Hacker News: lokar

New comment by lokar in "New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing"

lokar — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:38:29 +0000

I’m very reluctant to put any effort in without an official stable API

New comment by lokar in "New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing"

lokar — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:10:41 +0000

I would give it a shot. Home assistant is full of adapters like this.

I though the CSV export was manual, you can’t automate it.

New comment by lokar in "New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing"

lokar — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 21:59:20 +0000

We had to plug our (gas) car in at night. I don’t recommend it.

New comment by lokar in "New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing"

lokar — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 21:50:21 +0000

They do need to keep up with API changes. But that’s not that hard. Even then, they could expose a stable local API so someone else can maintain the adapter.

New comment by lokar in "New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing"

lokar — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 21:46:20 +0000

I see you did not grow up going out to the driveway to start the car before breakfast :)

New comment by lokar in "New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing"

lokar — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 21:45:19 +0000

You can buy the feature outright when you order the car.

This is just them figuring out that if they pre-install the HW in every car they get enough payments to cover the units never used.

It has two obvious consumer benefits: second hand sales (the new owner may really want it), and very occasional use.

New comment by lokar in "Do dentists know what they're doing?"

lokar — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 19:39:51 +0000

I'm saying they should have done the (week long) recording every 2-3 years, which is standard. This would almost certainly have given them some advance understanding of the issue.

New comment by lokar in "Banks are now trying to offload the AI data center debt they just underwrote"

lokar — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:22:18 +0000

Volume!

New comment by lokar in "Do dentists know what they're doing?"

lokar — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 22:58:19 +0000

And it's not just scams for $, it's missing standard care.

My father (80) and I have the same (genetic) heart condition. My current and previous cardiologist (due to a move) ordered a week long heart rhythm recorder, noting that doing this every 2-3 years was the standard of care for the condition, to catch irregularities before they become serious.

My father's current and 2 previous cardiologists did not. They ended up having to do an urgent pacemaker implant since he was frequently on the verge of passing out in his apartment due to an irregular rhythm.

One of these two groups of Drs is very wrong.

New comment by lokar in "Passkeys are not a trap"

lokar — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 22:41:37 +0000

A lot of (good) debate about the usability, etc when using passkeys for all/many of your "everyday" sites.

Setting that aside, I would suggest people strongly consider them for their 2-3 most critical sites. You primary email, your main bank/investment account, and any cloud infra / dns registrations you have.

IMO, for these the trade-off between usability and security is strongly in favor of passkeys. I use 4 hardware keys for these accounts (USB-A and USB-C on my keychain, USB-C in the laptop, and a USB-C backup locked away).

New comment by lokar in "Who Is Planting Backdoors in Ledger Crypto Wallets?"

lokar — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 22:28:58 +0000

The participants (the banks) are trusted to validate transactions before sending them, and are responsible for fixing bad transactions. And if they keep screwing up they can lose access.

New comment by lokar in "Who Is Planting Backdoors in Ledger Crypto Wallets?"

lokar — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 21:18:07 +0000

Yeah, I'm not deep into this stuff, but I thought the role of the device is to hold the key for a wallet that you don't intend to transfer out of very often. This makes the trade-off (more hassle, more security) worth it. If you are using the key all the time I don't see the point, the storage device won't be the weak point in your setup anyway.

New comment by lokar in "Who Is Planting Backdoors in Ledger Crypto Wallets?"

lokar — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:47:44 +0000

For the public string? QR code

New comment by lokar in "Who Is Planting Backdoors in Ledger Crypto Wallets?"

lokar — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:07:22 +0000

Or, get a mass produced general purpose computer and never connect it to the internet.

New comment by lokar in "Who Is Planting Backdoors in Ledger Crypto Wallets?"

lokar — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:05:03 +0000

There counterfeiting is not the issue; it’s unauthorized transfers or alterations to the account ledger. In both cases there are many layers of backup record keeping and procedures to investigate and correct errors.

New comment by lokar in "Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) 2026 Cancelled"

lokar — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 03:31:55 +0000

And companies (who provide direct sponsorship, and send staff) are cowering.

New comment by lokar in "Leaving Tech"

lokar — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 04:02:48 +0000

I would love to see better breakdowns of where things are hard. YOE/level, remote/hybrid, specialty, region, etc

Most of the people I’ve worked with over the years seem to be doing fine.

New comment by lokar in "AI coding agents generate more code, but not more software"

lokar — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 23:23:36 +0000

My main goal in a review is to ensure the design of the system and approach to the change is resilient to errors (by me and the author). You have to assume there will be mistakes you can’t catch (still, catch as many as you can), but other factors heavily influence how bad the mistakes will be.

New comment by lokar in "Just say no to OpenAI and Anthropic"

lokar — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 21:50:32 +0000

In the US, where they started, they were openly flouting local laws.

New comment by lokar in "Just say no to OpenAI and Anthropic"

lokar — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 19:36:07 +0000

I have faith that we will get back on a correct course, once we try everything else.