Hacker News: parapsychic

New comment by parapsychic in "I don't have a smartphone or at least I wish I didn't"

parapsychic — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 19:24:17 +0000

I've always admired people who can live without a smartphone. I met one linux contributor at an open source conference who doesn't have a smartphone. He uses an old dumb phone, doesn't have any socials and always carries cash! In a country like India, where every payment runs on a QR code, it's crazy that he can survive without it. He asked me to look up directions to the metro, memorized it, and left.

One other thing is that he isn't socially awkward. He could go up to people, and ask for help, which I think a lot of us tend to avoid, and instead use apps to solve them.

New comment by parapsychic in "The August 17 outage"

parapsychic — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 03:52:25 +0000

To some extent we are getting more things done as well. In my company (mid-sized startup), they're making us push features every other day now as opposed to maybe 1-2 features per person per sprint. Back when I joined, things were a lot slower. Today, they expect freshers to push new features on day one.

But ofc, slop has increased a lot more as well.

New comment by parapsychic in "Going Dark, and the era of law enforcement hacking"

parapsychic — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 05:35:58 +0000

hmm fair. so a foolproof backdoor that cannot be exploited by the enemies. I don't know how much of that is possible, but then again, the author is talking about super-secure-no-exploit software. So by that definition, a super secure exploit-free backdoor is also possible.

New comment by parapsychic in "Going Dark, and the era of law enforcement hacking"

parapsychic — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 01:27:43 +0000

But isn't that the point the writer is making? They'll be self-sabotaging themselves once they do that.