Hacker News: kristjank

New comment by kristjank in "Replies to comments on my "LLMs are eroding my career" post"

kristjank — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 18:00:25 +0000

Yeah I think you're right. My ESL is pushing through, I guess.

New comment by kristjank in "Replies to comments on my "LLMs are eroding my career" post"

kristjank — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:52:21 +0000

Knowledge often does not produce competence, especially in the applicable market. I work on the system administration side of things, and I have encountered many output-competent developers that were immeasurably stupid, but very little incompetent ones with tons of cryptic knowledge and intuitive understanding of the systems they worked on.

It seems to me that knowledge doesn't always imply competence, but the lack of knowledge often very well explains incompetence. And, since the LLM is replacing the competence part without imprinting any knowledge on the one that wields it, it generates a lot of competent imbeciles that pass interviews and appear as though they not only do things, but know things as well. And once you reach that critical mass, sheeeeesh

New comment by kristjank in "Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)"

kristjank — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:21:19 +0000

I think there are two distinct type of "touristy" experience.

1. Culturally important experiences lean towards the prescriptive side. You enter, you are observing or being challenged in something, and it leaves an imprint on you. It is usually a bit discomforting in an exciting way that transforms a part of you in a infinitesimally small, but distinct and permanent way.

2. The unimportant experience is the conforming one, where zero friction is the preferred method of interaction, but it is universally loved in the way high-fructose corn syrup is; it's an economically sound decision to at least try and profit from it.

New comment by kristjank in "Microsoft doubles down on controversial quantum computing claims"

kristjank — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:36:47 +0000

It really looks like they are trying hard to scale a system that is simply explained away by a simpler model... From TFA:

  The switching behavior they see could just be an electron hopping on and off a quantum dot, perhaps one formed incidentally by part of the wirelike region, Legg says. “This is exactly what you could get from a quantum dot.”

I won't pretend I have a deep understanding of any of this, so the only parameters I can judge is the consensus of people that do, and these people aren't too happy about the claims being made.

New comment by kristjank in "GitHub bans security researcher who posted zero-day Windows exploits"

kristjank — Fri, 29 May 2026 07:41:53 +0000

Why would it not be? Microslop doesn't need to make such a backdoor, but it's still a lot more convenient to make one generic backdoor than many signed ones.

New comment by kristjank in "Magnifica Humanitas"

kristjank — Tue, 26 May 2026 10:31:27 +0000

The likes of them are Christian in the same way the third reich was. Adopting the dogmatic mechanisms of control while discarding everything standing in their way towards achieving their goals. There is a reason why the NSDAP had much better standing with Protestants than Catholics and this should be reexamined or at least referred to as similar figures reemerge nowadays.

(not to excuse the Catholic church's crimes either, especially the brutal crimes of the NDH in WW2, and the Franco regime)

New comment by kristjank in "Collapse of Personal Computing"

kristjank — Mon, 25 May 2026 22:18:31 +0000

This may be the most important war that us consumers have to win this century. Most of our liberties will depend on it in the future, not in some spiritual or principled way, but in the "means of production" kind of way.

New comment by kristjank in "Flipper One Tech Specs"

kristjank — Thu, 21 May 2026 09:32:10 +0000

They can clone NFC tags, if the phone hardware, drivers and software permits. It really depends on how smart the chip inside the smartphone is and how locked down its drivers are. I still keep around a Galaxy S3 because its reader does not complain when writing to UID fields of a NFC tag. Saved a lot of friends exorbitant second keyfob landlord fees.

New comment by kristjank in "Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms"

kristjank — Fri, 15 May 2026 07:16:19 +0000

This resonated with me especially since the 9-5 maxxing of modern society constantly discriminates against working members of society. My post office is open so sparingly that I have to find an unemployed friend or my grandmother to pick up my packages sometimes. Same story with health services, banking or any store that isn't a huge grocery store.

I could get inflammatory and say that functional members of society are being discriminated against in this way, or flip it around, stating that any disadvantage that requires you interacting with public services is systemically pushing you away from meaningful employment.

New comment by kristjank in "Microsoft BitLocker – YellowKey zero-day exploit"

kristjank — Thu, 14 May 2026 09:32:09 +0000

Linux+LUKS enables FIDO2, which uses sha256, meets the requirements of "never leaves the device" and keeps it on a separate device, on a separate secure element.

New comment by kristjank in "GNU IFUNC is the real culprit behind CVE-2024-3094"

kristjank — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:09:14 +0000

I will still hold the decision to link the biggest possible target on every server against the biggest, most privileged daemon on every server, as not very smart indeed.

New comment by kristjank in "GNU IFUNC is the real culprit behind CVE-2024-3094"

kristjank — Fri, 08 May 2026 12:51:02 +0000

OpenBSD exposes pledge() and unveil(), which allow programs to only access things they declare they need. So, even if the running SSH process gets exploited, it can't do anything the user it's running as can't do. sshd afaik runs as a root process which after authentication forks into another process, running as the target user.

New comment by kristjank in "Claude Flags Hantavirus Vaccine Questions as Security Risk"

kristjank — Fri, 08 May 2026 09:15:30 +0000

"Nothing to see here, please disperse"

But for real now, people asking health-related questions is a huge trigger for AI safety measures. Does it only care about the vaccine part, or does it care about the hantavirus part? Maybe ask about the virus in general first, then ask about development...

New comment by kristjank in "Police advised to disable Bluetooth on Axon body-worn cameras to avoid detection"

kristjank — Fri, 08 May 2026 09:12:41 +0000

Bluetooth has, especially with the adoption of the BLE standard, wholly transformed from this PAN link you only turned on to take fone calls, transfer a file or attach a modem to your computer into an always-on nightmare that incessantly beacons even when there is no need to do so at any time.

The whole pivot around covert work is strange, though. What kind of "covert work" involves a taser and/or a bodycam on the person anyway? Wouldn't the mere physical presence of a bodycam (an Axon bodycam no less) signal something's off?

New comment by kristjank in "CERN's KiCad component library now open source"

kristjank — Fri, 08 May 2026 09:05:54 +0000

I really enjoy how the fast-tracked improvement of open source design software like KiCad, OpenSCAD and FreeCAD have enabled people to share products of their work in a way that does not necessarily need to benefit a walled garden software provider. 20 years ago they'd have to be Altium components or something...

New comment by kristjank in "Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard"

kristjank — Fri, 08 May 2026 08:56:44 +0000

Third party doctrine means corporate surveillance is state surveillance. And unlike Pix covering just Brazil, CC companies cover the whole world.

New comment by kristjank in "Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard"

kristjank — Fri, 08 May 2026 08:54:07 +0000

It is instant provided your financial institution works within the SEPA Instant transfer system

New comment by kristjank in "London Met Police investigates officers after using Palantir AI tool"

kristjank — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:00:59 +0000

If the warnings are legitimate, then it's the only good thing I heard about Palantir, ever. Can't wait for the program to be silently discontinued considering how police-state-y the UK institutions are.

New comment by kristjank in "First G-SHOCK with a heart rate monitor, also featuring Smartphone Link"

kristjank — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:22:41 +0000

Take a look at the Amazfit NEO. I use it with all the notifications off.

New comment by kristjank in "Men who stare at walls"

kristjank — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:13:51 +0000

A lot of these self-improvement sort of hacks stop working when employed at a large scale, repeatedly, so one must keep it in check enough to not overdo it.

However, a lot of my mental performance has become intertwined with the concept of breaking the mental work pattern with some light physical activity like taking a short walk, or just mental inactivity like going outside for a smoke (which also includes a positive chemical reinforcement, coupled with some light environmental stimulation), which might yield itself somewhat similar to the staring at a wall routine, though much less dull.