Hacker News: chopin

New comment by chopin in "Source code of the Estonian online voting system"

chopin — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 06:29:54 +0000

That's a big ask for trust. It illustrates nicely why electronic voting is a bad idea.

New comment by chopin in "Source code of the Estonian online voting system"

chopin — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 06:25:12 +0000

How is guaranteed that the open source code runs on the voting and tallying computers? How can citizens verify this?

New comment by chopin in "Source code of the Estonian online voting system"

chopin — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 06:22:08 +0000

If we are talking about the Berlin elections there had to be great public pressure for the election being repeated. Officials denied any impact on the final result. Afair courts had to be involved. Pretty shameful. The whole thing didn't further my trust in German democracy.

New comment by chopin in "Source code of the Estonian online voting system"

chopin — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 06:04:58 +0000

That would make coercion pretty easy.

New comment by chopin in "Whatever became of holography? (2011)"

chopin — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 07:52:31 +0000

You don't need a laser but a monochromatic point source. Modern LEDs work quite well.

Depth of reflection holograms depends on the quality of the reference beam. A divergent one gives limited depth but a parallel or convergent one would give much more. But this is much more difficult to achieve.

New comment by chopin in "California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops"

chopin — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:13:58 +0000

That's very unusual for 20 years ago. I remember this from my childhood, 60 years ago, where this was common. But even in the 90s that had stopped almost completely.

New comment by chopin in "California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops"

chopin — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 09:54:33 +0000

It's harmful as it tastes awful. At least compared to a good traditional wine.

New comment by chopin in "Stop Turning every purchase into a tip request"

chopin — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 22:50:13 +0000

In Germany, it is not very common. Where I see it, I avoid the business.

New comment by chopin in "Vancouver PD website features Quick Escape button that wipes itself from history"

chopin — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:58:24 +0000

What does eggcorn mean?

New comment by chopin in "European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS"

chopin — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:39:37 +0000

The app will likely have access to a bunch of unique identifiers on the phone. At least on Android whichs core concept is spying on the user.

For me, it's enough that your activity could be linked to any unique identity. I don't want mandatory government apps on my phone, that's very chinese. We should strive for better.

Edited to add: your linked FAQ conveniently leaves open how the communication between the web site and the app happens. There are myriad of ways that ones behaviour leaks in this step.

New comment by chopin in "European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS"

chopin — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 19:22:52 +0000

Governments will track with whom you verify. Much worse.

New comment by chopin in "A metallurgist's doubts about self-replicating probes"

chopin — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 18:05:52 +0000

Honestly, I always assumed that consensus was that replication is the hardest part. I believe we have almost none of the technologies required for that.

Whenever I read of von Neumann probes I always thought "How can that even made possible?".

New comment by chopin in "A bug which affected only left handed users"

chopin — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:58:12 +0000

You don't seem to use scissors.

New comment by chopin in "Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July"

chopin — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:05:39 +0000

Apparently, West...

Edit: before 1989.

New comment by chopin in "Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July"

chopin — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:02:38 +0000

Faring better than some other country doesn't mean its good.

Try calling up rt.com via a German phone network.

And calling our chancellor a liar will get your house searched.

New comment by chopin in "Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July"

chopin — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 07:50:33 +0000

I was referring to"hey you probably shouldn’t blow your hand off”. I am not against regulations per se, I am German after all.

But a sane discussion should be had how far this should go. Regulating things which are dangerous to the person taking a risk knowingly is over the top in my book.

New comment by chopin in "Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July"

chopin — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 07:38:01 +0000

But that is the maxim which drives almost everything we do on a daily basis.

New comment by chopin in "Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July"

chopin — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 07:22:13 +0000

But this is none of your business. I live in Germany, where everything is regulated by well meaning people. Going so far to regulate what you ought to say or to watch.

It is hellish. I don't recognize the country any more in which I was born and raised.

New comment by chopin in "If you're a button, you have one job"

chopin — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 07:11:25 +0000

But there are things like consistency which one can check for. And should.

New comment by chopin in "Hackers shoveled snow for company, were rewarded with network admin access"

chopin — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 15:23:25 +0000

I loathe two things in password requirements: special characters and not allowing spaces. C'mon, it's 2026. Require 20 characters and call it a day.