Hacker News: freefrog334433

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Fire at Starlink site in Bulgaria after suspected sabotage in Poland"

freefrog334433 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 01:45:40 +0000

Ukraine started attacks against Russian shipping in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea on 6th July 2026, as part of the 40 days day sinking over 100 commercial ships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_MoLoChKa

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Ask HN: How can I delete a Substack account in Australia?"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:21:38 +0000

Unfortunately social media website make it difficult to delete accounts. I wouldn't have minded if the options were to verify through bio-metrics or delete account.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Ask HN: How can I delete a Substack account in Australia?"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:18:58 +0000

I tried this, and got a reply with a link, that redirected me to the age verification again. I replied to this asking them to manually delete my account, and they manually verified that I was an adult without asking for bio-metric verification. I just my calm, but critical emails convinced them, along with my paid subscription history that I was an adult :).

Ask HN: How can I delete a Substack account in Australia?

freefrog334433 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 08:23:43 +0000

Hello,

Since 10th December, Substack introduced age verification to login to your account. Unfortunately this breaks the process of deleting an account (which requires you to login).

How can I delete my account without completing the video streamed mug shot age verification process?

support@substack.com autoreply directs you to substack.com/contact -- which also requires you to pass age verification first.

The substack AI chatbot is useless - no hope of reaching a human. The process for cancelling a deceased account doesn't work either as the chatbot can't look up my account using my email address (presumably it is frozen until age verification). Tor and VPNs don't work as my profile includes my location in Australia, and my email address is Australian.

Any ideas? I'm about to cancel my credit card as a last resort.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46242012

Points: 6

# Comments: 6

Deleting Substack account after Australia age laws

freefrog334433 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 08:07:13 +0000

Hello,

I don't want to submit to substack's age verification process that requires streaming face mug videos, and am trying to delete my account and paid subscriptions.

Unfortunately, the only way seems to be logging into your account first - a nice catch-22.

support@substack.com autoreply directs you to substack.com/contact -- which requires you to pass age verification first.

The substack AI chatbot is ridiculous - no hope of reaching a human. The process for cancelling a deceased account doesn't work either as the chatbot can't look up my account using my email address (presumably it is frozen until age verification). Tor and VPNs don't work as my profile includes my location in Australia, and my email address is Australian.

Any ideas? I'm about to cancel my credit card as a last resort.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46241931

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by freefrog334433 in "How I fell in love with Erlang"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:51:41 +0000

The ability to load recompiled code on running processes makes it possible to change live services on the fly. I worked for a low budget mobile operator in SE-Asia where there were no test platforms, and every change was on the live servers. Erlang made changes fast, as small changes were trivial, while large changes were broken down into small changes, implemented individually, and tested. Rolling back was fast, as I kept the original code before modifying. No convoluted build structures, and praying the rollout to production doesn't throw unexpected errors.

Programming languages stress reusable code, where you get reusable processes (eg interface to the SMSC)in Erlang, which you would need messaging servers in other languages.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "South Korea's President says US investment demands would spark financial crisis"

freefrog334433 — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 08:23:39 +0000

China knows NATO will turn on them if Russia is defeated. Also, the narrative that Russia launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine isn't strong outside the West. It's more complex, starting with Bush announcing Ukraine eligible for NATO membership, the Maidan coup, and 8 years of civil war against the 4 Eastern Oblasts that voted to secede from Ukraine.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "South Korea's President says US investment demands would spark financial crisis"

freefrog334433 — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 08:13:16 +0000

Freezing Russian assets was the beginning. Sanctions against Russia backfired, cutting them off from SWIFT encouraged alternatives as did Lloyd's of London refusing to insure Russian ships. All it did was make the non-NATO world develop alternatives.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "This map is not upside down"

freefrog334433 — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 00:02:41 +0000

GDP PPP is being used to compare countries productivity more often now. Australia has high GDP but low productivity as most is sunk into expensive, unproductive real estate. Every country has their rust belts and undeveloped rural areas.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 10:48:41 +0000

It seems like you are making the point that there are large ranges of drones, and other weapons are required when drones are not effective, which I agree with. Drones aren't as cost effective as your earlier example of 12 soldiers being killed by a few drones. I can't find the interview, but a Ukranian drone operator said on average 15-20 FPVs were needed to wound/kill a soldier (80% are jammed). Just as it takes 1000 bullets to kill a soldier, it takes lots of drones (on average) to kill a soldier, making the cost-effectiveness worse.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 10:31:20 +0000

The key word was "effective". Ukraine's attacks haven't had any meaningful effect on the war. I would have no doubt that if Israel lost any of the conventional wars with it's neighbors, nuclear weapons would have been launched.

