Hacker News: kyralis

New comment by kyralis in "Improving site performance by shipping more CSS"

kyralis — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:36:29 +0000

Claiming that performance is not complicated, as a blanket statement, is absurd.

There are certainly plenty of performance problems that are not complicated, you're correct that many people do not have the skills necessary to solve even simple performance problems. The connection to social intelligence is a leap that doesn't really follow, though; this feels more like you just trying to dump on people who are missing skills, which isn't usually very helpful.

Regardless, however, there are absolutely performance problems that are complicated. When you're trying to optimize performance in environments constrained by compute, network, disk, and memory, finding the right solutions to reach the right optimum amongst the contributing factors can, in fact, be very much nontrivial. This is especially true if you're working on more general systems for which client use patterns may vary wildly.

New comment by kyralis in "When did Google get so weird?"

kyralis — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 22:46:20 +0000

... assuming you build the tool and then think that it's worth polluting context with making that tool available, and then that the LLM decides to actually use the tool. Tool parameter space and tool selection still remains a complicated topic.

New comment by kyralis in "Two-tier encryption in the UK"

kyralis — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:24:00 +0000

The original implementation of iCloud included Apple's ability to recover the data. You can view this as a backdoor, and that might be fair, but the reality is that it's also a feature in the eyes of many customers - because people will lose devices and passwords, and when Apple doesn't have the keys that means they also lose data. Many customers would rather be able to get their data back.

Apple has moved more things into the bucket of "we do not have the keys for this" over time, but pretending that this isn't a tradeoff for the common customer is disingenuous. That's why ADP exists, so that those who want to make a different tradeoff can do so.

Commenters on HN tend to be technically savvy and tend to want the defaults to be tailored to a technically savvy customer base. That's fine, but that's not a real representation of all of the smartphone users out there, and in this case Apple is directly offering the choice that they usually get knocked for taking away.

New comment by kyralis in "Global Glacier Extinction Explorer"

kyralis — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 19:39:52 +0000

Works for me? What version are you running?

New comment by kyralis in "LG TVs caught spying even when offline or on standby"

kyralis — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:29:23 +0000

The intention is to allow for automatic installation of software that is actually needed for the function of the peripheral - think proprietary cameras or non-standard printers/IO/etc. It's not a bad goal, but it leads to manufacturers abusing it, unsurprisingly, for things that are not, in fact, necessary.

New comment by kyralis in "US police fear Meta smart glasses could be used to secretly record them"

kyralis — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 16:38:17 +0000

The irony of someone on Fox News arguing for compromise is thick.

New comment by kyralis in "Parque Arqueológico do Solstício"

kyralis — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 20:34:01 +0000

That assumes a perfectly vertical stone, which is not really indicated by the article's description of the stone placements.

New comment by kyralis in "Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM"

kyralis — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 21:41:11 +0000

They are not lying when they say that they cannot read your messages at rest or in transit without actively changing the code so that you start trusting a new key. The keys sync between devices in ways that Apple cannot read.

This is not bulletproof, because they can potentially change the code to do this - this is what the FBI vs Apple thing was a few years ago was all about.

New comment by kyralis in "Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM"

kyralis — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:46:03 +0000

Also, Apple's E2E iCloud encryption vastly predated the NeuralHash efforts.

New comment by kyralis in "Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM"

kyralis — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:41:55 +0000

This is based on a faulty understanding of the underlying systems. The risk with this sort of E2E encryption is not that the service provider pinky promises not to decrypt what they have, it's that they promise they will not insert a new key into your circle of trust to subsequently start decrypting things.

New comment by kyralis in "Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k"

kyralis — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:28:58 +0000

It's not even just wanting jobs for family; it's wanting to be around services that I think people don't always consider. Sure, you could plan on doing everything yourself if that's truly your hobby, but most remote workers will want to be able to call a plumber or an electrician when something goes wrong, and even finding tradesmen in those locations can sometimes be challenging.

New comment by kyralis in "Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't"

kyralis — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 04:29:19 +0000

The article does not include the word "density" at all. Switzerland has 2.5x the population density that the US does.

I absolutely believe that US regulation choices encourage telecom monopolies and suppresses service in the US, but it's impossible to make a credible argument for that without acknowledging the density challenges that the majority of the US (geographically) faces.

New comment by kyralis in "Scientists find molecular-level evidence for two structures in liquid water"

kyralis — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 05:37:21 +0000

> Rightly or wrongly, homeopathic products are considered medicines, not supplements, and people in general are very mindful of spending money on medicines that don't work.

[Citation needed].

People spend enormous amounts of money on junk "cures" and have done for centuries. Homeopathy is just one of the many current such scams.

New comment by kyralis in "Scientists find molecular-level evidence for two structures in liquid water"

kyralis — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 05:33:35 +0000

The problem with making claims about the chiropractic practices is that it spans such a huge range of "absolute bullshit" to "physically grounded adjustments". Joints and vertebrae (especially) really can be out of alignment, and you can absolutely see that on imaging. Muscles in constant tension can be self-reinforcing in ways that don't easily correct themselves without an external force. My wife has significant back issues as a result of various injuries -- one leading to an SI joint that frequently pops out of place, one due to an injury that fractured most of the spinal processes -- and you can absolutely feel the "pop" when an adjustment helps something slide back in place. This is validated by imaging and sports medicine, not just chiropractic quacks.

At the same, adjusting your back isn't going to cure your cancer, no matter what idiots with fake degrees say.

The challenge is that the latter is just as stupid as homeopathy, but whereas homeopathy really has no redeeming qualities beyond the placebo effect, at least chiropractic practices actually do sometimes have groundings in reality.

New comment by kyralis in "HackerRank open sourced its ATS. My resume scored 90/100. Oh wait 74. No – 88"

kyralis — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 05:06:54 +0000

Is it? Or is it a 65% chance of a resume getting ignored before a single human sees it, reducing your pipeline's likelihood of catching qualified candidates by the same?

Gates that reduce resume flow-through are only useful if their reduction is correlated with quality. Otherwise they're just dragging out your hiring process or unnecessarily causing you to ultimately lower your hiring bars.

New comment by kyralis in "Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption"

kyralis — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:44:20 +0000

It's not launching in China either.

New comment by kyralis in "Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption"

kyralis — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:30:40 +0000

This isn't GDPR, it's DMA. They're not subject to it.

New comment by kyralis in "Zig by Example"

kyralis — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:36:08 +0000

You're not wrong at the high level, but learning a particular language to the point of fluency is still an investment if you're interested in being productive while writing it. Sure, once you have the experience, reading most new languages is easy -- but learning the idioms and particular syntactic choices of a new language to that point that you can reach for them without having to constantly search or consult references isn't something that's instant. There's also a mental cost to how many of those languages you can have "ready to go" in your brain at any given time, and for languages that are evolving -- most of them, at this point, honestly, even old languages like C++ -- there's a cost to keeping up with the language as it changes.

All of that is investment, and not all languages pay off that investment.

New comment by kyralis in "I’ve banned query strings"

kyralis — Sat, 09 May 2026 22:37:50 +0000

Yes, and if the site actually used query strings, then it would of course accept them. Why does it have any reason to accept invalid query strings?

New comment by kyralis in "I’ve banned query strings"

kyralis — Sat, 09 May 2026 22:36:14 +0000

There's a referrer header, if the client wishes to send it. If they don't, the "courtesy to the web host" is done at the expense of the client. This particular web host takes umbrage at other sites taking advantage of their clients that way, which seems reasonable to me.