Hacker News: coldpie

New comment by coldpie in "About the security content of macOS Tahoe 26.6"

coldpie — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:33:37 +0000

I found if you turn off transparency effects and turn on high contrast in the accessibility settings, it's actually a pretty nice looking UI. Still has some dumb quirks like inconsistent corner radiuses and text appearing under UI elements (because they're assumed to be transparent, but aren't). But all software is trash in 2026 so be thankful it isn't even worse, I guess.

New comment by coldpie in "Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain"

coldpie — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 20:10:25 +0000

Yeah, it sucks. It could've been a cool technology but they're so locked in to "my way or nothing" and won't consider other usecases or security trade-offs other than the ones they decided on. It's just a complete non-starter with that attitude.

New comment by coldpie in "Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain"

coldpie — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:32:20 +0000

Your understanding is correct and I agree with you. The Passkey spec authors, however, think services should be allowed to ban your client for behaving this way:

> [When UV is required, KeePassXC must request user verification or not handle the request]

> This implementation is not spec compliant and has the potential to be blocked by relying parties.

https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10406

New comment by coldpie in "Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain"

coldpie — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:13:31 +0000

Proton Pass is on the official Passkey client naughty list[1]. I hope the services you log in to don't choose to ban it because of those big, scary X's.

[1] https://passkeys.dev/docs/reference/known-issues/

New comment by coldpie in "Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain"

coldpie — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:51:49 +0000

Passkeys are a vector for locking your logins to Big Tech ecosystems. They support device attestation, which means the service you are logging in to can require you to only use certain Passkey clients such as those provided by Google, Apple or Microsoft. The Passkey spec authors also maintain a list of "naughty clients"[1], which are clients that allow the user to manage their own data how they want. Services could choose to block those clients for "security reasons," justifying the decision to force you to use one of the Big Tech providers.

Until device attestation is removed or strongly curtailed in the spec, I suggest you do not create any Passkeys. Which sucks, because it's otherwise a pretty cool tech.

[1] https://passkeys.dev/docs/reference/known-issues/

More sources here: https://www.smokingonabike.com/2025/01/04/passkey-marketing-...

New comment by coldpie in "Back to Kagi"

coldpie — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:25:48 +0000

I have. Like I said, the results were the same or worse than DDG and Google. It was not noticeably better in any way, certainly not something I want to pay $50 for.

New comment by coldpie in "Back to Kagi"

coldpie — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:20:10 +0000

I've asked a number of times on HN threads for specific examples of searches that Kagi performs better on than DDG or Google, and never gotten a solid reply. It seems what people like about Kagi is the customization and surrounding tooling, but the actual search quality is about the same or possibly worse. That's cool, but I don't find it worth the cash personally.

New comment by coldpie in "Ask HN: Another "Hacker News" with less AI and more human-focused hacking news?"

coldpie — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:32:09 +0000

I finally did this: https://github.com/ColdPie1/enough-ai-on-hn

Browser extension to automatically Hide AI-related submissions on Hacker News

coldpie — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:47:23 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/ColdPie1/enough-ai-on-hn

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005223

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by coldpie in "Ask HN: Another "Hacker News" with less AI and more human-focused hacking news?"

coldpie — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:19:00 +0000

I thought about writing a Firefox extension that would just auto-click the Hide button for any story containing a keyword from a configurable list. Haven't gotten around to it.

New comment by coldpie in "Canada's only watchmaking school still ticking after 80 years"

coldpie — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:20:47 +0000

Also looking to leave software, lots of options in front of me. Are you still in training, or are you making a living from it now?

New comment by coldpie in "Canada's only watchmaking school still ticking after 80 years"

coldpie — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:12:56 +0000

I wonder too. About a year ago I dropped a ~1970s Citizen mechanical watch[1] of mine and it shattered into a few pieces. I took it to a small-device repair place that advertised they can fix watches. The guy there said it was out of his abilities, but his business could send it out to some guy in California to repair. I took him up on that and a few weeks later it came back in one piece. So I guess someone out there is making a business of it. Cost me like $200 which is more than I paid for the watch, hahah.

[1] This model! https://www.fratellowatches.com/citizen-homer-second-setting...

New comment by coldpie in "Tenda firmware (multiple versions) contains hidden authentication backdoor"

coldpie — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:53:28 +0000

I'm a security people. I can say with confidence that a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of these security issues are deliberate. Almost all of them are just dumb mistakes because making good software is really hard and really, really expensive and there is no market incentive to make good software. You don't need to get hired at the safe factory to build an elaborate back door into the production line if safes are actually just cardboard boxes, you know?

It's possible the backdoor is deliberate, I have no idea in this particular case, but the more likely situation, absent more information, is that someone who is earning a middling wage just added the "feature" and didn't think about the security implications because no one cares about computer security.

New comment by coldpie in "Has_not_been_viewed_much"

coldpie — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:07:55 +0000

Yeah I suspect ebooks are even more dire as they have neither the curation of a publisher putting money into physical production; or the curation of a librarian with limited shelf space.

New comment by coldpie in "Has_not_been_viewed_much"

coldpie — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:15:31 +0000

> Never regretted reading them

Interesting! I'm surprised to hear you've had that experience. I pick out books at the library largely by the cover & back blurb, not by whether they're popular or well reviewed or whatever. And to be honest, I've picked out a lot of crap this way, where I turn it back in after just a chapter or two. I suspect that frequency of being checked out & popularity/well-reviewed-ness are correlated. So I also suspect (admittedly without evidence) that my algorithm of picking somewhat randomly means I pick out books that are not popular with some frequency, and I've definitely regretted many of my choices. So it's surprising to me that you haven't had any that were terrible.

New comment by coldpie in "US residents angry datacenters 'shoved down our throats' are recalling officials"

coldpie — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 18:10:24 +0000

You get VC to give your company $X00 M to build out AI capabilities, take a $X M salary for yourself, and retire. Doesn't matter what happens past that.

New comment by coldpie in "Bring back crappy forums"

coldpie — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:50:03 +0000

It has definitely grown up with its users, yes. Most of us are in our 30s-50s now, lol.

New comment by coldpie in "Bring back crappy forums"

coldpie — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:25:47 +0000

I guess the WWW itself is what you are asking for. You simply can't scale a single community to include all of humanity. You need some way to filter out abusers, and people will vary widely in where they want to place the line of what counts as acceptable behavior. Given that, you need some way to exclude people from spaces they aren't welcome in, and different discussion mediums in order to encourage or discourage types of behavior. This leads to different communities with different expectations of behavior, and that's exactly what we have on the WWW.

Usenet worked because it was small, a very small percentage of the planet used Usenet.

New comment by coldpie in "Bring back crappy forums"

coldpie — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:44:11 +0000

I think it's pretty clear from the conversation context?

New comment by coldpie in "Bring back crappy forums"

coldpie — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:46:32 +0000

It is the website owner's decision to allow people on drugs screaming obscenities on their platform. They are allowed to kick those people out, and you're allowed to leave if you don't like the people in that community. Good moderation is a requirement for healthy communities.