Hacker News: Symbiote

New comment by Symbiote in "Supermarket giant Tesco sues VMware for breach of contract (2025)"

Symbiote — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 10:45:40 +0000

A supermarket with over 3000 (5000 depending where I search) stores probably doesn't want everything in the cloud. They will want every shop to be at least mostly-capable of operating without an internet connection.

New comment by Symbiote in "Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)"

Symbiote — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 09:30:21 +0000

What were they expecting? A letter sent by mail?

New comment by Symbiote in "VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'"

Symbiote — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 08:17:31 +0000

They get no special treatment. They would only show up in my feed if one of my contacts shares a link.

New comment by Symbiote in "VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'"

Symbiote — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 18:56:56 +0000

If you insist on that approach, then for the sake of argument, you could pretend the discussion is about Australia which already has a similar law.

You could argue the benefit to children in repealing it.

New comment by Symbiote in "VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'"

Symbiote — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 18:53:20 +0000

The first sentence of the article "under-16 social media ban".

New comment by Symbiote in "VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'"

Symbiote — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:48:32 +0000

There has been 15 more years of highly motivated psychologists tuning their social media systems to create addiction, time for those who've grown up through this to become adults, foreign interference with democracy etc.

Though I think banning it for children is the wrong approach. Ban the addictive and dangerous features for everyone, adults included — no more infinite scroll, and no more feeds showing content from outside social connections.

New comment by Symbiote in "Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics"

Symbiote — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 05:33:12 +0000

In a factory, where you can guarantee a hard, smooth floor, I would think wheels are better in most cases than four feet.

But of course the wheels could be replaced with feet where that's needed.

New comment by Symbiote in "Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct"

Symbiote — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 19:30:26 +0000

Then I misunderstood, I thought you meant you could buy 3 sandwiches for €1.99, 67¢ each.

Tesco also have four choices for £1.50 each (€1.73), several 100-200g bags of crisps/tortilla chips for less than £1, and 2 litres of cola for 49p. This would be cheaper than the "Meal Deal".

https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/browse/fresh-food/chilled-s...

https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/browse/treats-and-snacks/cr...

https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/browse/drinks/fizzy-and-sof...

New comment by Symbiote in "I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M"

Symbiote — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 09:46:40 +0000

If I need to buy something at El Giganten (Danish version) I speak English when paying, and tell them I'm a tourist and don't want to give them a phone number or email. They can print a paper receipt.

But I only buy from there if it's the only option. (Other than Amazon, which I refuse to use at all.)

New comment by Symbiote in "I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M"

Symbiote — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 09:39:41 +0000

Or the UK, which is still in alignment for privacy regulation as far as I know.

New comment by Symbiote in "Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct"

Symbiote — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 23:01:10 +0000

If much of this is to support their thousands of supermarkets, almost all of them are closed overnight, or at least overnight on Sundays.

Plenty of time to schedule a migration.

New comment by Symbiote in "Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct"

Symbiote — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 22:51:51 +0000

They have over 3000 stores. Maybe each one has a handful of VMs.

Maybe each self-service checkout runs a VM, or each staffed checkout.

They wouldn't want to rely entirely on a remote database to be able to sell products.

New comment by Symbiote in "Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct"

Symbiote — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 22:40:01 +0000

The ones being discussed in the UK are in the triangular box like that, but there's so much competition between the shops that they're ok.

It's also a dense enough country that they will be at most a day or two old.

New comment by Symbiote in "Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct"

Symbiote — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 22:37:53 +0000

Can you give an example, as I'm not sure it's a fair comparison?

https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/262308005

New comment by Symbiote in "Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct"

Symbiote — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 22:34:34 +0000

Konbini have more unhealthy stuff than you'll find in the ready-to-eat section of Tesco, although the sushi is better in Japan.

Both are way ahead of the USA.

New comment by Symbiote in "I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M"

Symbiote — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 22:10:07 +0000

You can see the fines the Bulgarian regulator has handed out here:

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

New comment by Symbiote in "How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)"

Symbiote — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 06:58:52 +0000

Living directly in view of a metro entrance within the inner city will be have noise from people using it, but one minute walk away is considered perfect in Europe.

Many people who visit me for the first time comment on this.

On the very quietest summer night, when there's no ventilation systems running etc, I can sometimes hear an occasional dum-dum, dum-dum when I lie in bed. The tunnel is directly under the building.

In suburbia closer is also better, but away from the track is better than along the track of it's above ground.

The idea of security concerns sounds ridiculous to me.

New comment by Symbiote in "Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures"

Symbiote — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 04:30:24 +0000

Proportional to the respective populations, this would have needed roughly four times as many signatures to get to that level in Switzerland.

New comment by Symbiote in "Nobody clicks your share buttons"

Symbiote — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:14:30 +0000

Firefox has a "copy clean link" button for hyperlinks and in the address bar.

New comment by Symbiote in "Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything"

Symbiote — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:22:09 +0000

In a small business, I've been responsible for buying laptops for a while.

In about 300 person-years, we've had two laptops stolen. Both were stolen while the staff were on trips abroad, and the staff were both rather careless IMO.