Hacker News: alphager

New comment by alphager in "Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?"

alphager — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 23:10:46 +0000

There are very limited seats (a few teens of thousands). Free market logic dictates that the 100000 richest fans get the tickets.

If you don't like it, you are not a true believer in a free market. There's a reason social democrat countries heavily subsidize culture.

New comment by alphager in "An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight"

alphager — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 15:17:42 +0000

*in the US

New comment by alphager in "U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse"

alphager — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:21:53 +0000

It is absolutely bonkers to think about using UV to disinfect human skin, let alone the inside of the human body.

Any UV radiation strong enough to destroy the cells of bacteria is strong enough to destroy human cells. We know that UV-radiaton that's not strong enough to kill bacteria is already harmful to human skin (we call the phenomenon sunburn).

New comment by alphager in "Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier"

alphager — Tue, 26 May 2026 22:35:03 +0000

Nope. You have to possess a valid ID or passport, but you are not required to carry it. Keeping it at home is perfectly fine.

Carrying it is practical and most Germans do carry their ID, but it's not a requirement.

New comment by alphager in "IBM Spins Off the First Pure-Play Quantum Chip Foundry"

alphager — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:45:07 +0000

We are as close as you can get, but we estimate that we're about 3.5% away from true optimum on the hardest problem we try to optimize.

New comment by alphager in "IBM Spins Off the First Pure-Play Quantum Chip Foundry"

alphager — Mon, 25 May 2026 22:32:49 +0000

Absolutely true in the real world; I was part of a real team that explored quantum optimization algorithms as part of a strategic initiative (my day job is algorithmic optimization on classical computers).

Our problem is similar (but not identical) to the traveling salesman problem. We run on a tight time constraint (measured in days for the complex type and measured in minutes for the simple type).

We're running approximations on classic computers but estimate that we'd save billions if we could reach optimum.

New comment by alphager in "IBM Spins Off the First Pure-Play Quantum Chip Foundry"

alphager — Mon, 25 May 2026 18:58:22 +0000

Logistics would love to optimize the traveling salesman problem.

New comment by alphager in "Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans"

alphager — Thu, 21 May 2026 20:40:28 +0000

X$ for the ticket plus a convenience fee/service fee for standing in line.

New comment by alphager in "Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard"

alphager — Fri, 08 May 2026 20:08:20 +0000

What difficulties do you mean? We got Sepa instant transfers nowadays...

New comment by alphager in "Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0"

alphager — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 13:41:44 +0000

How is that a ban?

New comment by alphager in "Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen"

alphager — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:37:59 +0000

It's in all kinds of medicine. People take some pills and then add a cough syrup, not noticing that the syrup also contains it as an active ingredient.

New comment by alphager in "This year’s insane timeline of hacks"

alphager — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:50:11 +0000

Stealing is one possible problem (transactions out of country are really hard to claw back), but the major fear is probably stability. You won't like the consequences if a significant percentage of your countries banks are down for a few days...

New comment by alphager in "Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers"

alphager — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:49:54 +0000

That are paid (if not avoided) at the location of the owner, not the location of the dc.

Datacenters really aren't that good for the locals. Low property tax, just tens of jobs but very high infrastructure needs.

New comment by alphager in "Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire"

alphager — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 19:38:21 +0000

Just be aware that DW is literally government propaganda. If you want news from a German perspective, it's great; however its purpose is explicitly to give the German governments POV.

New comment by alphager in "Finnish sauna heat exposure induces stronger immune cell than cytokine responses"

alphager — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:29:05 +0000

A steam sauna originating in Turkey, popular in many Arabic countries.

New comment by alphager in "Finnish sauna heat exposure induces stronger immune cell than cytokine responses"

alphager — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:27:23 +0000

People with 2 minimum wage jobs have even less time.

New comment by alphager in "Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies Against Quantum Vulnerabilities [pdf]"

alphager — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 23:10:16 +0000

That would be about 10-15 years after the moment it would have been wise to migrate to PQC. You won't have the time to migrate before breach when you start after ECC is broken.

New comment by alphager in "Oracle is building yesterday's data centers with tomorrow's debt"

alphager — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 22:47:11 +0000

They are selling access to GPU computation. Seeking their used GPUs would flood the market with cheap competitors using their old GPUs.

New comment by alphager in "Wikipedia was in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise"

alphager — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:14:43 +0000

Most admins on Wikipedia are competent in areas outside of webdev and security.

New comment by alphager in "AMD will bring its “Ryzen AI” processors to standard desktop PCs for first time"

alphager — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:44:35 +0000

Those usecases are at least 5 years if not 10 years out. They require software support which won't come until a significant part of the pc market has the necessary hardware for it. Until then, paying extra for the hardware is foolish.

This will only come if Windows 12 requires a TPU and most of the old hardware is decommissioned.