<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: jmkerr</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jmkerr</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 22:44:37 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=jmkerr" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Because it's not true, check the largest consumer banks:<p><a href="https://www.postbank.de/dam/postbank/pdf/privatkunden/Postbank-Preisaushang-678-147-007-0621.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.postbank.de/dam/postbank/pdf/privatkunden/Postba...</a>
<a href="https://www.deutsche-bank.de/dam/deutschebank/de/shared/pdf/ser-konditionen_preise-preisaushang.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.deutsche-bank.de/dam/deutschebank/de/shared/pdf/...</a>
<a href="https://www.commerzbank.de/portal/media/efw-dokumente/preisaushang.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.commerzbank.de/portal/media/efw-dokumente/preisa...</a>
<a href="https://www.hypovereinsbank.de/content/dam/hypovereinsbank/shared/pdf/Footer/Preisaushang.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.hypovereinsbank.de/content/dam/hypovereinsbank/s...</a>
<a href="https://www.ing.de/girokonto/konditionen/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ing.de/girokonto/konditionen/</a>
<a href="https://www.diebank.de/content/dam/f0032-0/PDF_neu/preisaushang-und-geschaeftsbedingungen/preisaushang/Preisaushang_11.08.2021.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.diebank.de/content/dam/f0032-0/PDF_neu/preisaush...</a> (Volksbank)
<a href="https://www.ksklb.de/content/dam/myif/ksk-ludwigsburg/work/dokumente/pdf/preise-leistungen/preisaushang.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.ksklb.de/content/dam/myif/ksk-ludwigsburg/work/d...</a> (LBBW)<p>In this sample, if overdraft is enabled, you pay up to 15% p.a., if disabled the cancellation fee is up to 2€ for the postal notice, but mostly just porto (0,80€).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 13 Nov 2021 10:47:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29208905</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29208905</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29208905</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "European Payments Initiative (EPI)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>PINs are safer, and less fraud is better. At the end of the day, shifting blame and liability is not going to change anything.<p>However, using security factors like secrets or updating the withdrawal limit is possibly inconvenient, that's why some people rather not use them and companies are incentivised to just recover the relatively minor losses to fraud in fees.<p>I guess it comes down to the fact that in some countries people are used to having about five different cards, and in others it's close to one.<p>((1) is both disingenuous (ignoring sensible withdrawal limits) and mathematically wrong (unlimited fraud spread evenly over all accounts is still unlimited fraud against every account). I guess people would pay more to avoid surprises, but they'd like it even more if there was less fraud.)<p>(3) The point was more that <i>someone</i> will have to pay for the fraud that is happening. Deriving a structural advantage from not using secrets is far fetched.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2021 20:27:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28437685</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28437685</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28437685</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "European Payments Initiative (EPI)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The customer still pays for fraud, one way or the other. So why not aim to prevent fraud in the first place by using a simple and effective second factor to mere possession of the card?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Sep 2021 18:24:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28395530</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28395530</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28395530</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ Beta Software Used on Public Roads Lacks Safeguards"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In this case it doesn't matter, because there's a car in front anyway.<p>I don't know how much the system can ignore or mislabel people and still drive safely, but right now it's not really safe and it's not necessary to have the car drive while improving object recognition.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 20 Jul 2021 14:35:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27894248</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27894248</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27894248</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ Beta Software Used on Public Roads Lacks Safeguards"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In 8:39 - 8:42, there's a group (three people with a dog and stroller) crossing the street left to right.<p>Here's what the Tesla recognises on the screen:<p><pre><code>  One person
  Nothing
  Motorcycle
  Nothing
  Motorcycle
  Nothing
  Car
  Nothing
  One person
  Two persons
  One person
  One person and a motorcycle
  One person
  Nothing
  Motorcycle
  One person
  One person and two motorcycles
  Two persons
  One person
  One person and a motorcycle
  Two persons
  One person
</code></pre>
It seems to me you wouldn't really need public testing yet at this early stage of development. At a minimum, I would expect it to count the people correctly and get rid of the motorcycles, i.e. basic perception.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:47:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27892568</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27892568</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27892568</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is a discussion about market share, not quality.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 12 Jun 2021 09:27:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27483051</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27483051</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27483051</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> <i>"(Europe has over 100 mobile operators, compared with a handful in America or China.) These lack the economies of scale and opportunities to grow quickly enjoyed by firms plying the American or Chinese markets."</i><p>This is such a bad example, I count 6 European carriers with more subscribers than AT&T.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operato...</a><p>> <i>"These internal barriers mean Europe has many smaller firms operating at national, not continental, scale."</i><p>Looks like they're not interested in continental scale because they're already at global scale with together 1.4B subscriptions.<p>I generally agree with the point but this is a bad example.