Hacker News: hekkle

New comment by hekkle in "Arizona Bill Requires Age Verification for All Apps"

hekkle — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 21:45:13 +0000

> I'm much more convinced Microsoft wants to do stuff like sell cloud subscriptions at the click of a button in the desktop than Microsoft gives a crap about those subscriptions being tied to a consistent account ID. The latter certainly sounds evil, but not in a way that particularly helps Microsoft over their competitors.

Bless your cotton socks, you had it in the first part MS wants to sell stuff, but then you failed to realise that by tying people to a consistent account ID builds a profiling on them that lets MS serve targeted advertisements, through Edge.

New comment by hekkle in "The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967)"

hekkle — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 04:40:06 +0000

> Being betrayed gives you every right to be angry, but it is what you do with that anger that matters.

I am not angry. What I was ultimately describing was referred to as a 'social contract'. Like a regular contract, once it is not fulfilled, you cannot rely upon it ever again.

To illustrate this concept better I will explain it by example:

If you hire someone to fix your roof, you pay them, and they don't fix it; then a few months later you re-hired them again to fix your roof, and again they take your money and refuse to fix it.

Who is ultimately responsible for you losing money the second time around?

I would argue, (and so would their lawyers if you sued them), that you had a legal duty to "mitigate losses", and as you didn't learn the first time, you are responsible for throwing good money over bad, not them. You knew they didn't honour their contracts, so it was on you that you re-engaged with them.

That is not anger, that is common sense, and a basic common law legal concept.

New comment by hekkle in "The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967)"

hekkle — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 03:58:26 +0000

I can only speak for the society I live in, Australia. I'm glad you perceive yours (wherever that is) to be doing much better. I hope you use that privilege to enrich your fellow man instead of just bragging online.

New comment by hekkle in "The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967)"

hekkle — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 05:29:21 +0000

Of course, anyone always has the option to volunteer to make the world a better place; but the idea that anyone has a responsibility, or moral obligation to help a society that is actively hostile towards them is insanity.

New comment by hekkle in "The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967)"

hekkle — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 04:59:55 +0000

I would say that one has as much responsibility to society, as that society accepts for the individual.

As a previously homeless veteran, I'd say that is zero. Why should intellectuals, or in fact anyone have any duty to help a system that doesn't help them?

Now I know a lot of people will grandstand and say that if people just started taking on responsibility, then that would improve the system so that it would help more, but again, I did my part and was promised to be taken care of by society with its fingers crossed behind its back.

New comment by hekkle in "'Askers' vs. 'Guessers' (2010)"

hekkle — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 21:31:27 +0000

I don't necessarily think it is how you were brought up, and probably more to do with personality. As an introvert, I don't have the talk time to continuously put out feelers, I just gotta ask.

New comment by hekkle in "Lix – universal version control system for binary files"

hekkle — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 05:35:07 +0000

Based on the product description, it seems that they don't like text, and want to deal in objects. It would feel strange if they did support a terminal, rather than a GUI.

New comment by hekkle in "FreeBSD"

hekkle — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:28:10 +0000

BSD can be a better choice for a variety of reasons. Firstly business reasons BSD has more permissive licences than Linux's GNU licence which compels you to share any modifications you make to the software. BSD uses the MIT licenses which state that you are allowed to modify the source code and not release it, which is why most embedded devices like routers/firewalls use BSD over Linux. That and BSD is faster at networking.

It also has better storage (ZFS), although this is now implemented in Linux, it is not as stable as BSD which developed it specifically for their OS.

New comment by hekkle in "Are arrays functions?"

hekkle — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 02:49:43 +0000

To quote John McCarthy "Since data are list structures and programs are list structures, we can manipulate programs just like data."

Yes, I know most people consider it to be a functional language, and some variants like 'common lisp' make that more explicit, but the original concept was markedly different.

Australia criminalises hurting feelings [video]

hekkle — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 02:21:01 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VskqOgr1OtU

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46700402

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by hekkle in "Are arrays functions?"

hekkle — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 01:55:31 +0000

In Object Oriented programming, yes, arrays are objects and the functions are a property of another object that can perform instructions on the data of the Array Object.

Similarly in Lisp, (a list-oriented language) both functions and arrays are lists.

This article however is discussing Haskel, a Functional Language, which means they are both functions.

New comment by hekkle in "When "likers'' go private: Engagement with reputationally risky content on X"

hekkle — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 20:56:53 +0000

I'd say this study is inherently flawed. As I am sure most people know on the Internet these days that just because X states their 'likes' are 'anonymous', doesn't mean they are.

I think the potential reputational damages would still be on the forefront of most people's minds, knowing that at any stage, at the whim of Elon, these will be revealed.

New comment by hekkle in "Provenance Is the New Version Control"

hekkle — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 05:40:37 +0000

TL;DR, the author claims that you should record the reasons for change, rather than the code changes themselves...

CONGRATULATIONS: you have just 'invented' documentation, specifically a CHANGE_LOG.

New comment by hekkle in "PawSense: Catproof Your Computer"

hekkle — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 04:59:49 +0000

I give it One Star: It keeps locking me out of my computer whenever I rage at video games, which makes me rage further.

New comment by hekkle in "Postal Arbitrage"

hekkle — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:20:33 +0000

That's not even mentioning their additional overheads, like the cost of fuel for their idling van as they drop off your potato.

New comment by hekkle in "Perlsecret – Perl secret operators and constants"

hekkle — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 22:16:48 +0000

OMG! The Goatsie operator =( )= is WILD! wilder than the glob wild operator *

New comment by hekkle in "TikTok unlawfully tracks shopping habits and use of dating apps?"

hekkle — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 22:36:55 +0000

No, the permissions are very granular compared to Stock Android. I can't remember all of them from scratch, but by way of example Graphene allows for 'contact scopes', which sets permissions for which contacts you will share with each app, rather than a blanket "you can access all of my contacts" that Android has. I know when I tried it last (this was more than a year ago mind you so it might have changed), if you didn't give Amazon access to all contacts it somehow knew and refused to work.

New comment by hekkle in "TikTok unlawfully tracks shopping habits and use of dating apps?"

hekkle — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 22:32:25 +0000

Just ease of use on a small screen really. I don't use it too much anymore anyway, I'm in Australia, so Amazon's not as big here as it is in the US. We mainly use Ali-Express or Temu, because those apps deliver from China, which is close and more convenient for here, relative to the US.

New comment by hekkle in "TikTok unlawfully tracks shopping habits and use of dating apps?"

hekkle — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 03:25:31 +0000

Fair enough, it does make sense that they will maximise their profits where they can, I'm just saying that it (the app not the website) refuses to work unless you provide it a full scope of literally every permission available. Maybe it has more to do with attestation, and verifying that you are not a scammer, than stealing and selling data?

New comment by hekkle in "TikTok unlawfully tracks shopping habits and use of dating apps?"

hekkle — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 01:07:35 +0000

If you want to find which apps are the worst at this use GrapheneOS. Amazon flat out REFUSES to work unless it has unfettered access to everything.