Hacker News: bigfudge

New comment by bigfudge in "Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data"

bigfudge — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:23:50 +0000

I'm not sure if you're joking and this is a backhanded compliment to Harris, or you're sincere in your belief that what Trump will negotiate is going to be better than the Obama deal he ditched in the first term.

I hope you're joking!

New comment by bigfudge in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

bigfudge — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:18:47 +0000

I think you're reading too much into this report. It was one ship that according to the story passed by hugging the French coastline. My memory from a radio report at the time was these ships also passed at night. There's no sense that French ships are consistently getting special treatment.

New comment by bigfudge in "The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 21:27:18 +0000

I really didn’t experience the early internet that way.

New comment by bigfudge in "The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 21:25:48 +0000

That’s what you will get in the US. It’s not clear a functioning democracy would produce the same outcome.

New comment by bigfudge in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 21:22:17 +0000

At the beginning it was fairly clear to everyone outside the US that this was an illegal war of aggression. That we waited until Iran had struck Israel and gulf countries was at least a fig leaf for the pretence we were doing something reasonable.

What source do you have for French ships being allowed to pass?

New comment by bigfudge in "Every plane you see in the sky – you can now follow it from the cockpit in 3D"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:44:12 +0000

Is it possible to pan?

New comment by bigfudge in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:31:22 +0000

Really not many people outside far right proponents of hate speech (and more recently MAGA shills) have been complaining about free speech in Europe. Yes, there are laws against holocaust denial for specific historical reasons. The UK also had regulations on some Irish republican organisations access to TV, but not other forms of expression. And yes most European jurisdictions accept that speech can cause harm and try to balance this against free speech. But there is really no case that nonviolent political speech is -- in practice -- discriminated against in EU and UK.

On the IT and AI services: Europe hasn't really failed to compete in innovation, as much as scale of operation. That might change if we have a security imperative to protect our own markets for these things against an increasingly hostile US.

New comment by bigfudge in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:24:24 +0000

I'm not defending racism against immigrants to Europe, but let's get this in proportion. It wasn't long ago that the US had _state mandated segregation_ and regular lynchings. All racism is abhorrent, but I really don't see Europe a specifically problematic in this regard.

New comment by bigfudge in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:19:48 +0000

Really though, how many companies actually need Azure, AWS? In my experience in SME's there is _so_ much overcomplication, over-provisioning and overspending going on because there has been a default assumption that US cloud==lower risk.

Governments properly mandating that data be held in the EU, or even in orgs with proper EU entities and checks and balances against US interference in time of conflict would change the game. This is what the EU should be working on... a data residency regime that allows us to use AWS but creates a firewall that allows us to take operational control of the servers if the US continues on it's current path.

New comment by bigfudge in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:15:40 +0000

How has Europe actively hindered the war effort? Not volunteering for demining duties under fire in a very narrow straight, and preferring diplomatic solutions seems eminently sensible, and not at all the same as 'getting closer to Iran'. Why doesn't the US send frigates and destroyers into the straight to open it and escort ships out? The answer is that it's pretty high risk, and not one worth taking (unless you are Trump and looking to save face).

New comment by bigfudge in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:13:00 +0000

The bureaucratic apparatus in the EU has a reputation for being complex, but a lot of that seems to be bullshit stories written by people like Johnson in the 20 years leading up to Brexit. I've yet to see much evidence it's more complex or corrupt than Federal government in the US, for example.

New comment by bigfudge in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:07:22 +0000

> European skepticism of the US has its roots in the postwar era.

This is crazy. The Europeans fell hook line and sinker for the line that the US could be trusted to manage security for Europe and would always be a dependable ally. That suited everyone — Europe because we could focus spending on post war reconstruction, and the US because you made a shit tonne of money by being the world's arms dealer and policeman.

There was no resentment of the US. Europe was in love with US culture (weird French cinema rules aside). And especially Eastern Europe... who have now had the hardest of all disillusionments.

This administration has destroyed the goodwill and trust built up over 80 years, and the economic foundation which made you rich and powerful. Let's check back in 30 years and see if that was a good idea. I'm hopeful that French nukes and Ukrainian ingenuity (and MAGA incompetence) will see us through the next 10-15 years of transition as re right the past mistake of trusting the US.

New comment by bigfudge in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:02:24 +0000

The French are just (wonderfully) arrogant enough to say what everyone else is thinking. The UK will likely be too spineless to actually follow through, but the Germans and Eastern Europeans are not going to tolerate the level of exposure we all have to US craziness any longer.

New comment by bigfudge in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

bigfudge — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:00:10 +0000

Those attempts happened before the US really made such a concrete demonstration it was a security and strategic risk though. That was back in the good old days where they at least pretended to be strategic partners.

It's good to be sceptical, but the US really does present a clear danger to the EU and UK now (and the rest of the world). I'm hopeful that this will actually materialise this time, and that Munich and Birmingham and the others will have paved the way and built some expertise.

New comment by bigfudge in "Native Instant Space Switching on macOS"

bigfudge — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:49:35 +0000

As someone who never uses spaces or any window manager, what am I actually missing? What’s wrong with cmd tab and just switching between apps? Is this going to be some Kind of major epiphany?!

New comment by bigfudge in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

bigfudge — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:52:19 +0000

This is so unhelpful. What has happened in the last 5 weeks has hugely escalated the violence in an already difficult situation. It's not wishful thinking or naive to think that deliberately inflaming a difficult situation is a bad idea.

New comment by bigfudge in "German men 18-45 need military permit to leave country for longer than 3 months"

bigfudge — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 16:30:17 +0000

This comment doesn't make much sense. Are you implying German taxes are buying Russian oil and so funding the war in Ukraine? If so, that's a very partial reading of what's happened in recent years. Europe went through a huge and very painful transition away from Russian oil and gas. Germany in particular found this very difficult, but AFAICT it's mostly complete and Germany has prioritised renewables.

Energy is currently expensive because an orange maniac has started a war that only seems to benefit Russia.

New comment by bigfudge in "Tailscale's new macOS home"

bigfudge — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:18:06 +0000

On a laptop? I’m interested but have never found sleep/wake and battery life to ever remotely approach osx and a Mac.

New comment by bigfudge in "Tailscale's new macOS home"

bigfudge — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:06:22 +0000

That would be gross. I wish devs didn’t abuse menu bars (looking at teams, zoom etc)

New comment by bigfudge in "Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains"

bigfudge — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:56:34 +0000

This probably reflects my own prejudices, but it always struck me that MS based IT people wouldn’t work with anything else, basically because they couldn’t.

That stack optimises for not really having to understand what you’re doing, but also avoiding any major foot guns (and having the general arse covering that buying IBM used to provide, but which MS now does). The price you pay is that everything is horrible to work with. But if the alternative is not really being able to get anything done at all then so be it?