Hacker News: potwinkle

New comment by potwinkle in "Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock"

potwinkle — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 06:20:55 +0000

We usually take it from natural gas deposits instead.

New comment by potwinkle in "Vite 8.0 Is Out"

potwinkle — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 08:14:02 +0000

I've had a great time using Rust with Actix as the framework.

New comment by potwinkle in "MacBook Neo"

potwinkle — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 04:37:54 +0000

macOS actually does the opposite; to avoid wearing down the drive it will hold 7-10gb of your most commonly used files in memory and release them when the memory gets allocated for something else. In theory you could get away with editing gigabytes of files and using dozens of apps without ever wearing down your drive at all.

New comment by potwinkle in "New iPad Air, powered by M4"

potwinkle — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 19:33:54 +0000

You can get Wipr 2 for iOS and (for me) it's been as good as uBO.

New comment by potwinkle in "Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan"

potwinkle — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 11:08:40 +0000

There is an open-source launcher to run Bedrock on Mac and Linux, and it runs well. Bedrock, however, still isn't as popular because servers and mods are more of an afterthought, so not a lot of effort has been put into making it developer-friendly.

New comment by potwinkle in "Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan"

potwinkle — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 11:03:06 +0000

It seems kind of odd to play Java edition without mods at all. Wouldn't you have a simpler time on Bedrock?

New comment by potwinkle in "Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun"

potwinkle — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:58:14 +0000

You most likely use a Windows PC and an Android phone. If Uncle Sam viewed you as a threat actor, he could ask both companies to send you a signed and verified update to either your OS or apps they control, running whatever he wants.

New comment by potwinkle in "Backing up Spotify"

potwinkle — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 22:33:32 +0000

I mean... not really? Not much music is Spotify exclusive (at least from the 99.6% of what people listen to mentioned in the article), and from friends in the industry I can guarantee you all major content platforms (Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, a large chunk of YouTube) have already been completely copied without a business agreement with the rightsholders by AI startups and big-name players.

New comment by potwinkle in "Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?"

potwinkle — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:02:43 +0000

Ladybird is pretty good today. A lot of web apps, even complex ones, just work. It's reached high compliance scores for web standards in a shockingly quick period. See here: https://youtu.be/VqzbqsIlaNI?si=YPdwbApq4nVYlPMQ&t=209

New comment by potwinkle in "Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business"

potwinkle — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 20:56:39 +0000

This seems a bit foolish? Even just limiting stock to paper launches and massively raising the price would let you say "oh, it's just the market" but here it makes them look like they're putting all their eggs in one basket.

New comment by potwinkle in "Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC"

potwinkle — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 04:32:37 +0000

Security seems like a solved problem on desktop already? Secure Boot + LUKS + SELinux gives anyone a pretty airtight userspace.

Microsoft/Apple have similarly secure set ups for their operating systems. Bitlocker by default (although there is a convenient backdoor for high-paying customers to protect against data loss and for law enforcement forensics) and Apple's Secure Enclave (only broken into by a certain five countries intelligence agencies and for older versions streaming pirates) should protect the average user pretty well.

Is there anything special about Android phones (especially budget ones) that makes them more secure? That's not what I've seen.

New comment by potwinkle in "Mind-reading devices can now predict preconscious thoughts"

potwinkle — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 03:38:58 +0000

The Wikipedia page seems to show that it's just a placebo/scam? The helmet has the equivalent magnetic effect of a fridge magnet or hair dryer, and researchers in Sweden replicating the research in a double-blind study found no effect at all. Looking at the pictures on the official website https://www.god-helmet.com/wp/god-helmet/index.htm , it's just magnets on a snowmobile helmet this guy bought.

New comment by potwinkle in "Azure hit by 15 Tbps DDoS attack using 500k IP addresses"

potwinkle — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 06:50:43 +0000

But the botnets don't use VPNs, they use IoT devices owned by people who don't even know there's a computer inside. It seems like you just don't like the idea of VPNs in general and are using an unrelated attack to argue for deprivatizing (And thus, surveilling) the citizenry.

New comment by potwinkle in "Azure hit by 15 Tbps DDoS attack using 500k IP addresses"

potwinkle — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 06:33:31 +0000

We didn't. The WTO copyright framework is a joke that only goes after sports rebroadcasting and people who watch Disney movies for free. Meanwhile every valuable piece of US science and industry has been replicated on the other side of the planet and used for great success.

New comment by potwinkle in "Android developer verification: Early access starts"

potwinkle — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 04:07:58 +0000

All levels of Widevine are cracked, but only the software-exclusive vulnerabilities are publicly available. It's only used for valuable content though (netflix/disney+/primevideo), so it might still work out for YouTube as no one will want to waste a vulnerability on a Mr. Beast slop video.

New comment by potwinkle in "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B"

potwinkle — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 06:16:16 +0000

What are you talking about? Both iPhones and Android let you spoof your MAC address to a random or fixed value if you want, for privacy.

Also, "leaking my IP addresses" how the fuck do you expect a website to talk to you without an IP address to send the data back to.

New comment by potwinkle in "Windows 11 25H2 October Update Bug Renders Recovery Environment Unusable"

potwinkle — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 20:33:05 +0000

99% of Steam games work great on Linux now thanks to Proton. You might be thinking of how it was back in 2015.

New comment by potwinkle in "Hackers can steal 2FA codes and private messages from Android phones"

potwinkle — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 07:39:48 +0000

No. This isn't Spectre/Meltdown for GPUs, it takes advantage of SurfaceFlinger giving apps information on what's drawn behind them.

New comment by potwinkle in "Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move"

potwinkle — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 01:44:30 +0000

Paying Google $25 for the privilege of giving them a picture of your face and license to save in their cloud.

New comment by potwinkle in "No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive"

potwinkle — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 21:29:23 +0000

You're anthropomorphizing the lawnmower. Microsoft didn't do this to help or hurt users or ransomware. There's no deeper meaning behind the action past improving business metrics in order to meet goals and please management and shareholders. They're not thinking about good or evil when implementing this, even if the PR firms they hire might make it look that way.