aside: The fake ads came from a website called "Bannertown", (if memory serves). I believe it's long-since defunct. I'd love to find the ads today. They were very amusing.

by EvanAnderson

5/12/2026 at 3:16:21 AM

Cool idea!the font weight should be extra/heavy, and not true black, dark gray.

by dostick

5/12/2026 at 7:12:40 AM

The heavier weights of League Spartan would be a good match.

by kilna

5/12/2026 at 4:04:39 AM

Watch it if you haven't already. I accidentally landed in the middle of it while doing some illicit late night channel surfing when I was a kid.. this left quite an impression.

I think it was a healthy formative influence for me and primed me for rejecting fads / peer pressure, distrusting authority, etc. Probably also helped me to resist the more unhealthy aspects of a religious time/place, and I was even doing light reading on Cartesian skepticism a few years later, which got me into math. Didn't figure out the name of the movie until years later when it was a big meme.

This is not advice but I definitely advise you to show your small children this movie before they are old enough to think it's corny. They may have a schizophrenic episode or descend into solipsism sure, but they may also get scared as hell by monsters and learn some mental judo, and thank you for it later.

by robot-wrangler

5/12/2026 at 5:17:22 AM

What I find funny (only not really) is the wildly different interpretations of this film people have, for many they seem to be primed by other things to see in it what they want.

Basically skeptical of common forms in modernity, that is very clearly the intention. However, I have also seen that in extreme far-right communities this film represents how Jewish people control the world... somehow I don't think that is what Carpenter was going for.

Alas, once your works are in the wild it is out of the creators control in how they end up being used.

by HerbManic

5/12/2026 at 9:16:50 AM

I have not clicked, but recently I was suggested a video whose title was more or less: “everybody thinks 1984 agrees with them”.

by nraynaud

5/12/2026 at 10:55:19 PM

I do recommend that one. Jacob Geller could talk for 3 hours about impressionist paintings and I guarantee it would be fascinating.

by HerbManic

5/12/2026 at 8:02:53 AM

> Basically skeptical of common forms in modernity, that is very clearly the intention. However, I have also seen that in extreme far-right communities this film represents how Jewish people control the world... somehow I don't think that is what Carpenter was going for.

Say what you will about claiming that the Jews secretly control the world like the aliens in the 1988 John Carpenter movie They Live, the people making this claim are certainly not obeying, conforming, or refraining from questioning authority.

by JuniperMesos

5/12/2026 at 10:32:55 AM

They absolutely conform; by what mechanism do you think they all happened to pick the same bundle of labels and beliefs?

by cwillu

5/12/2026 at 10:59:28 AM

Of course, choosing to stand up to the man together with those like minded makes you the real conformist. A deep philosophical conundrum for the prepubescent.

by account42

5/12/2026 at 4:55:00 PM

Life got easier once I realized that being contrarian meant you were just as much controlled by other people as being conformist.

by wat10000

5/12/2026 at 11:42:05 AM

I remember a conspiracy nut telling me "the truth", saying not to believe what the media told me, and do my own research. And then proceeded to point me to a few conspiracy influencers that were telling him what to think. It was very ironic.

by ClikeX

5/12/2026 at 12:24:55 PM

> They absolutely conform; by what mechanism do you think they all happened to pick the same bundle of labels and beliefs?

Are you conforming/obeying when you believe the Earth is round? That the sky is blue? Perhaps a bunch of people picking "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" is… simply them recognizing/accepting reality?

by throw0101c

5/12/2026 at 4:18:33 PM

Depends on why you believe those things.

If you believe the Earth is round because someone you view as an authority told you, and you never asked for any reasons or evidence, then yes, you're conforming/obeying.

If you believe the Earth is round because you understand the extremely strong evidence we have for that, then no, you're not conforming/obeying.

> Perhaps a bunch of people picking "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" is… simply them recognizing/accepting reality?

For something like "the sky is blue", sure--we can confirm it by our own observations and us all using the same word to describe the color we see the sky as being.

For something like "the Earth is round", it's more complicated, because it's not obvious just from observation, at least not the kind of observation that ordinary people today are going to be making in their daily lives. But if, for example, you have enough experience on oceangoing ships, you're likely to have made observations that were part of what convinced certain ancient Greeks that the Earth was round. Or if you've observed enough lunar eclipses to see how the shape of the Earth's shadow appears on the Moon. Or if you've observed the Sun's angle above the horizon in the sky at enough different latitudes on the summer or winter solstice. But how many people have made those observations? Or understand what they tell us about the shape of the Earth?

And of course people, even very large numbers of people, can also pick "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" about things that aren't reality. So no, you can't rely on that as an indicator.

by pdonis

5/12/2026 at 2:24:28 PM

> Are you conforming/obeying when you believe the Earth is round? That the sky is blue?

