Hacker News: bragr

New comment by bragr in "Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)"

bragr — Wed, 13 May 2026 20:30:08 +0000

It was in the news when it went into effect at the beginning of the year.

New comment by bragr in "Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)"

bragr — Wed, 13 May 2026 18:58:30 +0000

Or if you're in California: https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/

New comment by bragr in "50K Tahoe residents need power as utility eyes redirecting lines to data centers"

bragr — Wed, 13 May 2026 18:11:41 +0000

At lot of west coast datacenters have moved to Nevada in search of lower land prices and better seismic risk. Vegas is a major hub now too.

New comment by bragr in "StarFighter 16-Inch"

bragr — Wed, 06 May 2026 16:04:00 +0000

Genuinely asking, if someone really wanted to play that game with the EU, could the EU escalate to preventing the import of the products?

New comment by bragr in "For Linux kernel vulnerabilities, there is no heads-up to distributions"

bragr — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:54:00 +0000

>All distro's shipping a major kernel version from more than a year ago -- and that includes all LTS kernels -- are vulnerable, regardless of how "timely" their patch schedules follow upstream

To be fair, I question the wisdom of managing kernels like that across all distros.

New comment by bragr in "For Linux kernel vulnerabilities, there is no heads-up to distributions"

bragr — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:52:59 +0000

The problem is that if you make too big of a deal about a particular patch, then someone just reverse engineers the vuln from the fix and your responsible disclosure period doesn't exist anymore.

Gentoo has to take some blame too for not keeping all the kernels they maintain patched in a timely way.

New comment by bragr in "Email could have been X.400 times better"

bragr — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:44:00 +0000

That's a partisan framing. Another framing could be that SMTP is the golf cart SMBs were asking for, not the car they were being sold.

New comment by bragr in "Not buying another Kindle"

bragr — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:16:08 +0000

I forgot one more important thing: OverDrive only has a subset of the libraries on Libby, so it's possible for a library to be on Libby and be unavailable on Kobo.

New comment by bragr in "SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B"

bragr — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:00:41 +0000

It is less about profitability and more about dilution of ownership. He seems to have a pattern of diluting the ownership of his profitable companies by folding in his less profitable/failed companies. You still own a share of a profitable company, but a smaller share, to his benefit.

New comment by bragr in "Not buying another Kindle"

bragr — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 23:04:29 +0000

I tried that, and it was incredibly frustrating to have to run back to the PC every time, not to mention vacations and things like that. At that point you don't even need Libby since you can do the same with digital editions off your library's website.

New comment by bragr in "Not buying another Kindle"

bragr — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 21:31:14 +0000

You can't even get all books either.

I've got multiple library cards so it is a non-starter.

New comment by bragr in "Not buying another Kindle"

bragr — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:47:23 +0000

Do NOT buy a Kobo device for Libby integration. It is a LIE. I found out the hard way.

Kobo only integrates with OverDrive, the predecessor to Libby. You can only use one library card at a time with OverDrive, and don't have access to the audioboks or periodicals on Libby. Meanwhile Kobo will aggressively push you to sign up for their monthly subscription to get access to that kind of content.

If you want Libby on e-paper, sans Kindle, your best bet is to look at the E Paper android tablets (I use Boox) and just install the Libby app. The experience isn't perfect but its the least worst option.

New comment by bragr in "All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027"

bragr — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:44:49 +0000

That's assuming you live near a store.

New comment by bragr in "Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft"

bragr — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:47:35 +0000

It would be more interesting to see those numbers broken down by frontline service. What percentage of the guys actually dying in the jungle were drafted?

New comment by bragr in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

bragr — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 02:59:21 +0000

As has been established in other threads here, the metal button thing the prongs slide onto is an earth connection.

New comment by bragr in "Londoners are sick of viral videos telling lies about their city"

bragr — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:37:10 +0000

>There was the person with the relative in Los Angeles who was worried about going to London

This amused me because living in LA/California, I get the same style unhinged comments completely disconnected from the reality of what is happening here. We certainly have our share of problems, but you'd think we're Somalia the way certain people talk. I had a friend from Arkansas visit last summer and it definitely reset his world view a bit.

I assume this is all just deflection. It is more politically convenient to talk about bad roads or the homeless problem in California, than to address that your state's schools are in the bottom 20% of the nation.

New comment by bragr in "I quit. The clankers won"

bragr — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:12:08 +0000

The problem is that juniors given access to AI don't seem to learn as much. AI just gives them fish over and over instead of learning how to fish.

New comment by bragr in "Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder"

bragr — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 01:46:14 +0000

No, that's more than napkin math but I feel the numbers stand for themselves that we can't really do better than decades. A few km/s won't change that.

New comment by bragr in "Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder"

bragr — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 22:02:46 +0000

Bunch of napkin math: you'd need something like 10 kilowatts and 140 km/s detla-v to catch up to Voyager in a decade, assuming a New Horizons equivalent Earth escape velocity. The amount of xenon is technically possible, however even assuming impressive 8000 Isp thrusters, your fuel mass fraction ends up being 90+% fuel which doesn't leave a lot of mass for that reactor and radiators.

A 20 year intercept would be pretty reasonable though. It needs about 15 km/s delta v after that NH style escape, about a kilowatt of power, and maybe a 25% fuel mass fraction at 6000 Isp. That's all very reasonable by current standards.

New comment by bragr in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

bragr — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 09:21:21 +0000

The dearth of case law here still makes a negative outcome for FSF pretty dangerous, even if they don't appeal it and set precedent in higher courts. It might not be binding but every subsequent case will be able to site it, potentially even in other common law countries that lack case law on the topic.

And then there is the chilling effect. If FSF can't enforce their license, who is going to sue to overturn the precedent? Large companies, publishers, and governments have mostly all done deals with the devil now. Joe Blow random developer is going to get a strip mall lawyer and overturn this? Seems unlikely