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bgbntty2

94 karma · joined December 3, 2025

Decided to comment after years of lurking. Might stick around if HN is Tor-friendly - haven't tried it yet. I care about security, privacy, ethics, philosophy of mind, qualia and suffering, so I'd most likely comment on related threads.
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bgbntty2··on Governments in the West Are Turning Their Sights on VPNs
I'm on the "outside" of this argument - never owned a gun yet and not in the US, but the right to life (not to be shot) can be exercised by protecting oneself from guns, with a gun.

Here we're discussing how attacks against privacy are totalitarian and how more and more governments are on their way to become totalitarian regimes, but we don't agree that people having guns is a good defense against a totalitarian government. We talk about police or ICE overreach, but don't talk about what would happen if that overreach expands even more.

bgbntty2··on Governments in the West Are Turning Their Sights on VPNs
Why is TLS 1.3 interesting here, in relation to censorship circumvention? Why is version 1.3 banned and not 1.2?
bgbntty2··on NYC phone ban reveals some students can't read clocks
That was my point, although I might've written it poorly. You can't go and learn everything. We're surrounded and bombarded by so much information, so many different things every day. Even very intelligent and curious people who read and learn all the time don't know everything. Just sitting at my desk I can probably think of 1000 things that pique my interest, but I don't try to learn about them because I know I have a very limited life on this planet. It's impossible to know everything, even to read all of Wikipedia.
bgbntty2··on NYC phone ban reveals some students can't read clocks
Years ago I once wasted 2 hours arriving at 07:00 instead of 19:00. The AM/PM stuff is ridiculous, especially when people don't specify it. It was the time we were going to leave for a trip, so 07:00 or 19:00 were all acceptable times. So 24-hour time is obviously better. Most people don't even bother saying "AM" or "PM" if it even exists in their language or culture.

I think analog clocks are mostly for old people who don't like change, for people nostalgic for the past, for people who think like it makes them better, smarter, fancier of classier somehow - especially with expensive mechanical analog watches.

bgbntty2··on NYC phone ban reveals some students can't read clocks
We also see thousands of other things everyday. You can't be curious about everything.

Analog clocks, roman numerals and Morse code are unnecessary in modern living for 99%+ people, just like it's unnecessary for them to know why the moon always faces the same way or how a car engine works or what technologies are used by their computer monitor. It's good to know these facts exist and that they can be learned, but that's about it.

bgbntty2··on NYC Spends $200 Million on Cell Service for School Chromebooks
But with a LAN port, wouldn't you agree that reinstallation could take 1-2 human minutes of work, even if the whole process takes an hour? Take the laptop, plug it in, press a key, wait however much, then take it out and give it back to the student. The student could even do it themselves.

And even without a LAN port I assume there are various ways to automate it so it isn't really an issue. If you keep /home or if most files are synced, students could break their OSes every day if they want to. One of those students will actually learn from it, at least.

bgbntty2··on I didn't realize my LG TV was spying on me until I turned off Live Plus
Because the stereo doesn't spy on us (hopefully). If it did, I wouldn't buy one, as it's not a necessity, either.

The zipper also doesn't spy on us... yet? When smart zippers become the norm and you can't find jeans with dumb zippers, I'll return to using buttons even if they're a bit annoying to deal with.

bgbntty2··on I didn't realize my LG TV was spying on me until I turned off Live Plus
Those aren't real problems for most people, though. I've never damaged a piece of clothing and I only use a few programs. It's obvious what you can put in the dishwasher. And expiry dates don't mean anything. Food is usually fine to eat long after the expiry or best before date. It's easy to see if someone is bad because the color, texture, smell and taste change.

Those examples seem like they would be useful for mentally disabled people. Not trying to be a dick here, but someone with declining cognitive abilities is more likely to put a sock in the dishwasher, to wash delicate clothing at 90 °C or to forget food in the fridge for months.

