Hacker News: romaniitedomum

New comment by romaniitedomum in "Java Hello World, LLVM Edition"

romaniitedomum — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 21:22:19 +0000

> I’m always a bit shocked how seriously people take concerns over the install script for a binary executable they’re already intending to trust.

The issue is provenance. Where is the script getting the binary from? Who built that binary? How do we know that binary wasn't tampered with? I'll lay odds the install script isn't doing any kind of GPG/PGP signature check. It's probably not even doing a checksum check.

I'm prepared to trust an executable built by certain organisations and persons, provided I can trace a chain of trust from what I get back to them.

New comment by romaniitedomum in "I hate screenshots of text"

romaniitedomum — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 02:15:38 +0000

Screenshots of text! Luxury! In my day, the screenshots were embedded in a Word document too.

But I can't be the only one appalled at the suggestion to use an LLM to parse the text. The sheer, prodigious waste of computing power, just to round-trip text to an image and back to text, when what's really missing is a computer user interface that makes it as simple to send text or other snippets as it is to send screenshots.

Forking confusing: Vulnerable Rust crate exposes uv Python packager

romaniitedomum — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 06:34:41 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/22/vulnerable_rust_crate/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45678839

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by romaniitedomum in "I wish my web server were in the corner of my room (2022)"

romaniitedomum — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 04:54:55 +0000

> with a corn tab that

A corn tab you say? I'm all ears!

Lethal Cambodia-Thailand border clash linked to cyber-scam slave camps

romaniitedomum — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 08:48:31 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/31/thai_cambodia_war_cyberscam_links/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44743687

Points: 7

# Comments: 2

New comment by romaniitedomum in "Study mode"

romaniitedomum — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 23:12:52 +0000

> Learning something online 5 years ago often involved trawling incorrect, outdated or hostile content and attempting to piece together mental models without the chance to receive immediate feedback on intuition or ask follow up questions. This is leaps and bounds ahead of that experience.

But now, you're wondering if the answer the AI gave you is correct or something it hallucinated. Every time I find myself putting factual questions to AIs, it doesn't take long for it to give me a wrong answer. And inevitably, when one raises this, one is told that the newest, super-duper, just released model addresses this, for the low-low cost of $EYEWATERINGSUM per month.

But worse than this, if you push back on an AI, it will fold faster than a used tissue in a puddle. It won't defend an answer it gave. This isn't a quality that you want in a teacher.

So, while AIs are useful tools in guiding learning, they're not magical, and a healthy dose of scepticism is essential. Arguably, that applies to traditional learning methods too, but that's another story.

Ireland's Book of Leinster: The Wikipedia of the Age Goes on Display

romaniitedomum — Wed, 21 May 2025 09:19:11 +0000

Article URL: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2025/05/21/the-wikipedia-of-the-age-myths-legends-and-seating-arrangements-at-the-hill-of-tara-in-900-year-old-manuscript-on-public-display/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44049673

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by romaniitedomum in "Dilbert creator Scott Adams says he will die soon from same cancer as Joe Biden"

romaniitedomum — Mon, 19 May 2025 22:34:40 +0000

> I don't understand believing that trans people (or whatever other belief) are a major threat, but I understand getting heavily involved in policies around trans people if one were to somehow believe that trans people are a major threat.

You are presenting a strawman argument, and then declaring you can't believe that others believe this. The truth is, they don't believe that.

What women like J.K Rowling argue is that women's and girl's rights are harmed by insisting that trans people be treated for all purposes as their declared gender without regard to their birth sex. They argue that women and girls by virtue of their sex need single-sex facilities where males aren't admitted, no matter how that male self-identifies. They argue that treating adolescents expressing gender confusion with puberty blockers and surgery is extremely harmful and morally wrong.

And it's clear from recent surveys and polls that clear majorities in most western countries agree. An example of this is a recent poll in the UK regarding its recent Supreme Court judgement on the interpretation of its Equality Act. [1][2]

Regardless of the position you take on this, nothing is to be gained by not engaging with what others are actually saying and arguing.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/supreme-cour...