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 12 Jun 2021 08:27:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27482729</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27482729</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27482729</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "NHS Covid-19 app update blocked for breaking Apple and Google's rules"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The UK government has a democratic mandate to track infections, including by tracking visitors to areas of risk. The correct way to do this, and how most other governments do it is to provide two Apps. One for trivial QR/location based tracking, one for contact based tracking using the government-exclusive APIs.<p>The point is, the UK government made a technical error, we cannot extrapolate a democratic deficit or malice or anything like that from the information we have from this event.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 12 Apr 2021 12:08:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26778450</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26778450</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26778450</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "“When it comes to broadband, America is the original shithole country”"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is not surprising for a ex-government agency that is still substantially government owned. Somewhat anti-competitive, expensive, and they clearly have no sense of urgency with regard to fibre.<p>But more than half their revenue is now from the US Market, which they didn't enter in such a privileged position.<p>Anyway, <i>100% of Germany to be covered with FTTH by 2030</i> :)<p><a href="https://www.telekom.com/resource/blob/619512/394bebe64a0f87d270efe15221665a71/dl-21022-q4-presentation-data.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.telekom.com/resource/blob/619512/394bebe64a0f87d...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Mar 2021 13:24:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554658</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554658</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554658</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "EU rebuffs UK calls to ship AstraZeneca Covid vaccines from Europe"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Von der Leyen [said] the epidemiological situation was worsening<p>> “The European Commission will know that the rest of the world is looking at the Commission, about how it conducts itself on this, and if contracts get broken, and undertakings, that is a very damaging thing to happen for a trading bloc that prides itself on the rules of law,” Defence Minister Ben Wallace said<p>Can't believe such bullshit in the face of a humanitarian crisis. Sales are cancelled all the time. It would only be reciprocal, and in line with US policy. More importantly, the UK is already thoroughly vaccinated, and the risk is very low throughout the summer. For once, the UK has time.<p>He's right in that export restrictions on vaccines are wrong, but it's because much of the rest of the world is even worse off than the EU, not because this tool has a piece of paper.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2021 15:58:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26542617</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26542617</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26542617</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Ask HN: What is the most complex concept you understand?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There is some self-similarity going on (Mandelbrot discusses scales from 1000 km to 10 km) but rocks or coastal sections with the fractal dimension of Great Britain on a scale of 1m or 10m are a rare exception.<p>I'm not an expert, but I think it's because as the length scale gets smaller, coastal erosion dominates the coastline, as opposed to an older force producing larger features, like glacial erosion or even plate tectonics. No reason to drag quantum mechanics into this discussion, but the circumference of an atom can be defined, so that's not a problem.<p>An actual Koch snowflake you can buy will always have a measurable circumference.<p>E: Some of this misunderstanding is actually due to Mandelbrot himself, he wrote in the introduction to [How long is the Coast of Britain?, 1967]:<p>> Geographical curves are so involved in their detail that their lengths are often infinite or, rather, undefinable.<p>No, they're not any more infinite than a toothbrush.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 17 Mar 2021 18:53:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495360</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495360</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495360</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Ask HN: What is the most complex concept you understand?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sorry couldn't resist, from wikipedia:<p>> if one were to measure a coastline with infinite or near-infinite resolution, the length of the infinitely short kinks in the coastline would add up to infinity.<p>No they wouldn't. The sum would converge. What a bad article.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 17 Mar 2021 16:41:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26493586</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26493586</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26493586</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "NIH will invest $1B to investigate 'long Covid'"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It absolutely reads like anxiety to me (except for the dermatological issues).<p>Feeling short of breath (short of an emergency) can cause headaches, dizziness and random pain as a consequence of breathing too much. Left arm goes numb when there's too much tension in the left shoulder. Palpitations can also be related to excessive tension in the upper body, as can the circulation issues.<p>It doesn't need acute stress for that, just a steady accumulation.<p>I hope it's not disrespectful, but this is the most common explanation, although it doesn't usually get this bad.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 Mar 2021 14:05:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26356959</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26356959</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26356959</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How I cancelled the New York Times:<p>> To: help@nytimes.com<p>> Hi, please cancel my subscription (account number ...). Thanks and regards.<p>Answer:<p>> Hello, ...<p>> Thank you for contacting The New York Times! I am sorry to hear that you would like to cancel your New York Times subscription today.<p>> I was able to locate your account under the email ... and I would like to thank you for your support as a Basic Digital subscriber. It is through the support of subscribers like you, that allows us to continue to pursue the truth, as the truth is more important now than ever.<p>> I was able to see that you are currently on our rate of $4 every 4 weeks for the Basic Digital Access and I would be very happy to help you with 4 weeks free for your subscription then stay at a 73% discounted rate for just $1.00/week for a full year, then returning to a discounted rate of $2.00/week, no commitments!