Hacker News: asksomeoneelse

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests"

asksomeoneelse — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 14:03:43 +0000

Niche topics like linux feel somewhat safe from bots. But the last time I checked the more popular subs.. yikes..

When I see 2-weeks old account "Incendiary-Leg-8592" responding to a post by another weeks old user "Pivotal-Kitchen-0498", I have a hard time believing they are humans behind them.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "The scourge of x86 emulation"

asksomeoneelse — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 07:47:32 +0000

Great article ! This is the kind of content I always hope to find on HN's front page.

I really wonder how things are organized at Apple to allow for vertical integration to work so well. That feature alone must have involved so many people from so many different teams.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "XCancel service is suspended until further notice"

asksomeoneelse — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 18:22:24 +0000

Same thing for me. I suspect their algorithm is basically "Linux+Firefox user agent using the web client ? That's gotta be a bot". From what I see on reddit, it seems that they have been massive ban waves lately. I am given the possibility to give my biometric data to prove I'm human. But no way I'm doing that..

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "US gov sides with OpenAI on issue of training LLMs on copyrighted material"

asksomeoneelse — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:43:37 +0000

Only for the work of the plebeian. They are still very much in effect when it benefits our overlords.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years"

asksomeoneelse — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:56:02 +0000

Are we really a minority ? Feels like a lot of people just suffer in silence.

Even though I dislike SQL on many levels, I would be hard pressed to find a better, widely supported alternative. I gave up writing portable SQL and just target PostgreSQL now.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "How Shamir's Secret Sharing Works"

asksomeoneelse — Tue, 26 May 2026 23:07:40 +0000

Just spitballing; I have seen prefixing integers of arbitrary length with a bit 1 as the most significant bit as a way to avoid loosing the leading 0s when serializing the integers if the size is important. Also, IIRC, it's possible to implement shamir using arbitrary length integers instead of a common finite field. Not sure why someone would recommend doing either in that context though.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "Five Banana Lessons"

asksomeoneelse — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:15:53 +0000

I hate that my first move when I see an em dash has become to check the old posts of the author to check whether it's a new "habit" of them.

sigh skip

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "Germany suspends military approval for long stays abroad for men under 45"

asksomeoneelse — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:57:45 +0000

> what privileges do you feel you've had to give up on the path to a slightly more equitable society?

None. The privileges that I was supposed to enjoy thanks to my gender were either vastly exaggerated or already revoked.

But I still get to "enjoy" the measures installed to counterbalance and compensate for them anyway.

> No military conscription for one

Lucky you. I don't. And the voters for "equality" massively voted to keep it that way for me a few months ago [0]

[0] https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/2025/article/double-non-aux-i...

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "Germany suspends military approval for long stays abroad for men under 45"

asksomeoneelse — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:21:36 +0000

If you are okay with men being forced to go to war by laws, are you also okay with women being forced to "make more people" by laws ?

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "Germany suspends military approval for long stays abroad for men under 45"

asksomeoneelse — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:05:08 +0000

We already disgrace ourselves by having some of the core ideologies of our society being blatant lies.

We have been repeatedly told that "equality" is primordial to our values. That men had to forego their privileges in the name of it.

The hypocrisy of the defenders of those ideas suddenly being so complacent when we look at the other side of the coin is revolting.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad"

asksomeoneelse — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 03:24:52 +0000

If society enforces men's roles using the law and you're fine with it, don't come complaining when it does the same for women.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad"

asksomeoneelse — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 21:26:57 +0000

I don't know. A lot of countries in East Asia seem to struggle demographically just as much as Western countries do, if not more.

But at least it seems they didn't go for the easy solutions that is mass immigration, so hopefully their children's "seats" won't be taken when they finally wake up.

On the other hand, as someone living in Central Europe, it's obvious our society is heading towards a radical change. I don't know what will happen, but I don't recall ever reading about a indigenous population becoming a minority being a good thing for them.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "AI boom risks widening wealth divide, says BlackRock's Larry Fink"

asksomeoneelse — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 10:36:31 +0000

This is an overly charitable take on the role of AI companies. A more realistic view would be that they shamelessly plundered the work of millions of people, used it to destroy the livelihood of the original creators, while making a profit for themselves out of this collective nightmare.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure"

asksomeoneelse — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 23:08:22 +0000

> it's delivered for free (as in beer) to the government

Not everywhere though; it's up to the canton or municipality to implement this. It's literally the only reason I still buy stamps. Should be made a thing at the federal level imho.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "Teenagers report for duty as Croatia reinstates conscription"

asksomeoneelse — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 22:17:12 +0000

There is a significant difference between jury duty and military service when it comes to risks and bodily harm. Equating the two as both being "reductions" is absurdly missing the point.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "From specification to stress test: a weekend with Claude"

asksomeoneelse — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 11:47:32 +0000

Sorry, I meant the spec and code of the toy project described in the post.

I don't necessarily expect their secret sauce to be openly available. But given the grandiose claims made there, I do expect something to back it up other than a corpospeak "trust me bro".

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "From specification to stress test: a weekend with Claude"

asksomeoneelse — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 10:51:06 +0000

Is there a link to the specification and the resulting generated code ? I skimmed through the article and the author's github profile, but couldn't find anything related.

Seems like a serious oversight if this is your selling point.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE"

asksomeoneelse — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:23:51 +0000

Because Iraq or Afghanistan weren't threatening the man in power. Just take a look at what is currently happening in Iran if you wonder what happens when the local authority fears the crowd.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data"

asksomeoneelse — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 22:44:34 +0000

It's not just the ads though. Am I to think that Youtube helpfully replacing a video title (whose original text I understand) by a half-assed translation into a language that I don't speak is actually Alphabet playing 5D chess ? If so, hats off to you, Google. I totally fell for it.

New comment by asksomeoneelse in "ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data"

asksomeoneelse — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:51:13 +0000

Color me unconvinced. Google can't even figure what language I speak even though I voluntarily provide them the information in several different ways. I can't understand half the ads they serve me.