Hacker News: TonyTrapp

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Can gzip be a language model?"

TonyTrapp — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 13:37:01 +0000

While I also like 7z a lot and use it all the time, it's really not a better format that RAR. Higher compression ratios? Sure, marginally. But for archival RAR is still the better choice as it supports recovery records, which 7z still does not. I also found it more difficult to restore data from a partial 7z file (i.e. trailer data is missing) compared to an incomplete RAR file.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "This Month in Ladybird – August 2026"

TonyTrapp — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 07:39:20 +0000

That's not the kind of complexity that is the problem though. The complexity you have to deal with is just more and more features being shoved into the spec at breakneck speed, or if they are not in the spec, it's just Google adding them to their engine and everyone starts using them anyway to the quasi-monopoly of Chromium-based browsers.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "bzip3"

TonyTrapp — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 18:09:56 +0000

Those tutorials are about as old as the author of the repository.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "ReactOS 0.4.16"

TonyTrapp — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:43:27 +0000

It's also the kind of project where LLM license-washing is going to be the most dangerous for the project itself. Projects like Wine and ReactOS have to be extremely careful about what kind of code to accept, because taking code from one of the countless Windows source leaks is just a recipe for legal disaster.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Creepy Crawlies"

TonyTrapp — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 13:30:44 +0000

No, when I said this behaviour is stupid I did not imply that it needs to be solved with "intelligence". This class if problem is already solved by traditional crawlers, AI companies just actively chose to disregard any of that in their race to the top / bottom.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Creepy Crawlies"

TonyTrapp — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 07:50:04 +0000

So? You can design a deterministic crawler for AI that

- Respects robots.txt

- Detects if something is likely a git forge and as a result

- Clone the git repository instead of trying to crawl the forge

None of this needs to be happening, and yet it does at an unprecedented scale.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Creepy Crawlies"

TonyTrapp — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 19:52:19 +0000

Exactly my observation as well. They devour absolutely everything, no exceptions. No matter how stupid it might be to digest a source code repository via HTTP. They probably don't even recognize what's inside those pages and that there's an easier way to obtain the same result.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026"

TonyTrapp — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 16:47:24 +0000

Can't speak for France but in Germany, you can usually check on each ISP's website what their coverage for a specific street address is. It's one of the things I always do when I look for a new home.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Repair Cafe – Fix Your Broken Items"

TonyTrapp — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:00:40 +0000

Personally speaking: I could not find anything that would be a match in terms of quality and ergonomics for the MX Vertical. Tried a small number of cheap vertical mice, none of them felt right.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Repair Cafe – Fix Your Broken Items"

TonyTrapp — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:47:14 +0000

Similarly, even the higher-priced Logitech mice often use tact switches that are only rated for a relatively low number of clicks (probably 1 million?), so many of them started failing on me after about two years. Replacing the switches with higher-rated ones (50 million clicks) is trivial on all the mice I have disassembled so far. The switches and replacement glider pads (which need replacing after removing the screws hidden below them) are often just a few bucks but make the mouse last for several more years.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Western Sahara"

TonyTrapp — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 18:33:33 +0000

Frequency illusion, aka Baader–Meinhof phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

New comment by TonyTrapp in "DMARC has been public since 2012 but most company domains still don't enforce it"

TonyTrapp — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:25:32 +0000

I have set up DMARC, SPF, DKIM and whatnot. Sadly no one seems to take this as a signal for a competent mail setup, so Microsoft's mail servers regularly block my mails because of the surrounding IP range reputation - not because any spam would originate from my IPs or domains.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Simulate cassette tape audio profiles using FFmpeg"

TonyTrapp — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:51:41 +0000

There's a number of VST plugins that get very close - much closer than a static set of filters every possibly could. This is just an approximation.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence"

TonyTrapp — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:35:54 +0000

hunter2 my hunter2!

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Just Let Me Write Digits"

TonyTrapp — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:22:46 +0000

> It seems this should just be a single input field styled appropriately

Anecdotally, this seems to be the case on the majority of websites where I have to use such 2FA codes.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

TonyTrapp — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:55:45 +0000

This one? :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMFBuHsKXb0

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism"

TonyTrapp — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 13:17:26 +0000

Facebook is not a universal tool that is used the same way in every country in the world. As a start, there are more Facebook users in Canada both in absolute numbers and percentage of population than in Belarus. Internet censorship also doesn't help.

The countries that would need this the most are usually also the countries where it is the hardest to reach their population from the outside.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs"

TonyTrapp — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:04:56 +0000

The last significant DOSBox update (ignoring 0.74-3 which was not significant) must be over 10 years ago by now. In that time, forks like DOSBox-X have made tremendous progress in compatibility and accuracy. The original DOSBox is essentially frozen in time at this point, with many things not being emulated correctly.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken"

TonyTrapp — Wed, 06 May 2026 09:46:16 +0000

Hush, don't remind them that they have RSS feeds, or they might remove them altogether.

New comment by TonyTrapp in "GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay"

TonyTrapp — Mon, 04 May 2026 11:40:43 +0000

Auction or "buy now" with price suggestion?