<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: KingMachiavelli</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=KingMachiavelli</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:39:50 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=KingMachiavelli" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Apple broke an essential presentation feature of iPads"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Another stupid quirk is USB-C HDMI output sometimes outputs 4:3 mirroring of the iPad screen even when in a full screen video. If you reconnect and fiddle with pausing/playing the content while screen locked, you can “trick” it to use presentation mode at the screens native resolution.<p>Half the problem is flagship apps like HBO/Netflix don’t implement this correctly.<p>Oh and this is all different if you have a keyboard attachment because only then are you allowed to “extend” display which can use the screen’s native resolution.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:33:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50169812</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50169812</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50169812</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>While I disagree with lower property taxes and would advocate we switch to Land Value Taxes across the board.<p>I do agree that taxes in general should not be a fixed percentage that taxes people <i>more</i> just because valuations increased (be that land, property, tax).<p>We should instead have fixed taxation totals (pegged to local inflation) and just use property tax or land value taxes to establish the <i>relative</i> amount of tax between people/property.<p>If a housing shortage is causing increased costs for schools, local governments should say “Either vote for higher taxes to raise teacher wages or vote for denser housing so teachers can live here”. Instead taxes go up automatically, the money is spent on $X random shortfall.<p>People don’t care about cutting property taxes because local governments are historically and perceptually mismanaged so people assume that the roads and schools will decline regardless of higher or lower taxes.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 11 Oct 2026 01:10:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50038806</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50038806</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50038806</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Show HN: Bigwords.page – Turn any screen into a sign. The URL is the app"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Completely different architecture, but would be amazing if another device could control what message (or photo, embedded video) is displayed.<p>There's a huge industry around digital signage and I've always felt it could be replaced with a simple Chromium kiosk + auto-refreshed webpage content. There's really no need for expensive HDMI connections or custom video streams when we already have browsers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 18:57:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49997258</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49997258</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49997258</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That’s more like a therapeutic/occasional recreation dose and habitual users consume it multiple times a day.<p>A survey found that average daily consumption was 0.9g and median 0.35g.<p>92lb=41.73 kg = 41730g / 0.9g / 365 =127.032 average-user-years. Or basically a month’s supply for a small town.<p>Like most consumption, the top 10% easily account for >80% of total consumption.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 03 Oct 2026 22:41:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49948485</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49948485</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49948485</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Keys Not Included: recovering the signing keys for US driver's license barcodes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>All of this is nearly pointless unless the photo itself is in the barcode and also signed. You only need a leak of a few hundred real IDs to cover all of the identifiable characteristics (hair, eye, skin color, approx height and weight). Leak a few hundred thousand a year and now you can’t even flag leaked IDs without some false positives.<p>A fake photo plus a valid barcode will pass any current check right? Unless you still do a secondary proprietary photo lookup that I don’t think exists.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2026 03:59:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736235</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736235</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736235</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "AirPods 5"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Super annoyed they did not announce a new AirPods Pro or Apple TV. My NVIDIA Shield is getting a bit old (not really an issue unless I want to stream raw 90GB Blu-ray).<p>A bit strange for Apple to let fairly popular products just go so long without a refresh. Just the vision component of the new AirPods could have been delayed, not really a critical feature anyway.<p>Apple Watch seems to be getting pretty good, might finally switch away from Garmin if the Apple one is as durable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 20:32:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49633769</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49633769</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49633769</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Show HN: Copperhead – Hardware as Fast as Software"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Computationally what’s the difference between a human and an LLM besides scale and speed? Trained humans are still using heuristics and shortcuts. Just because these are subconscious and only possessed by talented, trained professionals doesn’t make the skill computationally special.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 08 Sep 2026 19:09:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49615235</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49615235</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49615235</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not sure why people are latching on to this. I'm 95% sure the AI agent was not "trained" on this intellectual property but rather the IP was just analyzed and it's usage and details were recorded to the AI agents memory (typically markdown/JSON summary of previous sessions).<p>The defense IMO is just trying to muddy the waters between "irreversible AI training that updates weights" and "AI learning by just storing secrets in text files".<p>Even in the 5% chance this AI model actually was fine-tuned or fully-trained (i.e the weights were updated), the employee did this while employed at Apple and used Apple IP as the training data. Even if the output is under fair-use (because it's transformative), (1) any IP created while employed during work duties almost always belongs to your employer and (2) the act of accessing Apple's IP would be (trade secret or regular) theft if done <i>outside</i> normal work duties.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2026 23:13:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49529571</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49529571</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49529571</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hmm, I'm using the CachyOS kernel but on NixOS. What CPU/GPU are you using?<p>I tried using the flatpak Chromium in case it was some NixOS build optimization oddities but didn't see much of a difference.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2026 22:13:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226379</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226379</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226379</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A more accurate title is can Intel (Linux/Windows) beat Apple?<p>If you don't want to run Windows, is there even a choice? My issue now with the non-Apple computers if you want to run Linux it's really hard to predict how awful Chromium/Firefox will be. My work Dell Laptop is only a 3 year old CPU with integrated GPU (and unused Nvidia GPU) but Chromium and Firefox are both slow as shit just loading pages like Slack and Outlook. Even resizing the browser windows seems 4-5x times slower than my M3 Macbook Air.