<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: qball</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=qball</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:44:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=qball" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>The claim I'm making is that they are underprotected online.<p>Yes, and not only is it wrong (they are protected sufficiently), but giving an inch to the same moral impulses and people that resulted in them being overprotected in the real world will naturally result in them taking a mile.<p>The ideal number of human beings that do stupid shit and pay for it is not zero, nor can it be in any functioning society.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 21:38:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48725634</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48725634</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48725634</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>Young people are barely living<p>Yeah, I wonder what caused that?<p>The most freedom they actually get is on the Internet, that's why they all hang out there.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 Jun 2026 20:55:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48711557</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48711557</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48711557</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "My Students Can't Read"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We hope the social redistribution that would have to be there to help those that fail, and those employed to teach them, is less expensive than every citizen forced to sacrifice 8 years of prime life time and tens of thousands of dollars.<p>Because that is how we are redistributing from successful people to not-successful ones right now.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 01:22:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378587</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378587</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378587</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, and here "Canadians want" is used to say "the people within 100km of the St. Lawrence want".  (That's actually part of the problem.)<p>Claimed identity isn't a suicide pact and consent of the governed isn't equally geographically distributed.<p>AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development.  The justifications for those policies (whether you agree with them or not) matter less than the fact they're being imposed from a condition of moral hazard.<p>Hence, the people of AB might vote to ban the people of ON/QC from imposing their laws; that's what separation is and why it happens.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 18:34:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48239650</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48239650</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48239650</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>it's because chargebacks<p>Sorry, but that's just bullshit.  This is nothing more than your standard pseudogovernmental meddling in the "just build your own financial infrastructure" vein, and it's coming from foreign countries this time rather than the US itself (it currently has an administration less hostile to business).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 16:35:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124178</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124178</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124178</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>A sign that we are approaching such levels would be nobody wants to enter those nations legally or illegally any more.<p>That is already true of Canada, as it is no longer possible to live like a Canadian [in the way they were hoping for] on immigrant wages.<p>>and still trying to figure out how they will avoid turning many of their citizens into criminals<p>The entire point of the gun bill is to do this.  The purpose of a system is what it does.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 04:03:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48117662</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48117662</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48117662</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's LPC policy to listen to these kinds of lobby groups, no matter how unhinged they might be.<p>A significant participant in a lobby group with similar aims, Nathalie Provost, is actually a sitting MP in Quebec.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 21:36:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48114932</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48114932</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48114932</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Because there's zero electoral accountability, and the voting bloc that insist it be that way are so obsessed with importing all the bad parts of the Commonwealth here that this will not change for the foreseeable future.<p>That Commonwealth, of course, imports all the cultural ideas and outlooks Coastal Americans have with about a 5 year delay, usually with anti-Americanism as the excuse, at the expense of the local culture.<p>This is just what happens when you import American politics without the American system that restrains it to just being noise.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 20:06:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48113737</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48113737</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48113737</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Kids can bypass some age checks with a drawn-on mustache"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Most parents are too afraid of the State kidnappers (and the Karens who call them) for that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 17:25:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48025650</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48025650</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48025650</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Canada's first sovereign wealth fund"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No.<p>Historically, this just ends up with Toronto and Montreal (and to a more limited extent, Vancouver) treating the rest of the country as a resource colony.  The pretense that consent of the governed is equally geographically distributed is, naturally, very useful to you.<p>If you do that again, as you did in the '60s, Canada will only <i>be</i> Toronto and Montreal.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:17:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925208</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925208</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925208</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "My phone replaced a brass plug"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Legacy and marketing have as much to do with it as local variations in how bores are actually measured do.<p>All the .38s and 9mms of the world are just slight variations on .36" round ball, .44 caliber pistols are generally .429", there's a .45" pistol caliber labelled .460 (.454 also counts), .50 BMG is actually .510", calibers claimed to be "7.62mm" use either a .308" or .311" projectile depending on the country of origin and sometimes not even then (France and Switzerland call this size 7.5mm, Argentina called this 7.65mm, Japan called it 7.7mm, the British called it .303), "8mm" can be either a .318" or .323" projectile, .32s are all .312" diameter, but one cartridge that uses this same projectile labels it as .30 and another .327.<p>The same 5.7mm projectile (.224") is used in cartridges that claim to have a diameter of .220, .221, .222, .223, .224, .225, 5.6mm, 5.56mm, and 5.7mm.<p>.277" projectiles are used in cartridges that call themselves 6.8mm, .270, .277; same thing with .284" projectiles used in cartridges that call themselves 7mm and .280.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Apr 2026 03:03:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47884989</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47884989</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47884989</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "An Oligarchy of Old People"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>It’s not even clear that Boomers are that much more likely to be NIMBYs<p>Most Boomers aren't NIMBYs, but most NIMBYs are Boomers.<p>This is a thing that uniquely threatens them because their home is their primary investment, so anything that can be leveraged to keep prices high, they'll do.  Environmentalism is usually the weapon they reach for, and because they have nothing but time, they have the advantage when it comes to a court system that privileges this kind of retireded spam.<p>>Social security<p>This is more because everyone under 40 or so doesn't trust social security will even be around for them to collect, so that group sees it, correctly, as an unfair wealth transfer from young to old.  Combine that with the above, and combine <i>that</i> with the abject refusal to even entertain basic reforms (which goes double for non-US nations), and that's where the resentment comes from.  Throwing good years after bad ones.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:12:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47769156</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47769156</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47769156</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "BC got rid of Daylight Savings"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ignoring, of course, the fact you're already waking up in total darkness in Standard time.<p>At least with perma-DST you at least get daylight once you leave work; with perma-Standard you don't get that either.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 10 Mar 2026 23:27:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47330086</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47330086</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47330086</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "AI is making junior devs useless"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>Prospective parents are saying "fuck that shit" and simply choosing not to have children.<p>Or in other words, they've been priced out of the market.<p>If there will be no sociofinancial niche for their children to inhabit this is in fact the rational course of action.  See also: South Korean current birth rates.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:13:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212683</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212683</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212683</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Why isn't LA repaving streets?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>it takes less power to move a lighter and smaller car<p>A smaller car has less space for battery than an SUV.  Because batteries are extremely heavy, that smaller car needs to be overbuilt compared to its gasoline counterpart, which further reduces room for battery.  Then, because safety standards are harder to meet with small cars, the smaller car needs to be overbuilt even more.<p>This means that you get cars that only have half the range a gasoline-powered car does, and the gas powered car recharges an order of magnitude faster than the EV does.  Oh yeah, and the people who buy smaller cars like this tend to live in places where there's no charging other than going to a gas station anyway.<p>It wouldn't sell on the US market because better alternatives exist.  It could sell on the Chinese market because there are no better alternatives.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:59:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47160391</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47160391</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47160391</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And that law is incredibly and hideously stupid, as it's a heckler's veto on having cool stuff.<p>The Internet is basically the final frontier where this harmful law doesn't reach, though the Karens are really trying to expand their power there.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:29:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47128313</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47128313</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47128313</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Everybody hates teenagers, so yes.<p>It's not really about protecting them; people that claim this is the case are generally doing so to launder that hatred.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 09 Feb 2026 17:16:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947885</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947885</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947885</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The big stuff, sure, but the French state's small-arms capacity (while once impressive) has atrophied to the point of non-existence.<p>They rely on the Germans (and to a point, Czechs) to supply their military these days.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 07:22:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46882574</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46882574</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46882574</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>Apple has never had better hardware (on mobile).<p>This is just straight up false.  Qualcomm's current <i>top of the line</i> processors are about 3 years behind what you can get in Apple's cheapest product (that being the 16e), and the budget phones (and by "budget" I mean "the 600 dollar ones") are another 3 years behind <i>that</i>.<p>iPhones don't generally become too slow to realistically use until their support lifetime expires.  Androids are like that out of the box unless you spend over a thousand dollars, and those only last for about half the time (a combination of inferior hardware and inferior software).  It doesn't matter if you have a 120Hz screen if the UI only updates at 20.<p>This is why the only killer feature for Android (outside the cameras) is adblocking- which, of course, is what Google wants to prevent.  They don't want you to run real Firefox (with the only effective adblock remaining), and they want you to pay for YouTube Premium rather than using NewPipe (or some other ReVanced successor) so you can't get out of paying 10 bucks to listen to a video with the screen off.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 25 Jan 2026 12:18:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46753462</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46753462</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46753462</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qball in "Light Mode InFFFFFFlation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No.<p>The reason Light Mode has been getting lighter is simple: because the default computer in 2025 is now a laptop or phone, whereas in 2009 it was a desktop.<p>Laptops and phones have easy and relatively coarse brightness adjustment settings for their screens.  Desktops didn't, and still don't.<p>So it makes sense that you'd just make whites as bright as possible- if the user doesn't like that, they can just turn the brightness down.  Otherwise you're just kind of leaving the monitor's available/potential contrast on the table.<p>Note that Dark Modes skyrocketed in popularity after the default computer changed from being a desktop to a laptop- but that's because laptop and phone screens couldn't (and still can't) get <i>dim</i> enough at night (for dark colors are still bright due to inherent backlight bleed-through).<p>The next change to this trend will occur, specifically to Dark Mode, 1-2 years after the average machine a software designer is issued for work has an OLED screen- because OLED screens actually can get that dim, the current color balance will likely be inappropriate.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 17 Jan 2026 23:17:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46663127</link><dc:creator>qball</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46663127</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46663127</guid></item></channel></rss>