Hacker News: abighamb

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

abighamb — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 13:43:04 +0000

And what is inflation?

New comment by abighamb in "Codex CLI installs a persistent, self-updating background daemon by default"

abighamb — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 19:26:03 +0000

It has pretty rapidly reached the point where I do not think any acceptable LLM-harness is widely available. Every single one I've tried has broken in bizarre ways on even minor updates.

New comment by abighamb in "Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO"

abighamb — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:26:04 +0000

I look forward to a new era of trust busting.

It's an old American Tradition in need of revival

New comment by abighamb in "I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers"

abighamb — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 19:52:21 +0000

They really need to be produced to be appreciated.

I came to love Shakespeare in High School because I happened to perform it in a Theatre Class. Acting it is totally different from reading it.

New comment by abighamb in "Why some people mow a lawn better than others"

abighamb — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 19:33:54 +0000

The lines change mowing so much!

New comment by abighamb in "A new way to measure poverty shows the US falling behind Europe"

abighamb — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:52:42 +0000

This metric makes a lot of intuitive sense and reflects the consumer sentiment I hear from neighbors. "Working more for less" isn't a new complaint, but something that measures that is interesting.

I would be very interested to find out how those stats are related to things like, GINI or old pre-GDP economic measures of raw production.

New comment by abighamb in "GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash"

abighamb — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:41:33 +0000

For personal stuff I hopped over to source hut and it's fine.

Simple, direct, and I really like the email based workflows.

New comment by abighamb in "US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]"

abighamb — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:22:18 +0000

Often I see a popup to accept TOS after the update, which was run without me agreeing to anything.

At which time the company has unilaterally denied my access to something I already paid for without seeking my affirmative consent.

In theory I could stop whatever I'm doing, go email the company a brief to the point letter indicating they've broken their ToS and are unacceptably impairing my ability to use my property under the contract that I did agree to, and giving them an opportunity to amend their problem and give me a rollback path.

Realistically the outcome of this is a brushoff and needing to file a consumer protection complaint or get a lawyer.

If the feature is something like "my car" I can't afford that opportunity cost and am coerced into accepting their contract by the way they presented the amended terms.

New comment by abighamb in "/e/OS is a complete, fully “deGoogled” mobile ecosystem"

abighamb — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:28:28 +0000

This a pretty general recipe to make a company care.

A Professional letter letting them know that you know your rights, and that they know your rights (Them getting your letter is your proof of that) is what the beginning of someone losing his bonus for a compliance incident looks like.

Companies don't care about you, or even shareholders, they care about the incentives of leadership.

New comment by abighamb in "/e/OS is a complete, fully “deGoogled” mobile ecosystem"

abighamb — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:18:14 +0000

Is it such a burden to write them a letter stating, "Because you have decided to disable my electronic access, I am notifying you that I withdraw my consent to e-delivery. Please provide me statements and directions to mail you a check for payment." Maybe spend 20-30 min to find the specific laws that give you the right to do that and remind them of their timelines to comply.

Send a letter like that certified. It gets attention, and the time to write and mail a check really isn't, if you batch your bills, more than using an app.

We do have ways to push their inconvenience back on them.

New comment by abighamb in "The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists"

abighamb — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 23:53:54 +0000

This has been my experience as well.

It's let me apply my general knowledge across domains, and do things in tech stacks or languages I don't know well. But that has also cost me hours debugging a solution I don't quite understand.

When working in my core stack though it's a nice force multiplier for routine changes.