Hacker News: ajackfox

New comment by ajackfox in "The Internet I Grew Up with Doesn't Exist Anymore"

ajackfox — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 12:34:31 +0000

This resonates: the Internet was such an interesting place to grow up in, though my experience may be a little before the author’s.

I miss the niche bespoke websites and forum communities of the years past, but there’s nothing holding us back from creating and maintaining spaces like that these days, aside from spam and AI slop. Some are still out there.

The shift is mainly attributable to lowering the bar to access as cellphones with browsers came on: it became such a valuable consumer platform, rather than a place for creators, hobbyists, and those with a nerdy curiosity to congregate.

I hope the pendulum swings back the other way someday, but I fear ‘dead internet theory’ may be the current endpoint of least resistance.

New comment by ajackfox in "Microsoft builds on Recall with Gaming Copilot – fails basic privacy tests"

ajackfox — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 18:14:34 +0000

Found this installed automatically on my Windows system with no notice with the screenshot stuff automatically enabled: guess they’re taking an opt-out vs opt-in approach here.

Can’t say I’m a big fan.

New comment by ajackfox in "When will we fix the tools that run the world?"

ajackfox — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 03:08:07 +0000

This is bang on. I am shocked by how poor UX really is these days in most modern applications.

I worked at an old grocery store running the front office as a teenager through college maaaany years ago, and everything was a keyboard shortcut, non-touchscreen driven interface from probably the early 90’s. It took some time to get used to and train others on, but I could fly through those interfaces in a way a modern UX simply does not allow by focusing on the lowest common denominator for usability instead of any attempt to cater to ‘experts’: aka the people who have to use those interfaces day in and day out.

Sure, the modern interfaces look great (usually) and in the ideal state anyone can pick it up and use it without much instruction. But there’s no attempt to focus on the poor soul who has to use it in their day to day and just wants to get it done as quickly as possible.

How I Work

ajackfox — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 13:59:59 +0000

Article URL: https://blar.do/how-i-work/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38708743

Points: 108

# Comments: 15

New comment by ajackfox in "The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment"

ajackfox — Sun, 25 Sep 2022 15:59:39 +0000

No disagreements there: I was just lamenting the short term negative impacts it will have.

Further concentration of capital’s power in the tech space is a significant issue, IMO, and painful in its own right to back out of. It will be interesting to see how we deal with this problem in the future… if we address it at all.

New comment by ajackfox in "The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment"

ajackfox — Sun, 25 Sep 2022 14:43:07 +0000

For basically my entire adult life, at the macro level capital investments have basically been free for corporations.

While I have an idea of will happen based on historical data, it will certainly be ‘interesting’ to experience it first hand. :/

New comment by ajackfox in "Things I Won't Work With: Azidoazide Azides, More or Less (2013)"

ajackfox — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 17:19:48 +0000

I knew this was going to be Explosions & Fire before I clicked. This guy is completely insane and I love it.

New comment by ajackfox in "Infrastructure bill cryptocurrency surveillance provision is a privacy disaster"

ajackfox — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 12:30:55 +0000

Sales taxes are regressive and affect the poorest the most. Income taxes (can be) progressive.

Progressive taxation benefits society at large.

Council-GAN – Breaking the Cycle – Colleagues are all you need (CVPR 2020)

ajackfox — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 18:51:51 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/Onr/Council-GAN

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24385938

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by ajackfox in "Apache web server bug grants root access on shared hosting environments"

ajackfox — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 13:43:49 +0000

Probably a stupid question, but are the version #'s mentioned here ( "From version 2.4.17 (Oct 9, 2015) to version 2.4.38 (Apr 1, 2019), Apache HTTP suffers from a local root privilege escalation vulnerability due to an out-of-bounds array access leading to an arbitrary function call." ) the only ones affected, or is it possible earlier versions are affected as well?

Also, I just want to throw out there that the name of this one is great:

"Why the name ? CARPE: stands for CVE-2019-0211 Apache Root Privilege Escalation DIEM: the exploit triggers once a day

I had to."

New comment by ajackfox in "Unprivileged Docker Builds – A Proof of Concept"

ajackfox — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 22:09:52 +0000

Unfortunately I think these types of restrictions are fairly common in large organizations, even non-financial.

Speaking as someone in a Fortune 500, sometimes the bureaucratic hoops one must jump through to develop in a VM or with docker on ones own machine isn't even worth it.

New comment by ajackfox in "Show HN: I made a Hacker News for podcasts"

ajackfox — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 13:24:57 +0000

I've been looking for something like this--podcast discovery is severely lacking right now(or I don't know where to look!). Excited to try this out--thanks!

I'll be sure to get to send you some feedback once I've used it for a while. :)

New comment by ajackfox in "Google App Engine Silently Stopped Sending Email 5 Weeks Ago"

ajackfox — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 01:12:31 +0000

I'm pretty surprised by the long wait times between "updates" from support... that's pretty rough. I understand it can be hard to get a good signal to noise ratio with support, but when so many other people are reporting issues, perhaps it's time to take it a bit more seriously?

This thread is a great example of why support is so hard.

New comment by ajackfox in "NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub"

ajackfox — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 22:41:36 +0000

The grenade launchers are M79's, and can be used for tear gas and other non-lethal rounds. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M79_grenade_launcher#Ammunition

Now about the quantity some PD's ordered... that's a different story.