No, I am incorporating multiple different lines of evidence from multiple sources, including my eyes, into a framework of knowledge that I am constantly challenging and questioning, and "the Earth is round" and "the sky is blue" have survived those challenges as good first approximations to the truth. Whereas "Jews control the world" has extremely flimsy evidence, strong counter-evidence, doesn't fit with my understanding of the world, and can be traced as a myth/meme to known bad-faith actors. Which, by the way, is all also true for "vaccines cause autism" and "the earth is flat".

Not everything is the same.

by feoren

5/12/2026 at 1:33:59 PM

I don't think it's the same.

I like to think of these supremacist/racist conspiracy theories as another form of control: in many cases these people are right to be upset, since they see things in the world that are truly unfair, but their anger gets redirected to bizarre beliefs and racism. So it's a way of controlling and channeling their anger to a place where real change becomes impossible, just anger and venting and weird beliefs in secret Jewish/Muslim/Woke/Illuminati cabals running the world.

Real change is hard, and involves compromise and dealing with people with different ideas and goals. Anger against immigrants, or some ethnic or religious group, is easier.

by the_af

5/12/2026 at 6:42:26 PM

Immigrants are very often people from different ethnic and religious groups than you, who you have to compromise and deal with because they are present in large numbers in your poltical jurisdiction in a way they were not previously. Being angry at them for creating the conditions under which you have to compromise with them is normal.

by JuniperMesos

5/12/2026 at 9:13:28 PM

It's normal, but misguided to direct your anger at them. It's so normal it's the usual path the frustration is channeled, often with conspiracy theories such as "the replacement" etc.

Compromising and dealing with people is what life's all about, but it's easier to hate than to build consensus and harmony.

And of course, some people exploit these misguided tendencies because they want people not to focus on systemic inequalities that are the root of their problems, and instead blame everything on some other group of people that's different from them. Or because fanning the flames works as a ladder for them.

by the_af

5/12/2026 at 8:42:27 AM

> the people making this claim are certainly not obeying, conforming, or refraining from questioning authority.

In my experience racists tend to just latch on to different authorities to blindly follow and obedience and conformity are even more strongly enforced. I've had long discussions with racists over the "rebel" identity they see in the confederate flag who shortly after demonstrated incredible amounts of boot-licking when it came to police. Most of the racists I've meet were very dedicated to hierarchies, a select set of social norms, old-fashioned gender roles, etc. and conformance was absolutely seen as mandatory.

by autoexec

5/12/2026 at 10:35:00 AM

But it's not The Federal Authorities™, so they don't think it counts as conformity.

by cwillu

5/12/2026 at 5:06:43 PM

Until it’s ICE boots to be licked.

by kridsdale1

5/12/2026 at 8:39:10 AM

"Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, at least it's an ethos" -- The Big Lebowski, another influential film to many people.

by pjc50

5/12/2026 at 8:50:44 AM

And let's also not forget that keeping wildlife, an amphibious rodent, within the city isn't legal either.

by subroutine

5/12/2026 at 9:02:52 AM

I like The Big Lebowski, it has some fun lines, but John Goodman's Walter Sobchak doesn't have a monopoly on the English phrase "Say what you will about X".

And indeed apparently the line was in fact "say what you want about the tenets of national socialism", not "say what you will about the tenets of national socialism" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_29yvYpf4w).

by JuniperMesos

5/12/2026 at 9:39:19 AM

The second half of the line was also relevant, since the claim of Jews controlling the world was specifically a Nazi one.

by pjc50

5/12/2026 at 2:21:53 PM

That actually traces back further to, appositley, the White Russians and their Protocols of Zion to smear democracy as a Jewish plot.

From there it spread to Henry Ford, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler amongst others.

by ZeroGravitas

5/12/2026 at 5:07:49 PM

Is that why Lebowski drinks White Russians exclusively?

by kridsdale1

5/12/2026 at 11:36:59 AM

> somehow I don't think that is what Carpenter was going for.

Same deal with the Starship Troopers movie. When Helldivers first came out, it was really incredible to see how many people truly didn't get the irony.

by MSFT_Edging

5/12/2026 at 1:29:07 PM

> Starship Troopers movie

This movie is so misunderstood. It's basically disliked by Heinlein fans who took offense, and by people unfamiliar with both Heinlein and Verhoeven who thought it was actually Beverly Hills + Space Fascism without irony.

I like it for what it does, but I'm more of a fan of Robocop.

by the_af

5/12/2026 at 3:22:28 PM

Unfortunately most Heinlein classics like Door into Summer or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress can't be adapted visually for various reasons.

by PaulHoule

5/12/2026 at 9:03:36 PM

Heinlein meant the book literally and not as a farse or satire.

by Der_Einzige

5/13/2026 at 11:06:59 AM

Yes, that's what I'm meant, I just worded it ambiguously. Let me make it more explicit:

The movie was disliked by:

- Fans of Heinlein, who took offense at what they thought was a mocking and misunderstanding of the source material.

