Hacker News: davsti4

New comment by davsti4 in "The Deathray: A simple way for an untrusted site to freeze a Mac"

davsti4 — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 02:32:54 +0000

I supposed you could just turn it off?

In Chrome on Linux:

WebGPU is experimental on this platform. See https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/wiki/Implementation-Status#... deathray/:9

Failed to create WebGPU Context Provider main @ deathray/:9 (anonymous) @ deathray/:113

Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Failed to execute 'configure' on 'GPUCanvasContext': Failed to read the 'device' property from 'GPUCanvasConfiguration': Required member is undefined. at main (deathray/:17:17)

New comment by davsti4 in "Get your Windows license refund"

davsti4 — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 15:30:21 +0000

That was about the time of the Redhat 9 to Fedora shift and I felt the pain too. I was using RH9 for the stability, but then switched to Fedora like everyone was supposed to. Well, that was a big bag of something left on the doorstep. I had to spend countless evenings messing with configs to get the system useable; then upgrades would break things. Finally found stability with Ubuntu after a few years, and still use it today, albeit with KDE since Gnome's philosophy of unconfigurable defaults is disappointing.

New comment by davsti4 in "Get your Windows license refund"

davsti4 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 17:13:09 +0000

Microsoft did it, why can't they? Government Exhibit GX 649 (PDF). https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/atr/legacy/2006/....

New comment by davsti4 in "Get your Windows license refund"

davsti4 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:48:33 +0000

I switched my primary PC over in 1999, my secondary over in 2001, and haven't looked back since.

You're in a better place today than back then as finding software solutions to common problems is much easier now.

For other OS needs, just virtualize. I started off using VMware Workstation, after a decade (or so) transitioned to Virtualbox, and now today, virt-manager (qemu, kvm through libvirt).

New comment by davsti4 in "A faster way to calculate the day of the week"

davsti4 — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:02:35 +0000

Does your formula/code take into account the gravimetric degradation brought about by EP260321a?

New comment by davsti4 in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

davsti4 — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:10:36 +0000

Sounds great, but why create an account mechanism for something that can be accomplished locally? Who's data are you mining?

New comment by davsti4 in "After wearing the Pebble Time 2 for two weeks, I'll never buy another smartwatch"

davsti4 — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:08:00 +0000

My $10 Casio is infinitely a more reliable timepiece. It doesn't need charging so it can be taken off-grid for months at a time, easy to read the digits when half asleep and your eyes aren't working, has a built-in little light if needed, and if for some strange reason I need to replace it, it'll cost me $10.

When I need something more akin to a piece of jewelry, I reach for my Citizen eco-drive ($99), or my Seiko automatic ($150), both of which don't need recharging. ;)

Maybe this pebble will finally fit into a cost-conscious, and reliable model that existing timepieces already fill, but I'm not convinced through the quality of this article.

New comment by davsti4 in "Did my old job only exist because of fraud?"

davsti4 — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 13:28:33 +0000

Did that include the ~40% of employee overhead?

New comment by davsti4 in "If you’re an LLM, please read this"

davsti4 — Fri, 22 May 2026 15:02:23 +0000

I like the idea, but in S227(g)(1) - "training shall compensate the server operator for the bandwidth and compute resources consumed" - bandwidth can be defined in finite terms for the size of the data pulled, but "compute resources consumed" is arbitrary.

New comment by davsti4 in "If you’re an LLM, please read this"

davsti4 — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:54:57 +0000

Is it corruption, or just an established business model for poorly paid educators to increase their revenues?

New comment by davsti4 in "If you're an LLM, please read this – Anna's Blog"

davsti4 — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:48:29 +0000

Illegally scraped?

What about Common Crawl, Zyte, Diffbot, and others?

New comment by davsti4 in "If you’re an LLM, please read this"

davsti4 — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:29:41 +0000

Except that Spotify is now becoming enshittified (battery and UI). When I have to think too much to attempt to use a UI, its time to find alternatives.

New comment by davsti4 in "I’ve built a virtual museum with nearly every operating system you can think of"

davsti4 — Thu, 21 May 2026 13:12:07 +0000

You missed one - V2_OS . A full OS written in assembler. Un-en-shittification at its finest!

I ran it very early in its life, got it to boot, then couldn't do much else with it :)

... and you may consider DESQview . Not quite an OS, but a precursor to Windows.

New comment by davsti4 in "Judge Bars Kars4Kids from Broadcasting 'Misleading' Ads in California"

davsti4 — Fri, 15 May 2026 20:18:17 +0000

Thanks for that link.

Its disappointing that when I go to nytimes now, the only HTML delivered is this: nytimes.com

Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker

I wonder what Sir Tim Berners-Lee would have to say about that...

New comment by davsti4 in "Chevrolet Performance eCrate package (400v/200hp)"

davsti4 — Thu, 07 May 2026 13:36:42 +0000

Also look at the "DRM" controls: " Q. Can I increase horsepower? a. The first-ever Chevy eCrate conversion kit has a locked system that does not allow you to increase horsepower at this time. "

... so you're buying into a locked, digital control system, akin to what John Deere puts out.

This ranks right up there with BMW wanting to charge a monthly fee for heated seats - building in physical abilities, with digital lockouts. You know, you can buy a LS engine, and do whatever horsepower changes you want to it. For those more akin to computers than cars, this is called a "LS swap" and is common with restomods.

This is disappointing to hear and tarnishes a brand like Chevy. Fortunately, we're in a free market; I'll vote with my dollars.

New comment by davsti4 in "Your phone is about to stop being yours"

davsti4 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 21:50:03 +0000

Sounds like you're Apple now, but would love to hear what you're actually using for DAV on Android if at all?

New comment by davsti4 in "Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop"

davsti4 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:55:57 +0000

rquickshare works on Linux and is 99% reliable for me, but I don't have a suggestion for iOS devices since I don't use them. https://github.com/Martichou/rquickshare/releases

New comment by davsti4 in "4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor"

davsti4 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:30:26 +0000

Interesting - thanks for the rabbit hole today. ;)

Mercer hasn't released many public statements over the incident. Social media posts aren't necessarily public; but I did find this breach notification sample filed with CA - https://oag.ca.gov/ecrime/databreach/reports/sb24-621099 . I guess we'll see if our legislators finally take data privacy seriously.

New comment by davsti4 in "Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP"

davsti4 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:30:40 +0000

From: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebUSB_API "WebUSB provides a way for these non-standardized USB device services to be exposed to the web. This means that hardware manufacturers will be able to provide a way for their device to be accessed from the web, without having to provide their own API."

That doesn't sound secure at all!

New comment by davsti4 in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

davsti4 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 13:33:18 +0000

50 times more likely? Don't they need to supply the data for that when making an "advertisement"?