HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

a_random_canuck

770 karma · joined June 5, 2022

submissionscomments
a_random_canuck··on X is justifiably slow (2022)
100%.

Even just loading files off the old spinning disks took ages. Loading screens for a game could take 5-10 minutes.

Even just booting into my Linux box took 3-5 minutes and optimizing the boot time was a whole thing you spent a lot of time on.

I remember the day I received my first SSD and installed it in my computer, it was like Christmas morning. Things are way faster now.

a_random_canuck··on Washing machine chime scandal shows how absurd YouTube copyright abuse can get
I think this is a major (the only?) reason these internet companies are even successful. Because they just ignore all these costs that don’t scale well that ordinary companies should have.
a_random_canuck··on Should I use JWTs for authentication tokens?
In my experience for medium sized services it’s still better to have everything talk to the same authentication database.

Postgres has insanely good read performance. Most companies and services are never going to reach the scale where any of this matters, and developer time is usually the more precious resource.

My advice is always, don’t get your dev team bogged down supporting all this complicated JWT stuff (token revocation, blacklisting, refresh, etc) when you are not Facebook scale / don’t have concrete data showing your service really truly needs it.

a_random_canuck··on Is regulated BGP security coming?
They need to. Honestly we need a way to completely segregate Chinese and Russian networks off, as well as anyone who peers with them. They are using our open networks to brazenly attack us in broad daylight… it’s time to fight back.
a_random_canuck··on Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain
This is my take. Consciousness is overrated and probably just an emergent phenomena of the brain processing external stimuli into memory, moving memories around, etc etc, in a continuous and never ending flow. Free will is just an illusion of our deterministic but fundamentally random reality.

There isn’t even an agreed upon definition for what consciousness is from a scientific perspective.

a_random_canuck··on Merging Remix and React Router
I feel like this announcement could use a more clear summary of the key point at the top.

It sounds like Remix will be discontinued and anyone using it will need to upgrade to React Router? Is that not going to be super super confusing?

a_random_canuck··on Protecting your email address via SVG instead of JavaScript
They do. My wife lost her 10-year-old Instagram account to a well crafted phishing attack against an email she had published…

Instagram/Meta’s customer support is absolutely atrocious and disgraceful on this front. They basically treat my wife like she’s also a spammer and there’s no way to recover the account or undo any of the changes the spammers made.

It’s hilarious how they ask you to “appeal” a ban by clicking a single button without giving any chance to rectify what the spammers did to her account. Of course their automated bots just reject your appeal almost instantly. Shameful.

a_random_canuck··on More than 100 arrested in Spain in $900k WhatsApp scheme
> They managed to secure continuous income streams of free money by talking to people on their phones. It’s extra money and surely they planned on doing more scams. That’s the motivation.

Doesn’t this pretty much describe a sales job? Except the product they are selling doesn’t exist.

a_random_canuck··on Flags Are Not Languages
Really? When I first saw it I understood it must have to do with changing languages.
a_random_canuck··on Discord Applying Forced Arbitration - opt-out before it is too late!
A funny argument to make when the “contract” is entirely automated, without negotiation or consideration.

Such agreements should not be enforceable in the first place.

a_random_canuck··on Alice's adventures in a differentiable wonderland
I don’t think anyone is trying to pass an exam here, but just give an understandable overview to a general audience.
a_random_canuck··on Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation
I’m betting they’ve turned on some AI “features” for detecting fraud and it’s not working out as well as promised.
a_random_canuck··on Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest
“Officially” is meaningless here. The blocking exists, and it is at the direction or under the control of their government.

They are yet same thing. You know, if it looks like a duck.

This is standard operating procedure for the communist party. They rarely say any kind of topics or activities are banned outright. It’s just that if you say the wrong things in the wrong place, a bunch of plainclothes police will come to your home in the middle of the night.

a_random_canuck··on I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
I found the interviewer comes across as incredibly pretentious. I can’t stand this style of writing, he is trying way too hard.
a_random_canuck··on Dangers of “decentralized” ID systems
Not only that, but reinvented it way worse… now it depends on GitHub (aka Microsoft).
a_random_canuck··on US Senate passes TikTok divestment-or-ban bill
Because Meta and Google are weaponized by a dictatorship?