The original post was postulating that American bombers and intelligence could destroy China's production base. If US attacks did destroy a significant portion of China's factories, and production facilities, I have no doubt the war would become nuclear.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 10:26:45 +0000

The X.com links don't work. The CNN article was on a video showing how Russians treat a deserter. Ukraine has 400,000 deserters, and forces men on the street into vans for conscription. https://www.ukrainemonitor.com/article/837248236 https://www.bitchute.com/video/4GlBx4Dgihge

The Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine are volunteers, well paid (five times average salaries). https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/b0002tho

The people on the ground know how the war is going - there are no more Ukrainians volunteering to fight. Winning attracts, and Russia doesn't need conscription. Amazingly, Ukraine is now recruiting 60+ year old men to fight. https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-signs-law-allowing-over...

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:54:44 +0000

It also took 18 months to insert the people, set up the shell company, smuggle materials, manufacture, etc. It also had the advantage of surprise - the first such attack at such a distance from the front line. Is it unlikely such an attack will be replicated, just as a box-cutter hijack of 747s attack against buildings will not succeed again.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:47:24 +0000

Soldiers adapt - deploying in groups of 3-4, moving along tree lines, and hiding in buildings/trenches. One of Patrick Lancaster's (an American journalist covering the war from the Donbas) videos has him hiding with a group of soldiers while a drone is overhead - the twigs and branches of the bushes and trees makes it impossible for a drone traveling at a moderate speed to see them, and would entangle the drone if it did attack.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:37:48 +0000

Problem is that munitions carried by drones are much weaker than artillery shells - more like grenades. On this page is a turtle tank that took 60 drone attacks to disable. https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/western-analysts-find-li...

Russians are able to retrieve 80% of disabled armored vehicles to repair them.

A tank does not even notice cluster bombs - this type of bomb is effective against infantry and civilians.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:33:08 +0000

https://simplicius76.substack.com/ is in the top 10 subscribed substacks. He posts videos supporting points he makes, and you can find drones attacks. His analysis and predictions are more accurate than pro-Ukrainian pundits, and draws on information from within Ukraine (speeches at the Rada, Ukrainian commander interviews, posts) and Russia.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook"

freefrog334433 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:16:34 +0000

An effective attack against Chinese mainland by US forces would be the trigger for nuclear war. The century of humiliation has cemented a "never again" attitude.

Also, Aircraft carriers are vulnerable to mass missile attacks, and land bases in the Philippines, Japan or Taiwan are within missile range.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system"

freefrog334433 — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 09:38:12 +0000

I've started using presenterm for markdown presentations. Given that markdown is just a format, a comprehensive comparison should find the tools using markdown to export to pdf and epub.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system"

freefrog334433 — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 09:34:13 +0000

The online editor is commercial. They have a github repository releasing Typst under an Apache 2.0 license for free. I installed it using cargo (Rust), and don't use the online editor.

New comment by freefrog334433 in "Ask HN: How are parents who program teaching their kids today?"

freefrog334433 — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 23:52:31 +0000

I started a coding class at school because my 8yo preferred learning with friends.

I made a website for parents to see, at http://rustycc.com.au/whyrust for more details of why I chose Rust.

I used Rust, partially because like you, I started with C at an early age, courtesy of my Academic father, who placed me in front of a Unix mainframe at the Uni "babysitting", and older children taught me.

To make it fun, I developed multiplayer games, and children program the actions of a robot avatar, so they have their character, and robot in the games. I also used it to teach mathematics.