Hacker News: Qem

New comment by Qem in "Microsoft deleted my account and OneDrive"

Qem — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 22:35:23 +0000

New comment by Qem in "Microsoft loses Brazilian case after telling hacked user to re-purchase games"

Qem — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:59:25 +0000

> Courts elsewhere have gone the other way. Chinese courts have recognized game accounts as inheritable property, while U.S. rulings generally treat games as revocable licenses

Pretty ironic a communist country has stronger assertion of individual ownership rights than USA, the flagship of capitalism.

Microsoft loses Brazilian case after telling hacked user to re-purchase games

Qem — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:43:03 +0000

Article URL: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/xbox/brazilian-court-orders-microsoft-to-restore-a-gamers-account-and-digital-library-after-it-told-him-to-rebuy-his-games

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48874547

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

New comment by Qem in "Learning another language appears to slow brain ageing by up to 13 years"

Qem — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:28:32 +0000

> The researchers took account of factors such as people’s age, sex and education, but cautioned that they could not rule out the potential influence of other factors that may have an impact on the brain, such as lifestyle and social engagement.

Perhaps it's just a correlation. Number of spoken linguages may correlate with income, frequent travel, sociability, or other factors that improve or filtre for health, brain health included.

Woman's hip replacement disintegrates, causing metal poisoning

Qem — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 23:15:27 +0000

Article URL: https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/womans-puzzling-decline-turns-out-to-be-cobalt-poisoning-from-hip-replacement/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48811721

Points: 53

# Comments: 22

New comment by Qem in "Sick leave: Germany rising but not the worst in Europe"

Qem — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 18:25:55 +0000

I wonder if lost productivity from sick leave days is offset by preserved productivity of all coworkers that were not infected by people that felt obliged to show up sick with flu or other communicable disease.

New comment by Qem in "The bottleneck might be the air in the room"

Qem — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 18:16:33 +0000

That's scary if confirmed. It took 500 million years for complex life to find the right mix of atmospheric O2/CO2 to foster intelligent lifeforms. Then we are undoing it in mere centuries.

New comment by Qem in "A martian rock has lots of carbon on it, and it's not clear why"

Qem — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 18:04:40 +0000

> At least within the precision limits of the Perseverance’s instruments, the material roughly matches terrestrial kerogen. Using the word “kerogen,” though, was a no-go, the researchers decided. On Earth, kerogen is made almost exclusively of biological matter, mainly fossilized microbes that were buried millions of years ago. “The term kerogen implies biogenic source,” Murphy explained. “Macromolecular carbon implies we don’t know whether its origin is biotic or abiotic.”

I'm pretty convinced the catchphrase "There's no Planet B" is imprecise. In fact there is a Planet B, Earth. Mars was Planet A[1], our ancestors came here billions of years ago, perhaps in a rock fragment full of organics like this "completely not shale".

[1] https://badspacecomics.com/apostles-of-mercy

Bad news is that if we screw the Planet B where our lineage took refuge after Mars dried out, there is no habitable Planet C left in the solar system.

New comment by Qem in "Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]"

Qem — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 14:07:38 +0000

> Actually raising a child costs more than $1.2M - just $20K/year invested in S&P500 over the last 20 years would have grown to more than $1.2M.

The future markets of a shrinking world, with consumer and worker cohorts dwindling year after year, will be very different from the last 20. This is paradoxal reasoning. Your're counting on going childless, while the market remains the same, other people keep having children to grow the market. But if everybody else does the same it doesn't work. The mean investment probably will give negative returns, in a fast shrinking world.

New comment by Qem in "Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]"

Qem — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 14:01:41 +0000

> If you don't have children to inherit your fortune to, you can retire with full exhaustion of capital - that will yield way more than 4k$/month.

As a lone elderly person you're likely to be scammed and lose a lot of that capital near the end, without close people that like and support you. Elders are incredibly vulnerable to financial scams, specially those enabled by technologic means they are not familiar with.

New comment by Qem in "Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]"

Qem — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 13:37:19 +0000

> ppl are now having better options than raising a baby.

It gets me beffudled people actually think addiction to the virtual crack of social media is a better option.

New comment by Qem in "The first early human eggs from stem cells"

Qem — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 16:09:10 +0000

Reminds me of this: https://badspacecomics.com/in-the-flesh-copy

Mageia 10 keeps the 32-bit Linux flame alive

Qem — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:10:36 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/06/29/mageia-10-keeps-the-32-bit-linux-flame-alive/5263856

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747119

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by Qem in "Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers"

Qem — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:24:22 +0000

> Or, indeed, WhatsApp and Signal.

You can use Shelter from FDroid to create a separate work profile in the phone, with separate accounts, and then pause it after office hours.

New comment by Qem in "More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)"

Qem — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:44:05 +0000

> We should be wary of bringing Martian microbes back to Earth, because they may find our environment too hospitable and end up invasive species.

They could even already have invaded in the past, and we descended of them[1]. Earth as Mars ancient lifeboat[2].

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23872765

[2] https://badspacecomics.com/apostles-of-mercy

New comment by Qem in "Israel targeted Gaza children resulting in genocide, UN inquiry says"

Qem — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 21:37:36 +0000

Lots of tech companies involved in this genocide[1]. Unfortunately tech has bad antecedents, as IBM also supported genocide in WWII[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

New comment by Qem in "Israel targeted Gaza children resulting in genocide, UN inquiry says"

Qem — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:59:20 +0000

> highest entity that could apply leverage

What is the lowest entity that can apply leverage? Regardless of what US or UN does or doesn't, you can start boycotting today.

New comment by Qem in "Israel targeted Gaza children resulting in genocide, UN inquiry says"

Qem — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:53:50 +0000

> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these?

Apply the Apartheid South Africa treatament. Gather the larger number possible of complying members, and apply a coordinated boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to put pressure in the party engaged in genocide, ethnic cleansing or other abhorrent actions.

New comment by Qem in "My Mathematical Regression"

Qem — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:07:22 +0000

And does it quite fast too:

https://www.wilfred.me.uk/blog/2014/10/20/the-fastest-bigint...

New comment by Qem in "A New Interpretation of the Rise of Intelligence: Falling CO2 Levels Was Key"

Qem — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:12:46 +0000

Paper: https://www.qeios.com/read/NYZWD5