<p>> By cancelling this subscription, you'll be missing out on unlimited access to all our published articles from 1851 until now; as well as access to exclusive features and Newsletters which are a big time saver as they are sent directly to your email with a summary of your preferred topics and sections such as the Morning Briefing, Arts and much more! Are you sure you would like to give up to these features?<p>> If you would like to apply for this new promotional rate, do not hesitate to reach us back! If we do not hear from you within the next 7 days, we will go ahead and cancel your subscription.<p>> As a reminder, you can always view/edit your account information online at myaccount.nytimes.com. If there is anything else we can do to help you, please chat with us at <a href="https://myaccount.nytimes.com/seg/cancel" rel="nofollow">https://myaccount.nytimes.com/seg/cancel</a>, text us at 855-419-6348 or call us at 1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637) from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday-Friday and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday & Sunday (ET). Thank you for being the best part of The New York Times and have a fantastic day.<p>> Best regards, ...<p>That's it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Feb 2021 08:06:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26177246</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26177246</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26177246</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "HomePod has been jailbroken with checkra1n"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's available in Ireland, but maybe not to the Irish. As far as I know all of the European Apple online stores ship from Cork, and some of them sell Homepods.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Nov 2020 17:11:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25162463</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25162463</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25162463</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Show HN: Zfs.rent"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's because domains were increasingly registered to masses of private customers, who should have a different expectation of privacy than businesses. And privacy is a problem here. You cannot enforce a privacy policy (if there only was one) or data protection law against an anonymous website, so expect all your data to go to the highest bidder. Naively, maybe, I would expect that to be unacceptable, although there seem to be people in favour of this. It's possible that you'll get enough data later in the ordering process, but it's still highly unusable (compared to e.g. rsync.net and all the other big clouds).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Nov 2020 23:53:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25155867</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25155867</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25155867</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Show HN: Zfs.rent"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There is no reason for a reputable professional data center operator to stay anonymous and not disclose a business mailing address or applicable jurisdiction.<p>But then again, you are free to upload 8TB of your data to an anonymous website that was created this morning.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Nov 2020 14:17:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25149655</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25149655</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25149655</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "Introducing the next generation of Mac"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In 2012, the same Mac mini case held a cooling system for a 45W chip, 2x2.5" storage bays (or one storage bay and a DVD-Drive), 2 RAM slots, and had three more ports and a card reader. They really used every last corner.<p>The new one is apparently half empty:
<a href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22027513/mac_mini_fan_gif.gif" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22027513/m...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2020 12:56:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25057922</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25057922</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25057922</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "AltStore: An alternative app store for non-jailbroken iOS devices"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>When you run your own code, compiled on your own computer with your own copy of XCode for nobody but yourself, the only applicable measure of software quality is whatever is good enough for you.<p>Even if you choose to run flaky code, there are very little security benefits and no stability implications from restricting an app to run for only 7 days. The 7 day rule is obviously meant to interfere with homebrewing and make hobby developers with no App store aspirations pay $99.<p>Sorry to be so patronising, but your perspective obviously lacks understanding. The vast majority of iOS users never even tried making something themselves, they just want to be safe while looking up the solution. That's okay, but off-topic.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 09 Nov 2020 06:36:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031986</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031986</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031986</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jmkerr in "The Nordic concept of friluftsliv – outdoor life"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This reminds me of this British perspective on the custom of opening a window in Germany, which is indistinguishable from parody for a German:<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/30/germans-embrace-fresh-air-to-ward-off-coronavirus" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/30/germans-embrac...</a><p>> The custom is something of a national obsession, with many Germans habitually opening windows twice a day, even in winter.<p>> Impact ventilation, or <i>Stosslüften</i>, which needs explanation for most people unfamiliar with Germany except for experts in air hygiene, involves widely opening a window in the morning and evening for at least five minutes to allow the air to circulate. Even more efficient is <i>Querlüften</i>, or cross ventilation, whereby all the windows in a house or apartment are opened letting stale air flow out and fresh air come in.<p>> In Germany, windows are designed with sophisticated hinge technology that allows them to be opened in various directions to enable varying degrees of <i>Lüften</i>.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2020 09:04:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24905603</link><dc:creator>jmkerr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24905603</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24905603</guid></item></channel></rss>