Hacker News Reader

Jayschwaon Select Subcommittee: CIA Paid Analysts for Virus Origin Statements

I can understand why government scientists wouldn't want their name attached if it was discovered that they funded research on the escaped virus. It's less obvious to me why the CIA would care though. Just trying to avoid general blame attributed to the USA?

Jayschwaon 'Foundation' space advisor on keeping Asimov's fictional galaxy realistic

Oops, I meant mayor Hardin, not Seldon.

Jayschwaon 'Foundation' space advisor on keeping Asimov's fictional galaxy realistic

I couldn't get through the first season. The Empire stuff was good, but I thought they really butchered Seldon. In the show, Seldon is portrayed as a warrior with a mystical connection to the vault. In the book, the whole point of Seldon is that he's a regular but smart person who leverages his opponents' beliefs in mysticism against them.

Jayschwaon Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

> he has had a commendable commitment to free speech

Reddit does not have a good track record of supporting free speech outside its zeitgeist. In the past, it has banned subreddits that were politically conservative, not toeing the party line on transgenderism, or hosting pandemic skepticism / conspiracies. The bans were usually executed in the name of stopping threats or "hate speech", but to my eye, the rules and punishments were applied unevenly.

Jayschwaon Amazon accuses customer of racism and shuts down their smart home

Upstream article: https://medium.com/@bjax_/a-tale-of-unwanted-disruption-my-w...

Jayschwaon How to quit cars

I agree. At its best, public transit can be a better experience than driving. But the average experience is often worse than driving.

Jayschwaon How to quit cars

I disagree. I lived in NYC for 10 years without a car and used public transit for everything. There are plenty of passengers, and that didn't matter. It was just a larger captive audience for whoever was having their mental breakdown.

Jayschwaon Airbnb shares fall after probe into unpleasant customer experiences

I had a similar experience in NYC circa 2019. Several weeks before the scheduled stay, the host wrote that we should lie if anyone asked us about the situation. I was not okay with that and canceled the reservation. Despite the sketchiness, Airbnb refused to refund any of the prepayment.

Jayschwaon Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

Over time, I've been migrating from Gandi to Porkbun. I've been happy so far.

Jayschwaon Zig's multi-sequence for loops

While with optionals enables some iterator-like behavior. https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#while-with-Optiona...

Jayschwaon Apple TV+ to adapt William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer

I didn't finish the TV show (I got maybe halfway through), but my main problem was the changes to Hardin. In the book, Hardin is a shrewd politician, and there's nothing magical or blessed about him. He "defeats" Anacreon by exploiting their own dim beliefs in magic against them. In the TV show, Hardin is a warrior with a special "magical" connection to the Vault. That conveys a very different, almost contradictory message compared to the book.

Jayschwaon A Yubico FAQ about passkeys

I had a YubiKey fail when I touched it and a static shock wiped its memory. I was able to reinitialize it using their app, but the previously loaded key was lost.

Jayschwaon Thoughts on the “guard” proposal for Go's error handling

> What is a Golang person

Gopher

Jayschwaon Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

> the idea of the vaccine was always to prevent bad effects of infection, not infection as such.

This is false historical revisionism. Biden[1], Fauci[2], and the media sold the public on the vaccine and justified mandates by saying it would stop the spread. Early skeptics were labeled as misinformed conspiracy theorists. It later became self-evident that the vaccine was less effective than originally thought (e.g. everyone I know who got vaccinated, including myself, still got infected). Only then did the goalposts move to "it makes infections less bad". But that is not how it was originally presented.

[1]: https://www.whio.com/news/local/exclusive-news-center-7-sits...

[2]: https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/553773-fauci-...

Jayschwaon Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

I am unhappy with this change, but I can cope with it. I'm more concerned with my tech-challenged family members who don't understand the distinction between different messaging services or have any understanding of security. Until now, Signal has been good for them because they only need to deal with one application and they get some added security among our group. After this change, I fear they'll just use the SMS app exclusively (out of inertia) and Signal will collect dust.

Jayschwaon Ask HN: Is anyone using Fastmail for their business?

I switched from Gmail to FastMail about 4 years ago and have been very happy with it. At the time, FastMail had no problem importing a decade's worth of emails from Gmail, and I still have the deprecated Gmail address forward to my FastMail account.

I'm on their ~$50/year Standard Plan so that I can use it with my own domain names. I point my domains to FastMail's nameservers, and it automatically configures all email-related DNS settings. It can be setup to accept mail to arbitrary addresses, so I now use service.tld@my.tld when I create accounts on other websites, which can help with filtering or seeing who is leaking my info. Any other type of DNS record can be manually added, so I can still generally point my domains to my GitHub pages.

I can recall only one outage since I've been using the service. I use their web client and Android app (which is just a thin wrapper around the web client). They are not glamorous, but they are functional and feel snappy.

One thing to be aware of is that FastMail is based in Australia, which I believe has some backwards laws with respect to Internet privacy.

