Hacker News: lkramer

New comment by lkramer in "That time when I failed the Microsoft interview"

lkramer — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 11:05:45 +0000

You can not improve on perfection!

New comment by lkramer in "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions"

lkramer — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 20:42:40 +0000

Instead of just various penis challenged nation leaders doing so...

New comment by lkramer in "Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2"

lkramer — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:44:36 +0000

I agree Thimbleweed Park was a little rough, a bit like Maniac Mansion if you like. What gives me hope is that Monkey Island 5 was really really good, so I feel he's back in his grove.

New comment by lkramer in "Did they ghost you?"

lkramer — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 07:49:35 +0000

I did that, and had to take a bollocking from the HR guy at the company I took the first offer from, but I don't regret it.

New comment by lkramer in "It's a shame what's happened to radio"

lkramer — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:50:29 +0000

It might not work in your scenario, but I too listen to radio a lot and found the signal issues annoying. My car is pretty old and doesn't have aux/bluetooth input so I can't plug in my phone and use the Sounds app, but I got a bluetooth to FM signal transmitter and now listen to my phone through my car radio, including a lot of streaming radio.

New comment by lkramer in "Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet”, is retiring"

lkramer — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 07:43:37 +0000

I believe it's what is called a joke. I'm with you, I don't like them either.

New comment by lkramer in "Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?"

lkramer — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:52:34 +0000

I don't necessarily agree with all these measures, but there is a lot more harm in social media than just pedophiles hunting children.

New comment by lkramer in "England Runestones"

lkramer — Sat, 16 May 2026 11:16:29 +0000

Conveniently the hammer is deceptively similar to the cross in general shape.

New comment by lkramer in "The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization"

lkramer — Thu, 14 May 2026 10:38:09 +0000

As a non-American I agree with this. There is a whole different energy to Americans in terms of mindset compared to Europeans (not just in business). I think Europe have outstanding talent, and when it comes together it can be exceptionally good and often in a more sustainable way than the American equivalent, but it's a somewhat sad fact that many of the most successful European companies have been successful by emulating (parts of) the American culture.

New comment by lkramer in "Kids bypass age verification with fake moustaches"

lkramer — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:22:21 +0000

LSL 1 EGA specifically is pretty much how I learned English. It was certainly much more efficient than my teachers :)

New comment by lkramer in "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent"

lkramer — Tue, 05 May 2026 13:01:55 +0000

at this point you're barely the product either. You're more a passive platform for them to execute their strategy on.

New comment by lkramer in "How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences"

lkramer — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 19:07:08 +0000

`constantly analyze other people's perception of you` I find this a really hard trap to escape...

New comment by lkramer in "Your Backpack Got Worse on Purpose"

lkramer — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:15:02 +0000

There are so many examples of this. Processed food, sweets and so on. Cadbury, Toblerone, etc live on the brand recognition, but have come objectively worse over the years. Often they are owned by the same mega corp that have a strategy of milking the brands for as long as possible.

It's bait and switch on global, organised scale and it's almost impossible to fight except on an individual level.

New comment by lkramer in "France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app"

lkramer — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 17:12:16 +0000

Because even the UK is getting fed up with Trump? They literally started preparing to deploy on of the carriers to the Gulf and Trump basically told them to fuck off because they were "late" to the war? Now he's changed his mind again, who gives a damn? He can reap what he has sowed.

New comment by lkramer in "I verified my LinkedIn identity. Here's what I handed over"

lkramer — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 11:04:49 +0000

They will have an app that asks to scan you passport with your phone's NFC reader. It's pretty common for Identity Verification.

New comment by lkramer in "I Like GitLab"

lkramer — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 13:03:03 +0000

For a long time I self hosted Gitlab, and was always quite happy with it, but I recently moved my VPS and decided to give Forgejo a try, and I have to say it's refreshing. It's really fast and takes a fraction of the resources Gitlab does. I'm sure Gitlab have more features, but frankly, I wasn't using them. I still like Gitlab, we use it at work and it does a good job, but for my own needs I don't see myself switching back any time soon.

New comment by lkramer in "Vietnam bans unskippable ads"

lkramer — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:43:31 +0000

It's infuriating, the other day I had to download an app to pay for parking. What the fuck do I need the top choice to be a competing parking app? That won't do me any good when the place I'm parking need the one I searched for and who the hell goes "oh, an exciting new parking app? I'm gonna drive around until I can find a place that uses it so I can park there!"

New comment by lkramer in "Librarians tired of being accused of hiding secret books that were made up by AI"

lkramer — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 13:04:58 +0000

it shows there is a demand!

New comment by lkramer in "Backing up Spotify"

lkramer — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:37:41 +0000

They have also arbitrarily decided not to pay out if you fall below a certain threshold, which hits smaller artists as well. Of course part of the problem is that the pay out is so low, so if you don't have millions of streams it's not worth it.

New comment by lkramer in "Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs"

lkramer — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:34:09 +0000

The one I found most devious was the ATMs in Stansted that offers to pay out Euro. I was going to Spain and knew I would need some cash on arrival, so I thought I could save a bit of time. They had cleverly swapped the exchange rate so in big letters they showed a reasonable figure, like 0.85 and then in smaller type in the corner showed that actually it was in favour of Euros, so you would pay over 350 pounds for 300 euros. I luckily realised in time, but I expect a lot of people don't. Also it's drilled in from the bad old days that you need to take out cash before going on holiday to avoid being scammed. A whole exploitive service industry seems to exist solely on that misconception.

The only place in I've had any troubles paying with card (or easily find a cashmachine) in recent time have been Turkey outside the big cities.