Hacker News: bryankaplan

New comment by bryankaplan in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

bryankaplan — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 23:10:17 +0000

The analogy is location. file : directory :: person : geocoordinates. I thought it was a straight-forward analogy, but clearly I was mistaken.

New comment by bryankaplan in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

bryankaplan — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:59:50 +0000

Hardly. That would be analogous to two people having the same name _and_ the same spacetime coordinates; they would indeed be the same person.

New comment by bryankaplan in "I Won't Download Your App. The Web Version Is A-OK"

bryankaplan — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:58:37 +0000

If the elevator was invented today, use of it would require an app which demands access to one’s contacts and microphone, and has a rating of 1.4 stars.

New comment by bryankaplan in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

bryankaplan — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:51:30 +0000

Did they also struggle to understand that some people have the same name yet are not the same person?

New comment by bryankaplan in "I'm drowning in AI features I never asked for and I hate it"

bryankaplan — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 11:22:08 +0000

The underlying problem here is that a click or tap should always refer to whatever _was_ on the screen a few (100?) milliseconds ago. It’s a long-standing bug on all platforms.

New comment by bryankaplan in "YouTube's new anti-adblock measures"

bryankaplan — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 19:21:14 +0000

I've come to rely on a robust method of adblocking YouTube which I believe to be perfectly reliable and impossible for YouTube to circumvent: avoid watching YouTube. Incidentally this method also reliably prevents false buffering.

New comment by bryankaplan in "Bitwarden introduces mandatory 2FA for new devices"

bryankaplan — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 17:31:34 +0000

But folders are now stuffed into a small dropdown, leaving All Items as an unorganized mess.

That change alone is pushing me to switch password managers.

New comment by bryankaplan in "No Bitcoin ETFs at Vanguard (2024)"

bryankaplan — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 18:38:11 +0000

Certainly true. Gold is difficult to transport and expensive to protect, whereas Bitcoin is neither.

New comment by bryankaplan in "Dual-Link QR Code Generator"

bryankaplan — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 21:40:07 +0000

I've long wished hyperlinks would permit multiple hrefs. Hypertext could be more sophisticated.

Multi-link QR codes could be practically useful, provided an interstice appears with the URLs and allows a person to follow any of them or all of them.

New comment by bryankaplan in "Following Wyoming Example, Feds Limit Foreign Crypto Mines Near Military Bases"

bryankaplan — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 18:45:34 +0000

It may well be considered a security flaw for any country to allow foreign nationals to purchase any real estate.

Incidentally, the practice also drives up prices for citizens, leading to housing crises.

But a policy that allows anyone with a foreign allegiance to set up shop next to a military base is courting disaster.

New comment by bryankaplan in "FreeBSD: How Can We Make It More Attractive to New Users?"

bryankaplan — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 14:07:00 +0000

Funny how the desire to attract new users seems genuine up until someone mentions the glaring elephant in the room, and then you're downvoted to oblivion.

I, like many others, would never use FreeBSD precisely because it promotes the idea that demons are cute, and it's made by people who see nothing wrong with that.

New comment by bryankaplan in "Cooking items in your home are linked to cancer-causing chemicals"

bryankaplan — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 16:23:52 +0000

Why is this comment downvoted? I also saw no ads, using Firefox Mobile with uBlock Origin and NextDNS.

New comment by bryankaplan in "Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell"

bryankaplan — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 18:42:38 +0000

How do we solve that?

New comment by bryankaplan in "Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell"

bryankaplan — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 18:29:15 +0000

Yes, but there's still so much supporting software waiting to be built.

New comment by bryankaplan in "GPT Takes the Bar Exam"

bryankaplan — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 13:41:17 +0000

So what you're saying is it makes things up.

New comment by bryankaplan in "Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022"

bryankaplan — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 12:30:15 +0000

It's a system that was never introduced in the US, and in fact I've never even heard of it until now. So surely one option is to remove the system altogether.

That written, I'm also surprised there's any serious talk of going cashless there. We have plenty of cash-only businesses here that preclude any serious consideration of the notion.

New comment by bryankaplan in "Oakland cops hope to arm robots with lethal shotguns"

bryankaplan — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:37:09 +0000

What are its prime directives?

New comment by bryankaplan in "Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam"

bryankaplan — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 15:36:50 +0000

I too do this, yet I occasionally receive evidence that my address was sold or stolen. I've confronted one company about the problem, and they outright denied that they had any part in it.

New comment by bryankaplan in "Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2012)"

bryankaplan — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 17:17:33 +0000

I'm not the person you asked, but it's trivial to host your own git repos on a server.

New comment by bryankaplan in "Lab-grown woolly mammoths could walk the Earth in six years"

bryankaplan — Sat, 23 Jul 2022 20:16:05 +0000

Life finds a way.