- People unfamiliar with Heinlein, and also with Verhoeven, who failed to understand the movie was satirical and thought it was actually endorsing a weird mix of Beverly Hills 9210 and fascism.

In case you wonder, I have read Heinlein (not just Starship Troopers) and know what he meant. I also appreciate Verhoeven!

by the_af

5/12/2026 at 5:33:07 AM

It's interesting right? Now there's too much distrust of authority and also not enough. Even the word "skeptic" is sometimes used to refer to people who "do their own research" and doggedly latch on to wild conspiracy theories.

Avoiding groupthink is another slightly different positive spin on (my read of) the underlying message. There's such a thing as toxic individualism too, but if there's a "bad" way to be a free-thinker then you could say it usually has a pretty limited blast radius for society in general and it isn't a contagious kind of madness either

by robot-wrangler

5/12/2026 at 8:37:38 AM

So.. a lot of this is "negative polarisation" combined with "exactly wrong". People see something bad happening, or come to distrust a piece of mainstream belief/reporting when it gets caught in a contradiction or turns out on subsequent evidence to be wrong. That is the healthy side of skepticism.

The problem comes in this causing people to do one or both of:

- immediately flip to believing the direct opposite, without evidence that's true either (most things are not excluded-middle)

- immediately imprint on the first non-mainstream source they find and start treating it as gospel

> but if there's a "bad" way to be a free-thinker then you could say it usually has a pretty limited blast radius for society in general and it isn't a contagious kind of madness either

It absolutely can be contagious. Sometimes that's for the good, sometimes bad, quite often the mixed result of getting to the right place only after a fraught disruptive time. Martin Luther, originator of the listicle, was correct in a lot of the theses but also started the domino chain for some of the most lethal wars in Europe. VI Lenin was right about the problems and wrong about the solutions. And so on.

by pjc50

5/12/2026 at 6:02:25 AM

>wild conspiracy theories.

Do you know the difference between a conspiracy "nut", and a rational person?

For a "conspiracy nut", understanding that there is sufficient incentive (also implies a lack of deterrent) for X to do Y is proof enough that X is doing Y.

For a "mainstream" person, that is not enough. They require real, solid proof to consider that X is doing Y.

Note that this is about deciding their own behavior, and not about handing capital punishment for X.

I ll let you decide who is smarter...

by qsera

5/12/2026 at 6:16:05 AM

Not sure you can purely talk about "is the motivation likely?" and end up with qanon stuff. This leaves out motivated reasoning coming from the rube, plus a bunch of other things like narratives that are sufficiently fun / scandalous /surprising

by robot-wrangler

5/12/2026 at 6:38:27 AM

A "mainstream" person can also consider past evidence of A, B and C doing Y and assume that X is doing Y too without any evidence about Y.

by M95D

5/12/2026 at 7:20:51 AM

"Mainstream" people will also look at past evidence that A, B and C did Y, and say something like "that was N years ago, surely nobody would do this today".

by jjcob

5/12/2026 at 7:19:14 AM

> Do you know the difference between a conspiracy "nut", and a rational person?

The former is trivially manipulated, can be made to believe anything by appealing to their inherent obvious biases, and will double down on their beliefs even when presented with irrefutable proof to the contrary. The latter can detect false dichotomies, understands answers are often nuanced instead of black and white, and is capable of changing their mind when new evidence comes to light.

by latexr

5/12/2026 at 8:38:37 AM

Yes, these categories are sometimes simply separated by what they considers as "irrefutable proof".

by qsera

5/12/2026 at 10:35:29 AM

See “The Final Experiment”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment_(expediti...

In particular the “Reactions” section.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment_(expediti...

You’ll find this bit:

> Alabama pastor Dean Odle suggested that Satan created a fireball to act as a false Sun.

That is cuckoo cuckoo bananas to a point only “conspiracy nut” applies.

by latexr

5/12/2026 at 12:28:48 PM

See perhaps René Descartes:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon

by throw0101c

5/12/2026 at 2:58:54 PM

That thought experiment assumes the whole world around you is a fabricated illusion. In which case it would be unnecessary for Satan to fake the Sun at that point, especially considering the pastor wasn’t even there. If everything around you is an illusion, there’s no need for 5D subterfuge chess, the devil could just fake whatever.

So no, Descartes doesn’t apply. Unless I were the one being tested (seeing as I’m thinking, and therefore am). In which case that particular lie would be especially hilariously stupid.

by latexr

5/12/2026 at 6:36:25 AM

Looking at conspiracy nuts joining ice and gleefully celebrating unidentified armed goons abducting people, i think they more likely think, well, i would do y, so they must be doing it against me.

by secretsatan

5/12/2026 at 8:15:40 AM

The difference is that one follows the collective/reactive order of things, and the other doesn't.

