Hacker News: ghaff

New comment by ghaff in ""Negative" views of Broadcom driving VMware migrations, rival says"

ghaff — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:15:51 +0000

Honestly? VMs are a level of complexity I haven't felt a reason to fuss around with at home for at least the past five years. Just not interested.

I'm told that Kubevirt with Kubernetes has also been a winner among customers post Broadcom acquisition who were really reluctant to go beyond VMware previously.

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

ghaff — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:05:50 +0000

You hopefully can adapt to what you need to. That's not the same things as switching to something you find awkward and you don't find to have a particular, if any advantage.

New comment by ghaff in "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"

ghaff — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:34:31 +0000

As I say no dog in hunt and don't actually have a Linux laptop any longer since I had to send it back to my company--from whence I'm sure it went straight to recycling. Maybe I'll buy an older refurb Thinkpad at some point.

New comment by ghaff in "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"

ghaff — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:23:13 +0000

>What you are used to.

Absolutely. I've given using a tablet (with keyboard) as an alternative to a laptop when traveling and it sort of frustrates me for a lot of things. But talking to people I know who have largely switched over, my conclusion is that, in general, I probably mostly just haven't put the effort and commitment to make it worth it for me. And I'm not sure, not spending nearly as much time on planes as I used to, it's worth it relative to getting a laptop that is even lighter than the combination.

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

ghaff — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:19:27 +0000

"Pretty well" is doing a lot of work. I have no horse in the race. I just run native on MacOS or Linux. Haven't run any Windows in a number of years. (I don't really game much and would just use my Xbox if I really wanted to--though that mostly functions as a DVD player these days.)

But if "pretty well" causes the random administrative person to have issues with doing their job or increases IT support costs, it will be off the menu pretty quickly. We'll see. A lot of things are different from the last round of we're going to Linux in Europe.

New comment by ghaff in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

ghaff — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:21:08 +0000

For anyone who disagrees with this statement there’s been a lot of research done in the area.

New comment by ghaff in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

ghaff — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 10:09:53 +0000

It’s been known since at least the 90s that it’s really hard to fully anonymize patient records. You can’t be certain but you can infer probabilities from very little information.

New comment by ghaff in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

ghaff — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:55:43 +0000

In the US at least owning a residence is public record. It can be obfuscated with shell companies and things like that but most people don’t do.

New comment by ghaff in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

ghaff — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 06:38:07 +0000

Mini-celebrities are probably far more likely to attract attention than a lot of “rich people.”

New comment by ghaff in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

ghaff — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 06:35:59 +0000

And if you do have a big pile of money but are flying under the radar so far you sadly should have some investments in security. I thought people around here didn’t really believe in security through obscurity.

New comment by ghaff in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

ghaff — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 06:27:59 +0000

How is it different from all the non-secret billionaires to say nothing of all the people with 100s of millions?

New comment by ghaff in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

ghaff — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 05:44:03 +0000

Historically, people got a big book every year with the name and address of most people in it. You could get unlisted numbers but now everyone has a cellphone which just isn’t broadly published but because now many use it for everything it’s probably not that hard to find.

Also, has others have noted it’s trivial to put other a list of wealthy people. In fact, it’s probably better to skip the Forbes 400 list who probably have some level of private security. Just go through the board member lists of Fortune 500 companies.

New comment by ghaff in "The Importance of Being Idle"

ghaff — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 05:28:54 +0000

In general use though slack has an even stronger connotation of e.g. slacking off and not doing anything useful with the time.

New comment by ghaff in "Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era"

ghaff — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 17:15:32 +0000

Hadn’t been to a Kubecon in about a year as I’ve been tending to go to just the European ones. I definitely felt a much stronger this is real vibe at this event from people like Greg KH.

New comment by ghaff in "The Harvard Library Passport"

ghaff — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 17:02:08 +0000

I dare say that he has access to at least some libraries that a random person can’t just breeze into.

New comment by ghaff in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

ghaff — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:26:52 +0000

Certainly the Magic Keyboard is way better than any alternatives I’ve seen. Have tried to give it a good shot but maybe just haven’t tried hard enough and default back to what I’m used to.

When I get home need to ponder a bit more because some gear is very old or was declared to be unsalvageable after smoke damage from a kitchen fire.

New comment by ghaff in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

ghaff — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:03:15 +0000

I’ve been trying a bit of an experiment on my current trip and I’m still skeptical about iPad plus Magic Keyboard. Better than alternatives but still so-so. I think I’ll go back to my 10+ year old MacBook Pro but unless something really changes I’ll just pick up an Air for traveling at some point.

New comment by ghaff in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

ghaff — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:33:05 +0000

I was somewhat shocked a while back when a coworker told me that they offered their kid a laptop for school work and the kid apparently said : Thanks but I’ll stick with my phone.

New comment by ghaff in "What being ripped off taught me"

ghaff — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:34:00 +0000

And dealing with a lot of that crap is more trouble than many of us want to be filling our days with. Micro-optimizations I might have done as a student I mostly don’t do today.

New comment by ghaff in "In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants"

ghaff — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 06:32:03 +0000

In many places, garbage collection is done by competing private firms.