Hacker News: freedomben

New comment by freedomben in "Pixel Watch 5"

freedomben — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:11:02 +0000

Is anything with the pebble time able to capture heart rate for historical data analysis? Anything that can show graphs that you know of?

I've got the pixel watch and I'm using Fitbit for this currently, but it's way too expensive for all I'm using it for. I really just want historical heart rate at the moment plus basic exercise tracking, and of course being able to tell the time. Media controls are a huge plus as well.

New comment by freedomben in "Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'"

freedomben — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:02:59 +0000

In that I fully agree, but the reason it has to be at a fast pace is because when Google adds things to chrome, developers will use them and don't have to care enough about market share. I think unless Firefox gains enough market share to matter, we'll be stuck in this race.

New comment by freedomben in "Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'"

freedomben — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:41:28 +0000

Like many here, I think Mozilla has done a terrible job managing their money and they are largely to blame for the pickle they are in.

However, I don't see who picks up the reigns if Mozilla dies. Like it or not, Firefox is essential for a somewhat (increasingly less) open web, and (at least for now) Mozilla is essential to Firefox. For those who want to see Mozilla die but Firefox live on, what are the more likely outcomes in your opinion if Mozilla went down? Do you see a big corp (which it increasingly seems is the only way to keep up with the needed pace for a browser) stepping up?

New comment by freedomben in "Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview"

freedomben — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 15:33:39 +0000

I'm not usually one to defend Microsoft, but since Teams works great in a browser, I actually prefer it that way. My video conference doesn't need access to my whole filesystem and an opacity layer that prevents me from seeing what it does. I actually applaud them for supporting browsers as well as they do.

New comment by freedomben in "How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story"

freedomben — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:58:07 +0000

Indeed, I remember being told to go to kinkos and have it printed there since I didn't have a laser printer

New comment by freedomben in "How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story"

freedomben — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:57:00 +0000

I remember a Java job interview like that. "Tell us what you would do to improve this code" with a couple pages of code printed out :-D

New comment by freedomben in "Has the New Cocaine Arrived?"

freedomben — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 13:56:59 +0000

Agreed, but even some physical dependency seems to be acceptable, though surely only because they're grandfathered in. For example caffeine

New comment by freedomben in "Cyberscript"

freedomben — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 12:35:58 +0000

I even had someone submit a resume that listed crypto as one of their skills. When I asked basic questions it quickly became clear they were talking about cryptocurrencies lol

New comment by freedomben in "Only 8.9% of sites block AI crawlers, but 94.8% are never cited in AI answers"

freedomben — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 12:33:52 +0000

For standard responses you're not wrong, but increasingly there are a lot of LLMS that are essentially doing RAG against search results. For example this is I believe how Kagi works, and Google AI overviews. I have increasingly seen Claude and chat GPT also doing the same thing where instead of answering a question from the knowledge Bank they will do a web search and cite the responses that were used.

New comment by freedomben in "RipGrep musl binaries occasionally segfault during very-large searches"

freedomben — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 18:31:18 +0000

Thank you for taking the time to write that out. I found it incredibly helpful, just wanted to let you know I appreciated it!

New comment by freedomben in "Run Kimi K3 using 29 GB of RAM at 0.50 tok/s"

freedomben — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 10:46:15 +0000

I fully agree, but you'd be amazed at how good Claude is at figuring out the why based on the what. I would never have believed it if I hadn't tried it myself. If it doesn't get the why, then I will typically add it

New comment by freedomben in "Run Kimi K3 using 29 GB of RAM at 0.50 tok/s"

freedomben — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 20:31:16 +0000

I often let Claude write my commit messages even when I'm the one who wrote the code. Claude is often damn good at writing commit messages, and they frequently end up much better than if I wrote it all by hand. I nearly always edit them somewhat, but it's like starting from 80% instead of 0%. Some might call it laziness, but I call it working smarter rather than harder.

New comment by freedomben in "Show HN: Gander, an Android file viewer that asks for no permissions at all"

freedomben — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 11:08:41 +0000

Great work! A tool like this is sorely needed.

How is accessibility? Do PDFs work with screenreaders for example?

New comment by freedomben in "'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling"

freedomben — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:15:54 +0000

I considered it, but it wasn't a direct quote so quotes felt misleading. It was a paraphrase of opinions I've heard expressed by various people in the past

New comment by freedomben in "'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling"

freedomben — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:14:23 +0000

Yes agreed. I use tailscale for the same purpose, and it's so much simpler than having to properly ingress everything from the internet. I have a few older devices on the LAN that have reached EOL as well and would be a terrible idea to expose them directly to the internet (not so much because I don't want someone turning off my light, but more so I don't end up as part of a botnet)

New comment by freedomben in "'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling"

freedomben — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:12:43 +0000

Yes that would be the ideal! I do hope we can reach that some day

New comment by freedomben in "'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling"

freedomben — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:11:38 +0000

Exactly. I disagree with the law, but it's obviously not about corporate VPNs

New comment by freedomben in "'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling"

freedomben — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:42:10 +0000

Yes correct, I vehemently disagree with people who say things like the first paragraph. I definitely should have been more clear that that was not my opinion, but it's too late to edit now

New comment by freedomben in "'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling"

freedomben — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:40:36 +0000

Oops yes, definitely should have done that. Looks like it's too late to edit though

New comment by freedomben in "'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling"

freedomben — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:33:28 +0000

VPNs are just tools that sketchy people use for sketchy means. There's no legitimate use for someone who isn't trying to break the law. Allowing these tools let's underage people access porn, and do all manner of undesirable behaviors like accessing region locked content.

I have actually heard otherwise intelligent people say things just like that, including site operators who run nontrivial websites.

There are of course some people on the other side who think VPNs are a guarantee of privacy and secrecy on the internet, but that's pretty rare in my anecdatal experience. I largely blame the rampant ads on podcasts for this view.