"Everyone knows" is the greatest conspiracy of all. Its quite possible to be a 'nut' simply by referring to what "everyone knows" ... this is a thought-stopping meme designed to end challenge to authority, since "everyone" is the ultimate authority.

by aa-jv

5/12/2026 at 10:21:23 AM

The system isn’t static. Anti-authority is not countered by authority, or the same kind of authority. It’s countered by co-opting anti-authority.

by keybored

5/12/2026 at 1:56:45 PM

When you're already promoting baseless conspiracy theories, what's a little more acting in bad faith?

by dfxm12

5/12/2026 at 7:06:40 AM

Meanwhile I've personally found myself completely unable to take it seriously due to the subliminal messages being "marry and reproduce" and "consume". Like people need sinister brainwashing to fall in love, have sex, or engage in hedonistic consumption. These are base biological urges that have existed regardless of societal economy for millennia! By casting it as something from a sinister conspiracy it makes the creator come across as someone completely insane from being so swallowed by their ideology. The sheer ridiculousness of it it brings to mind the "Mortal Engines" series and its incredibly dumb basic premise and the critical panning that it received. The lesson being, that just because something is an allegory or metaphor doesn't prevent it from being so incredibly stupid that it completely derails the message it is trying to send. Imagine if the billboards instead said.

I recognize that this is certainly a minority view given how influential the film is. But I just plain cannot unsee it, like a Lovecraftian revelation and that ruins it for me from the start. Short of thinking Jodie Foster is talking to you through screens, it is very hard to look like an outright unhinged anti-Reaganist given the many legitimate things to object to about the man and his policies. Even if you agree with some of it, you can easily see where others would reasonably disagree. But this 'basic urges are part of a sinister conspiracy' sort of message? This managed to do it.

by Nasrudith

5/12/2026 at 2:18:18 PM

> Meanwhile I've personally found myself completely unable to take it seriously due to the subliminal messages being "marry and reproduce" and "consume". Like people need sinister brainwashing to fall in love, have sex, or engage in hedonistic consumption.

I thought the billboards and other displays were not subliminal but only viewed by the aliens and the sunglasses could see through that.

by onemoresoop

5/12/2026 at 1:10:12 PM

I thought the billboard was more ironic: lots of people thought we were facing a population bomb at the time and now we're on the other side of the spectrum seeing a population collapse. For me just seeing something that I don't agree with doesn't automatically ruin my enjoyment.

by havblue

5/12/2026 at 8:17:13 AM

Yes, thats the point of the movie - human beings' most banal desires can be and are weaponized against them.

That you reject the entire premise of the movie because you can't "get over" this particular aspect, just means you've got your own loaded revolver in your pocket.

by aa-jv

5/12/2026 at 2:28:55 PM

To be fair it was a mediocre film, definitely not one of Carpenters best, and is memorable mainly for the visual imagery of the billboards.

But don't mind me, I'm here to chew bubblegum and comment, and I'm all out of bubblegum.

by projektfu

5/12/2026 at 7:26:31 AM

If it was a basic biological function then the marketing department wouldn’t exist.

by MagicMoonlight

5/12/2026 at 8:56:13 AM

Consumption and love/sex are things we tend to do naturally, but marketing just ramps it up to a level we probably wouldn't reach if we weren't forced or manipulated into it. Just about anybody can fall in love, but marketing can pressure you into thinking that not falling in love and being with someone means you've failed at life and marketing can fill with you anxiety if you aren't in love, or haven't had sex, or you've had sex too early, or not early enough, or not often enough, etc. Naturally they've got all kinds of things to sell you to help.

by autoexec

5/12/2026 at 9:20:45 AM

Of all the phenomena in modern life a person might have anxiety about, the kinds of sex they are having (or not having) seem like the thing most relatable to their hunter-gatherer ancestors tens of thousands of years ago, long before the invention of marketing.

by JuniperMesos

5/12/2026 at 10:09:12 AM

> marry and reproduce

I left that out deliberately, as I think they are a good thing

Yes, I am aware of the irony of trying to manipulate people via messages

by tokenburner

5/12/2026 at 6:50:57 AM

> extreme far-right communities

Extreme libertarian seems a more apt description for those groups since they severely distrust government often also criticizing Trump and Netanyahu for example.

by huijzer

5/12/2026 at 12:16:31 PM

You don't have to belong to any particular in-group, except maybe humanity itself, to want to protect the human rights of people living outside ones' own nation/cultural identity. In fact, its kind of essential to the survival of the species to do so.

