Hacker News: basisword

New comment by basisword in "Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?"

basisword — Sun, 24 May 2026 13:52:34 +0000

I'll come your place of work and hurl abuse at you all day. Let's see if you find it harmful or not by the end of the week.

New comment by basisword in "Oura says it gets government demands for user data"

basisword — Sun, 24 May 2026 12:56:06 +0000

They removed a specific (non-default) feature which provided end to end encryption rather than build a backdoor. They continue to offer encrypted backups etc. although they hold the keys. So not great but also not a backdoor that breaks encryption for everyone and can potential be accessed without legal oversight.

New comment by basisword in "Oura says it gets government demands for user data"

basisword — Sun, 24 May 2026 12:52:45 +0000

If that's your policy you can't use anything ever.

New comment by basisword in "Oura says it gets government demands for user data"

basisword — Sat, 23 May 2026 20:01:33 +0000

>> "Apple is taking the unprecedented step of removing its highest level data security tool from customers in the UK, after the government demanded access to user data."

They did exactly what they should have. Their choices were build a backdoor or disable the advanced data protection feature in the UK. They also made it incredibly public.

New comment by basisword in "Oura says it gets government demands for user data"

basisword — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:07:21 +0000

This is why although I don't love my Apple Watch, I'm not using anything else. It's very sensitive data and Apple is the only company worth trusting with it. They're not perfect but compared to others there's no competition.

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

basisword — Thu, 21 May 2026 22:14:33 +0000

If you're on Apple devices it's $25 a year for iTunes Match. You can throw all your Bandcamp purchases into the Music app and they'll be available across your devices.

New comment by basisword in "Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops?"

basisword — Thu, 21 May 2026 20:42:36 +0000

Try not taking things so literally. Here's a better example: - Company has a Cursor project you can download and open in Cursor. - It's connected to all of the companies internal data sources. - Now business people (who would have previously had to make requests to the BI team) can query the databases in natural language. - They can tell Cursor to export the data as a CSV and they can open in their Spreadsheet tool. - They need that report every day. They can tell Cursor and it can suggest the best automated way to do that. Once they ok it, Cursor can write a script and run it daily. The csv file shows up in the persons Downloads folder every morning.

Aside from this, I've seen people with no coding background creating Chrome extensions to help them with things. I've seen them making little React Native apps without knowing what React Native is.

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

basisword — Thu, 21 May 2026 20:32:13 +0000

Not really. In the past you could buy tickets in tonnes of places. Ticketmaster had physical 'stores' all over and most of the big music retailers also sold tickets. Admittedly these aren't widespread anymore which poses a problem. It's also a terrible solution because it excludes people with jobs.

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

basisword — Thu, 21 May 2026 20:30:44 +0000

Two options, both of which seem to work well in venues near me:

1. When an event sells out you can join the 'waitlist' and people can offer their tickets back to the ticket company who give the person at the top of the waitlist the opportunity to purchase. All at face value. Good for the artist too as there is less chance of empty seats when people can't make it.

2. QR code tickets that rotate meaning they can't be screenshotted and sold.

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

basisword — Thu, 21 May 2026 20:28:45 +0000

What a braindead move. If you see people post their "wrapped" you notice quite a lot of people basically streaming a single artist 24 hours a day. So now you're encouraging people to become streaming bots. And you're taking tickets from fans who don't happen to use Spotify. Fuck Spotify.

New comment by basisword in "Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops?"

basisword — Mon, 18 May 2026 17:21:27 +0000

>> The overwhelming majority of the population doesn’t even know what a tool or script is.

They don't need to know what it is. "Hey ChatGPT I have to check this report daily and update a spreadsheet with the latest changes, can you do it for me?"

New comment by basisword in "Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops?"

basisword — Mon, 18 May 2026 13:22:48 +0000

The big difference from 3D printers is that there is zero upfront investment required. The number of non-technical people I've seen making simple tools/scripts to automate bits of their workflow is astonishing. Costs them nothing to at least try it out.

New comment by basisword in "AI is a technology not a product"

basisword — Sun, 17 May 2026 22:54:54 +0000

Who wants to talk to an earpod in 95%+ of real world situations? I remember the original Siri ads where a guy was configuring his schedule via Siri on a run. 15 years later and most of the world still thinks you're a doofus if you're running and talking to your voice assistant. Some things will never change.

New comment by basisword in "AI is a technology not a product"

basisword — Sun, 17 May 2026 22:52:50 +0000

Nothing wrong with a faster horse when AI isn't reliable enough yet to produce the car. Don't leave me with my aging horse while you cross your fingers that something better might come along someday.

New comment by basisword in "AI is a technology not a product"

basisword — Sun, 17 May 2026 22:50:54 +0000

Exactly this. I use Siri for two things: remind me x at date/time and set a timer for x. And it even screws these up 10% of the time. If you make those work flawlessly but it also works with any app on the device I'm sold. I'd even buy a new device if it was limited to that. Let OpenAI and Anthropic worry about changing how we work in a revolutionary way. Whatever the outcome is there people still need great products to do ordinary things and that's where Apple has always excelled.

It's crazy to me that even with a strong accent ChatGPT can nail my voice messages. If Siri can suddenly do that (and there's no reason it can't anymore) the device becomes much more useful to everyone that doesn't speak English and doesn't have an American accent.

New comment by basisword in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

basisword — Sun, 17 May 2026 10:16:49 +0000

Why don't you explain it to us then? What are you actually doing with it? What type of products are you working on?

New comment by basisword in "London Police Deploy Facial Recognition at Protest for First Time"

basisword — Fri, 15 May 2026 23:21:36 +0000

> A 31-year-old man who was wanted for voyeurism for more than six months.

> A 41-year-old man who was wanted for rape in relation to an incident which took place in November in Croydon.

>> These are all pretty low-hanging fruit.

>> This is literally the "overpolicing" of petty crime critical race theory bemoans.

You listed voyeurism and RAPE. I'll take one less rapist on the streets thank you very much.

New comment by basisword in "Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent"

basisword — Thu, 14 May 2026 12:53:12 +0000

It shouldn't be but it is. Otherwise we'd find most European sites don't have consent popups. In reality we have tonnes, many now requiring payment if you want to reject trackers.

New comment by basisword in "Claude for Small Business"

basisword — Thu, 14 May 2026 12:42:25 +0000

This. Payroll mistakes seem to be a common issue in the many companies I've worked for. Still can't believe they screw it up so often and also do such a poor job of correcting their errors.

New comment by basisword in "Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent"

basisword — Wed, 13 May 2026 13:27:59 +0000

I think it's more incompetence than malice. It's just such a standard thing for engineers to throw analytics tracking in every website/product they build. Although I am surprised not one person realised this might be a bad idea given the sensitive nature of the site.