[2] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/half-of-labour-...

A new Lazarus arises – for the fourth time – for Pascal programming fans

romaniitedomum — Sun, 11 May 2025 07:25:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/new_lazarus_4/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43952057

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by romaniitedomum in "Scientists are growing T. rex leather in a lab. It could be used to make purses"

romaniitedomum — Sun, 11 May 2025 07:22:45 +0000

From the article, about mid-way through:

> But some detractors consider the project misleading. University of Maryland vertebrate paleontologist Thomas Holtz, Jr. pointed out to Live Science, a science news site, how the lab-created skin won't be authentic because there's no actual T. rex skin or DNA to serve as a basis. "What this company is doing seems to be fantasy," he said.

Interview: Bjarne Stroustrup on 21st century C++, AI risks

romaniitedomum — Sun, 11 May 2025 07:17:11 +0000

Article URL: https://devclass.com/2025/05/09/interview-bjarne-stroustrup-on-21st-century-c-ai-risks-and-why-the-language-is-hard-to-replace/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43952021

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

The Unholy Society, browser-based game made with Castle Game Engine

romaniitedomum — Sat, 03 May 2025 22:02:32 +0000

Article URL: https://michalis.xyz/unholy/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43882728

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by romaniitedomum in "French researcher denied entry to US for 'expressing personal opinion' on Trump"

romaniitedomum — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 01:21:33 +0000

America has been doing this for years. I recall a story from a few years ago about an Irishman refused entry because he'd posted something on social media about how he was going to "destroy LA".

Ah, here it is:

https://www.joe.ie/uncategorized/irish-tourist-banned-from-u... https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/6342775/US-ejects-tourists-ov...

This was back in 2012.

Gene Hackman has died

romaniitedomum — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 08:46:54 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/obituaries/gene-hackman-dead.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43192500

Points: 154

# Comments: 163

Wallbleed vulnerability unearths secrets of China's Great Firewall

romaniitedomum — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 07:35:44 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/27/wallbleed_vulnerability_great_firewall/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43192183

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by romaniitedomum in "On Running systemd-nspawn Containers (2022)"

romaniitedomum — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:53 +0000

Redhat's Leapp, for upgrading between major releases of RHEL, uses systemd-nspawn to create a container where it can test installing the packages without interfering with the running OS.

The Mediterranean diet is a lie

romaniitedomum — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 07:11:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.politico.eu/article/mediterranean-diet-child-obesity-italy-health-europe/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42915745

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by romaniitedomum in "Why Tracebit is written in C#"

romaniitedomum — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 05:07:09 +0000

Honestly, this reads more like someone who wanted to use C# from the outset and needed to come up with reasons to justify it, rather than an honest comparison of a number of languages and platforms with a view to selecting the best fit for the problem domain. None of the listed reasons for choosing C# are unique to C# or its ecosystem. And some of them seem to have been discovered to be applicable only after the fact.

For instance, productivity is listed as the top reason, but his team only found C#/dotNET to be the most productive after using it. They didn't know it would be the most productive in advance. So it wasn't a reason for choosing that platform.

Other reasons listed are, 1 Open Source, 2. Cross Platform, 3. Popularity, 4. Memory Safety, 5. Garbage Collection, 6. Stability, 7. Statically-Typed, 8. Batteries Included, 9. Tooling, and 10. Performance. I think there are plenty of languages and platforms that are as good as C#/dotNET in all of these areas, but there's nothing here to suggest any of them were even considered.

New comment by romaniitedomum in "IsMyXFeedFucked – Analyze How Your X Feed's Impacting You"

romaniitedomum — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 20:25:01 +0000

> And so there is no literally zero reason now why anyone should stay on X.

Unless the people you're interested in hearing from are mostly or exclusively there.

New comment by romaniitedomum in "Oh Shit, Git?"

romaniitedomum — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 04:57:31 +0000

> Are there any public forges that support hg?

Sourceforge, Sourcehut, and GNU Savannah all support Mercurial.