Hacker News: rbits

New comment by rbits in "Siri AI"

rbits — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 07:21:40 +0000

Oh damn I didn't realise it sent all this to the cloud. That seems kinda concerning.

New comment by rbits in "Google changes its search box"

rbits — Tue, 19 May 2026 23:52:15 +0000

Go to Google right now and search anything. What is the very first thing you see?

New comment by rbits in "Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian"

rbits — Mon, 18 May 2026 16:28:40 +0000

Well they'd just release it under a non-commercial license. The majority of their income comes from Obsidian Sync, and someone can't just host their own version of Obsidian Sync for all the Obsidian users for free. And there are already self-hosted alternatives to Obsidian Sync, in fact Obsidian even endorses them themselves[1].

As for their other paid service, Obsidian Publish, since all Obsidian notes are in plain markdown there are already many free alternatives.

So open sourcing would not harm any of those income streams. It's not about Obsidian losing profit. If you want to read the actual reasons they have decided not to open source Obsidian, they have talked about it on their forums[2]

[1] https://obsidian.md/help/sync-notes [2] https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-obsidian/1515/1...

New comment by rbits in "Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California"

rbits — Sat, 16 May 2026 05:41:05 +0000

So then you just only play it with trusted friends. It's still better than the current situation

New comment by rbits in "The vi family"

rbits — Wed, 13 May 2026 07:04:39 +0000

I really want to use Helix, it clicks with me so much more. But I do not want to learn how to use Helix for development. I want to be able to continue using VSCode. And last I checked, the VSCode extension was not very good. I also use Vim keybindings in Obsidian.

The moment VSCode and Obsidian support improves, I am switching immediately.

New comment by rbits in "The vi family"

rbits — Wed, 13 May 2026 06:58:29 +0000

Well that's one extra key press for every action. For example, you have to do `ved` to delete the current word instead of `de`. Whereas in Helix it's just `ed`.

Also visual mode doesn't work the same. If I want to delete up to the next word normally I do `dw`, but if I do `vwd` then I also delete the first letter of the next word. I guess in visual mode you'd have to do `vwhd` or `vawd`? Which is 4 keypresses instead of 2, which isn't great for something that I do all the time.

New comment by rbits in "If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive"

rbits — Fri, 01 May 2026 17:30:56 +0000

Going to just copy and paste rbren's comment from above:

> Some people seem to be convinced by logical reframings, like "if you jump into a woodchipper you die, but if 50% of people jump into the woodchipper they all survive"

> A logical reframing is not equivalent though! We know everyone else gets the same frame, and most of the problem is predicting what other people will do when presented with this particular two-button frame.

New comment by rbits in "If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive"

rbits — Fri, 01 May 2026 17:25:11 +0000

If you think that you can somehow get EVERYONE to press red... then surely you could get EVERYONE to vote blue. The outcome would be the same. And guess what... it's a lot easier to get 51% of people to vote blue than it is to get 100% of people to vote red.

New comment by rbits in "Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data"

rbits — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 03:15:43 +0000

Maybe if the US had a sane voting system, but they don't. I'm of the opinion that their flawed voting system is a huge factor in why the US government is the way it is.

New comment by rbits in "A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”"

rbits — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:32:03 +0000

If it automatically adds something to the history when you visit the page, then yes. If it only adds to the history when the user clicks something, then I would assume it would be fine. Hopefully.

New comment by rbits in "A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”"

rbits — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:30:10 +0000

> This relates to Chrome, not to search.

To me, it appears to relate to search

> Pages that are engaging in back button hijacking may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions, which can impact the site's performance in Google Search results.

New comment by rbits in "Americans still opt for print books over digital or audio versions"

rbits — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 13:34:03 +0000

That's why I got an e-reader. So I'm not reading books on a phone that's distracting me all the time. I don't know what e-reader you got, but on mine I just press the power button and it brings me right into the book I was reading, no ads or distractions.

New comment by rbits in "Optimal Strategy for Connect 4"

rbits — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 03:33:04 +0000

He has 4 videos about human Connect 4 strategies on his YouTube channel[1], you should check them out.

[1] https://youtube.com/@twoswap

New comment by rbits in "1D Chess"

rbits — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 01:40:43 +0000

I think it's because the rules of chess don't state that making a move that puts yourself in checkmate results in a loss, they state that you're straight up not allowed to make that move. So if the only moves you have left would put you in checkmate, they're not legal moves.

New comment by rbits in "1D Chess"

rbits — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 01:36:50 +0000

Reminds me of The Button[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Button_(Reddit)

New comment by rbits in "GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone without requiring personal information"

rbits — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 20:56:52 +0000

The GrapheneOS website[1] explains how to use Android Auto with sandboxed Google Play

[1] https://grapheneos.org/usage#android-auto

New comment by rbits in "GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone without requiring personal information"

rbits — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 20:53:09 +0000

Android Auto apparently should work if you follow the instructions on the GrapheneOS website[1]

[1] https://grapheneos.org/usage#android-auto

New comment by rbits in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

rbits — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 06:22:14 +0000

From the article:

> This flow is a one-time process for power users

New comment by rbits in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

rbits — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 06:20:33 +0000

No. F-Droid builds the apps on their server, and they cannot sign the apps with the developer's keys because that would require them to have access to the developers' Google accounts

New comment by rbits in "Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS"

rbits — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 10:58:00 +0000

> Will the Motorola device have USB port control, OS virtualisation and GPU virtualisation?

From GrapheneOS's requirements for any phone they will consider supporting [1]:

- Hardware accelerated virtualization usable by GrapheneOS (ideally pKVM to match Pixels but another usable implementation may be acceptable)

- Support for disabling USB data and also USB as a whole at a hardware level in the USB controller

[1] https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices