Hacker News: ChuckMcM

New comment by ChuckMcM in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"

ChuckMcM — Sun, 10 May 2026 20:00:10 +0000

+1 to this. I had a long conversation with a local shop that went to only ordering online or through an enslaved ipad on a pedestal at the entrance. I explained to them that I wasn't going to use their app or web page online and the iPad at the door has people trying to figure it out so orders take longer, and the combination means I just won't eat there any more.

New comment by ChuckMcM in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"

ChuckMcM — Sun, 10 May 2026 17:54:03 +0000

This is a really good thread on why this technology is becoming a problem for "open" anything. The argument "we can create our own separate web" is fine until all of your services are behind the web that locks you into owning a Google approved or Apple approved mobile device.

Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

ChuckMcM — Sun, 10 May 2026 17:54:02 +0000

Article URL: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116550899908879585

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48086190

Points: 2161

# Comments: 752

New comment by ChuckMcM in "IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields"

ChuckMcM — Tue, 05 May 2026 19:14:00 +0000

Do you remember what the official definition was? I admit I was working at an internship in FEIS (Field Engineering Information Services) in Colorado and people with that title would occasionally yo-yo in to a meeting make some comment that didn't apply and then yo-yo out again. None of the engineers in the organization had anything but disdain for them. If you were late 80's, I was interning in the late 70's so its entirely possible that they restructured the job responsibilities somewhat. But again I'd really love to see what was the official job description from the time.

New comment by ChuckMcM in "IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields"

ChuckMcM — Tue, 05 May 2026 18:15:24 +0000

Having worked at IBM, I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. But that is just a guess.

In the 80's IBM had a whole class of high level technical people called "Systems Engineers" whose entire job description was to opine on the merits of any given system. Not write systems, not debug them, and certainly not to explain them, it was simply to opine "you're doing it wrong."

New comment by ChuckMcM in "Feds Fine Durham Energy Efficiency Co $722M"

ChuckMcM — Mon, 04 May 2026 05:32:22 +0000

This is a wild story about creating a business that buys and sells not using electricity. I jokingly suggested you could build an 'energy consumption facility' which was just a big resistor connected to ground (which is all an unprofitable bitcoin mining rig is) and then get paid for not using it.

The original source for this was Matt Levine over at Bloomberg. His take is also quite good: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-04-30/sel...

Feds Fine Durham Energy Efficiency Co $722M

ChuckMcM — Mon, 04 May 2026 05:32:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theassemblync.com/news/business/american-efficient-ferc-durham-fine/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48004992

Points: 31

# Comments: 17

New comment by ChuckMcM in "Maladaptive Frugality"

ChuckMcM — Fri, 01 May 2026 18:40:16 +0000

May I suggest you read, "Scarcity: Why having too little means so much" (https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much-ebo...) it is a really interesting book which explores maladaptive frugality. We often talk about money and how people don't have enough, but these principles apply to any resource, in my own case I found cases where 'never having enough time' would push me to make bad choices about how I spent time. The author is talking about spending money but consider the adage "If its worth doing over then its worth doing right the first time."

New comment by ChuckMcM in "Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores"

ChuckMcM — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 23:19:06 +0000

Its a much bigger problem on things like Amazon. My expectation is that Amazon would come under the provisions of this law if the buyer was in Maryland. One the most annoying things about Amazon is looking at different prices using a browser with no history and a VPN putting you in a different zip code, than the same product on your browser where they can see where you are coming from and know who you are.

New comment by ChuckMcM in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

ChuckMcM — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:40:06 +0000

So glad to see someone doing this. I like to believe that the Ukrainians will also be able to export their "dumb" tractors once the war is resolved. I had lunch with a friend of mine who retired from the VC business and he asked me what kind of company I would start if I could start one right now. I told him probably a "dumb printer" / "dumb TV" company with a fully open designs. If the rejection of the "trade your privacy for cheap products" push back is actually widespread (instead of anecdotal) then such a company would do well I believe.

New comment by ChuckMcM in "Two Motorola Transistors Became the Default NPNs"

ChuckMcM — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:27:50 +0000

This is an interesting article on how open licensing can help ensure viability long after the original designer has left the game.

