Hacker News: Zak

New comment by Zak in "Why Zig over C for Systems Programming"

Zak — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 16:57:43 +0000

A version number starting with 0 is not just evidence, but a direct statement by the maintainer that software is unstable/pre-release no matter how long it has been in development.

New comment by Zak in "Nvidia is preparing to oust Jensen Huang"

Zak — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 13:51:28 +0000

I thought I covered the privacy angle well enough; once it's exposed, admitting it's cheating seems far worse to me than admitting it's an open relationship.

Cheating may be more conventional, but it's almost universally considered immoral.

New comment by Zak in "Nvidia is preparing to oust Jensen Huang"

Zak — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 12:28:20 +0000

> if they had some open relationship type arrangement

His public statement about hurting his family suggests they did not.

If I was in his position and I did, my statement would be something like "We're not monogamous, and we're both content with that arrangement. That was meant to stay private, and I'm sorry it came to public attention".

Then I'm just eccentric instead of an asshole.

New comment by Zak in "Don't buy AR glasses"

Zak — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 14:20:50 +0000

I recently bought something that might qualify as AR glasses: a new old stock Google Glass XE-C.

All the original services for it are long-dead so it's immune from the nightmare scenarios in the article. It's pretty decent for heads-up biking directions after vibecoding an app for that (https://github.com/zakwilson/OsmGlass/).

New comment by Zak in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (November 2026)"

Zak — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 15:55:01 +0000

Thanks for the explanation, I guess it makes sense on large and especially ultrawide displays.

New comment by Zak in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (November 2026)"

Zak — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 14:37:32 +0000

I found it bizarre when Microsoft moved the Windows start menu from the corner (Fitts' law, corners are infinite-size targets), and I see you've done the same. Why?

New comment by Zak in "Dutch 'idealist' bank ASN blocks non-Google Android, including GrapheneOS"

Zak — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 13:55:48 +0000

I'm skeptical.

An immutable OS install and app sandboxing by default provide a lot of security. Those are present on third-party Android distributions that don't pass SafetyNet. Some users of those add root access so they can let a handful of apps out of the sandbox, but I'm willing to bet most of those are tech experts with better security habits than the average person.

Show me examples of actual data breaches and account takeovers SafetyNet would have stopped if you really want to defend this position.

New comment by Zak in "Dutch 'idealist' bank ASN blocks non-Google Android, including GrapheneOS"

Zak — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 13:47:15 +0000

Safetynet was not a mistake; it was a lock-in mechanism. Widespread failure to call it out as such and oppose it as happened when Microsoft proposed something similar for PCs a decade earlier[0] was the mistake.

> will this mean we have to support one more standard, one more release channel, one more modified OS?

Android apps don't have to take any active steps to support third-party distributions. All they have to do is refrain from taking active stops to block them, but I suspect you knew that.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/30/business/technology-a-saf...

New comment by Zak in "Dutch 'idealist' bank ASN blocks non-Google Android, including GrapheneOS"

Zak — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 13:38:34 +0000

I'm convinced the Amazon Fire Phone was the motivation for SafetyNet.

The Fire Phone was a midrange Android phone from 2014 preloaded with Amazon's app store and services instead of Google's. It failed on its own merits, but I think Google got scared someone else would do a better job. The barrier to entry is a lot higher if most people can't use their banking app on it.

New comment by Zak in "Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux"

Zak — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 15:51:22 +0000

This isn't just a matter of lack of a good driver because they didn't bother making one for an OS they didn't intend to support. Encrypting the firmware's power table serves no purpose other than frustrating any third-party effort to develop a good driver.

It is not obvious to me why they would want to do that.

New comment by Zak in "Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux"

Zak — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 15:55:55 +0000

> the firmware’s power table is encrypted and only the Windows driver can decrypt it

Why the fuck is the power table encrypted?

New comment by Zak in "Copper – A minimal low-level programming language with OOP and generics"

Zak — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 20:31:09 +0000

As long as one of the backends is something widely available, I don't see a problem. C is a decent option. LLVM IR is another.

New comment by Zak in "Brazilian Court Sanctions Lawyers for Prompt Injection in Court Filing"

Zak — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 14:04:10 +0000

I remember being a young child when my parents were shopping for a car. I heard a radio ad for a car dealer claiming it was the best place to get a car, and I was excited to tell them.

I think that experience helped blunt the ability of ads to manipulate me ever since. I recognize, however that advertising has increased in sophistication, so I block ads pretty aggressively and try to avoid media that makes it impossible.

New comment by Zak in "Japan's trains are great. Why is booking one so hard?"

Zak — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 13:55:22 +0000

The fact that a ticket bought online must be printed on paper at all seems anachronistic in 2026. I would expect, or at least hope for a QR code saved to a smartphone as the default.

New comment by Zak in "Japan's trains are great. Why is booking one so hard?"

Zak — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 09:58:10 +0000

I've taken hundreds of flights in and between the USA and EU and never once had to show anyone my credit card. In a number of cases, the ticket was booked with someone else's credit card.

For (non-Schengen) international flights, I usually have to show someone my passport.

Did you mean most/all airlines in Japan?

New comment by Zak in "The federated code forge"

Zak — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 13:41:33 +0000

I'll have to give that a good look. The concept sounds good.

I do, however question the taste and judgment of any project that tells users to run `curl ...|sh`.

New comment by Zak in "Molly (Signal fork) has not been updated since 3 months and is vulnerable"

Zak — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 12:39:35 +0000

Bank apps do checklist-oriented security, and nobody has put that on the checklist yet.

New comment by Zak in "The federated code forge"

Zak — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 20:28:59 +0000

I'm disappointed that issue tracking inside the VCS (probably as a separate repository, or at least a special branch) never got popular. That would reduce the importance of web-based code forges and make moving between them easy.

New comment by Zak in "Evidence of a spying operation by ICE against left-wing social movements"

Zak — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 14:40:35 +0000

Here are three examples involving physical surveillance, mining public data, and using data collected by a third party, respectively.

https://www.fox8live.com/2026/08/07/unchecked-overtime-nopd-...

https://niemanreports.org/mining-the-data/

https://gijn.org/stories/investigations-using-strava-fitness...

I expect a "but this case is different" type reply; it's almost always possible to make an argument like that.

New comment by Zak in "Evidence of a spying operation by ICE against left-wing social movements"

Zak — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 14:27:50 +0000

I expect law enforcement agencies to act like professional public services, not venomous insects.