Hacker News: karteum

New comment by karteum in "Your phone is an entire computer"

karteum — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 20:25:27 +0000

You can connect to 4G with your root-enabled Linux PC and a USB dongle or minipci module. Carriers don't care about your application processor, they only care about the baseband. In the case of a smartphone, you can have root access and still run the Qualcomm closed blob firmware that will drive the baseband

New comment by karteum in "John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists"

karteum — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 19:47:25 +0000

IMO code generated by AI (which was trained on a lot of copyleft codebases) ought to be systematically on an open-source copyleft license.

New comment by karteum in "Jolla on track to ship new phone with Sailfish OS, user-replaceable battery"

karteum — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 01:49:51 +0000

It's not only the issue of SoC modems but about the whole integration (RFIC, LNA/PA, RF switches, antennas...). The more bands you integrate, the more difficult it becomes (or with compromises such as worse performance because of wideband antennas...). If I may risk a comparison : you can't have a lense with a huge focal range that would simultaneously be perfectly sharp and have a wide aperture like fixed focals...

New comment by karteum in "Show HN: Skir – like Protocol Buffer but better"

karteum — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 06:40:03 +0000

Apart from the comparison with Protobuf, how does it compare to flatbuffers, capnproto, messagepack, jsonbinpack... ?

New comment by karteum in "Pentagon formally labels Anthropic supply-chain risk"

karteum — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:31:13 +0000

Could Anthropic consider to relocate in Europe ? ;)

New comment by karteum in "Dear Time Lords: Freeze Computers in 1993"

karteum — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 08:00:54 +0000

Actually the GSM spec existed in 1993 :)

New comment by karteum in "You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play or App Store Account"

karteum — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 12:43:04 +0000

More and more things require a Google-certified Android phone (and will not work with jailbroken/rooted phones, unlocked bootloader, and so one : banking apps of course, but also medical apps (e.g. Doctolib in France), ID apps (e.g. France identité), and a lot more. This "digital sovereignity" hype makes me laugh since in practice government apps are literally enforcing Google locks, effectively excluding people using LineageOS/MicroG and other similar open roms.

New comment by karteum in "Lilush – LuaJIT static runtime and shell"

karteum — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:18:09 +0000

Speaking about "batteries included" LuaJIT, people might be interested in https://franko.github.io/gsl-shell

New comment by karteum in "Debian's Challenge When Its Developers Drift Away"

karteum — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 01:51:01 +0000

I am not native english so maybe it's just me, but I think the title is misleading because it suggests that Debian could be struggling with a situation where developers would massively drift away (my first reaction was "what ?? is there really a significant amount of devs that are leaving Debian now, and why ?"), while actually it's more a discussion on how to bring awareness to a team and encourage developers to better communicate with colleagues when they have a life change that would lower their commitment (which can happen to anyone, and in any project), so that the project can better handle when a developer "drifts away".

New comment by karteum in "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"

karteum — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:54:36 +0000

720p is OK for me and I also almost don't notice. 480p is really noticeable (and totally unacceptable when you pay for a subscription...).

New comment by karteum in "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"

karteum — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:28:20 +0000

> All major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave) have native Linux builds. Full support. No compromises.

Full support ? I thought that the DRM were not the same (e.g. Disney+ and Amazon Prime limited to 480p on Linux which is a scam... At least, I remember having to hack something to use the Windows version of Chrome with WINE in order to get a decent image with Amazon Prime when I got a 6-month offered subscription a few years ago)

New comment by karteum in "Open-Meteo is a free and open-source weather API for non-commercial use"

karteum — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 01:36:08 +0000

That's great ! FWIW I generated a small web app (I am just starting to experiment with Claude and Devstral and that seemed a good exercise :), and put it online in case it would be useful https://meteo.karteum.ovh (e.g. during my last trips I used the weather forecasts to refine where I would go more precisely within the country. But I was frustrated as many meteo websites are full of ads...)

New comment by karteum in "Asahi Linux with Sway on the MacBook Air M2 (2024)"

karteum — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 03:05:30 +0000

> Have you ever used windows on a $100 second hand laptop?

Who talked about using Windows ? Many of my family/relatives (most of which have zero knowledge about computers, and little money to invest) use ~100$ laptops, with Debian+XFCE, Firefox+ublock origin, Libreoffice, vlc, thunderbird... I just put the maximum RAM I could, and installed a SATA SSD, which makes the machine fast and completely usable. I now live on the other side of the planet yet I get very little complains from them or demands for remote support as it works very reliably and fast.

And those were 100$ machines 8-10 years ago. Today's 100$ machines will give you a decently recent core i5 or i7, nvme, 8G RAM...

New comment by karteum in "Asahi Linux with Sway on the MacBook Air M2 (2024)"

karteum — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 22:46:21 +0000

Possibly, but I don't see why those people would buy a new MacBook rather than a used 100$ laptop (which would be both better for their finances but also for the planet...)

New comment by karteum in "JetKVM – Control any computer remotely"

karteum — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 19:38:35 +0000

I have happily used nanokvm (https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/kvm/NanoKVM_Pro/introduc... ).

(N.b. unfortunately the ATX board cannot be ordered independently, so be sure to order the "nanokvm-full" package)

New comment by karteum in "Power-over-Skin: Full-Body Wearables Powered by Intra-Body RF Energy (2024)"

karteum — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 13:40:24 +0000

Morpheus : "The human body generates more bioelectricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion, the machines have found all the energy they would ever need."

New comment by karteum in "Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere"

karteum — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 14:04:36 +0000

Not entirely sure, but I heard that the "Pixel 911 bug" (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37714579) could be related to an IMS bug. Since operators are liable with regards to safety calls, maybe it explains why they would only allow tested devices to use IMS...

New comment by karteum in "Diff Algorithms"

karteum — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 02:14:47 +0000

I wish that the diff/patch would be able to better take into account moved data (not only as deletion+add but with with a proper semantic indicating the moved block). This would both lead to smaller and more readable patches.

I noticed that some peoble have worked on such an algorithm, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cacycle/diff

New comment by karteum in "Anything but safe: Using VPN can bear immense risks"

karteum — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 21:30:59 +0000

If using a VPN service is deemed unsafe, it's still possible to book your own VM or server with a full root access, and then setup your own openvpn/wireguard connection.

New comment by karteum in "F-Droid build servers can't build modern Android apps due to outdated CPUs"

karteum — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 07:11:24 +0000

I don't fully understand: aren't gradle and aapt2 open-source ?

If you want to build buildroot or openwrt, the first thing it will do is compiling your own toolchain (rather than reusing the one from your distro) so that it can lead to predictable results. I would have the same rationale for f-droid : why not compile the whole toolchain from source rather than using a binary gradle/aapt2 that uses unsupported instructions?