Hacker News: pull_my_finger

New comment by pull_my_finger in "Blog ran on Ubuntu 16.04 for 10 years. I migrated it to FreeBSD"

pull_my_finger — Thu, 21 May 2026 23:10:11 +0000

Can you detail the transition? What were the pain points? I feel like you lose a lot of the selling point of OpenBSD as soon as you start pulling from ports, but how could you do anything productive without it

New comment by pull_my_finger in "AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale"

pull_my_finger — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:43:18 +0000

What gets me is when this was brought up, they said "requiring explicit permission will kill the AI industry"[1]. No shit! Why do you think all the rest of us didn't build a business/"industry" around stealing shit? They could have done it at a slower pace while respecting copyright laws, but they were too greedy to be first to market and secure a hold.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/news/674366/nick-clegg-uk-ai-artist...

New comment by pull_my_finger in "I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows"

pull_my_finger — Sun, 17 May 2026 23:09:39 +0000

I feel like Windows 11 was literally JUST in the headlines for bricking PCs with one of their forced updates. I get that *nix is not for everyone, but it is VERY rare that you hit an issue with one of the more popular distros that hasn't already been hit and with a documented answer on a reputable forum with an easy search. When I've had issues with Windows stuff, you have less information to go on usually, just some BSoD or similar and the forum posts seem to be heavily moderated (post chains read like a generic tech support call - have you tried restarting etc etc) and hard to find an answer. Just my anec-data. You usually get a very verbose error message when Linux issues arise and pasting the error message into a search will usually point you right where you need to be.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "MCP Hello Page"

pull_my_finger — Sat, 16 May 2026 23:12:12 +0000

Maybe it should return a 303 See Other response

New comment by pull_my_finger in "California Police Can Start Ticketing Driverless Cars"

pull_my_finger — Fri, 01 May 2026 23:08:24 +0000

Since it came out that they're being operated remotely, via Filipino remote workers, you'd think the whole defense that they're driverless should be moot, and some people should be catching charges for fraud or something. Facilitating drivers operating motor vehicles without a US driver's license, for hire no less. Not like startups ever get charged for blatantly breaking laws under the guise of "disruption", though.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "Ghostty is leaving GitHub"

pull_my_finger — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 02:16:42 +0000

Outages aside, I have not put any serious work (of mine) on Github since it came out that they trained CoPilot on everyone's code without any sort of opt-in or details about how licenses were honored. I moved all my code, and I stopped doing the Hacktoberfests as I realized their incentive to have us all do it. All the good will I felt participating in FOSS was lost almost instantly. I still make FOSS and still participate in other's projects where I can, but I host my own stuff elsewhere.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "Aspartame is not that bad? (2022)"

pull_my_finger — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:52:47 +0000

What sweeteners are you leaning toward these days? I try to stick to stevia/monk fruit/allulose, but if you're not preparing food yourself, it's hard to find things that aren't using the sugar alcohols, maltodextrin, etc

New comment by pull_my_finger in "Game devs explain the tricks involved with letting you pause a game"

pull_my_finger — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 16:24:14 +0000

I always wondered how NES games, which were notoriously low memory, could have game simulation on the start screens. Think Super Mario Bros, but there are many others. If no input is received at the start menu, the game starts playing a demo run. You always see videos and posts about how developers were dissecting sprites and swapping color pallets to work around the small memory, so how in the heck did they manage having the gameplay demos?

New comment by pull_my_finger in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

pull_my_finger — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:14:44 +0000

Spotify arbitrarily gatekeeps even basic function like accessing your Liked songs on the PWA

New comment by pull_my_finger in "GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating system"

pull_my_finger — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 17:29:35 +0000

Age checks certainly won't be restricted only to porn sites. Tons of sites have 13+ ToS like Facebook & the various other social sites, Discord too iirc. The reason people are so adamantly against this proposal is that it ties the machine to a particular identity. So how does a public computer work? If age verification is implemented at the OS level, can we even have public terminals? All those interfaces in stores that are just a website in kiosk mode? Would they be illegally representing end users if it's set as an adult on a master account/login? This proposal is so stupid and poorly thought out it's alarming.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating system"

pull_my_finger — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 23:26:43 +0000

I wonder how things like computers at the library will work. This whole thing is just so stupid and intrusive. I can't imagine anyone will benefit from this except advertisers, doxxers and Big Brother.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "Node.js needs a virtual file system"

pull_my_finger — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:29:33 +0000

When you review code, do you spend 2 minutes per line? That seems like a huge exaggeration of effort required

New comment by pull_my_finger in "Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill"

pull_my_finger — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:00:51 +0000

It WOULD be nice if it only got used appropriately. But in 2026 its just one more metric to narrow down your profile for advertisers. Wouldn't it be convenient if you could just opt-out of tracking with a convenient API like the literal "do not track" header in browsers? It exists, but none of the people who SHOULD use it pay it any attention except as, ironically, another metric used to track people.