This stereotyping you're doing is itself a manifestation of the very problem you're attempting to describe, which is that authorities murder with impunity, while we individuals can only organize among ourselves to address their crimes if - you know - we kind of get along.

Which is less likely to occur if you label everyone who has a concern for human rights violations, an "extreme libertarian" or "far-right". Maybe you're right that 'only extreme libertarians question the actions of Trump and Netanyahu', but then again, maybe you don't care about human rights as much as you should - quickly - before your own human rights (to live) are put in peril by the war criminals you allow to rule you ..

The corollary to your position is akin to this: "if you don't resist the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Trump and Netanyahu are committing - perhaps you agree with those crimes, and, therefore stereotyping you as a 'Trump'- or 'Netanyahu'-aligned type of person allows your position and indeed entire identity to be rejected, outright..."

So, what'll it be? Shall we, human rights-concerned individuals, stereotype you? What are your political afflictions, just so .. you know .. they can be instantly rejected or discounted as invalid since you are a member of 'that filthy group over there', who seem to think that authorities should have impunity to murder ... ?

by aa-jv

5/12/2026 at 8:35:33 AM

A lot of them are very concerned about restricting the rights of others

by secretsatan

5/12/2026 at 8:45:41 AM

Source?

by huijzer

5/12/2026 at 11:54:48 PM

Source?

by secretsatan

5/12/2026 at 11:39:39 AM

To be fair, some people will always default back to "the Jews" any opportunity they get. That's not specific to this movie.

by ClikeX

5/12/2026 at 4:53:23 AM

My dad pitched this movie to me when I was a kid, as he was a Carpenter fan.

Beyond the somewhat "obvious" message (for a grown up) it's just an eminently entertaining movie.

by riffraff

5/12/2026 at 4:23:32 AM

Nice pitch. I'll stream it right away!

I've been watching Andor as a instructional manual recently and this seems like a good addition to the reality based manuals out there.

Idiocracy, War INC etc.

by shrubby

5/12/2026 at 10:11:23 AM

What do they say about those who see through ideology.

by keybored

5/12/2026 at 5:42:42 AM

"They live" was a cult classic, and great fun if you were a Roddy Piper fan.

Other entertaining films =3

"The Great Dictator" (Charlie Chaplin, 1940)

https://archive.org/details/the-great-dictator-disc-01-title...

"Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951)

https://archive.org/details/day-the-earth-stood-still-1951

"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" (1956)

https://archive.org/details/invasionofthebodysnatchers1956_2...

"The Man in the White Suit" (1951)

https://archive.org/details/the-man-in-the-white-suit_202105

"The Twilight Zone" (1959)

https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-01-e-00...

https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-01-e-00...

https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-03-e-15...

https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-03-e-15...

by Joel_Mckay

5/12/2026 at 5:37:58 AM

Oh the irony: "They Live", a movie famously about alienation and dehumanization, and you let AI do all the coding.

by deng

5/12/2026 at 1:14:16 PM

People have jobs and lives, let them make things quick with the tools available if its for fun.

by GroksBarnacles

5/12/2026 at 5:48:41 AM

Interacting with a computer in natural language is much more human than typing in special codes and punctuation.

by xnx

5/12/2026 at 6:01:08 AM

So telling someone to make a table for you is more human than making it yourself, because you're using natural language instead of saws and hand planes?

by deng

5/12/2026 at 6:17:29 AM

I would say yes, conversing between two humans, maybe even collaborating, is more human than a solitary human using inanimate objects.

by GCUMstlyHarmls

5/12/2026 at 9:07:05 AM

Basket weaving is more human than conversation. Language is entry level artificial man.

by spacebacon

5/12/2026 at 6:09:21 PM

[dead]

by redsocksfan45

5/12/2026 at 7:50:10 AM

Even if the table collapses down badly instead of doing a proper one with a good set of tools?

by anthk

5/12/2026 at 1:56:24 PM

I can't know how To hear anymore about tables

by spacebacon

5/12/2026 at 1:50:02 PM

Have you seen me work?

by tclancy

5/12/2026 at 2:42:13 PM

But the extension works, not "collapses down badly."

by HeatrayEnjoyer

5/12/2026 at 7:17:25 PM

Yes, I build furniture for my wife’s designs. Without her my furniture wouldn’t exist. I’m the LLM in this case, capable of building things but not furniture design.

by ok_dad

5/12/2026 at 10:11:20 AM

> telling someone to make a table for you is more human than making it yourself

That's a bad comparison. You have to compare crafting a table manually to doing it via CNC.

by gchamonlive

5/12/2026 at 7:53:32 PM

Commissioning a craftsman you respect to make custom furniture to your taste and specifications sounds human enough to me.

