Hacker News: fph

New comment by fph in "The sigmoids won't save you"

fph — Sat, 16 May 2026 20:38:57 +0000

As a wise man once said, "anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist".

New comment by fph in "Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone"

fph — Sat, 16 May 2026 20:32:52 +0000

You can buy phones with Graphene preinstalled: https://shop.nitrokey.com/shop , https://zextons.co.uk/categories/DeGoogled-Phones , if you really want.

New comment by fph in "Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying"

fph — Fri, 15 May 2026 07:07:59 +0000

Within the realm of possibility? Let's be honest, if you are a top NSA executive and you couldn't find a way to get your hands on Cloudflare's private keys (bribing or threatening the right person), you are not getting your Christmas bonus.

New comment by fph in "Arena AI Model ELO History"

fph — Thu, 14 May 2026 08:32:35 +0000

Very neat! It would be great to extend it to non-flagship models as well.

New comment by fph in "Credit cards are vulnerable to brute force kind attacks"

fph — Fri, 01 May 2026 22:31:09 +0000

3-digits? What is this, an OTP for ants?

New comment by fph in "Ti-84 Evo"

fph — Fri, 01 May 2026 22:22:49 +0000

What prevents a motivated cheater from swapping out the processor entirely?

New comment by fph in "CO operating system age-verification open-source exemption doesn't include Linux"

fph — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 07:59:35 +0000

My understanding (IANAL) is that the GPL restricts how you /redistribute modified versions/ of the software. So I'd argue that it passes all requirements.

Can you copy and redistribute it without restriction? Sure.

Can you modify it and install the modified version on your computer without restriction? Sure.

The only thing you cannot do is redistribute the modified version. If you do that, there are some restrictions in place: you have to provide also the source of that modified version.

New comment by fph in "I'm done making desktop applications (2009)"

fph — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:05:25 +0000

Didn't HN have a "no clickbait titles" rule?

New comment by fph in "Original GrapheneOS responses to WIRED fact checker"

fph — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 09:14:13 +0000

Please provide a link to this post you found, so I can tell which one you think is a citation to a source. If you want some examples of recent posts that should have a source but don't, here they are:

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116442796907613215

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116442754144530576

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116439834987996043

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116439798112845463

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116439747793648606

(the linked post in Mastodon is the one displayed with a bigger font, not necessarily the first at the top of the page.)

New comment by fph in "Original GrapheneOS responses to WIRED fact checker"

fph — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 20:00:13 +0000

How far down do you have to scroll on https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS to find a citation to a source for one of their claims?

New comment by fph in "Original GrapheneOS responses to WIRED fact checker"

fph — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:31:53 +0000

One of the main criteria to differentiate "rants" from "correcting falsehoods" is proper citing of sources. In the case of Grapheneos, unfortunately I often see very few sources in what they post online.

(But, if you ignore the rants, that's a fantastic OS.)

New comment by fph in "College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work"

fph — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 07:55:21 +0000

You have a point, but it is very ironic that this sounds a lot like the old argument "you must still learn to compute by hand because you won't have a calculator with you all the time".

New comment by fph in "SI Units for Request Rate (2024)"

fph — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 07:51:51 +0000

As the OP discusses, the current state of the standard formally disallows it: the SI specifies that hertzes are only to be used for periodic phenomena, and becquerels only for radioactivity.

New comment by fph in "Brunost: The Nynorsk Programming Language"

fph — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 14:17:30 +0000

Excel still translates keywords in 2026.

New comment by fph in "Most people can't juggle one ball"

fph — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 19:05:21 +0000

I don't recommend tennis balls for a beginner: they bounce everywhere, and you'll spend most of your time chasing the balls rather than juggling. Cheap juggling balls are around 10$.

New comment by fph in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

fph — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 11:38:16 +0000

Why would only incompetent users expect something that "just works"?

New comment by fph in "France to ditch Windows for Linux to reduce reliance on US tech"

fph — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 19:48:37 +0000

Jolla had ties with Russian state companies, I wouldn't be surprised if they planted backdoors all over the place.

And in any case if you use Jolla without the Android emulation layer (so Google again), the app ecosystem is as barren as the Siberian wasteland.

New comment by fph in "How Pope Leo is pushing back on divine justification of war"

fph — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 12:58:17 +0000

This is still very mild opposition, the equivalent of a "strongly worded letter". What we should expect from a serious pope is excommunicating [1] those who start wars.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication_in_the_Catholi...

New comment by fph in "German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad"

fph — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 19:23:34 +0000

Writing prompt: On June 1, the ministry for defense stops issuing these permits. No one knows why, but wild speculation ensues.

New comment by fph in "Copilot edited an ad into my PR"

fph — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 16:30:31 +0000

In principle, one could train the AI to insert ads in its answers. So no, if you only do inference locally with an open-weight model you are still not in control.