Not to mention that computing is a global thing, and in order for this to be useful it would definitely have to be providing more specific information than just a bool. Maybe chats require 13+, but pornography requires 18+. Maybe those ages are different based on location. All advertisers would need to do is ping the various different checks to get your actual or at least very approximate age.

This kind of thing is a slippery slope, and its ripe for abuse by doxxers, advertisers and big brother himself. Burn this with fire. I'm totally in agreement with the others that suggest stuff like this should b just get banned from getting introduced and reintroduced constantly trying to sneak it in as a rider or hidden provision. The people DON'T want it.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability"

pull_my_finger — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 03:33:45 +0000

This was my thought as well. I'm surprised people are so easy to forgive and forget

Edit: a link[1] for those that aren't familiar

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...

New comment by pull_my_finger in "I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services"

pull_my_finger — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 17:42:05 +0000

I use Cookie AutoDelete on Firefox and it's great. It works with Firefox Container Tabs (groups have their own cookie settings), and let's you greylist (allow cookies from a particular domain pattern until the tab is closed) or whitelist (always allow from the domain pattern). I set it up for my kids computers also. The default is to blacklist (cookies aren't set), and I can whitelist for particular sites where they need say persistent login.

Definitely in 2026 kids should be getting tons of education in public school about how to safely browse the internet, both for personal data privacy and for safety against stalking, doxxing, grooming etc in the same way millenials were grilled about source checking internet resources like Wikipedia.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "Show HN: I'm writing an alternative to Lutris"

pull_my_finger — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 23:15:56 +0000

I'm curious what short-comings you found with Lutris is particular, because the examples you listed are actually not hidden from the users at all.

Not that there's anything wrong with tailor-made solutions or hacking for the sake of hacking, but it sounds like a fairly big undertaking and it might just be a skill-issue (no offense) if those items in particular were your only gripes.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "White House Insists Trump Is 'Joking' About Canceling Midterm Elections"

pull_my_finger — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:14:33 +0000

You can find so many parallels to Trump's presidency and the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. I wish there were some in depth political analysis of the similarities because just as a layman, there are many.

- Both used Cambridge Analytica heavily in their elections and terms.

- Both appealed to very macho/misogynistic bases.

- Both made wildly inappropriate jokes and threats, leaving their Press Secretaries to explain it away. "Locker room" talk for Trump, and "Bisaya humor" for Duterte.

- Both did basically anything they wanted, basically with impunity (although Duterte is captured by ICC now iirc)

- Both accused of being a foreign asset. Trump->Russia, Duterte->China.

- Both want to rewrite/dispose of their constitutions.

- Both wanted to end elections or remove term limits.

- Duterte declared martial law, Trump wants to.

- Duterte did door to door searches (under guise of War on Drugs), Trump doing it under guise of Immigration enforcement.

There's probably more, but those are off the top of my head. If I had a tinfoil hat to wear, I would almost believe this is all still Cambridge or other big data backed planned behavior. I admitted don't know much about Project 2025, but just knowing a) they worked with big data in Cambridge, and b) there is actually goals planned that accommodate expected responses from congress etc make things highly suspicious.

I wish a political scientist/independent researcher would do the leg work and investigate the two presidencies, because all of it is just really scary and prophetic.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "API Clients: Bruno betrays, Yaak yaks"

pull_my_finger — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 02:25:56 +0000

Say what you want about Bruno and Insomnia, but $50/year is pretty steep for the lowest tier of commercial use when there are more mature free options available.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "Lua 5.5"

pull_my_finger — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 23:23:31 +0000

5.1 (by way of LuaJIT) gets a lot of use, but to suggests no one uses the modern versions is just not true. Lua being an embedded language just takes the pressure away to upgrade. It's a feature, not a bug.

New comment by pull_my_finger in "Wine 10.20 Released With VKD3D 1.18 Upgrade For Direct3D 12"

pull_my_finger — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:37:30 +0000

I don't think they are needed. Cheaters will always find a way to cheat, giving game developers access to low level kernel features under the guise of anti-cheat is definitely not a trade-off I'd be willing to make. If game makers can't solve a problem with mechanics or moderation, I probably would just not play the game. Most of those issues revolve around MMO things, and could be solved with private lobbies, self-hosting etc - i.e. not playing with randos on the internet.