Hacker News: pkphilip

New comment by pkphilip in "California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash"

pkphilip — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:04:10 +0000

However, this is not about age verification or protecting children. That is just the excuse they are using.

If Meta, Google etc could easily have algorithms in place for determining the age of the person seeing the video - apart from having the override capability via a parental login as you have stated.. but these platforms have consistently refused to limit the type of content they are showing to children.

New comment by pkphilip in "Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes"

pkphilip — Sun, 17 May 2026 10:33:01 +0000

I wish there was a similar attempt at making "open source" motorcycles

New comment by pkphilip in "Phel v0.36.0 – Lisp on PHP, now with numeric tower and first-class Vars"

pkphilip — Thu, 14 May 2026 10:00:10 +0000

That is cool! thank you.

New comment by pkphilip in "Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired"

pkphilip — Thu, 14 May 2026 09:58:24 +0000

What a stupid move! way to make things worse for yourself! Some people have such low impulse control it is just unbelievable the sort of damage they can do to themselves and others.

New comment by pkphilip in "dBase: 1979-2026"

pkphilip — Mon, 11 May 2026 10:04:42 +0000

The Borland/Inprise/Embarcadero mess impacted a lot of software.

They could have still been the king of the hill now if it weren't for the suits who completely ruined it after Philippe Kahn left the scene.

New comment by pkphilip in "Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard"

pkphilip — Mon, 11 May 2026 09:59:40 +0000

There is a transaction charge for IMPS which is not there for UPI. Also, IMPS only works against already pre-approved bank accounts

New comment by pkphilip in "Phel v0.36.0 – Lisp on PHP, now with numeric tower and first-class Vars"

pkphilip — Mon, 11 May 2026 09:57:53 +0000

It would be great if the Phel repl could connect to a running PHP process

New comment by pkphilip in "Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard"

pkphilip — Fri, 08 May 2026 05:40:17 +0000

India's UPI is also extremely quick and easy to use - instant transfers with just the person's phone number or via a QR code or via a UPI id which looks like an email id.

We are talking about 19-20 billion transactions per month.

Apart from UPI, there are other interbank transfers methods such as NEFT, IMPS, RTGS etc. All quite convenient and easy to use.

New comment by pkphilip in "Why I Created phpc.tv"

pkphilip — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:18:30 +0000

PHP remains one of the fastest ways of getting a web application done - especially with frameworks like Yii2, Laravel etc.

New comment by pkphilip in "Kids can bypass some age checks with a drawn-on mustache"

pkphilip — Tue, 05 May 2026 07:32:12 +0000

The governments know fully well that simple checks for age verification will be bypassed. So they will "fix" this issue by demanding a digital id.

New comment by pkphilip in "Roboticist-Turned-Teacher Built a Life-Size Replica of Eniac"

pkphilip — Fri, 01 May 2026 05:06:49 +0000

Wow! I am sure the kids are totally kicked and will remember this for the rest of their lives!

We need many more of these sorts of projects - for kids as well as adults

New comment by pkphilip in "AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it"

pkphilip — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:24:22 +0000

Google Maps has made me a total idiot. I can't remember routes to places where I have gone quite a few times!

New comment by pkphilip in "AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it"

pkphilip — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:48:02 +0000

Just as the advent of palm-sized organizers reduced our ability to recall dozens and sometimes even 100s of phone numbers of friends etc, AI will reduce our ability to perform a range of functions.

I think the evidence for this is quite clear. Humans are NOT going to expend any energy - even mental energy, to think about something if they don't have to.

New comment by pkphilip in "An AI agent deleted our production database. The agent's confession is below"

pkphilip — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:43:57 +0000

Why in the world would you give an AI agent the ability to delete your production database AND ALL OF YOUR BACKUPS in one go?!

And it is not even the first highly publicised instance of this happening!

Crazy!

New comment by pkphilip in "AI can cost more than human workers now"

pkphilip — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:19:05 +0000

Any second now they will also find out that AI won't buy the products you create either.

New comment by pkphilip in "Girl, 10, finds rare Mexican axolotl under Welsh bridge"

pkphilip — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 06:27:46 +0000

Amazing to see all of the things kids have been finding these days!

Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/75848

‘It Had Teeth’: A 3-Year-Old Discovers Ancient Treasure in Israel While on a hike with her family, a child stumbled across a 3,800-year-old Egyptian amulet. It will go on display in an upcoming exhibition. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/world/middleeast/child-an...

Sarah Huckabee Sanders' kids scream with excitement after finding 2,000-year-old coins in West Bank cave https://www.foxnews.com/travel/sarah-huckabee-sanders-kids-s...

New comment by pkphilip in "Archive of Byte magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975"

pkphilip — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 11:54:14 +0000

It was my favourite magazine. The only way I could access it was by going to the US Information Services Library attached to their consulates.

I learned a tremendous deal from it and I will forever be grateful.

New comment by pkphilip in "US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification"

pkphilip — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:01:45 +0000

This is yet another underhanded attempt at making digital id mandatory. Child protection is just the trojan horse.

EU also released their age verification legislation. Notice how closely they are timed.

https://www.dw.com/en/eu-chief-urges-bloc-wide-push-on-age-v...

Pure coincidence?

It is all going according to plan.

New comment by pkphilip in "Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)"

pkphilip — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 14:06:31 +0000

UX has really gone downhill. This is particularly true of banking websites.

Also, the trend of hiding scrollbars, huge wasted spaces, making buttons look really flat, confusing icons, confusing ways of using drop downs rather than using the select/option html controls etc have all made the whole experience far inferior to where desktop UI was even decades ago

New comment by pkphilip in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

pkphilip — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 05:42:45 +0000

It is me