It reminds me of those items primarily designed for physically disabled people that (used to) be advertised for normal people on infomercials because the market for disabled people wasn't big enough.

bgbntty2··on I didn't realize my LG TV was spying on me until I turned off Live Plus
Why would people even buy something like a smart TV if they know it's highly likely that it's created to spy on them? It's not a necessity, so maybe just don't get a smart TV in the first place? Otherwise, how sure you are it won't search for an open Wi-Fi or that it doesn't have a cellular connection?
bgbntty2··on Inside CECOT – 60 Minutes [video]
I found this quite interesting, but I don't understand how the articles claims we can see flesh.

And the author's Substack has 2 videos of Trump kissing and patting Bill Clinton's groin area (through pants). They are likely AI because I couldn't find anything online about how they're real besides the original photo. And if they were real, why is no one talking about it? He claims for one of the videos that it's real. So it kind of reduced the author's trustworthiness a bit.

bgbntty2··on Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
Years ago when paying with PayPal, there were 2 choices - for them to convert currencies or to rely on my bank to convert them. There was a warning that if I chose the second option, it could cost a lot. Turns out, with my bank the conversion was good and with PayPal's conversion I'd lose like 10%.

Stuff like that is what I say "years ago" - I haven't used PayPal for a while now, and I won't use it again.

bgbntty2··on Things I learnt about passkeys when building passkeybot
How else would you make the private key unexportable and the passkey uncopyable?
bgbntty2··on Things I learnt about passkeys when building passkeybot
The problem with this is requiring everyone to own a device with a secure enclave or similar hardware capabilities because some people are prone to being phished. Let me choose the level of risk I find acceptable.
bgbntty2··on Things I learnt about passkeys when building passkeybot
In the EU there is Strong customer authentication [0], part of the PSD2 (Revised Directive on Payment Services).

I read as much about it from the official sources as I could about a year ago, so I might be wrong here. From what I remember even though no specific mention of Android or iOS attestation was made, a "strong" form of 2FA is needed. Stronger than TOTP.

In my country most banks I talked with require a mobile app for 2FA even if you're logging in from a desktop browser. I haven't (and will not) install a banking app on my phone, so I'm not sure if it would work if the phone doesn't pass the attestation (e.g., Play Integrity on Android). I wanted to install the app in an AOSP VM, but no bank would even send me the apk file - they all want me to download it from Google for some reason.

Another option was to pay for a hardware device from a third-party company.

I was lucky that one bank still uses SMS 2FA. It's weaker than TOTP (depending on your threat model, I guess), but I prefer it.

My other option is either to:

* have a smartphone;

* have an "approved" OS from an American company;

* have an account with said American company so I can download the app from the company's repository;

* run closed source software on my smartphone.

or to

* pay for a USB device from a third-party company;

* that barely works with Linux;

* that requires a closed source program to run;

* that doesn't work with VMs and troubleshooting was a pain (I tried).

What I want is to use TOTP. I would actually store the secret on another device, as I'm not opposed to the idea of 2FA in general. And I would be fine if my money were drained as a result of me being hacked. If I had millions in my account, I could just use a separate computer only for the banking, but still a computer I chose.

Online banking (a superset of "mobile" banking) is very important for a person to have in order to participate in society. The ability to choose what hardware and software to use is also very important. The ability to not associate oneself with third-party companies, to accept their ToS and to pay them money is also very important. Therefore, I think those things should be my rights. I'm not complaining about a gym or a pizza place requiring a mobile app here, after all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_customer_authentication

bgbntty2··on There Is No Future for Online Safety Without Privacy and Security
> Now, in the current government up to the challenge of doing this, and not fucking it up? Yeeesh, probably not. You got me there. But one can dream…

The question should be about whether any future government would be up to the challenge of not fucking it up, as the system would stay in place and only grow in size. That's why privacy-invading infrastructure like this should be kept to a minimum.

bgbntty2··on NYC Spends $200 Million on Cell Service for School Chromebooks
That can be easily automated, and has been in a variety of ways. Just plug a USB or an Ethernet port, press 1-2 keys and done. The sysadmins won't have to go through a normal install wizard.
bgbntty2··on NYC Spends $200 Million on Cell Service for School Chromebooks
I don't think Chromebooks are good computers for kids to learn on. They may learn how to use a browser and a relatively-closed ecosystem of dumbed down apps, but they won't learn working with a real OS, much less tinkering or experimenting with it. What's wrong with normal laptops running a Linux distro? You can always reinstall if the kid messes with the OS too much.

