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tikkabhuna

758 karma · joined August 22, 2017

London based software developer working in Finance
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tikkabhuna··on An agent used DNS to reach an external chatbot
Regulations need to be created for LLM providers immediately. Make them liable for any illegal actions that the LLM performs. Only then will they become more responsible for their actions. How many more stories like this are we going to read before something catastrophic happens?
tikkabhuna··on Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub
Really? I've been very happy with how easy GitLab Runners are to manage. We were running 20,000 jobs a week on 6 bare metal boxes and we had tons of spare capacity. Simple Ansible script to deploy the runner and register it. Tags for t-shirt sizes to set the amount of CPU/memory allocated to each job container.

Maybe running on Kubernetes or some autoscaling solution is more painful.

tikkabhuna··on Fastmail offers EU data region
Isn't it a step in that direction? The first data centre in Europe shows a commitment and it will likely be easier to do the next data centre(s).
tikkabhuna··on LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps
I share your disappointment. I just want a screen with a tuner. If I want any “apps”, I’ll pair it with another device which will probably be an Apple TV.

I’m starting to wonder if a monitor and a soundbar with an external tuner is possible.

tikkabhuna··on British Steel taken into public ownership to protect 'vital' UK supply
Do you have that the wrong way round? In the UK, you go to bbc.co.uk (and bbc.com redirects to bbc.co.uk). From memory, in the US you get pushed to bbc.com.
tikkabhuna··on European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS
Doesn't the "how to implement" determine whether to implement it? A poor implementation shouldn't be done, but a good implementation could make it simpler for companies to verify the ages of users, limit information passed to companies, offer a quality of life improvement for users.
tikkabhuna··on European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS
Why would an age verification app need to know your ethnicity/religion?

Governments likely already know your name, age, place of birth, so having an app with a standard API for verifying users isn't giving the government additional data.

tikkabhuna··on It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
I think that's on you. I'd expect it to be on me. If I bought another physical product (a bike, football, scissors, knives), I'd expect to buy a replacement if I couldn't fix it.

That's definitely a perk of digital media.

And for the record, I'm not against digital media. There are a ton of benefits. I think there just needs to be better communication of the expectations between producer and consumers. Reading this thread and seeing that California requires the use of "License" instead of "Buy" is a good example of emphasising the difference between paying for digital media and physical media.

tikkabhuna··on It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
Lots of leaseholds now start at 999 years.

It’s a weird system. The previous and current governments have been looking to modernise it.

tikkabhuna··on It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
You can pay for services and you may use the term “buy”, but it is clear you’re receiving a service, and a service in its nature is temporary.

Buy a night in a hotel, dinner in a restaurant, haircut, shoe shine. These are all services.

Buying of digital services like games, films, and music is an evolution of buying dvds, cds or records. There is an expectation that you now own something. I can dig out my dad’s old records and play them and pass them onto my children.

If media companies want to sell a license that has an expiry date, that’s fine, but it has to be explicitly communicated. Consumers have to be well informed about what they’re purchasing.

tikkabhuna··on Dependencies should be fetched directly from VCS
There’s no perfect solution here. Publishing to a separate registry can survive a Git repo rename, migration or deletion. Locking into a Git host seems undesirable. By separating VCS and registry they can offer different feature sets. There’s also nothing stopping someone from publishing to multiple registries.
tikkabhuna··on Podman v6.0.0
Yes! It put me off Podman for years. I do now think it has some clever ideas and if you’re running RHEL it’s a no brainer, but they should be more upfront that you will have to adapt. Especially if you’re moving from rootful docker to rootless Podman.
tikkabhuna··on Lines of code got a better publicist
The word “slop” was a good choice to talk about the mass of code generated by AI. I think it resonates with non-tech people and it conveys disgust. It’s clear that we should avoid slop.

“Technical debt” never hooked management in the same way and we have found it hard to convince them that it needs to be addressed. Debt in general is something that can be a problem, but doesn’t need to be avoided or addressed until it is a problem so the can is kicked down the road.

tikkabhuna··on AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere
Neither the automobile nor a gun can operate without a human. You could say “bull runs amok in a market” after it was released intentionally.
tikkabhuna··on Job: Head of Stonehenge
Is that including or excluding bank holidays? In the UK, 25 days excluding the 8 bank holidays is pretty standard.
tikkabhuna··on Apple WWDC 2026
Is the end state that countries regulate app stores and approve apps? Apple has legit concerns. The majority of users would happily sell their own data for some tiny benefit. However, like you say, Apple has a perceived or real conflict of interest. Are Apple being benevolent or acting in their own interests?
tikkabhuna··on Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests
In the UK we have that scenario with people turning on kettles during breaks in TV programs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

tikkabhuna··on India's surprise baby bust
I don’t think anyone is going to be working at the hospital if they have to start dedicating their time to survival?
tikkabhuna··on India's surprise baby bust
There is a huge gap between capitalism and communism.

