Hacker News: decasteve

New comment by decasteve in "Men who stare at walls"

decasteve — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 02:13:36 +0000

Your comment is spot on. The support of a teacher and a group are essential to go along with the practice. They are called The Three Jewels for a reason.

New comment by decasteve in "Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?"

decasteve — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:02:27 +0000

Reviewing code becomes more arduous. Not only are the pull requests more bloated, the developer who pushed them doesn't always understand the implications of their changes. It's harder to maintain and track down bugs. I spend way too much time explaining AI generated code to the developer who "wrote" it.

New comment by decasteve in "/e/OS is a complete, fully “deGoogled” mobile ecosystem"

decasteve — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:15:36 +0000

If you block Google, as much of it as possible anyway, on your firewall, does the device work/install? I tried /e/ and Lineage about a year ago, but neither of them worked when Google was blocked completely. The only one that made no requests to Google was Graphene.

New comment by decasteve in "Tool beeps every time data is sent to Google"

decasteve — Sat, 27 Aug 2022 12:09:59 +0000

Add Akamai to that list of ASNs and you cover everything. I did that experiment a couple of years ago and my Apple devices went unresponsive unless I disconnected them from the Internet entirely.

The rabbit hole goes as far as locking yourself out of many government services. If you’re a Canadian, it means not being able to travel without submitting to corporate privacy policies and ToS (ArriveCan apps/website).

New comment by decasteve in "Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?"

decasteve — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 11:33:32 +0000

That would be a hard one. A book of appetizers without a main course. I read it when I was an undergrad wanting to get a broad sense of different areas in Math I could pursue.

If I had to pick one math book it would have to be a classic with some depth to it: Euclid’s Elements, Newton’s Principia, or Gauss’ Disquisitiones.

New comment by decasteve in "Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?"

decasteve — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 11:19:36 +0000

4 of those 5 books are some of my all-time favourites. Ones that I enjoy rereading but I’d be hard pressed to pick just one.

New comment by decasteve in "Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)"

decasteve — Fri, 27 May 2022 12:23:51 +0000

Last time I used macOS, 2-3 years ago, it was in constant communication with Akamai servers. Blocking some of those hosts to prevent it from doing so would render the system unresponsive when trying to launch an application.

Note: this anecdote may no longer be current. I’m not sure what changes Apple might have made since I tested this.

New comment by decasteve in "How Polyester Bounced Back"

decasteve — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 21:34:41 +0000

> including switching away from polyester clothing to cotton, linen and wool where possible.

I’ve been going through the same thing lately. My daughter had offered to show me how to naturally dye and sew my own clothes if I get the undyed fabric. I’m eager to take her up on that.

New comment by decasteve in "Scientists find microplastics in blood for first time"

decasteve — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 12:17:50 +0000

Clothing is mostly plastic fibre nowadays. Upholstery fibres too. Walls are painted with acrylic paint. Flooring is often made of various plastics. I assume the dust in our homes that we breathe in contains relatively a lot of plastic. Containers for food are almost entirely plastic.

I’m interested in these sorts of studies on the topic.

New comment by decasteve in "George Orwell Outside the Whale"

decasteve — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 14:56:40 +0000

Bradbury covered the spectrum of from literal book burning to idea burning through his characters. In my opinion it's through Faber he hit the nail on the head. It's not just books, but the quality and "texture" of the information, having time to reflect and contemplate it (leisure), and having the ability and willingness to act upon it.

New comment by decasteve in "George Orwell Outside the Whale"

decasteve — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 14:43:43 +0000

Add The Road to Wigan Pier for the Orwell trifecta.

New comment by decasteve in "The Scranton Iron Furnaces"

decasteve — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 02:41:29 +0000

It depends on the scale. I still like the idea of harvesting bog iron and smelting in a homemade bloomery.

New comment by decasteve in "Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do"

decasteve — Sun, 17 Oct 2021 14:51:46 +0000

Social media have become Bradbury’s parlour walls.

New comment by decasteve in "Why Mathematics is Boring (2007) [pdf]"

decasteve — Sun, 17 Oct 2021 13:36:30 +0000

Research Math is an inside joke between friends. The jokes fall flat unless you know the same people and attend the same parties.

New comment by decasteve in "Finland lobbied EU to declare nuclear power sustainable"

decasteve — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 00:28:20 +0000

I’ve been pro-nuclear for the past 20+ years and have echoed the same arguments and sentiments expressed here. However, I’ve started to waver.

Is it naive idealism to expect a future where nuclear technology won’t be weaponized? We have to maintain global peace for thousands of years without a large-scale war. It’s incredibly unlikely given that scale of time that global peace will be continuously maintained.

New comment by decasteve in "Firefox: Dark pattern consent dialog invites users to share their location"

decasteve — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 01:32:11 +0000

I mentioned this on another post:

The Tor Browser without Tor. It’s Firefox with all the “extras” stripped away.

The instructions on how to do so are easy to find on the web. It also supports all the same add-ons/plugins.

New comment by decasteve in "Lots to See in Firefox 93"

decasteve — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 19:54:46 +0000

The best version of Firefox is the Tor Browser with Tor disabled. Avoids the “features” Mozilla insists on.

New comment by decasteve in "Americans' Trust in Media Dips to Second Lowest on Record"

decasteve — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 15:49:30 +0000

It’s not just trust in media (or government). It’s most societal institutions that have lost trust. I’d argue even trusting one’s own neighbours is probably at an all-time low.

Trust should be something we think about in our interactions and how we can work to improve it.

New comment by decasteve in "Remembering Huxley's “Brave New World”"

decasteve — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 15:45:28 +0000

The warning from Huxley is regarding what happens when the choice of child rearing (and bearing) are removed by both government and social pressures. He explores this to the extreme but many aspects of his thought experiment in Brave New World exist today.

More and more of child rearing is controlled by state institutions: child care, preschool, grade school, trade school, university, sports/activities, work, etc. Some are mandatory and some people are left with no other choice, e.g. both parents have to work to make ends meet, extended families live farther apart. A mother or father working as homemakers and child rearers are negatively viewed and social pressure mounts against one who chooses to do so (speaking from experience).

New comment by decasteve in "Facebook thrives on criticism of “disinformation”"

decasteve — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 10:24:09 +0000

> Cambridge Analytica was a good example of this as well. The press fell over themselves to characterise their technology as some sort of election tipping, mind controlling super tool. They probably loved it. In reality there's not even any scientific backing for their targeting and it most likely did barely anything, they just wanted to look like James Bond's Spectre.

Reading what’s still out there about Cambridge Analytica ignores the findings of the UK’s Information Commissioner which indeed found they were basically throwing data at scikit-learn hoping for a result — the script kiddie version of machine learning.

How many of the journalists gone back to correct their misinformation on the topic? Many of the articles are still out there in their original form and those hacks are still making hay on the subject.