How can people really be so blind to the enormous threat posed by allowing hostile dictatorships unfettered access to our eyeballs and devices within our own borders.

a_random_canuck··on Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'
I’m not so sure about that.

I would say Chinese society values the family… people don’t really give a shit about others outside of family or friends.

My feeling on Japan is that they value their society and country much higher.

But I’m neither Chinese nor Japanese so take that with a grain of salt.

a_random_canuck··on CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
I wouldn’t call most of those Amazon, FB, YouTube etc, people the actual smart people either. They’re mostly just lucky. What made Facebook or YouTube successful over any other competitor? Just luck that their design turned out to be the one people like more?

They mistakenly think their success is due to how skilled or smart they are they think they’re hot shit and their thoughts are gold. But most of them are just like Elon Musk: average intelligence people who got lucky enough to climb to the top of the pile.

The same is true for most software people. We think we’re super smart because we have logical thinking and understand a complicated thing that most people don’t, but then you can always get a good laugh reading the HN crowd try to talk smart on other subjects like physics / quantum mechanics.

a_random_canuck··on YouTube to start blocking third-party apps that don't show ads
This is all very fixable for Google: stop streaming video for free to clients that don’t have subscriptions.

Otherwise, if you send the content to my device for free, it is my right decide which parts to watch and which parts to skip.

a_random_canuck··on Apple argues in favor of selling Macs with only 8GB of RAM
You haven’t mentioned what kind of laptop they own.

Everyone I know who owns MacBooks uses them for: photography editing, video editing, graphic design, programming.

a_random_canuck··on YouTube has a new design on desktop and everyone is mad about it
Honestly, no it doesn’t. Google pays creators a pittance and their practices around copyright and monetization are beyond exploitative.

Most creators make their money from sponsorships and stealth marketing, product placements etc, or regular marketing because they might have an actual paid service to offer.

a_random_canuck··on China Tells Telecom Carriers to Phase Out Foreign Chips in Blow to Intel, AMD
People “freak out” for good reason.

People need to understand just how insidious the communist party’s methods are.

a_random_canuck··on Homemade 6 GHz pulse compression radar
There’s no risk of cancer from heating up tissue.
a_random_canuck··on 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
I'm also living in central Taipei, this one woke me up, we felt really strong shaking in our flat on the 4th floor. Some tiles fell off the buildings on my street but otherwise everyone is fine.

Right after the quake saw police and fire dept patrolling around.

a_random_canuck··on Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores
As far as I can tell, every Uniqlo has this. And you’re right, this is by far the best checkout experience. It’s what Amazon wishes they’d built.

I can’t imagine there’s that much untapped profit in the grocery business that Amazon could turn a profit with such an expensive and unreliable mess like Just Walk Out and I find it’s so typical Amazon to find out that the man behind the curtain is actually a bunch of offshore workers in India.

a_random_canuck··on Can GPT optimize my taxes? An experiment in letting the LLM be the UX
Just be careful it doesn’t invent some new tax laws in the process.
a_random_canuck··on Influencers: Japan's secret weapon to promote niche tourism spots
Yeah this is literally what “influencers” are… they are just freelance salespeople/marketers acting as the outsourced sales and marketing arm for corporations and countries.
a_random_canuck··on How GitHub replaced SourceForge as the dominant code hosting platform
And it reeeeeeally makes me uneasy that all this OSS is effectively in the hands of Microsoft.
a_random_canuck··on How GitHub replaced SourceForge as the dominant code hosting platform
Honestly it’s been time for a shift ever since they were bought by Microsoft…
a_random_canuck··on Why Bluesky Remains the Most Interesting Experiment in Social Media, by Far
Probably because it’s crypto-based (blockchain) and required a $5 sign up fee to join… so it’s mostly attracted crypto folks.
Page 1 of 2Next →