Hacker News: petiepooo

New comment by petiepooo in "Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests"

petiepooo — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:09:19 +0000

A surveillance technology, intended only for lawful use, is being used unlawfully. Huh. Who could have seen that coming?

New comment by petiepooo in "Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash"

petiepooo — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:05:04 +0000

Required reading: "The Circle" by Dave Eggers.

Skip the movie; the ending sucks and there's too much drama.

The book neatly lays out how little steps towards a better life (like being able to find your lost dog) lead to an oppressive surveillance state. Every step is a good thing and makes logical sense. The end result is not good.

New comment by petiepooo in "Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash"

petiepooo — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:00:10 +0000

What I don't understand is how they get blindsided by the public's reaction. Do they not have high-powered PR teams to do market research? Or did they fire them when they came back with news that the self-centered execs didn't want to hear?

New comment by petiepooo in "When Every Network is 192.168.1.x"

petiepooo — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 13:55:58 +0000

We implemented a very similar solution more than five years ago. The NanoPi R3S was not available then, so we used the GL.iNet GL-MT300N-v2 (aka Mango) running OpenWRT as our edge gateways. It's slow and only has two 100Mb ports, but that was never the bottleneck. At that time, I was able to assemble a batch of 10 including cables and power supplies for only $300, which was ridiculously cheap for such a flexible solution. If you need a polished, turnkey solution, by all means check netrinos out. If you have a strong Linux/nftables/wireguard background, this solution is easy to roll on your own.

New comment by petiepooo in "QtNat – Open you port with Qt UPnP"

petiepooo — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 20:54:42 +0000

People still use UPnP? That's the first thing I disable on a new router.

New comment by petiepooo in "It's hard to justify Tahoe icons"

petiepooo — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 01:44:04 +0000

It's hard to take this rant seriously when the author chose to clutter his rant with snowflakes. If he's looking for more readers he's lucky I run uMatrix and chose to disable javascript instead of just closing the tab and moving on.

New comment by petiepooo in "Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system"

petiepooo — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:30:50 +0000

A viral commit

New comment by petiepooo in "Trump Says Intel Has Agreed to Give the US a 10% Equity Stake"

petiepooo — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 22:41:30 +0000

I pay taxes. Do I get a seat on the board?

No?

Then don’t use my taxes on that!

New comment by petiepooo in "Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy"

petiepooo — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 17:44:17 +0000

Well, duh!

New comment by petiepooo in "Free with In-App Purchase is a sham"

petiepooo — Wed, 07 May 2025 12:22:18 +0000

Shareware has been around since at least the 1980s, kids. The value proposition is that you get to evaluate an app's quality first before committing a payment.

If an app is unusable without an IAP, then that tells you about the developer's ethos and what kind of support you can expect. Cancel and delete.

New comment by petiepooo in "Don't use "click here" for link text"

petiepooo — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 21:35:35 +0000

In Win98SE days, I setup a PC for my parents to use. It was their first computer, and I personalized it the way I setup mine: enable view extensions and path bar in Explorer, remove the Go button in IE, and so on.

Then I got a call from my Mom: "I typed in the web address, now what do I do?"

To me, it was obvious: hit Enter. But MS had done their A/B testing, and that Go button was for the beginning user.

For the OP to assume that everyone is as adept as they are is folly. As another user lamented, sometimes you have to rub the user's nose in it for them to know they can click something.

New comment by petiepooo in "Varlink – IPC to replace D-Bus gradually in systemd"

petiepooo — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 16:33:39 +0000

Looks like the transformation of RHEL into a Windows clone is nearly complete. I'm all for it, as I expect a modern fork without systemd will coalesce for those of us that prefer Linux over Windows.

New comment by petiepooo in "Diffy – A Tool for Sharing Diffs"

petiepooo — Wed, 29 May 2024 21:18:00 +0000

Repost... There was a link to this back in 2016.

New comment by petiepooo in "YARA is dead, long live YARA-X"

petiepooo — Sun, 19 May 2024 13:29:58 +0000

YARA-X is dead, long love the next fad

New comment by petiepooo in "How Would You Turn This Dial to Make the Freezer Colder?"

petiepooo — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 13:02:19 +0000

The engineer's method: there's a way to wipe all markings and still figure it out. If the compressor is off and turns on when you turn the knob clockwise, then clockwise sets it to a colder temperature. Conversely, if the compressor is on and turns off when you turn it counterclockwise, then clockwise still sets it to a colder temperature.

Keep in mind that there should be a lockout period where the compressor does not come on within a few minutes of turning off, so you can't just move it back and forth and listen to the compressor start and stop.

New comment by petiepooo in "I Am the Magpie River: How a Quebec river became a person under local law"

petiepooo — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 14:03:27 +0000

This makes me wonder, how does a certificate of death work? Could a doctor declare that it does not have a heartbeat, and is therefore dead? Would that remove its person-hood, as there is no person to represent it and show life in court?

New comment by petiepooo in "Godaddy just stole my domain"

petiepooo — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 15:09:04 +0000

^-- this

New comment by petiepooo in "Ask HN: What have you built more than twice and wish someone had built for you?"

petiepooo — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 16:14:29 +0000

You can blame the ever-increasing complexity of MS Windows for that. My parents are now on Linux, being that the only things they do on it, other than open the occasional email attachment, are all browser-based. It's easier for me to occasionally run an apt-get upgrade remotely than it is to try to keep Windows free of infestations.

New comment by petiepooo in "Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?"

petiepooo — Sun, 02 Oct 2022 14:53:57 +0000

Two major areas I would focus work on:

1. concurrency 2. variable naming 3. off-by-one errors

New comment by petiepooo in "Ask HN: Recommendations for Home Solar Install?"

petiepooo — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 19:59:08 +0000

Add me to the list that recommends Energysage for a basic rooftop solar resource.

You didn't mention your state. The regulatory environment differs significantly between states, and determines what the electric company can do, since they're generally state-regulated public utilities. If you can sell excess electricity back to your utility at retail rates, it makes little sense IMO to buy a battery. However, if the utility will only pay wholesale rates for your excess, a battery can be cost effective, depending on your daily production/use cycle.

Also look up "solar value deflation" and understand that, as more people install solar, the value of it will decrease as net metering regulations and connection vs. distribution costs get shifted. Read up on the difficulties people with solar leases have encountered when trying to sell their home. For that reason alone, I'd recommend buying, even if it means a second mortgage or HLOC to pay for it.

I'm personally holding out for more efficient panels, cheaper batteries, and home-scale bio-fuel production for excess energy so I can size my install to support being truly off-grid throughout all four seasons.