Hacker News: pookha

New comment by pookha in "Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban"

pookha — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 18:34:27 +0000

This has nothing to do with protecting kids...This is the classic "OH WONT SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!" meme that governments fall back on to terrorize and coerce the herd. There's an obvious push by neo-liberals to implement a digital application (ID) that they can use to "authorize". What the UK and Australia and the US homeland security really want is the ability to see a troublemaker and to toggle a switch on their digital certificate\token to dissociate them from the internet. No doubt they've got legions of Keycloak systems stood up and ready.

New comment by pookha in "30 years ago today "Netscape and Sun announce JavaScript""

pookha — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 18:24:45 +0000

LOL. And Netscape 1.1 just casually birthed SSL (2.0) for the world and future generations.

New comment by pookha in "Digital ID, a new way to create and present an ID in Apple Wallet"

pookha — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 18:57:43 +0000

Digital ID is a misnomer, it should be called "Digital Social Application". These are NOT ID"s. They're government dreamcasted app's for managing the lives of civilians.

New comment by pookha in "Vibe engineering"

pookha — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 19:45:55 +0000

W. Edwards Deming was partially responsible for Japanese manufacturing QA and was a huge player in WWII manufacturing. He was one of the reasons the United States went from annually manufacturing 3k planes to over 300k+ planes by the end of the war, which is pretty crazy to think about. The US did plenty right in WWII but it gets over looked by historians and (I guess) universities.

New comment by pookha in "That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus"

pookha — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 12:22:16 +0000

What your Chinese friend isn't saying is that all those Substack writers in the US would be disappeared into Chinese gulag's. The US has a strong freedom of speech clause baked into its core governance system...When I was fifteen I'd be subscribed to five different punk zines and would be creating mix-tapes from 10 different sources (and much of it wildly offensive and political).

New comment by pookha in "Why English doesn't use accents"

pookha — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 15:36:44 +0000

As someone that enjoys reading I can't think of a more descriptive language than the English language...It's easily one of the most powerful languages on earth and has twice (!) the number of words in its vocabulary compared to something like French, which is heavily centralized by some managerial class. You just have to appreciate the language for what its strengths are (unbounded capability to communicate using just words) vs what you as a novice need to do to master it. Which, to be frank, is easier than mastering something like the Korean language that has all this drama and ceremony around politeness and speech levels.

New comment by pookha in "The Titanic’s Best Lifeboat"

pookha — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 14:09:30 +0000

I can tell you haven't been a software developer or engineer long if the woes of the Titanic aren't resonating with you at some level. They built out this lux tricked out master facade to make the most high-end ocean liner in the world but built it with rivets that were high in slag (cheap). They took shortcuts that got exposed on the product launch which sent over a thousand people to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. As a dev I look at this as the worst, most historically atrocious user experience in the history of human civilization and it continues to live on in the memories of everyone in 2025. And RIP to those that gave up their seats on those shifty lifeboats so that other peoples kids could survive this debacle.

New comment by pookha in "Working on databases from prison"

pookha — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 18:00:00 +0000

The Russians tried using a carfentanil aerosol to sedate hostages and it killed over 120 people. It's 100x more potent than fentanyl and 10,000 times more potent than morphine. He put the lives of god knows how many people at risk and could have easily cross contaminated the weed we also know he was dealing (probably to kids). And peer-pressure is an immense force, even with adults (https://news.utdallas.edu/health-medicine/peer-pressure-adul...). If he had the humility and self-reflection to post that his actions were ruthless and killed people than I'd be feel better about his mindset, but his insistence on being classified as a (non-violent) drug offender is clearly an attempt on his part to manipulate.

New comment by pookha in "Working on databases from prison"

pookha — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 17:21:29 +0000

Unlikely...He's an incredibly callous individual that was cutting drugs with a substance orders of magnitude more dangerous than fentanyl so he could drive an Audi and live the high life. Given that they tied several deaths back to his operation, and that it was a multi-state joint effort, I doubt he'd get a slap on the wrist by a European judges.

New comment by pookha in "Working on databases from prison"

pookha — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:14:09 +0000

Him claiming he's in prison for non-violent crimes (like he's your local herb dealer) takes gumption...Authorities linked his Carfentanil escapades to several deaths.

New comment by pookha in "Working on databases from prison"

pookha — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 14:53:14 +0000

I'd like to see him get life in prison with no chance at parole. He's responsible for at least three deaths (probably more) but because he's proficient at social engineering and feeding people lines he's weaseled his way into the tech industry (from prison!). Over 78k people died in 2023 of fentanyl alone and this twerp was trafficking a substance far more lethal, he literally left a trail of bodies in his wake.

https://www.wbay.com/content/news/New-Hampshire-man-suspecte...

