Hacker News: rzerowan

New comment by rzerowan in "Identity verification on Claude"

rzerowan — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 19:11:02 +0000

How does this play aout in the current realm of ID verifiation laws sweeping across most of the EU and US. As usual is using 'protect the children' : UK,AuS, FR for social media and Operating Systems while also pushing 'national security' : this current iteration. End result seems to be total end of online anonymity while the data slurpers and data brokers continue plying their trade uninterrupted.

New comment by rzerowan in "TerraPower in deal with Meta for eight Natrium 345 MW nuclear plants"

rzerowan — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 19:27:17 +0000

Concur, if it was an established builder with decades of know-how and experience doing a new buildout system maybe would be plausible to expect a reduction in the timeline for delivery. For comparison , the Chinese and Koreans who ae about the only players that have been consistently building/delivering reactors at scale over the last 30 odd years take a minimum of 9-10yrs. Expecting a commercially viable fleet buildout in half that time with less human capital and institutional knowhow is wildly optimistc. Maybe they subcontract out to the Koreans and get the running start that way?

New comment by rzerowan in "Statement on US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5"

rzerowan — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 13:07:04 +0000

I see a slightly different parallel here - they are basiclaly building a framework that takes the US adn friends back to the early 90's where cryptology was considerd a munition and all export products were nerfed. Just like then those that wanted to collaborate with the rest of the world found a way (printing /tshirts etc) similarly now those labs within the US sphere have that decision to make.Unfortunately its the Darios and Sam who are pretty much in favour of regulatory capture environment.With no other frontier labs in the US committed to OSS , and CHN models banned - the devs are pretty much hosed. I doubt the rest of the AI labs in China et al will follow suit in hobbling their own models.As its seen more as a commodity not a wondertool with a moat. At the end of the day the ask is going with a Oracle/Microsoft over a GNU/Linux type of environment.

New comment by rzerowan in "Let's Encrypt bans certificate usage in any US sanctioned territory [pdf]"

rzerowan — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:38:47 +0000

Seems in all thing tech at the moment the US legal system is accelearting a great split and erectinga digital iron curtain, from AI models to the more mundane like TLS certs. Its been standard for a while for many Linux distros based in the US to toe the party line - like RedHat having notices pretty similar to this one by LE. Seems any meaningful Open Projects will have to choose what path they want to take, be like RISC-V and relocate or LE and others and enforce the divide.

New comment by rzerowan in "Changing how we develop Ladybird"

rzerowan — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:54:43 +0000

So basically it will become more or less similar to the structure for SQlite and Fossil by Dr.Richar Hipp et al , basically seems most projects that have the requisite manpower/maturity will end up at that kind of structure. In the long run may be interesting from a chain of trust (human as well as code) and interop as any dev from these projects (guilds?) would already have some trust build in.

New comment by rzerowan in "China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus"

rzerowan — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:53:28 +0000

Famously back in the day Grindr , which had a plot point in the Silicon Valley series . Probably more obscure ones that havent been heard of outside software in the Hard tech space like MotorSich (Ukranian) was being courted by Chinese investment got blocked due to US pressure. And very recently the whole TikTok fiasco.

New comment by rzerowan in "“Why not just use Lean?”"

rzerowan — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:45:03 +0000

One of those names that forces a double take when seen disconnected from context:

'Lean or purple drank is a polysubstance drink used as a recreational drug. It is prepared by mixing prescription-grade cough or cold syrup containing an opioid drug '

proving that one of the hardest problem in CS - 'naming things' still keeps on keeping on.

New comment by rzerowan in "The RAM shortage could last years"

rzerowan — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 20:53:50 +0000

I think the article has a giant blind spot as far as China is concerned , considering they have already a mature enough memory ecosystem via YMTC that Apple was considering sourcing from them. As well as continued expansion in the DRAM and HBM Fabs [1]. It feels like the memory cartel once again trying to incentivise their various govt to cough up some more tax breaks/funding to cushion the AI buildout bet that they made and the bubble seeming about to pop. In any case if they leave the consumer market underserved it should be no surprise if before that 2030 prediction we are all on cheaper YMTC memory modules.

[1]https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ym...

New comment by rzerowan in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

rzerowan — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 11:36:50 +0000

Funnily enough there is some level of control that can be exerted by the US gov via the distros (at least the major ones - see legalese restrictions on Redhat/Ubuntu etc when you want to download , stating the various US gov laws/sanctions that they follow) and also via the kernel - i think some time back Russian kernel maintainers were removed.

So Open source it may be , however there are still pressure points that can be used. I believe this is one of the main reasons RISCV foundation moved to Europe.

New comment by rzerowan in "IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm"

rzerowan — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:15:20 +0000

Yep i think thats why even POWER isnt sold standalone but as part of the Z/i series packages as a unit.

They will probably market the ARM inclusion similarly - as something that the package provides.

