Hacker News: ptaffs

New comment by ptaffs in "U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk"

ptaffs — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 17:30:44 +0000

The "everyone has access to the ER" has to be paid somehow, which is through tax dollars. The USA has a for-profit health system but typical neo-liberalism has a safety net where corporates get to dip into a different bottom-less pot. So it makes sense that we make this visible by taxing everybody who isn't paying their own insurance, since they still expect access to ER.

New comment by ptaffs in "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"

ptaffs — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:39:37 +0000

Not a Lawyer, but Hister is a common, old word. Unless you're in the same business as the trademark holder, I would think you have grounds to continue? I note you have the domain name registered, and any deep-pocketed hostile trademark owner would already have reclaimed that. Unfortunately, legal advice is expensive, and the system is open to abuse.

New comment by ptaffs in "I built a hardware-bound local password vault hidden in a photo"

ptaffs — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 13:25:51 +0000

I recently learned Steganography, as correctly named in the article, is not the same as Stenography.

New comment by ptaffs in "Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera"

ptaffs — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:10:32 +0000

Regulation of private companies and enforcement of same aren't really the way things work in America. And even the most highly regulated companies struggle with reality practicalities of tamper evident audit trails, for example designating a subset of systems in-scope of SOX or PCI controls where such trails are required.

New comment by ptaffs in "uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook"

ptaffs — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:17:55 +0000

the example is good and those ads are less awful because the same ad it sent to a demographic, rather than an individual, eg everyone in Michigan get the same ad or everyone watching Friends at 8pm in Cincinnati gets the same ad. Facebook's specialty is targeting a user with an ad. And a side effect or bonus is that few others see it to talk about how inaccurate it might be.

New comment by ptaffs in "It's time Amazon played by the same rules as everyone else [video]"

ptaffs — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 14:38:01 +0000

We might expect the politicians to legislate against this, please at the same time, if you can, spend your money with better companies.

New comment by ptaffs in "Dates That Don't Exist (2015)"

ptaffs — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:25:53 +0000

This point about using seconds is entirely correct, and date-time should always be in epoch timestamp (numeric) except for human interfaces (input or rendering for output). APIs and web-forms should never pass multipart date strings because they can be internally inconsistent, for example February 30. (edit: unless there's no sequential meaning in the date and the date is just a local day name without the notion that adding or subtracting 1 takes you to yesterday or tomorrow (https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b...)).

(p.s. autarch thanks for your efforts in open source).

New comment by ptaffs in "The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader"

ptaffs — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:01:09 +0000

You put it well and presbyterian is right in that point, but eBooks don't have the financial risk of retail merchandise planning and merchandising, and that cost saving isn't differentiated.

New comment by ptaffs in "The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader"

ptaffs — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 15:20:18 +0000

That eBooks don't need printing, warehousing, distribution and retail shelving, it's quite galling that the price isn't favorably differentiated. And I don't think the author gets to keep the difference.

New comment by ptaffs in "A Practical Guide to SSH Tunnels: Local and Remote Port Forwarding"

ptaffs — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 16:05:08 +0000

so many time i have inadvertently ended a session with a fat fingered ~.

New comment by ptaffs in "Car headlights don't have to be this blinding"

ptaffs — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:44:58 +0000

Was discussing at home (USA) this same idea that vehicle lights are brighter and drivers are less inclined to be bothered to dip. I rented a car in the UK several years ago which auto-dimmed the beam and was fascinated by the technology which would allow it to differentiate light sources and identify oncoming vehicles.

New comment by ptaffs in "Driving in America Is Headlight Hell"

ptaffs — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:36:54 +0000

https://archive.is/20260610124844/https://www.theatlantic.co...

New comment by ptaffs in "New Referendum Would Flip Brexit Result 10 Years On, Poll Finds"

ptaffs — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:29:15 +0000

You remember the story the citizens were sold but not the vote requirement seems odd. From a minimum of research, it seems there was no vote to join the EU, which did not exist at the time (1973) of the European Communities project with common currency and the rest. But in 1975 they had a referendum to stay and decided they would with a 67% Yes.

New comment by ptaffs in "New Referendum Would Flip Brexit Result 10 Years On, Poll Finds"

ptaffs — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:47:28 +0000

At the time "polls" predicted a Remain win. Between the vote and the eventual Brexit along with protests, there was a government petition for a redo and a Remain optimism that a re-do would flip the result. For this poll to me meaningful, I would expect to see declining support for Reform. But the opposite is happening.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revoke-artic...

New comment by ptaffs in "Richard Scolyer Has Died"

ptaffs — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:21:51 +0000

Lead paint/gasoline. Asbestos. Teflon. Chernobyl. Weedkiller. Just what I can think of since the 70s.

New comment by ptaffs in "Mouseless – keyboard-driven control of macOS/Linux/Windows"

ptaffs — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:12:38 +0000

well, you should be able to, at the OS level use only keyboard shortcuts. Windows once was great with tab, enter, escape, but browsers make things more complicated than dialog boxes, and MacOS really isn't good at keyboard shortcuts. I would prefer the solution was not Mouseless and the others, but no mouse.

New comment by ptaffs in "Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies"

ptaffs — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:29:13 +0000

This. And military contractors. And predatory financial companies including high-interest credit cards. US Health insurance. Oil and Gas. -- "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It" https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/

New comment by ptaffs in "Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies"

ptaffs — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:18:01 +0000

i had this suggested to me by a locum dentist, and i agree. This is totally off topic and going further so but if you didn't already, you should change your dentist.

New comment by ptaffs in "Chuwi Minibook X"

ptaffs — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:21:46 +0000

my battered linux-running eeepc900a and I would agree. They also take some standard parts to upgrade SSD or WiFi modules (Mini Pcie).

New comment by ptaffs in "Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades"

ptaffs — Thu, 21 May 2026 13:15:50 +0000

The Book "Don't think of an Elephant" by George Lakoff covers how the term "climate change" has been pushed by those with a status-quo agenda, to reduce the urgency and engagement with "global warming". The linked article uses both, but global warming more dominantly, including "heating" in the headline.