Hacker News: Freak_NL

New comment by Freak_NL in "Hobby CNC machining and resin casting (2015)"

Freak_NL — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 10:07:44 +0000

A CNC router is on my list of tools to figure out and own. Routing aluminium, wood, and things like HDPE and being able to make moulds for silicones and resin? Yes please. 3D printing on the other hand never appealed to me.

New comment by Freak_NL in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"

Freak_NL — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 10:00:57 +0000

Nope. They get special treatment; and that's fine.

New comment by Freak_NL in "The Joy of Numbered Streets"

Freak_NL — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 09:12:54 +0000

Sounds like a good name for renaming the President Donald J. Trump Boulevard leading up to Mar-A-Lago when the current bout of totalitarianism over there ends.

New comment by Freak_NL in "Closed Source AI = Neofeudalism"

Freak_NL — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 09:24:14 +0000

A brief glance at the other posts makes me feel that this is not a bad thing perhaps. That blog seems quite high on rant and low on substance.

New comment by Freak_NL in "Android Developer Verification"

Freak_NL — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 07:05:54 +0000

I am doing leatherworking as well as woodworking. No idea if it is possible to actually make money with this¹, but damned if I'm not giving it a go just to have skills in an area where AI is not a threat for the coming decade. At the very least these crafts allow me to make things which do not exist and cannot be purchased off the shelf.

1: I mean, it is, certainly. I'm just not sure if I can make money by making leather gear.

New comment by Freak_NL in "I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era"

Freak_NL — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:22:17 +0000

German uses both kinds depending on the style and writer's preference. French has the guillemets the other way around.

(That Wikipedia table shows that too by the way.)

New comment by Freak_NL in "I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era"

Freak_NL — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:12:28 +0000

I feel ya. I've never been accused of using an LLM, fortunately, but depending on the context I do use “smart quotes” (even in „Dutch” or »German«) and the em-dash obviously… (And that ellips fella there. It's just so simple to type with a compose key set up.)

New comment by Freak_NL in "I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era"

Freak_NL — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:08:39 +0000

There are a bunch of typos in there which jar a bit ('deterioted'), but I guess that makes sense for this specific article.

Personally, I would recommend them to simple use any old editor with spellchecking enabled. That suffices for most writing where you just want to keep your own voice. To me, the red crinkly line just means that I should edit that word myself. In the rare case where I'm stumped on the spelling I'll look at the suggested edit of course, but never as a matter of course.

New comment by Freak_NL in "Android’s new sideload settings will carry over to new devices"

Freak_NL — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 11:01:30 +0000

> Who banks that often that they really need to do that, outside of places like Sweden where cash is almost dead?

I often pay cash in physical stores, but when buying things online I (and every other Dutch person) use Ideal (Wero). That means authorising each payment via my bank, and that means either using my smartphone (GrapheneOS) with the bank's app, or using the bank provided OTP device with my debit card inserted.

Using my smartphone is, unfortunately, the easiest way. I hate both options for the fact that I need to fetch either my smartphone or my debit card though.

Banks want their stupid app because it is the easiest way to keep some client-side secret secure in a nearly fool-proof manner. I can do everything I want in any browser, but authorisation and authentication happens by means of that app, so even just logging in means scanning a QR code with the app, and then continuing in the browser of any device I want.

I think most people use bank several times a week at the very least. Some do it constantly and put debit cards on their smartphones and concentrate everything financial on that single device, but even folk who keep ready amounts of cash on hand and don't buy things online too often bank several times a month, even if just to pay taxes and keep an eye on their finances.

New comment by Freak_NL in "Shipment of KitKat bars stolen en route from Italy to Poland"

Freak_NL — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 07:37:05 +0000

Why not? It doesn't make much sense for Nestlé to have plants in every EU country.

New comment by Freak_NL in "We broke 92% of SHA-256 – you should start to migrate from it"

Freak_NL — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 14:00:25 +0000

[flagged]

New comment by Freak_NL in "The Interactive Lost Place Map"

Freak_NL — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 07:18:35 +0000

I've checked a few locations I know, and it looks like this project imported points from various sources, (locations check out) but they completely left out the metadata.

This project looks useless. No curation (left as an exercise for the viewer I guess), crappy navigation (the OpenStreetMap tile server is not being called correctly leading to blocked tiles), and just… an aggregate of everything they could get their hands on.

New comment by Freak_NL in "We broke 92% of SHA-256 – you should start to migrate from it"

Freak_NL — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:06:24 +0000

Why omit the name of the leading cryptographer in the field?

New comment by Freak_NL in "Desk for people who work at home with a cat"

Freak_NL — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:57:36 +0000

> There’s another cat space on the underside of the desk surface, in the normally unutilized space in front of your knees when you’re sitting.

Yeah… If you're of a typical Japanese length. My knees appreciate all the space they can get, and that very much includes the bit of 'unused space' where a cat can go in the article.

(Living in Japan as a student really made me feel like a two metre tall giant at times. Classroom desks at Japanese universities were universally too small.)

New comment by Freak_NL in "Chicago artist creates tourism posters for city's neighborhoods"

Freak_NL — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 08:41:30 +0000

Or just get randomly selected by an ICE goon to hit their target for their bonus and get put in some processing facility for a few weeks.

I guess this is for our own protection.

New comment by Freak_NL in "Marriage over, €100k down; AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion"

Freak_NL — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:34:44 +0000

Selling won't be a problem in the current housing market in Amsterdam. Getting somewhere new to live on the other hand…

New comment by Freak_NL in "AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion"

Freak_NL — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:31:03 +0000

The part where he believed the protagonist from his own books uploaded to ChatGPT had become sentient and that building an app based on that would make sense didn't strike you as eccentric at the very least? Or the birthday party where he couldn't hold a single conversation because his wife asked him not to talk about AI for a change?

Your last paragraph basically describes what the article writes about him.

New comment by Freak_NL in "End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance"

Freak_NL — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:59:30 +0000

Did that vote pass with a difference of one single vote? Tight squeeze there.

New comment by Freak_NL in "GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone without requiring personal information"

Freak_NL — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:02:03 +0000

Better governance, hopefully:

https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/

https://lwn.net/Articles/1024387/

New comment by Freak_NL in "GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone without requiring personal information"

Freak_NL — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:01:22 +0000

A note on OrganicMaps: at present you are better off using the fork CoMaps. OrganicMaps is tainted by governance issues and a lack of financial transparency:

https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/