Just like how pure communism doesn’t work, neither does pure capitalism.

tikkabhuna··on Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
Yeah, this has been my experience too. I don't know how much easier it could be.
tikkabhuna··on Why is it called Kent House?
It feels rather odd to see a local place on HN. On a tangent, Diamond Geezer posted about their 15,000,000th visitor[1]. HN came in 4th for referrals and was noted “Hacker News are an American aggregator portal who've only sent people here a dozen times but in such huge numbers that they're fourth”.

[1] https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2026/05/fifteen-million.h...

tikkabhuna··on I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left
As someone who has had to deal with vendor management at a financial services company, I couldn't agree more.

We were going through a process to make vendor management more standardised and it reached a point where we couldn't even consider adding new vendors.

Adding new services to an existing vendor had minimal paperwork and approvals. As long as you had budget for it, you're unlikely to get any push back.

New vendors required tons of back and forth with legal. Infosec reviews. Additional costboards. Having to justify the vendor to multiple groups. Working out how you get them onboarded into the finance system. Once they're onboarded, we would then have additional paperwork to do periodic reviews to rate the vendor and make sure they're not a critical dependency that will bite us in the ass.

I've only worked with AWS and GCP, but they also throw training and credits at us, too. This could be personalised 2-day classroom events just for our company. There's a huge amount of perceived value for funnelling money through a cloud provider.

tikkabhuna··on Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
The problem is that destruction isn't contained to the company. If an AI agent exposes all company data and that includes PII or health information, that could have an impact on a large number of people.
tikkabhuna··on An update on recent Claude Code quality reports
I’m coming at this as a complete Claude amateur, but caching for any other service is an optimisation for the company and transparent for the user. I don’t think I’ve ever used a service and thought “oh there’s a cache miss. Gotta be careful”.

I completely agree that it’s infeasible for them to cache for long periods of time, but they need to surface that information in the tools so that we can make informed decisions.

tikkabhuna··on Framework Laptop 13 Pro
I was looking into hibernation on my Framework 13 with Ubuntu. Debian doesn't support it with SecureBoot enabled. Now you might say "just disable SecureBoot", but that is a whole new concept to understand.

I've found suspend performance has improved since upgrading to a kernel that supports the AMD 7640U NPU cores. I have no concrete evidence of that though.

I'm happy to accept poorer sleep performance to have a repairable laptop and Linux OSS (with good support), but I wouldn't say its problem free.

tikkabhuna··on Molotov cocktail is hurled at home of Sam Altman
Billionaires aren’t becoming billionaires from income. It’s increased stock valuations that create that level of wealth.

I constantly see posts focused on high earners already paying tons of tax. They do, but this should reinforce the point that the ultra wealthy should be paying more tax. People aren’t saying the guy on £500k should pay more, they’re saying the guy with £100m in assets should be.

tikkabhuna··on Number of UK workers on zero-hours contracts hits record high ahead of crackdown
Zero our contracts is used far beyond the "Uber"-style gig work where people can choose when they want to work. Often its used in for any sort of minimum wage job where there is a significant imbalance where employers have the power to offer as little/much work as they want and penalise workers who can't/won't take those shifts.
tikkabhuna··on The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
Yep. GitHub wrote a blog post on removing their cookie banner years ago.

https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/no-cookie-for...

tikkabhuna··on Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
Bear in mind that the UK has a “national speed limit” of 60mph for much of the countryside. This is very much a limit, a maximum, and you’re expected to drive to the conditions of the road. If it’s perfect weather conditions and twisting roads not wide enough for 2 cars, you shouldn’t be driving at the speed limit.
tikkabhuna··on UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards
I’m pretty sure UK security services can link bank accounts to you already. Hell, credit score companies like Experian already do it.

This is beneficial for public services and companies that need to identify you. Having a single ID for a person is a huge improvement. As an example, when we got married, my wife was simultaneously both her maiden name and my surname. There is absolutely no link between passport, birth certificate, driving license, etc.

You have to go around to all these different organisations and have them update the details. They all have different requirements for updating the name.

Having a single consistent mechanism for referring to a person in systems seems hugely beneficial for both the organisation and the person.

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