by robotresearcher

5/12/2026 at 7:53:14 AM

The human world is full of special codes and obscure gestures that only have meaning if provided in the right sequence to the right people. Computer programming being documented and formalized makes it more accessible than many social circles.

by speed_spread

5/12/2026 at 10:53:14 AM

Imagine writing this comment on 2013 Hacker News with a straight face.

by sph

5/12/2026 at 1:49:33 PM

I once built a Chrome extension to play this audio (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8itH10OFc8), encoded as base64 in the extension, on certain UI interactions on a sports site. I did it all by my big self. Should I be proud of that? Because I think we both know the answer is no.

by tclancy

5/12/2026 at 10:12:40 AM

Are you writing code in a computer instead of using pen and paper? Preposterous!

by gchamonlive

5/12/2026 at 6:07:04 AM

What if it wouldn't get done otherwise?

(Genuine question as we're all trying to figure this shit out)

by dang

5/12/2026 at 9:57:08 AM

It wouldn't have. I put this off for 11 years, the joke wasn't worth the manual effort required

AI is amazing at jumping into an unfamiliar codebase, it was probably 20 mins total work

by tokenburner

5/12/2026 at 6:51:57 AM

I think this is false dichotomy. It's been a while since actually empowering and encouraging humans was considered normal and attempted at scale. But not that long. How quick we forget. I think it's worth getting back to.

by d3ng

5/12/2026 at 6:24:12 AM

I think we can agree that this is not something anybody will actually use, but rather an homage to "They Live", and IMHO, letting this be done by AI is in contrast to the basic premise of the movie.

by deng

5/12/2026 at 10:00:00 AM

The joke wasn't worth 10+ hours manual work

by tokenburner

5/12/2026 at 6:50:09 AM

That argument could be taken to any extreme at the end of the day. They Live, at its core, is a commentary on unrestrained capitalism. You could fault OP for using a Google browser. You could fault OP for using a Microsoft cloud repository. The line may be blurrier than one thinks...

by dolebirchwood

5/12/2026 at 8:35:11 AM

Any argument can be taken to any extreme. This is why it's a popular rhetorical tactic, called "appeal to extremes".

by deng

5/12/2026 at 8:46:36 AM

So, why did you use it in this case?

by darkwater

5/12/2026 at 9:03:56 AM

So you consider calling something "ironic" an extreme position? On a more general note, you will find that many people are uncomfortable with the idea that AI will replace human work, especially when it relates to art, which this project in question references.

by deng

5/12/2026 at 9:16:37 AM

But there are many more tech things we take for granted that could be seen as ironic as well. I think I never saw this movie but being a young adult and an Internet nerd in the late '90s early -00s I remember perfectly how many people were negatively discussing it because it was dehumanizing, destroying personal relationships in flesh and a long etc. And while the future turned out to be not so good as some early adopter thought, it also never turned into something so bleak as detractors said it would.

And I think the same will apply here, with GenAI.

by darkwater

5/12/2026 at 7:40:26 AM

What's the premise of the movie? I thought it was about psyops.

(Also interdimensional shapeshifting reptilians.)

by andai

5/12/2026 at 9:43:41 AM

We'd all be better off for it. I don't want you to take a shit on the table and call it dinner. Even if you don't cook.

by ori_b

5/12/2026 at 9:17:00 PM

That sounds like you're denying that anything valuable can be produced with these tools. That would be an extreme position.

by dang

5/12/2026 at 10:35:12 PM

When people burn down their neighbor's houses to roast marshmallows, I think that it's worth taking a strong position against them.

If you listen to what effects the companies building this claim their products will have, you conclude that either they're going much farther than burning a few houses, or they're lying through their teeth. Neither of which lead me to thinking that the harm of empowering them is outweighed by having more low-effort software.

So, yes. As someone that has to live in the world those assholes are building, they can go fuck themselves. I want nothing to do with their creepy, infantilizing, bleak, dystopian future.

Maybe that's an extreme position, but I'm very glad I don't have children; I don't think I could look them in the eyes and tell them they had a bright future.

by ori_b

5/12/2026 at 1:28:09 PM

Why should anybody be interested in using software nobody was interested in making?

by thesuitonym

5/12/2026 at 9:26:06 PM

This is the labor theory of value

Why should anybody be interested in using software nobody was interested in...

Writing their own assembly for? manually allocating their own memory for?

by tokenburner

5/12/2026 at 9:14:47 PM

By that argument no software would ever exist.

by dang

5/12/2026 at 2:51:59 PM

They Live is such a good metaphor for so much of the modern world. Once you see it, cannot unsee.

by dueltmp_yufsy

5/12/2026 at 4:21:51 AM

I never found the Matrix very impressive, because I'd been inoculated by this movie.

by akkartik

5/12/2026 at 1:07:41 PM

they are two very different movies, especially considering all three of the matrix movies.

by fedeb95

5/12/2026 at 1:47:40 PM

Did you watch The Matrix on cinema, without knowing anything about the movie?