What is the reason given for Chromebooks being used so much in US schools? Is it just Google having a good sales team?

bgbntty2··on Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
> and pay for postage either online or via an app

No cash?

bgbntty2··on Backing up Spotify
How does it compare to rutracker, especially for electrnic music? I've never used what.CD and rutracker seems to have lots of high quality music.
bgbntty2··on TP-Link Tapo C200: Hardcoded Keys, Buffer Overflows and Privacy
Do you think the S3 bucket with the firmware will be available for the foreseeable future? If not could someone archive it somewhere? Maybe make a torrent out if it? My network is very slow and I estimated it's about 990 GiB of data (by summing the column with the bytes in the ls output the author linked). It might be useful to have it as a resource in the future for a variety of reasons.
bgbntty2··on Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class
I read non-fiction all the time. HN and reddit comments, news articles, Wikipedia articles, books, research papers. My ADHD doesn't help, but doesn't prevent me from finishing 300-page books that are actually interesting. I have yet to find a fiction book that's not full of fluff.

I've read a couple of scripts for movies and TV, and they're, by far, much better than fiction books for me. Just more condensed, more to-the-point.

That's not to say that I admit I can't finish (or even start) a fiction book now. They're ruined for me. But I don't care.

bgbntty2··on Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class
Yes! Art that's taught in school and that is "required" to know if you want to appear intelligent or fancy is just what GP posted.

But art is also:

* electronic music (if you're not aware, it's not just repetitive dum-dum-dum for 8 minutes, although I enjoy that style, as well);

* rap (it's not just guns, drugs and mysoginy);

* all the other music genres, of course, but I gave electronic music and rap as examples because they're usually treated badly by people who're not familiar with them;

* games (I've been emotionally moved by many flash games, let alone new immersive games);

* movies, series - live action or western animation or anime.

Yet, in school we either learned about classical composers, or about regional composers. Only once, around 10th grade, we had a cool music teacher who played other genres for us - Fat Boy Slim, random metal groups, even a few pretty out-there experimental things. Much better than learning about some composer who lived 50 years ago just because he is from the same country as you.

Same for paintings and similar art. What good does it do a 7th grader to look at Picasso? The context matters, but for people who don't care about such art, it's useless. I won't feel better if I can "intelligently" discuss the art scene in $nation in $year. I have, later in life, read interesting articles that actually mix politics and life in general with the art that was "allowed" to flourish. Like art in Soviet Russia. But that context, if it was given at all, didn't mean anything to a 7th grader, especially if they didn't learn about Soviet Russia in history before the art class. In my experience my education was all over the place.

bgbntty2··on What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?
> it can feel as good to give a kindness as to receive one

True - I love giving gifts and helping people more than receiving them or getting help. But it's still awkward/uncomfortable to receive help.

> her mom was embarrassed and then out-did me

Out-did you how? Did she buy better shoes for the kid? Or did she give you a gift?

bgbntty2··on Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo
The number would be most of the people who use the keyboard shortcuts && who use 2 or more layouts && who don't want to change languages to search for something.

It's just muscle memory for me.

CTRL+T -> x <search_term> -> ENTER

Most often I enter <search_term> with CTRL+V, so the sequence is:

CTRL+T -> x CTRL+V -> ENTER

Nowhere in that sequence is the keyboard layout important (if you don't write anything, but just paste).

