Hacker News: MrDrMcCoy

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function"

MrDrMcCoy — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:29:58 +0000

Right, because "you can't use an unpopular OS if you want your full rights as a citizen, and access to those rights must be additionally subject to a foreign corporation's opinion of you" is totally acceptable. I would go so far as to say that a government requiring any particular technology or private service to be a functioning member of society is hostile to all citizens. If your OS vendor / phone carrier / ISP all close your accounts despite no illegal activity, and your government has no alternatives you can use for essential services, then your government has sold your citizenship.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Quad9 Enables DNS over HTTP/3 and DNS over QUIC"

MrDrMcCoy — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 20:17:59 +0000

I expect Mullvad will implement all this soon enough, and they do have adblocking with public endpoints.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Senators Tell Americans That VPN Use Might Subject Them to Domestic Surveillance"

MrDrMcCoy — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 20:15:01 +0000

If your origin is disguised by a public VPN, and you require TLS for the endpoints you connect to, what exactly are the agencies collecting,?

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard"

MrDrMcCoy — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:56:55 +0000

Well, they are, but that excuses nothing.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

MrDrMcCoy — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 04:53:58 +0000

The last two people I handed Linux to were not tech literate. I offered them tech support from the beginning. They have been happy users for well over a year now that have not once called me for help. The story for normie Linux use really is pretty good now.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

MrDrMcCoy — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 04:39:48 +0000

Why bother with a VM for Linux on the Acer? Just run it natively. There's almost nothing that actually requires Microsoft anymore, and you'll get better performance.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

MrDrMcCoy — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 04:29:15 +0000

What on earth are you referring to?

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Make macOS consistently bad unironically"

MrDrMcCoy — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 04:18:21 +0000

Change without further qualifier implies doing something equivalent or better by different means or with a different look. What people are observing is a specific kind of change: regression, where the experience of appearance or result of action are worsened or no longer an option at all. It's a trend I've noticed in Apple since the move to unibody.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains"

MrDrMcCoy — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:25:56 +0000

What about buying from a fellow Hacker News nerd? I'm willing to handle shipping a new unit for you, based in USA. :-)

I also have a used 1st-gen model, upgraded with hall-effect joysticks and a 2TB SSD with a glass screen protector that I am willing to part with. Apart from a few barely-visible scuffs on the plastic housing, it's in great condition. If you're interested, let me know how to get in touch!

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Intel Announces Arc Pro B70 and Arc Pro B65 GPUs"

MrDrMcCoy — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 22:35:13 +0000

You completely misunderstood the quoted remark you responded to. The desktop security features in MacOS that interfere with unblessed binaries and libraries loading is a huge pain in the ass, especially for headless server use.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Intel Announces Arc Pro B70 and Arc Pro B65 GPUs"

MrDrMcCoy — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 22:28:19 +0000

Even if you're fine with risers, that might not be enough. If the bridge lanes are PCIe Gen 3, as many consumer boards have, your Gen 5 card might not init. I extensively tested several motherboards to try and get my AM5 CPU talking to a triple Radeon AI Pro 9700 XT setup, and they absolutely refuse to come up on PCIe3. I was using dummy EDID plugs for them, so they think they have a display, ruling out that issue.

What I eventually had to do was buy a used Threadripper box to run those cards, because PCIe Gen 4 definitely works.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music"

MrDrMcCoy — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 22:44:16 +0000

What about 10 years, then compulsory licensing goes into effect for any remaining duration and renewal?

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music"

MrDrMcCoy — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 22:42:11 +0000

I'm a big proponent of compulsory licensing, which could certainly be limited to renewals so that creative control is still granted for some amount of time.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Apple Just Lost Me"

MrDrMcCoy — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:28:25 +0000

Oh, sorry, I misread your comment as sarcasm.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Apple Just Lost Me"

MrDrMcCoy — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:27:25 +0000

Nice, I've standardized on Debian/KDE for most of my devices. Honestly, I recommend switching the repos to Testing and, in your case, using the edge kernel from Armbian. You'll have a much more performant and stable desktop, in my opinion. Flatpaks from there when available, and you should be golden :)

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Apple Just Lost Me"

MrDrMcCoy — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:21:26 +0000

Because possible voted it to the top. You don't have to agree, but it helps to understand.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Apple Just Lost Me"

MrDrMcCoy — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:20:37 +0000

Linux is a pretty good choice these days, and requires you to sacrifice nothing in terms of functionality :)

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Apple Just Lost Me"

MrDrMcCoy — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:19:23 +0000

Author is going to Linux, which has really gotten smooth in the last few years. I've been able to hand it to tech illiterate friends and not once get a tech support call. Everything you might need has a working, polished implementation. Give it a try sometime :)

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Apple Just Lost Me"

MrDrMcCoy — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:12:33 +0000

The last straw for me was around 2009. I was in college minoring and interning in media production. Invested pretty heavily in Final Cut, which was long in the tooth, and hoping for better I/O in Macbooks to support better ingest. That was when Apple announced the following:

- Final Cut X. Its first incarnation was a huge slap in the face for features and workflow. They completely cut a large swathe of the rest of Final Cut studio, and knew they were shipping shit with the new pricing.

- The first Unibody Macbook came out. Very little could be upgraded, the keyboard was a leap backward, and all they had for I/O was a half-baked USB3. It's usage for pro video workflows was severely hobbled compared to the last generation.

- Mac OS Lion came out, which was when it started showing signs of user hostility. Power-user features were getting locked down or removed, the app store was being pushed harder, and it was consuming more base resources for the privilege. The tend was clear that advanced users were no longer welcome in Apple land.

These things made me change majors back to computing, and a full return to Linux. I've never regretted that.

New comment by MrDrMcCoy in "Apple Just Lost Me"

MrDrMcCoy — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:55:49 +0000

When you move to Android, I'd definitely recommend getting a Pixel for GrapheneOS. It's really highly polished and most things should just work once you press the button to enable sandboxed Google Play.

Also curious what Linux distro and desktop you're going to. Flatpak makes it matter a lot less these days, so long as the base stays pretty current.