As far as POWER i think only Raptor[1] does direct marketingof the power(hehe) and capabilities

[1]https://www.raptorcs.com/

New comment by rzerowan in "IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm"

rzerowan — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:20:05 +0000

Im thinking maybe as a compliment to x86 offerings and eventual displacement as a primary offering , i do not see them ditching POWER.

The architecture might be non-standard and not very widespread however for what it does and workloads that are suited to it. I dont think any ARM design comes close , maybe Fujitsu's A64FX.

New comment by rzerowan in "VHDL's Crown Jewel"

rzerowan — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 10:29:29 +0000

How does this compare to chisel [1] , i never could get around the whole scala tooling - seemed a bit over the top. Though i guess it is a bit more mature and probably more enterprisey

[1]https://github.com/chipsalliance/chisel

New comment by rzerowan in "No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations"

rzerowan — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 15:38:06 +0000

To expand on that - there are many body systems that depend almost entirely on the 1g glodilocks zone. Lymphatic systems movt , venous blood returning deox blood to the heart and even some digestive processes. Keenly dependent on a g value that allows proper muscle tone/function to the systems at play. Too little or too much and and human life becomes non-viable. Throw in the effect of ping ponging between microgravity and 1g and the issues multiply.

New comment by rzerowan in "Swift 6.3"

rzerowan — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 09:56:50 +0000

Whats the stdlib situation for swift in comparison to newish languages like go or rust. I know its not batteries included lke python - and doesnt have a massive dev ecosystem of helper libs seeming to be mostly tied to macOS/iOS operating system API/ABI.

New comment by rzerowan in "So where are all the AI apps?"

rzerowan — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 18:53:07 +0000

Yep and the LLM tools are giving flasbacks to the Frontpage/DreanWeaver to geocities ipeline for building the sites.

Still early innings but i bet this plays out the same way - not everyone will have the time sink to vibecode all the software workflows they require.Maintainance iwse and security wise holes will still remain for the personaly non tech user. Devs and orgs will probably limit the usage to a helper sidecar rather than the hyped 100% LLM generated apps. Reminds me about the hype

New comment by rzerowan in "Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?"

rzerowan — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 06:22:22 +0000

Not to mention that p3 on its own was prettymuch functional and p2 quite stable and the major issue was migrating/porting all the legacy over to p3 .Hence bridges like six and 2-to-3 that at least attempted to smooth the transition over by allowing bot to coexist for a time.

With wayland they seem not to be even entertaing this optionality - with wayland itself being not yet feature complete to standalone.And the attempts to bridge like xwayland coming way after the fact and pushing a oneway path with no coexisting situation.

As a result introducinga whole lot of friction and surprises in UI functionality. So yeah at a time when the presentation layer should be a boring afterthough, it is too timeconsuming in part of a Linux setup and daily usage.

New comment by rzerowan in "Switzerland Built an Alternative to BGP"

rzerowan — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:54:10 +0000

Yeah seems likethe business interests have overridden the adpotion needs. Knowing the IETF process is molasses slow , they still have not made moves to close that gap.For open source at least a implementation RFC that interested parties could work with - none avaiable.

They want to sell a technically brillant protocol that is single vendor propriety/patent restricted.

Their bet should have been of open protocol and captalizing on fist mover advantage to drive their business side witha large partner like ericsson/cisco etc.

Of course theres also the soveriegnity angle knowing what went on with another swiss company CryptoAG.

New comment by rzerowan in "Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft"

rzerowan — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 04:58:04 +0000

Or more interestingly with the low-earth sat/data network. Seeing as projectssuch as starlink are basically mil in nature with a side of barely profitable civilian use. The whole data centers in space makes more sense. These are not for running cat blogs and video streaming , which is waht they are/will be marketed as. Realworld application will always be a command and control node spanning the globe for the mil use. And as its rolloed out globally can basically provide jammingfree links for the autonomous commands from space.

New comment by rzerowan in "Jolla on track to ship new phone with Sailfish OS, user-replaceable battery"

rzerowan — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 20:10:26 +0000

As i recall , they do not come preloaded and the usr has to do a song and dance to flash the ROM with the new OS. While also paying a separete license fee for the OS and updates.

Too much friction and limiting the potential - thats why i reiterate. The SailFishOS is a delight technically and aesthetically - the business side though needs a major overhaul.

Just thinking out loud , they could partner with someone likee huawei to preload for EU/rest of world customers that cannot use HarmonyOS outside CH. Or even one of the other smaller OEM with access to the deep tech ecosystem to give a prebuild/preloaded f;agship at a cost competitive price. Or do a Apple and auction search/maps defaults to keep BOM costs down and aim for widespread adoption.

New comment by rzerowan in "Jolla on track to ship new phone with Sailfish OS, user-replaceable battery"

rzerowan — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:13:26 +0000

This is why i keep saying the Jolla management neds a rethink. Its 2026 GraphenOS is in a partnership with Motorola while Jolla is still doing early 2K style kickstarter campaigns.

The market is there , product is loved and ppeople have proved they are willing to take some pain adopting the product.But still the execution to serve that market is shambolic to say the least.