Hacker News: eastbound

New comment by eastbound in "US jury says Apple owes record $5.7B in haptic technology patent case"

eastbound — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 18:23:40 +0000

Before patents, scientists wouldn't share their findings. Patents are an excellent way of making things public domain 20 years later.

We should have the same with software.

New comment by eastbound in "Excel now supports multiple values in a single cell"

eastbound — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 04:12:31 +0000

The other aspects is the new generation doesn't understand it. During interviews in marketing but also for a medical field expert, I often ask "make a small budget so you'll see how your bonus will work", and even the PhD, which is the top academic level, couldn't use a basic formula. How do they deal with data during a PhD? "In Prism", she said.

Same for marketing students and, although it's a lower academic level, they still need Excel for prospect lists.

New comment by eastbound in "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS"

eastbound — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 19:15:41 +0000

Buying US helicopters when they've been developing one with France. But Germany has no choice: It has been literally occupied by the US forces and it's only recently that it has regained the right to have an army, but there are still 200k US troops in Germany (among other means of influence).

New comment by eastbound in "Turn off and restrict access to Apple Intelligence features on Mac"

eastbound — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 19:27:42 +0000

I think a large part of our ecosystem is:

1. Lose the user, make him struggle to find items in the Start menu (Windows), struggle to type words on the keyboard (iOS), or struggle to manage find their subscription (Atlassian),

2. ???

3. Profit

If it's a dark pattern, I'd like to know what step 2 is. Who knows, maybe the goal is to overwhelm the user and it's a spy operation from the KGB.

New comment by eastbound in "AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran"

eastbound — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 07:49:30 +0000

I'm going to reword my Terms of Service this second to add "any military operation" next to "acts of war". But I'm sure we'll then have to demonstrate whether paramilitary are assimilated to the military.

New comment by eastbound in "AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran"

eastbound — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 05:13:31 +0000

Yes. It's super hard to answer interviews or customer demos. Every sentence you say should include all preconditions that were said in previous answers, within the same context, because you may be quoted. You should think in live about all possible contexts in which your app might be used, and your speech should be as detailed as a contract.

Obviously here, he should have mentionned that they can recover a hit on a single data center, provided the customer chose multi-AZ hosting. That's probably why companies run their ads on "This watch is a legacy for your children" rather than any material claim.

New comment by eastbound in "Salesforce Global Outage"

eastbound — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:36:55 +0000

What do you think of Atlassian?

New comment by eastbound in "iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27"

eastbound — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 05:19:17 +0000

I've deactivated every single type of data in Spotlight except Applications. It goes out of its way to still suggest files like C system files or header files, like "system_library.c". It didn't wait for AI to turn against us.

New comment by eastbound in "iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27"

eastbound — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 05:15:37 +0000

Don't they perform user testing?

- Do "normies" perform better with this behavior?

- Or is the goal to disturb the user and make something impractical like in Google, so that people click on ads? Software has turned into a curse. The machines have risen.

New comment by eastbound in "Ex-FTC boss Khan: break out the handcuffs for AI CEOs, citing 1934 precedent"

eastbound — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 05:04:44 +0000

It's transformative. Not aimed at exact reproduction, so not in the scope of copyright law.

New comment by eastbound in "Retrospectively Reverse-Engineering Apple's Neural Engine"

eastbound — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 09:22:45 +0000

I'm all for compassion, but engineers knew the NE was empty when it sat idle for 10 years on our computers.

- when you're given no usecase for your engineering piece, apart from "detour characters in pictures". It's an exageration but AI's contributions in iOS aren't visible; Meanwhile Google has features that people actually notice like removing tourists from your holidays photos — worse: it's mostly a simple collage feature working on the main CPU, and it has the same social effect as green bubbles in iMessage ("ah. Tourists on your photos. iPhone user?")

- and you tout it as "16 Neural Engine cores" during the sales, with no associated software, no listed material feature, just hand-waving,

- Siri maxxes out at "There is no contact named 'What's the weather today' in your agenda",

Then can't really claim that Apple engineers' problem was really the bad luck that ML wasn't the determining part of the future. It's more like misreading the room for 5 to 10 years straight.

Apple engineering's excellence on vertical integration and supply chain control gave them absolute power over our world (with merit), it just failed at that particular project. Which occupies 40% of our CPUs.

New comment by eastbound in "Who People Talk to When They're Struggling"

eastbound — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:27:26 +0000

How many upvotes do you have? I'll assume that will be representative of the prevalence of your case.

Sorry for you situation and stay strong.

New comment by eastbound in "iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max"

eastbound — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 18:24:15 +0000

Don't. Large iPhones are the deadweight of a ball and chain, and fits in no pockets. Next one will be the SE, and even if I buy an external battery, it's still lighter than the ingot Pro Max. Also you can buy one every 1.5 years.

New comment by eastbound in "iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max"

eastbound — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 18:17:16 +0000

— "Start my chronometer"

— "There is no contact named 'Chronometer'"

Maybe if we mock the iPhone enough, they'll stop autocorrecting words with other words that are on the opposite side of the keyboard. Or mistype letters with the letters just next to them.

iPhone is laughing stock. A neverending comedy of "There is no track named 'Call Mom' in your Apple Music library."

New comment by eastbound in "Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit"

eastbound — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:31:47 +0000

To protect their future reputation. There's a civil rejection brewing about YC, and it will affect both Flock and Sam Altman.

New comment by eastbound in "Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit"

eastbound — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:18:48 +0000

Flock will be a big curriculum that tarnishes YC. Already under YC videos, comments are related to the Flock scandal. Denizen will want to make it a pain for YC until they fix their ethical problem.

New comment by eastbound in "Doomscrolling ourselves to death"

eastbound — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 20:22:31 +0000

Coffee is also a temporary antidepressant, so I personally couldn't cut that.

New comment by eastbound in "The car industry A/B tested selling a car with and without CarPlay"

eastbound — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 20:18:14 +0000

And are the buyers told whether there is carplay. Because you generally assume a car can't not include it, until you step in and realize.

New comment by eastbound in "The Real Luxuries In Life"

eastbound — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 15:13:30 +0000

This (very common) approach causes the loop of people's insolation.

Why it's bad: I haven't performed my deed, precisely because it's so evil, but you have.

New comment by eastbound in "Cloud in a Bottle: making self-hosting accessible to everyone"

eastbound — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 09:39:57 +0000

It's sad that open source / open-internet projects always have a clunky design. Here, the main screenshot, at the top, uses a monospaced System font. You might as well display a terminal and it's a wrap. To appeal to broader audiences:

- You both need to trigger the potential OSS contributors, with references to Debian, Ubuntu maybe, and appeal to big donors, which is another topic entirely,

- And ALSO have a design that triggers the broader audiences and therefore, very "turnkey", very packaged, very "Comment like and subscribe", one-click install on your NAS, etc. Privacy is then a characteristic but services are the real features.