HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

ohgr

723 karma · joined March 2, 2025

submissionscomments
ohgr··on The language brain matters more for learning programming than the math brain
As a mathematician by trade, the math brain is a language brain. Mathematics is about abstract communication rather than mechanics.

Oh wait neuroscientists, explains it all. A statisticians favourite target for being unable to interpret data correctly.

ohgr··on Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup
Install LTSC: https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links

Then use massgrave hwid activator.

ohgr··on Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US
390 million users. Say 10% on iOS. 39 million users. 18Gb on iOS last time

Yeah app distribution costs something. Finger in the air 10's of petabytes...

ohgr··on Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US
Fortnite - sit in lobby for 80% of the time and buy shit?

Tim just wants all of his cut.

And wants Apple to pay his app distribution costs...

There's no good guys anywhere in this.

ohgr··on Zoho halts $700M semiconductor plan
I expect the thinking went:

build chip plant, ???, profit!

ohgr··on A new sign that AI is competing with college grads?
AI is only killing jobs because people are killing jobs and blaming it on AI.
ohgr··on Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup
So couple of issues there. Never upgrade windows. Fresh install only. Never had a good day upgrading it.

Secondly, there isn't always a solution in Linux. I've got one now where something is utterly broken and it's 5 layers of maintainers down and no one gives a shit.

ohgr··on Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup
My Linux desktop experience...

I started with Linux installing it from floppy disks in about 1996.

In 1995, I was back on Windows 95 within a week because I needed to get something done.

In 2000, I was back on Windows 2000 within a week because I needed to get something done.

In 2005, I was back on Windows XP within a week because I needed to get something done.

In 2012, I was back on Windows 7 within a week because I needed to get something done.

In 2015, I was back on macOS within a week because I needed to get something done.

In 2020, I worked out I'm wasting my time on this.

I watch my colleagues and friend struggling with it. Lots of small papercuts. Lots of weirdness. Lots of regressions. Plus many years of server-side experience says to me "I should probably just use FreeBSD" in that space.

ohgr··on Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup
No Linux desktop delivers what the user wants, needs or expect. Only what the developers think they need and find interesting to fix. It's more fun reinventing wheels badly than fixing shit generally. Some people are lucky this aligns with their needs, but for most it doesn't. It's jarring and unproductive.

It needs corporate (or government!) drive behind it or that won't change. I'm not talking about Redhat either who appears to just be a holding pen for the above.

ohgr··on Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup
It works fine on airgapped networks with Ohook https://massgrave.dev/ohook

Office doesn't have to talk to the internet at all other than periodic license checks.

I won't run it without Ohook, even though I have a license, because the cloud shit has screwed me a couple of times.

ohgr··on Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup
There are considerable formatting issues when you're working collaboratively on documents with other people who use MS office when you are using MS office too.

We gave up for large documents, assigned an editor and just send them chunks of text.

ohgr··on Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup
It goes really fast if you turn off the connected experiences like linked in, the AI crap, the splash screen, all the cloud shit and crack it with massgrave.

Like office 97 speed.

There's your problem.

ohgr··on All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of their funding
I fail to see how that is different to the situation today?

At least with less money they'll be able to fuck everything up slower.

ohgr··on "AI-first" is the new Return To Office
Got one of them. I ignore him most of the time. This has generated more ROI than his initiatives would have. Evidenced by the teams who do them generating a loss every fucking time.

His nickname, which he wasn't worked out, is the first half of a sexual lubricant brand because he's such a wanker.

ohgr··on Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
They did this at my kids school. Then issued them all with iPads which half the software they need to use doesn’t work properly on iPad size devices.

Total fuck up.

ohgr··on Ask HN: Is there hope for Microsoft 365 support?
That's how big email works these days. Fucking sucks but it is.

I stopped running my own stuff after Yahoo decided it didn't like me one afternoon with no recourse.

ohgr··on Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?
As much as I'd like a machine like that, my 5 year old random Lenovo 10500 desktop is probably more useful as a daily driver machine than an older workstation class machine at the sacrifice of no ECC RAM. I bought it when it was 3 years old and will use it for 4 years then get rid of it before it hits the tail end, the power supply dies or something else goes wrong. You avoid all the weird problems, the depreciation, the energy costs running like that. And you gain things like relatively competent NVMe slots, USB-C and other luxuries. And the single core performance is better than Xeons of the era and earlier.

win11 ltsc works perfectly on it. With a solid background :D

ohgr··on Carnegie Mellon staffed a fake company with AI agents. It was a total disaster
Waiting for the proponent default responses:

1. Next model will solve these problems.

2. Humans would have done worse.

3. Something something prompt engineering something something.

ohgr··on U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent
Yeah similar. My company is US and have banned all travel to US. Said we can do stuff over Teams instead.
ohgr··on U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent
That's completely fair.
ohgr··on U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent
Never attribute to malice what cannot be adequately explained by stupidity. And he is one stupid fuck.
ohgr··on U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent
Indeed. No data is safe or secure in such environments.

This has become an issue big enough that the US company I work for is actually removing data from US cloud providers to make it harder to get at. The European divisions have started data sovereignty projects because it's now a principal risk.

I'm out of the cloud as well.

ohgr··on U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent
I would leave that in the hands of professionals though.

Which is evidentially not this lot. Not even remotely.

ohgr··on U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent
Aktion T4 next? This is a dark dark road.

I suspect the US will become like Germany in the next few decades where the paranoia about handing any data over is justifiably high. I hope this burns the unethical side of the tech industry to the ground. It deserves it.

ohgr··on University of Waterloo withholds coding contest results over suspected AI use
As a notorious bastard I used to run C# code tests by giving someone a flattened windows 7 with the .net SDK installed and nothing else. Also no network connection. How the potential engineer dealt with it was interesting.

We had a couple of people shrug it off and do it in notepad and csc quite happily. They were of course hired.

ohgr··on ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation
I think a lot of that attitude is self-justification to proceed as they intend without moral compass. Personally I can't do that. Everything we do has a consequence.

I've got a copy of Careless People sitting in front of me I'm scared to read at the moment.

ohgr··on ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation
I had a friend until recently. Really nice guy. Always looking out for people. Never said a bad word. In the last couple of years he turned into a nasty piece of work jumping on every politicised story out there and treating it as gospel. He alienated everyone around him.

It turns out that some people don't have a mind of their own and are waiting for orders.

Here is no exception. Look at the foaming at the mouth praise of the second coming of Microsoft when Satya took over. And where we are now? Look at the hype as well - blockchain, crypto and AI now. Mindless people slithering all over everything.

In fact I find a lot of the people in the technology sector to either be entirely morally bankrupt or lack any kind of self or societal awareness of their speech of actions. It disgusts me. I've been on HN pretty much since day one but the accounts last perhaps 6 months before I tire of it.

I moved out of the tech-first industry about 10 years ago and into a position of tech as a tool not a reason for a business existing and there are better people here.

ohgr··on Australian who ordered radioactive materials walks away from court
That’s stupid as fuck as they still use mercury wetted relays to this day in some places.
ohgr··on ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation
I suspect it won’t come. The US embedded itself in everyone else’s business and is now withdrawing so we all have our own problems to deal with.
ohgr··on ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation
As my wise but now throughly dead German grandmother said:

”Do you think the nazis appeared out of thin air? No they were everywhere just waiting for someone to enable them with a label and an ideology.”

I suspect something analogous is happening here and it’s similarly not pretty. Hopefully it’ll get nipped in the bud quickly.

My fellow citizens scare me more than the government does.

Page 1 of 10Next →