New comment by pookha in "Mark Zuckerberg says social media is over"

pookha — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 14:25:20 +0000

I hate group chats (hate). It's a cliquey childish high-school cafeteria mode of communicating (thus why highschoolers use group chats). It's a clear step backwards and is representative of the covid-era stazi-like mentality people developed where they felt it was unsanity to share their views or life with the world at large (and maybe, given what we've learned about social media and nation-states, that's not without merit -- i.e the UK). Perfect world social media is a means of forming connections and expanding your little room(s).

New comment by pookha in "The Wright brothers invented the airplane, right? Not if you're in Brazil"

pookha — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 14:34:23 +0000

This is the same argument people used against the Wright brothers that you're now throwing at Elon Musk (in a thread maligning the Wright brothers claim to fame)...Langley was a classically trained mathematician with associations to Harvard and the Naval Academy. He was one of the most sought after and decorated engineer's and astrologers (invented his own time system) and was given exclusive funding by the Smithsonian to solve flight. He lost to the Bicycle repair shop guys that hand rolled their own equipment on sandbars in North Carolina (who didn't have advanced degree's in engineering).

New comment by pookha in "The Frontend Treadmill"

pookha — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 17:45:48 +0000

LOL 2015 was a banner year for the trendy web-dev influencers...I can remember junior developers tripping over themselves trying to implement "flux" to handle some form input. Needlessly complex bullshit libraries got forced down everyone's throat because AngularJS was passe and React was "very mindful, very demure". Eventually flux became "redux", which I gather was a "state management" framework that ripped off a post graduate students custom niche language. And I want to say the redux kid's background was literally microsoft powerpoint scripting. Very surreal time in development.

New comment by pookha in "When Crocodiles Attack: The Ramree Island Massacre (2013)"

pookha — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 17:18:18 +0000

Find it interesting when human governance systems develop clear psychopathic behaviors. Wild animals -- like salt-water crocodiles -- are their own version of a system and any system with nothing that kicks back against it will expand to fill the known universe as long as there's positive inputs. The idea that you'd allow a tier-one apex predator -- that can average 17 feet in length -- to explode and grow to these numbers and risk the lives of countless people and wildlife is a form of nihilism. You're saying we as humans are less important than a prehistoric reptile that lives off rotting flesh.

New comment by pookha in "Bald eagles are thriving again after near extinction"

pookha — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 14:53:15 +0000

You're not welcome for the Canadian Geese.

New comment by pookha in "Bald eagles are thriving again after near extinction"

pookha — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 14:51:36 +0000

I have no idea where these people live where they're getting food sntached by rogue bald eagles but here in Virginia these damn red-tailed hawks are thugs. I have to throw a frisbee for my over zealous eighty pound doberman and these hawks try to swoop in to snatch her toy. Happens in the spring\early summer. She barked at one last year and it literally shat on her from the tree's. And what I find strange is these hawks are in groups when they do this. Never seen any other raptor species gang up like these hawks.

New comment by pookha in "National Science Foundation fires roughly 10% of its workforce"

pookha — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 19:00:02 +0000

Biden signed the deal with the cyber trucks. https://www.wral.com/story/fact-check-is-the-state-departmen...

And the NSF headquarters is a complete joke...I use to do tempo runs down Eisenhower Ave when it was all brutalist government buildings and condo's. They ripped down the brutualist buildings and rebuilt them into commercial office space which has sat vacant for years. But then in comes the NSF and they constructed this abomination of a building that has rooftop gardens and dominates the skyline. Massive sky scrapper...And they did this when a significant portion of their employee's worked from home (I know one). Sorry if I'm not crying about layoffs with the NSF, especially after years of tech layoffs due to Section 174 (approved of by some of these same progressive NSF government employees).

New comment by pookha in "How shut-down Bay Area tech companies ditch their fancy gear"

pookha — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:11:52 +0000

Certainly feels like a native add...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising

New comment by pookha in "Communal Luxury: The Public Bathhouse"

pookha — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:55:42 +0000

Freaky...Speaking for myself, but as a guy born in the early 80's I can't think of a single more demeaning and foul situation in life than communually bathing and washing your booty hole around the "community" (and they had multiple genders in that photo)...In state prison, robocop, 80's gyms and military basic training this may be a way of life but to a millennial that's raising the cortisol. And how many boomers were more or less compromised by school gym teachers in communal showering situations? I've heard some horror stories.