Back when The Matrix first opened, it was still possible to go to the cinema without knowing anything about a movie. I watched it like this and my mind was blown. I thought I was about to watch a techno thriller about a hacker who resisted authority!

I don't think I would have enjoyed the movie in today's hyperconnected internet culture, where we know what every movie will be about months and sometimes years before release.

Wait, I'll make an exception: say what you will about The Force Awakens, but I totally thought -- based on the trailers -- that it was going to be about Han Solo and Chewie. When it turned out to be about a new character, Rey, I was completely and pleasantly surprised. Well done, trailer editors!

by the_af

5/12/2026 at 1:59:19 PM

"Did you watch The Matrix on cinema, without knowing anything about the movie?"

Yeah, that's what I mean. I went in not knowing anything, never having seen any trailers. And halfway through I went, "oh this is They Live, but the skeletons wear sunglasses."

by akkartik

5/12/2026 at 4:00:22 AM

My personal tagline, "I came here to kick ass, build web applications, and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of gum." came from this movie.

by tlhunter

5/12/2026 at 1:14:28 PM

I want to see the outtake lines they didnt use. Roddy Piper had tons of one liners he would use for wrestling.

by sumtechguy

5/12/2026 at 4:53:44 AM

And Duke Nukem.

by DeathArrow

5/12/2026 at 6:52:36 AM

That “kick ass & chew gum” line has been hugely borrowed, reused and parodied many times throughout the following decades since the release of this movie.

In fact the whole movie is almost a parody of itself now due to how many scenes have since become a meme.

by hnlmorg

5/12/2026 at 5:39:03 AM

I came here to kick ass and deploy microservices... And I'm all out of ass.

by sdenton4

5/12/2026 at 6:18:37 AM

I came here to shitpost and deploy microservices... and github is down.

by GCUMstlyHarmls

5/12/2026 at 2:34:44 PM

I came here to drink milk and kick ass... and I've just finished my milk

by ndsipa_pomu

5/12/2026 at 2:22:37 PM

Waiting for this to show up as a pi hole extension.

by Something1234

5/12/2026 at 8:34:59 AM

Should be able to use the local LLM to generate a short "They Live" style phrase based on the content of the ad.

by khafra

5/12/2026 at 11:55:17 AM

Is the pervasive advertising not bad enough already that you want to waste time and energy inventing fake advertising using plagiarism bots?

I can't offhand thing of a worse idea in the context.

by lproven

5/12/2026 at 7:21:13 PM

Please add “Chew Bubble Gum” to the ad list …

Love the idea

by lifeisstillgood

5/12/2026 at 1:46:14 PM

perhalps ublock origin could merge this as an easter egg in the config?

(like a very poorly maintained easter egg, not a problem if is broken by something else)

by aruametello

5/12/2026 at 1:52:07 PM

Well - while I like the movie, I'd also not want to see these slogans. I use ublock origin to get rid of unwanted content. I also simplify user interfaces a LOT. My default youtube view I have removed a lot of stuff from (hopefully one day I no longer have to use youtube; I don't want google in my life, but I haven't yet found enough motivation to degoogle my life completely); same with old.reddit.com back when I was still using reddit. So I think your proposal, while not bad in its own right, may not be ideal either - I'd not consider this an easter egg but rather content I'd want to block, so ublock origin would not do its job properly if it were to show this to me (and keep in mind I like They Live).

I had a similar problem with Nate when he abused all KDE users with his "donate-now-or-else" daemon (https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1f42sew/kde_is_asking_...).

I never ever want KDE widgets to pop up and pester me (that does not mean I have anything against donations; I have a lot against people who abuse the user base though, such as pestering them via unwanted pester-widgets. Sadly when you point this out on reddit, you get banned from #kde, same as when you critisize systemd on #linux - reddit censorship is out of hands).

by shevy-java

5/12/2026 at 3:42:09 AM

I LOVE for someone to make a version of this for Apple Vision Pro. In fact I would put down $500.

by minisini

5/12/2026 at 7:30:20 AM

A $500 app for those $1000+ glasses which shuts people off from reality and create the impression for others that they look into their eyes (while in fact looking at a rendering of your eyes).

There's some irony in here somewhere...

by rickdeckard

5/12/2026 at 5:19:31 AM

If AR ever makes it big, I think we have the first ad blocking idea already fleshed out. Would be kind of fun to see.

by HerbManic

5/12/2026 at 1:38:33 PM

I came here to chew bubblegum and say this ad revealer is a great idea, and I'm all out of bubblegum.

by wowczarek

5/12/2026 at 7:35:29 AM

For any one not familiar with this cult classic film from the 1980s, you can view the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeB3vdxF_jM

In short, aliens have invaded earth, but wear a special skin to appear human. To average people, they appear and sound identical to real humans. The lead character discovers that special sunglasses can show the aliens without their human-like skin. (They look a bit like the aliens from "Mars Attacks".) When wearing the sunglasses, most outdoor adverts are replaced with bland single-party-state-style propaganda encouraging people to consume, work hard, and follow the rules.

