Hacker News: protimewaster

New comment by protimewaster in "America's Driver's License Breach Is a National Security Disaster"

protimewaster — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 19:05:20 +0000

I'm confused about the read on this too. It reads like a "I don't want the government involved in my healthcare" type of statement, but it's posted in the discussion section of an article about private companies mishandling data.

New comment by protimewaster in "M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years"

protimewaster — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 15:05:14 +0000

> Verbatim, who owns M-Disc, doesn't even manufacture discs anymore. They just slap their brand on other peoples discs.

They're owned by one of the other disc manufacturers (CMC Magnetics), so I think they're technically putting their name on their own discs. But, "they" is CMC now.

New comment by protimewaster in "Gemini 4 Leak. Google is back"

protimewaster — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 17:29:05 +0000

I agree with all of this, but I also feel like it describes nearly every other big tech company over the same time period.

New comment by protimewaster in "Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools"

protimewaster — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 01:29:06 +0000

Colleges with key punches? Probably pretty close to zero.

My point was more that, I think it's incorrect to assert that it's necessary for kids to directly use a computer in order to effectively learn about them. We have tons of concrete evidence of kids learning to be excellent at programming and understanding computers without directly using one. It happened with the kids I described.

New comment by protimewaster in "Mamdani Bans AI in NYC Schools"

protimewaster — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 22:38:26 +0000

I think that can be done without having them sit in front of a computer or even really using a computer, though. Lots of kids have stories about wandering over to a college campus when they were in middle school, wandering into a room with the keypunch machines, and learning about computers that way. Very few of those kids directly used a computer, but they learned it anyway.

New comment by protimewaster in "How to debloat your Xiaomi 15 Ultra without root access"

protimewaster — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 22:13:46 +0000

They should probably explain that, though, since right now they've simply got a link to the website that's hawking the current version.

New comment by protimewaster in "Mamdani Bans AI in NYC Schools"

protimewaster — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 21:53:01 +0000

It's limited to "younger students", and keeping younger students away from computers also isn't a bad idea IMO.

New comment by protimewaster in "GrapheneOS says Pixel 11 has MTE support after all"

protimewaster — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 19:05:50 +0000

> Google may just be getting ready to follow suit.

That may well be, but it's a regression for the time being, since Advanced Protection mode presumably no longer uses MTE (or a replacement for MTE), whereas it did on the Pixel 8, 9, and 10.

It seems like they should've continued to offer MTE until the replacement was ready.

New comment by protimewaster in "GrapheneOS says Pixel 11 has MTE support after all"

protimewaster — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:43:37 +0000

AFAIK the other Pixel devices, going back to the 8, do use MTE in the stock OS. Some MTE features are only enabled when "Advanced Protection" is turned on in the OS settings, but the stock OS on those devices does make use of MTE. In the Android documentation, MTE is explicitly called out as one of the protection features enabled in the Advanced Protection mode.

So, I don't think it's accurate to say they don't use it yet. They were using it, and then they stopped. I think that's one of the reasons the linked GOS thread says they're concerned that "MTE may actually be broken due to CPU errata".

New comment by protimewaster in "GrapheneOS says Pixel 11 has MTE support after all"

protimewaster — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:52:08 +0000

Unfortunately, the headline is somewhat optimistic compared to the reality, I think.

The thread makes it sound like it could have been disabled due to errata or performance issues. Basically, it looks like the software Google is shipping intentionally doesn't use MTE on the Pixel 11 hardware. That raises the question of...what does Google know is wrong with MTE on the Pixel 11?

New comment by protimewaster in "Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO"

protimewaster — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:23:10 +0000

Is 2010 when people started to like it? I remember, in 2008, being in a computer science course at university when Chrome launched. It was not liked at that time, at least within the computer users I knew. I remember it being mostly described as "that awful browser that Google made".

New comment by protimewaster in "GrapheneOS project: pixel 11 no longer supports hardware memory tagging (MTE)"

protimewaster — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 16:10:30 +0000

> not clear at all if there will ever be cheap Motorolas

They've indicated that support will eventually be added for midrange Motorola devices, which I believe are historically price-competitive with the a-series Pixels.

New comment by protimewaster in "GrapheneOS project: pixel 11 no longer supports hardware memory tagging (MTE)"

protimewaster — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 01:25:35 +0000

> Well the current Motorola Signature (2026) is 3 times the price of a Pixel.

I understand the sentiment, certainly, but the price difference depends a lot on which model we're comparing to. The Signature will be the flagship from Motorola, and I'll be very, very surprised if it's 3x the price of the Pixel flagship.

Presumably someone who was planning to buy something like the Pixel 10a would be more interested in the non-flagship Motorola devices with GOS support, which are expected to launch later.

New comment by protimewaster in "Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here"

protimewaster — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:14:19 +0000

> If "thinning down the population" was the intent, shouldn't the US reverse their anti-abortion bullshit laws?

There can be more than one motivation, of course.

Also, it's very possible that outlawing abortion can result in a decreased birth rate. E.g., if a woman is scared that she'll have a problematic pregnancy, she may decide to just not have a child instead of risking needing and not being able to get an emergency abortion.

New comment by protimewaster in "Devices with GrapheneOS support should be available in 2027"

protimewaster — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:42:15 +0000

I wonder if practices will change any of there's ever a device that ships with GOS. Right now, many companies are happy to shrug off GOS, because they don't support "modified devices".

If any of the Motorola devices have GOS as a pre-installed option, now the companies don't have the excuse that the device is modified.

I'm guessing the companies will continue to be difficult, but it'll be amusing to watch, at least.

New comment by protimewaster in "Apple announces changes for apps in the European Union"

protimewaster — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 04:09:40 +0000

I think the point is that they didn't charge developers anything specifically to be developers or sell apps. They just needed the same hardware and software as everybody else, which, yes, they probably had to buy.

New comment by protimewaster in "Fairphone is now officially available in the United States"

protimewaster — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:32:31 +0000

Fairphone also had the publicly available test key flagged as trusted by the boot loader at one point, which probably discourages projects like GOS, since it makes it harder to trust the hardware to not be a weak link in security.

New comment by protimewaster in "ChatGPT has almost stopped citing Reddit"

protimewaster — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:20:01 +0000

There's a lot of good troubleshooting and tech info on there, though. I've run into multiple tech issues over the years that aren't documented in bug reports, change logs, etc., but some random person on Reddit will have a post where they investigated the cause and found a solution.

New comment by protimewaster in "Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full"

protimewaster — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 05:38:02 +0000

I actually remembered more about this after my initial post. I ended up with two copies of Quake (one is the original shareware release and one is a later release of the full game), and one of them has the PRE flag set in the TOC and the other one doesn't. Now I'm wondering if I ever checked the subcodes for the one that's missing the flags in the TOC. I'll have to dig it out sometime and check.

I did verify that the audio is identical down to an offset, though, between the two.

> The adjacent bit is “copy prohibited” versus “copy permitted”, which is not a piece of metadata I knew Compact Disc had.

I wonder if any equipment ever actually used those other flags for anything?

New comment by protimewaster in "Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full"

protimewaster — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 05:19:57 +0000

IIRC, it's actually debatable if the pre-emphasis flag is supposed to be set. I don't remember the exact details anymore, but I think it was discovered that there multiple releases with bit-identical audio tracks, but some of them have the flag set while others don't. They can't both be correct, because the audio data should've changed if the emphasis was removed.