<p>Maybe this is strictly a Linux issue but it hardly matters when the Windows ecosystem is pretty stagnant, full of junk-ware, and software development is much, much better on Linux/MacOS.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2026 20:30:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225610</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225610</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225610</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As much as I like to hate on larger cars. In reality, I use my SUV (3 row, Subaru Ascent) all the time for camping and outdoor activities (80% of weekends or so). I just took out the middle seats to build a full-size bed platform (75x45” or so).<p>My wife also drives a smaller Forester that we realize could have been an EV or hybrid. Although in CA, electricity is so expensive that it’s not much improvement over gas especially if you spend more on the car itself. Really, just a same model year but more fuel efficient sedan or one of those old 100-mile range EV cars is what you have to “downgrade” too.<p>Of course, it’s silly seeing all the oversized, sparkling clean massive trucks and SUVs on my commute while I’m driving my heavily scratched glorified minivan (since that’s what SUVs are now days).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 05 Aug 2026 06:33:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49179296</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49179296</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49179296</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "FDA authorized Zyn nicotine pouches without knowing what they were made of"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Don’t many medications and medical devices contain microplastics either on purpose (fillers) or un-avoidable (plasticizers in IV tubing). Unless the FDA has an existing microplastics policy, it would be weird to inconsistently apply it.<p>Lots of dental stuff like Invisalign or even regular braces involve keeping plastic and adhesives in the mouth for long periods of time. I think even some gum (non-nicotine or otherwise) contain plastics technically.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:55:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911454</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911454</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911454</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "CarPlay Is Additive"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In some states you no longer can interact with a phone at all unless mounted. Phone mounts kind of suck or you’ll be in a rental without your nice mount. A 15” screen is easier to read than a small phone bouncing on a mount.<p>If I’m spending $10K on something, I want the Android/iOS experience to be first-class instead of some shitty UI designed be people who I presume don’t drive cars.<p>Cars are otherwise fungible between brands. If one has CarPlay/Android Auto there is little reason to pick a brand that lacks support.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jul 2026 06:49:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48771711</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48771711</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48771711</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "The French are painting their windows with chalk to beat the heat"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Window units can be added to basically any existing home. And like you said roofs are an option. France could afford AC with their relatively cheap power but it’s just culturally and politically unpopular despite heat related deaths being extremely high and loss productivity it’s certainly more than the cost to retrofit.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:09:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48693654</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48693654</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48693654</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "I can haz smoller NixOS ISOs?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> build an image from scratch with the packages you want<p>Using what? Using NixOS to configure a system is orthogonal to the system actually running the Nix binary. Nix/Nixpkgs provide well maintained package derivations and module configuration for the largest amount of software of any ecosystem. IMO it's far simpler than Yocto or Buildroot or the dozen OCI container builder ecosystems that go in and out of favor.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 03:26:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48654729</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48654729</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48654729</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Err, the email list has like 13+ bad addresses? I get a lot of "Address not found" responses.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2026 23:34:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48653143</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48653143</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48653143</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Is it time for a new Embedded Linux build system?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Actually, quite an honest and in-depth review with many genuine good points about the state of Nix. If you genuinely need sub 1GB image sizes, you would have to reimplement many of the Nixpkgs conventions like glibc/systemd.<p>I’d still probably just implement this in Nix/Nixpkgs so I could leverage the rest of the ecosystem but that’s not trivial at all.<p>I wouldn’t even say Nix as a language is better than Starlark. The author is certainly well informed in the choices made.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:52:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649617</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649617</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649617</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Is it time for a new Embedded Linux build system?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My toolchain for both is managed by the Nix derivation wrappers. It’s trivial to set custom C/C++/Rust/Go/NodeJS flags. As long as I have <i>one</i> flexible build tool, I can customize it for both server and embedded.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:45:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649503</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649503</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649503</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Is it time for a new Embedded Linux build system?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>IMO the nixos-rebuild scripts are unnecessary and just obscures what’s being built.<p>build-vm is the same as building the configs “config.system.build.vm” attribute.<p>nixos-rebuild is fine for getting started but you end up needing to use the attribute path to do anything more complicated like CI caching or inspecting the drvPath.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:41:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649452</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649452</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649452</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by KingMachiavelli in "Is it time for a new Embedded Linux build system?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What do you mean by image? In Nix you instantiate a NixOS system and specify the architecture. There are a number of tools to build a disk image from a NixOS system.<p>$ my-arm-system = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
     system = "aarch64-linux";
     modules = [ ./configuration.nix ];
};<p>$ :b arm-system.config.system.build.images.iso</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2026 01:30:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48639010</link><dc:creator>KingMachiavelli</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48639010</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48639010</guid></item></channel></rss>