I can honestly say that the trailer does no justice for the film. It is much better than the trailer. When I saw first saw this, I was genuinedly spooked. One half of the film is good fun 1980s alien invasion beat 'em up, and the other half is a thoughtful commentary on the age of consumerism.

by throwaway2037

5/12/2026 at 7:59:37 AM

There is a good video that this cool philosopher made, I can't remember the name.. zazik?

Edit: Slavoj Žižek. As always, phenomenal and humble take.

"I’m already eating from the trashcan all the time, the name of this trashcan is... ideology"

Slavoj Žižek on "They Live" (The Pervert's Guide to Ideology) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVwKjGbz60k

by yard2010

5/12/2026 at 8:24:24 AM

Slavoj Žižek ?

by g6taa

5/12/2026 at 12:21:25 PM

Edit: Slavoj Žižek. As always, phenomenal and humble take.

"I’m already eating from the trashcan all the time, the name of this trashcan is... ideology"

Slavoj Žižek on "They Live" (The Pervert's Guide to Ideology) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVwKjGbz60k

by yard2010

5/12/2026 at 7:52:07 AM

I'd say it's got more than a bit of documentary, considering current progress in terraforming.

by euroderf

5/12/2026 at 10:28:27 AM

And the massive irony that it the clothing brand "Obey".

by whynotmaybe

5/12/2026 at 1:21:29 PM

This is a great reply. Not exactly a documentary, but I will grant you "mockumentary" similar to Spinal Tap.

by throwaway2037

5/12/2026 at 1:48:48 PM

They Live was such a fun B movie. It is also kind of timeless.

It is far from a perfect or even very good movie, but the key messages are great and simple and the "chew bubblegem" scene is one very actionable scene. Long live Roddy.

by shevy-java

5/12/2026 at 7:48:53 AM

UBo Lite pales against the original UBo, it doesn't matter if it's a cool fork.

by anthk

5/12/2026 at 9:09:44 PM

I don't see ads with ubo lite. From my perspective it does just as good of a job.

by charcircuit

5/12/2026 at 9:13:42 AM

I came here to block ads and chew bubble gum.

by specproc

5/12/2026 at 10:43:42 AM

And I am all out of bubble gum.

by ZeljkoS

5/12/2026 at 11:44:15 AM

It's slop though, which is even worse than the ads.

by desdenova

5/12/2026 at 2:59:12 PM

Looking at the code (https://github.com/davmlaw/uBlock/commit/fa2de61ae69927591db...), there's not much I would do differently writing by hand. It breaks some formatting/style conventions from the rest of the file, which I would probably flag in an organizational code review... but otherwise the logic is solid.

So is this "slop" simply because it's written by an LLM, even if the output is solid? Would it NOT be slop if it was worse code, but written fully manually? Honestly, I'm not sure I know the answer.

by matula

5/12/2026 at 11:50:56 AM

> Each blocked ad gets a single phrase, picked at random from the list.

The least it could do was classify images to some categories with a small vision model smh. They stopped using AI too soon.

by moffkalast

5/12/2026 at 6:59:49 PM

[dead]

by noctads

5/12/2026 at 8:23:54 PM

[flagged]

by bobbyjay007

5/12/2026 at 5:52:00 AM

on the same line, but less pop meme replacements

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/artificial-cl...

it replaces terms used to exalt Artificial Intelligence to what they really mean, and some tongue in cheek jokes against things that are used to pass billionaires/tech as friendly (e.g. replacing bill gates with his actual name)

by iririririr

5/12/2026 at 4:52:50 PM

Caution - At one point I was running a greasemonkey script to replace religious words with funny alternatives. Had a bad time when I installed it and forgot about it and it replaced my manager's first name, Christian, with the funny alternative.

by derintegrative

5/12/2026 at 9:03:01 AM

"Automated Incompetence" is probably better than "Artificial Incompetence" since the incompetence is 100% real.

by autoexec

5/12/2026 at 7:31:22 AM

That's so obnoxiously stupid and annoying, wow.

by logicprog

5/12/2026 at 9:23:53 AM

That's how most people feel when presented slop btw

by ares623

5/12/2026 at 9:11:53 PM

Well yes, I'm well aware. They're both obnoxiously stupid and annoying, lol.

by logicprog

5/12/2026 at 11:49:59 AM

A very good alternative to this vibecoded slop.

by desdenova