Hacker News: konmok

New comment by konmok in "US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search"

konmok — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 02:05:47 +0000

Sometimes it's used to uncover crimes, but very often it's used to invent crimes that never actually happened, or used to deceive a courtroom when they don't actually have evidence.

New comment by konmok in "Plasma Tunnels Reveal How Dying Satellites Fall to Earth"

konmok — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:32:18 +0000

Those are rocks, which are not made from the same stuff as satellites. (Also, the article says it's 44 tons, and other sources suggest around 50 at most.) In any case, I don't think anyone here is "freaking out", I just think this issue merits investigation.

New comment by konmok in "Plasma Tunnels Reveal How Dying Satellites Fall to Earth"

konmok — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:23:21 +0000

This kind of thinking is exactly what led to the ozone hole in the first place. Let's actually investigate our assumptions this time.

New comment by konmok in "An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight"

konmok — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 03:06:40 +0000

The USA opioid epidemic was caused by gross government negligence and corruption. Is it really a stretch to think that a policy solution could have prevented the majority of the harm? And do you really think there wouldn't be enough food and shelter to go around, if the government decided to get serious about poverty relief?

New comment by konmok in "If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?"

konmok — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:41:51 +0000

That is not a reliable source at all.

New comment by konmok in "If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?"

konmok — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:06:01 +0000

Incorrect. Seems like you haven't really investigated this topic at all.

https://www.newsweek.com/map-data-centers-built-drought-hit-...

New comment by konmok in "If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?"

konmok — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:02:41 +0000

That source says data centers use a lot of water. Less than all almond farms combined, sure, but it doesn't support the parent argument. It's also 3 years out of date, and not relevant to protests against all the data centers that have not yet been completed.

New comment by konmok in "If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?"

konmok — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:50:21 +0000

Who is "we"?? Some places do have water shortages. And regardless of whether the power goes out or not, more power consumption = higher prices + more pollution.

New comment by konmok in "If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?"

konmok — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:47:55 +0000

Source on that water claim? Everything I've seen suggests the opposite.

New comment by konmok in "That Methyl Methacrylate Tank"

konmok — Tue, 26 May 2026 22:33:49 +0000

I don't want any of those things, really (besides solar panels I suppose). I avoid plastic as much as I can. But, let's take your boots example. I recently went looking for a pair of well-made boots that don't contain plastic. But that eliminates something like 99% of the available offerings, and most of the remaining are luxury brands that can cost upwards of 600 dollars. I don't have that kind of budget, so I had to compromise. Do you see the problem here? If I want decent boots without a luxury brand fee, I HAVE to give these chemical companies my money. Extend that to clothing, groceries, furniture, devices, etc etc.

I avoid this stuff as much as I can without upending my life, and I'm still forking over much of my spending to companies that can pollute my land, water, and air with near impunity. I didn't choose this shit!

New comment by konmok in "California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash"

konmok — Mon, 25 May 2026 19:02:53 +0000

There are so many low-hanging fruit to choose from if you want to protect children online, so it makes zero sense to start with the option that deprives every adult of their rights.

New comment by konmok in "Shunning AI is the human choice"

konmok — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:15:26 +0000

> But aren't we glad it happened?

No. Or rather, I wish it happened very differently, and much slower. The rush to make every new city and development "car-friendly" had negative consequences that will last centuries. That's why my city isn't walkable and has awful public transportation, and biking is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention the insidious environmental and health effects!

Of course cars have their place in efficient modern transportation, but we would live in a much better world if their development and integration had been slower, more carefully considered, and more criticized.

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

konmok — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:21:56 +0000

Sure, it could be positive in some distant future utopia.

But the short-term impacts here and now are really, really bad. People are getting hurt (through water consumption, vibe-coded security disasters, IP theft, data center pollution, loss of job security and therefore healthcare in the US, LLM psychosis, inability to find reliable information, etc.) We're not actually obligated to sacrifice these people on the altar of "progress". We can slow down! When our society is capable of even somewhat protecting us from these harms, then maybe I'll stop being an LLM hater.

New comment by konmok in "No way to parse integers in C (2022)"

konmok — Wed, 20 May 2026 16:34:21 +0000

Is this sarcasm? I thought C didn't fix the size of int because they were trying to make C programs "portable" between architectures with different natural word sizes. It was a mistake, but I remember that as being the stated reason. I'm happy to be corrected if I'm misremembering my history though.

New comment by konmok in "No way to parse integers in C (2022)"

konmok — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:17:56 +0000

I don't think it's in bad faith.

The distinction between a language and its standard library gets blurry even in theory, and in practice they're nearly inseparable. If a language's standard library has four ways of doing almost the same thing, and they're all fundamentally broken, that's a problem.

No way to parse integers in C (2022)

konmok — Wed, 20 May 2026 10:28:05 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.habets.se/2022/10/No-way-to-parse-integers-in-C.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48205580

Points: 85

# Comments: 111

New comment by konmok in "Framework Laptop 13 Pro"

konmok — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 06:36:12 +0000

Apple markets to a very different customer base.

New comment by konmok in "Framework Laptop 13 Pro"

konmok — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 06:27:00 +0000

Why do you keep sponsoring Rails World and giving laptops to David Heinemeier Hansson? After the community reaction last time, don't you understand the message you're sending with this behavior? Are you not concerned about the rise of fascism and white nationalism, trends which gain legitimacy in part through corporate endorsement of people like DHH?

New comment by konmok in "Midnight Captain – A midnight commander inspired file manager"

konmok — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 02:14:32 +0000

I don't think the level of reliability necessary for a file manager is achievable with vibe coding. This is an area where small bugs can cause immediate and catastrophic data loss.

If you're shopping for a file manager, I recommend avoiding any project that incorporates a significant amount of LLM-generated code. Maybe in theory it could be reviewed as thoroughly as handwritten code; in practice that never happens.

New comment by konmok in "US national debt surges past $39 Trillion"

konmok — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:57:18 +0000

It would certainly help. And how does that additional spending compare to the defense budget, or the cost of going to war?