Just like CTRL+T works even if you're not writing in a layout where the "T" key is mapped to the letter "T", so should "x" work no matter what it's mapped to.

bgbntty2··on An off-grid, flat-packable washing machine
> doesn't offer any programs that soak for a noticable length of time

Again, wouldn't it be great if we could program the washing machine? A display and a couple of buttons would be enough.

Something like:

Menu ->

New program ->

(automatically assigns it a number, e.g., "14"; no need for fancy names and a keyboard, just write it down) ->

Enter first cycle ->

(gives you options like "let it soak", "rotate", "dispense soap", "remove water" or whatever) ->

(gives you sub-options like temperature, RPM) ->

Enter second cycle ->

(and so on).

I don't know much about washing machines, but it seems doable.

bgbntty2··on An off-grid, flat-packable washing machine
Thanks! I forgot about the unbalancing.

I wish the open source washing machine projects actually took off. From what I remember they were created mostly to help poorer nations, which is a good goal. I've had to hand wash in the past and it was awful. So slow, boring and annoying. And you either have to wring by hand, which ruined several underpants I had, or you have to let the clothes dry naturally, which I didn't try. The hand washing videos say to lay the clothes on a towel, but I didn't have a whole free room to lay down all the clothes, so I wrung them.

bgbntty2··on An off-grid, flat-packable washing machine
Why separate laundry? I've tried it in the past, but don't do it anymore. Same result. The stains that can be cleaned get cleaned. The stains that would persist, persist. The only difference is the temperature setting.

As for separating colors - in my life I've had a piece of clothing stain other clothes 2 or 3 times. Once I put some white shirts and they came out pink because of another red shirt. Funny thing is, the pink was very uniform, so it looked as if the shirts were originally pink.

If my washing machine breaks, I'll get a second hand one. If I get a brand new washing machine, it will have to have a manual mode where I can set the desired program manually. For example, what is "towel setting"? If I can't see and modify the setting (e.g., A temperature for B minutes at C RPM, then D temp for E min for F RPM, etc.), I wouldn't use it.

bgbntty2··on Ask HN: Is There a Shell Revival?
I'd make sure the scripts work with edge cases like unexpected characters in file names (new lines and so on), especially if you don't control the names yourself. Maybe prompt the AI to do some tests if that's possible?

And keep backups. Not because you're using AI, necessarily. And not because you're using shell scripts. But just in case.

The "bubble" part doesn't concern you. If it works for you, it works for you. Whether or not it's a "bubble" is more of an economic issue at a larger scale.

bgbntty2··on Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo
I use this a lot, but the problem with this, that still hasn't been fixed after all these years, is if you have 2 or more keyboard layouts, you can't make more than one bookmark pointing to the same URL with different search prefixes.

So if, for example, you wanted to make

> x <search_term>

and

> y <search_term>

both work the same, x and y being letters from 2 different alphabets but mapped to the same keys, you couldn't, without some JavaScript. If you just added those 2 keywords, even if you manually edited or created your bookmarks, one bookmark would override the other and the other would appear empty with no keyword.

The workaround I found was using a bookmark with this code in it (instead of the usual URL):

javascript:(function(){var keywords="%s";var mainURL="https://<URL>/";var searchURL="https://<URL>/<params>-"+keywords;if(keywords==""||keywords=="%"+"s"){window.location=mainURL}else{window.location=searchURL}})();

Where https://<URL>/<params> is something like https://example.org/search/q-.

It's slower and sometimes doesn't work if you type "y" and then the query too fast, especially if you're pasting the query. So sometimes it doesn't work and searches with the browser's default search engine for "y <query>".

bgbntty2··on Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class
I should've used "archaic" instead of "outdated". As in, "incomprehensible to someone speaking proper modern $language". Without a dictionary, a normal student couldn't understand what was being said in many sentences throughout the book. Some books actually had a dictionary in the end, but not for all the archaic words and phrases.
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