Jayschwaon Google Domains is out of beta

I've been a Gandi customer since 2014 and my opinion of them is not as favorable, especially since they rolled out a new and buggy dashboard a few years ago. Historical problems I've had:

1. When attempting to update the email address on my domains and accounts in 2018, the form to do so was broken. Support merely linked me to the broken forms and did not comprehend the problem. After re-explaining the problem, they changed my address to something completely wrong, which was alarming because it wasn't an address I controlled. It was eventually resolved, but it was not an experience that inspired confidence.

2. After getting married and having my legal name changed in 2019, there was no easy process for updating Gandi's records. Support walked me through some convoluted and time-consuming process that involved creating a new account and transferring all my domains to it. I recognize this use case isn't as common, but it shouldn't have been as difficult as it was.

3. Because of the combined shenanigans of (1) and (2), I now get five duplicate emails from Gandi for everything. I have notified support of this a few times over the last couple years, but it's always met with, "sorry, it's a known bug", and I guess it will never be fixed.

The only reason I haven't moved off of them at this point is because of inertia and I don't know what other registrar would be better.

Jayschwaon Protesters migrate to crypto fundraising platform following GoFundMe ban

> Their protesters have used their trucks to ram counter protesters.

Got a source for that? I'll believe it when I see it. I have only been made aware of one car attack so far, and it was perpetrated by a left-wing individual against protesters.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/08/canada-trucker-protest-hit-and...

Jayschwaon Ask HN: Will there ever be a vendor agnostic GPU interface?

> In my view, WebGPU is the future of cross-platform graphics.

How long before this API is ubiquitous though? For maximum compatibility today, wouldn't something like OpenGL ES / WebGL make the most sense?

Jayschwaon Apple Delays Rollout of Child Safety Features

I've been using an Oryx Pro (v5) for a few years. It's mostly fine.

My main disappointment is that it doesn't "just work" with the kernels shipped by Ubuntu. System76 provides their own kernel packages, but they sometimes cause weird conflicts with other low level packages, and it can't hold its charge when suspended. I haven't attempted to debug the issue because I usually stay plugged in when I'm working, but I suppose I ought to engage tech support. They have been helpful in the past.

At the end of the day, I'll probably still give them my first look if I'm shopping for another laptop.

Jayschwaon Golang.org will be merged into go.dev

It's a programming language website. To do its job effectively, it doesn't need to devote screen real estate to racial justice, police brutality, child sex trafficking, cancer awareness, gun safety, climate change, domestic abuse, regional famines, or any other myriad of important (sometimes political) issues. It's not hypocritical to desire a "separation of concerns".

Jayschwaon “I just got a copyright claim for *TYPING ON MY KEYBOARD*”

I had this problem too and I started using https://nitter.net mirrors to "fix" it. A nice side-effect is that Nitter's UI is much less bloated.

Jayschwaon Nebulus: An IPFS-Less IPFS

https://github.com/ipfs-rust

Maybe some of the building blocks you need can be found in there somewhere.

Jayschwaon Introducing Windows 11

I replaced Windows with Linux for gaming a couple years ago, due in part to Valve's Proton. It's not perfect, but I estimate 80% of the games I play "just work" and require no tweaking. The state of things for your set of games can be evaluated with https://www.protondb.com.

Jayschwaon Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

> this looks way way bigger than it should be.

I worked on the software for one of these A350 server blades nearly a decade ago, and I held the same belief at the time. There's some adage that system complexity grows to fill the organizational bureaucracy overseeing it, and that is my best explanation for the bloat. My employer (a contractor of Airbus) had offices in France, India, and the United States. Naturally, each office had to be in charge of their own separate blade(s), even if it was probably not optimal in terms of the overall system design to partition it that way.

Jayschwaon Heart inflammation cases in young men higher than expected after mRNA vaccines

It might be worth going to a gastroenterologist to check on acid reflux. I was in a similar boat a couple years ago. Sharp chest pains out of nowhere. Heart stuff was ruled out by a cardiologist. I then had an endoscopy which confirmed something was out of whack with the sphincter between my esophagus and stomach, causing strong heartburn. After taking some heavy acid reducers for a few months, it managed to heal up and has been fine ever since. I can relate to the anxiety though. It was pretty intense at times and I had trouble sleeping or focusing on anything else. Hang in there.

Jayschwaon I refused to become an FBI informant, the government put me on the no fly list

Most likely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation

Jayschwaon Diablo II: Resurrected

This reminds me of an anecdote I once read or heard about a person curing their World of Warcraft addiction. The person used an unofficial server with cheats to instantly get the best gear, then proceeded to one-shot the toughest boss. After that, playing normally felt pointless to them.

Jayschwaon The Simtel.net MS-DOS Collection

> Yet it's not scary or something I dread.

Has that always been the case for you, or is it something that has gotten easier to think about as you've aged?

Jayschwaon How Fat Does a Fat Binary Need to Be?

https://github.com/sponsors/jart