How Motorola’s 2N2222 and 2N3904 transistors became the default NPNs

ChuckMcM — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:27:49 +0000

Article URL: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-two-motorola-transistors-became-the-worlds-default-npns/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47810211

Points: 92

# Comments: 40

New comment by ChuckMcM in "Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight"

ChuckMcM — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 03:10:52 +0000

There is a very fine line between dumb and provacative.

I'm kind of curious how long it will be before people start publishing copyrighted works on the TrumpCoin block chain. :-)

New comment by ChuckMcM in "Someone bought 30 WordPress plugins and planted a backdoor in all of them"

ChuckMcM — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:56:30 +0000

I don't think companies appreciated just how much they gave up when they outsourced "IT".

New comment by ChuckMcM in "How long-distance couples use digital games to facilitate intimacy (2025)"

ChuckMcM — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:14:20 +0000

I know several people who have met online like this. I'd concur with the authors that working together to achieve an objective is kind of table stakes for an actual relationship. I've always felt that meeting someone in class and working together on homework and what not was something like that. But the key for me is that when you work with someone on a project you get a better understanding of how they approach things and how their values stack up.

Value stacks are something I heard about in a "Marriage and Family" class in college where the professor discussed that if you value say "economy" more than "time", you spend a lot of time to save a few cents, but if you reverse that stack order your spend extra cents to avoid spending the time. If the person you're dating has a very different stack than you do, it will be a source of problems going forward and doesn't suggest you'll have a successful marriage.

Playing video games together should certainly be a way to get a handle on how someone's values stack up relative to yours.

New comment by ChuckMcM in "DIY Soft Drinks"

ChuckMcM — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:04:12 +0000

If I could figure out diet dr. pepper this could be life changing :-)

New comment by ChuckMcM in "New Washington state law bans noncompete agreements"

ChuckMcM — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:27:12 +0000

Yes. At the time, non-compete agreements were legal (and commonplace) in Massachusetts. I haven't followed the Boston tech news for a decade so they may have changed that. But I had this exact conversation with Senator Ed Markey who was a congressman at the time. He was in the Bay Area and I was one of the people who were invited to a dinner he held on "Technology and Innovation."

New comment by ChuckMcM in "New Washington state law bans noncompete agreements"

ChuckMcM — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:57:20 +0000

If you had asked me in 1995 what was the one thing[1] that Boston could change in order to compete with Silicon Valley I would have told you "Make non-compete agreements illegal" Companies in the Bay Area whined about it all the time but it kept the ecosystem vibrant and a lot of technology exists because of that. In the late 90's early '00s a big reason for a lot of 'high profile' people quitting their cushy job and setting out in a startup was because 'management' wouldn't allow them to move forward on an idea that they felt would "disrupt our own business." Those same people could quit, create a start up, and make that idea real anyway. So this is excellent progress for Washington State. I wonder how many ex-Microsoft employees this effects.

[1] I vacillated between this and California law giving ownership of what you worked on in your own time on your own equipment yours, except the latter was pretty effectively neutered by big corps defining their businesses more vaguely.

New comment by ChuckMcM in "My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix"

ChuckMcM — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 21:16:46 +0000

> What is the probability of those things failing during the time you have the MacBook?

and

> ... you can pay them $50-150/year (depending on model) to take that risk.

These things are related, Apple knows what the failure rate in the field for their hardware is, and they "price in" that failure rate into their AppleCare costs. On my iPad pro, that's $90/year.

That said, it is entirely a 'bet' on your part as to whether or not you're in a position to cover costs of repair/replacement in the event of damage. That depends on a lots of factors and includes how much you can tolerate not having the equipment for a while, Etc.

New comment by ChuckMcM in "My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix"

ChuckMcM — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 20:36:58 +0000

> Framework Laptop is more expensive than a Macbook Air with all around worse hardware.

Is it though? I'd agree the hardware is less capable but if your Macbook anything is really just one 'top case' repair away from being more expensive. RAM failure is 'motherboard replace', the display? it is similarly expensive to replace.

So I would agree that it is more expensive to purchase a Framework laptop than a Macbook laptop, but also feel it is more expensive to own a Macbook laptop than a Framework laptop. Also I just replaced the screen on my FW13 not because it was broken but because they have one with 4x the pixels on it now. That's not something I could have done with the Macbook.