Hacker News: jonathanstrange

New comment by jonathanstrange in "AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale"

jonathanstrange — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:52:57 +0000

The point is that without copyright you can' do it professionally. Someone will just sell whatever you created for you and you will not get a cent from it.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools"

jonathanstrange — Sun, 17 May 2026 11:59:20 +0000

It's worth pointing out that some people under some circumstances need to use VPNs. For example, timestamp.apple.com stalls when I call it from my machine, so I cannot sign any executables for macOS. When I use a VPN that changes my IP number, signing and notarizing works perfectly fine. My CI chain would literally not work without a VPN.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "Write some software, give it away for free"

jonathanstrange — Wed, 06 May 2026 12:11:07 +0000

I'm always interested in how they pay their bills. Unless I know how they make a living, the advice is worthless. Of course, you can give away things for free if you're a rich aristocrat in a society of slave holders, like many ancient philosophers were.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "Write some software, give it away for free"

jonathanstrange — Wed, 06 May 2026 12:03:14 +0000

Not everyone has that luxury, some people need to earn money. That's why I sell software instead of giving it away for free. It's fine if you want to get everything for free, you're just not one of my customers then.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields"

jonathanstrange — Tue, 05 May 2026 19:04:22 +0000

I find keyboards fascinating because they have many anachronistic elements and design flaws, yet nobody outside of elitist mechanical keyboard circles seems to be willing to fix them. Everybody seems to just think "whatever, gotta live with it." Why do they still have an extra large Caps Lock key in such a prominent position? What does ScrLk key on my keyboard do? Why is there an Ins key when practically every text edit field is in insert mode anyway? How often do you actually use the Pause key and what does it do?

New comment by jonathanstrange in "It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs"

jonathanstrange — Tue, 05 May 2026 16:21:44 +0000

"websites subject to the state's age verification law will be legally barred from explaining how to use a VPN to get around age restrictions"

I thought the US has free speech?

New comment by jonathanstrange in "The fun has been optimized out of the Internet"

jonathanstrange — Tue, 05 May 2026 16:04:31 +0000

Nobody said that everyone has to be a CS graduate.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet"

jonathanstrange — Tue, 05 May 2026 15:52:45 +0000

Unfortunately, they're not even good at it. Setting up a custom CI chain today as a brand-new member of the Apple Developer program, I found out that they have at least 9 different certificates to generate with no explanation which one you need on the page, and after I had generated one, downloaded it, and imported it into the keychain, the certificate was invalid. I additionally had to go to some cryptic looking page[1] and manually download the "right" in intermediary certificates.

[1] https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/

New comment by jonathanstrange in "iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet"

jonathanstrange — Tue, 05 May 2026 13:23:41 +0000

What is a "pass" in that context?

New comment by jonathanstrange in "Embedded Rust or C firmware? Lessons from an industrial microcontroller use case"

jonathanstrange — Sun, 03 May 2026 15:24:42 +0000

That invariably leads to bitrot and low maintainability. It's one among many reasons why I don't use Rust.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "Your phone is about to stop being yours"

jonathanstrange — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:37:56 +0000

It's a number of false choices. Google has complete control over Android and they could easily implement 1, 2, and 3 if they wanted. It's not as if they couldn't provide the means for certified secure enclave apps in addition to normal ones.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI"

jonathanstrange — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:24:13 +0000

One thing is sure, they don't have international law in mind...

New comment by jonathanstrange in "U.S. companies back Sam Altman's World ID even as much of the world pushes back"

jonathanstrange — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:49:31 +0000

We're discussing this in the context of Altman's project, which is a project by a US company. You're welcome to find examples from other countries but the OP didn't mention any of them. The fact is that currently no other country has the same kind of techno-fascism, it's US-specific and mostly caused by the lack of education of your new tech elite. The new generation consist mostly of dropouts who barely read and talk about things they're not qualified to talk about at all. That wouldn't be a problem if they didn't have so much influence.

US companies used to do their business, now they're publishing fascist manifests (e.g. Alex Karp) and directly interfere in politics (e.g. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk). That's not even remotely comparable to what's going on in other countries.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "Rust Memory Management: Ownership vs. Reference Counting"

jonathanstrange — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:43:08 +0000

True, but it also happens to be the provably the shittiest form of garbage collection that was already outdated in the 90s.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs"

jonathanstrange — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 11:11:08 +0000

A digital ID not based on EU hardware should be taken down with prejudice. It's a direct threat to national security. US companies and, by extension, US government authorities have control over every popular endpoint (mobile phones, desktop OS).

Besides, if someone wants a digital ID, it already exists in many countries. Phones with NFC chips can read many passports, e.g. Germany has an "electronic passport" since 2005. It's barely used, though, because it's bullshit.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs"

jonathanstrange — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 11:00:06 +0000

That's possible but would be completely and highly illegal, the EU regularly fines companies violating GDPR, and those fines are not trivial at all, they can be quite hefty.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "UK Biobank leak: Health details of 500 000 people are offered for sale"

jonathanstrange — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:36:48 +0000

In the same way as the "UK Biobank" software accesses it.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "French government agency confirms breach as hacker offers to sell data"

jonathanstrange — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:32:26 +0000

Access to the server gives you access to the encryption keys, unless the server is just storing end-to-end encrypted material for someone else and doesn't do anything with the data.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid"

jonathanstrange — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:04:54 +0000

IANAL but what you state seems to literally fall under the STOCK Act of 2012. It is one kind of insider trading.

New comment by jonathanstrange in "French government agency confirms breach as hacker offers to sell data"

jonathanstrange — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:52:43 +0000

The attacker will then simply use the decryption key to decrypt it.