Hacker News: lotu

New comment by lotu in "The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online"

lotu — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:20:19 +0000

Doesn’t imply that the cops should be involved in prevention.

New comment by lotu in "What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance"

lotu — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:41:13 +0000

Using existing parental controls parents could set their kids age and that could be used for the age controls. Could the parents let the kids around the age gate? Sure but they could do that even if a government ID and camera was required. This actually might be more effective than a lot of these systems because other adults could not let the kids use their IDs

New comment by lotu in "Steam Machine launches today"

lotu — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 02:23:24 +0000

They said the extra time ment they would be able to do additional verification. I’ll bet checking what games you purchased and play time are a part of that.

New comment by lotu in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

lotu — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 04:38:08 +0000

This decision almost certainly came about because of people thinking what action was least likely to get them fired. Any rational person would realize the odds of an actual bomb are so close to zero you would need to start worrying about the sun spontaneously exploding if you were worried there was a bomb. The problem is that if you ignored it your boss could say you ignored a bomb threat and fire you.

Also if they really thought there the plan was going to explode any moment they would have ditched in the ocean or at least diverted to the nearest airport. They didn’t because there was no danger except to their jobs.

New comment by lotu in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

lotu — Sun, 31 May 2026 22:30:36 +0000

It treating every BomBeat RT-SF16 radio as if it contained a bomb would be a moronic reaction to that

New comment by lotu in "The Disappearance of the Public Bench"

lotu — Fri, 08 May 2026 04:09:01 +0000

Yes but critically none of this money is actually given to the homeless person. So we aren't giving them anything for free we are just dealing with the consequences of them not having a proper support system. Spending money to do that is okay, because it doesn't really directly benefit the homeless person.

New comment by lotu in "All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027"

lotu — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:57:14 +0000

I'd say it was bad legislation because this was a foreseeable outcome. I actually worked on cookie banners, and we did user testing, a full 80% of people closed it before reading single word and thought it was an ad.

This type of ambush agree to XYZ or you can't come in that we see with EULA's and privacy polices is unfair, just like if some scammer demanded people sign a fifty page contract before they enter the supermarket. This is something people understand intuitively.

It was foreseeable, and the end result is very little has changed as far as consumer privacy. Most people just agree to get the box to go away, if you actually want privacy your best bet is still a private browsing session and a VPN.

New comment by lotu in "Ban the sale of precise geolocation"

lotu — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:21:31 +0000

My job was building cookie walls in response to GDPR. It might not have been the “intent” but it certainly was the consequence of that law.

New comment by lotu in "New York could prohibit chatbot medical, legal, engineering advice"

lotu — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:37:56 +0000

Just because you aren't charging money doesn't give you the ability to act as an attorney, doctor, or civil engineer.

New comment by lotu in "Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet"

lotu — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 23:42:04 +0000

I remember when I found Flux (third party predecessor to night shift) sometime in 2013. It worked in a week, I'd been staying up until 3am for most of the year and a started going to bed at midnight.

New comment by lotu in "Oneplus phone update introduces hardware anti-rollback"

lotu — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 22:35:26 +0000

Yes thieves do, research on which phones to steal. Just not online more in personal talking with their network of lawbreakers. In short a thief is going to have a fence, and that person is going to know all about what phones can and cannot be resold.

New comment by lotu in "The Unix Pipe Card Game"

lotu — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 04:28:16 +0000

Sounds very profitable for whoever is selling solutions, I wonder if perhaps they also provide wisdom as a loss leader.

New comment by lotu in "The recurring dream of replacing developers"

lotu — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 19:33:43 +0000

Yes very much so, if they could make their product do the things they claim they would be focused on doing that, not telling people to stop being naysayers.

New comment by lotu in "The recurring dream of replacing developers"

lotu — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 19:30:58 +0000

Yes there totally are web development, shovel ware app development, are two that I can think of off the top of my head.

New comment by lotu in "The recurring dream of replacing developers"

lotu — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 19:28:48 +0000

You say that like someone that has been coding for so long you have forgotten what it's like to not know how to code. The customer will have little idea what is even possible and will ask for a product that doesn't solve their actual problem. AI is amazing at producing answers you previously would have looked up on stack overflow, which is very useful. It often can type faster that than I can which is also useful. However, if we are going to see the exponential improvements towards AGI AI boosters talk about we would have already seen the start of it.

When LLMs first showed up publicly it was a huge leap forward, and people assumed it would continue improving at the rate they had seen but it hasn't.

New comment by lotu in "Don't fall into the anti-AI hype"

lotu — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 02:53:26 +0000

Yes this is exactly what I feel. I disconnect enough that if it’s really taking its time I will pull up Reddit and now that single prompt cost me half an hour.

New comment by lotu in "The Other Linux Logo"

lotu — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 14:49:18 +0000

I disagree while, there is an Linux icon that would fit in here. This is not it. It might be a starting point, I don't think the design works. despite how simple the windows and apple logos they represent thousands of hours of work by the best graphic artists.

I'm not one of the best graphic artists but I'll give it a shot. First the default version feels vaguely ominous. To me it feels like someone robbing a bank or the logo on stormtroopers murdering civilians, this is obviously horrible. I think this is due to the sharp angles and the eyes without an attached mouth.

The other options improve the scary problem but add complexity that moves it away from the simple universal recognizable logo we are trying to make. On that note the default version is still too complex. Maybe you could move to more of a silhouette, though I think that would fail in recognizably.

Perhaps part of the problem is a penguin is just not so omnipresent in our lives as windows and apples are. Redhat does achieve this with a very simple instantly recognizable logo, I think that could work. Ubuntu also does well with it's logo thought it has gone full abstract, it's distinct and works well.

If you want to see more google image search for "logos"

New comment by lotu in "Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine"

lotu — Tue, 27 May 2025 00:43:04 +0000

Thank fuck for saying this

New comment by lotu in "Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine"

lotu — Tue, 27 May 2025 00:40:46 +0000

Those higher level questions are likely outside the scope of the class. Like write a novel or something like that.

New comment by lotu in "Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine"

lotu — Tue, 27 May 2025 00:38:54 +0000

Because it is necessary, think about toilet training a toddler.