Hacker News: sharperguy

New comment by sharperguy in "I tried to prove I'm not AI. My aunt wasn't convinced"

sharperguy — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:34:47 +0000

only proves you're not a corporate model rather than locally running model that's been trained to allow saying that

New comment by sharperguy in "Blocking Internet Archive Won't Stop AI, but Will Erase Web's Historical Record"

sharperguy — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 15:24:12 +0000

You can have cryptographically signed data caches without the need for a blockchain. What a blockchain can add is the ability to say that a particular piece of data must have existed before a given date, by including the hash of that data somewhere in the chain.

New comment by sharperguy in "System76 on Age Verification Laws"

sharperguy — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:27:33 +0000

The same politicians who claim to support the free market will do deals like ttis with corporate oligopolies to cement their position into eternity.

New comment by sharperguy in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"

sharperguy — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:33:23 +0000

they used to publish a buildable AOSP tree for the device which is no longer the case

New comment by sharperguy in "Microgpt"

sharperguy — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 10:20:39 +0000

Still, it might be interesting information to have access to, as someone running the model? Normally we are reading the output trying to build an intuition for the kinds of patterns it outputs when it's hallucinating vs creating something that happens to align with reality. Adding in this could just help with that even when it isn't always correlated to reality itself.

New comment by sharperguy in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"

sharperguy — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:24:30 +0000

Part of the issue with phones is that they are already controlled by the Google/Apple duopoly, and hence heavily optimized for constant distraction and addiction. These laws only cement that duopoly and provide fewer means to build more friendly platforms.

New comment by sharperguy in "Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok"

sharperguy — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 11:22:27 +0000

I've been hearing talk for years about a "web of trust" system, that could filter spam simply by having users vouch for eachother and filtering out anyone not vouched for. However, I haven't seen a function system based on this model yet.

Personally I'd love to add in something like the old slashdot comment model, where people would mark content as "helpful", "funny", "insightful", "controversial" etc, and based on how much you trust the people labeling it, you could have things filtered out, or brought forward.

New comment by sharperguy in "Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use"

sharperguy — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 11:10:16 +0000

I would even call it mid 2020s. I think in a couple years people's attention spans will be so short they won't even finish reading comments.

New comment by sharperguy in "Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android"

sharperguy — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 15:45:20 +0000

As a European it's hard for me to comprehend the influence that iMessage has on the US.

New comment by sharperguy in "Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android"

sharperguy — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:06:45 +0000

"But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty and the Pixel 10 was boring and I caved to the blue bubble pressure. But the keyboard on this beautiful phone is worse than ever. "

I don't understand. What could Apple possibly have that is better than a working device?

New comment by sharperguy in "The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling"

sharperguy — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 13:27:58 +0000

Tiktok will never have any competitors after this law comes into force. They will have the resources the implement the require changes, and the customer base will remain with them. Anyone starting a new service will have a tough time building something that jumps through all the hoops required by the EU, on top of the usual problems with network effects.

New comment by sharperguy in "Ring owners are returning their cameras"

sharperguy — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 09:43:45 +0000

It's typically with this type of headline "X people are doing Y" means "at least 2 X people did Y".

New comment by sharperguy in "AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder"

sharperguy — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:47:19 +0000

To me, it's just further evidence that trying to assert ownership over a specific sequence of 1s and 0s is an entirely futile and meaningless endeavor.

New comment by sharperguy in "Two kinds of AI users are emerging"

sharperguy — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 14:49:30 +0000

> If you are as good as everyone else, why would YOU get paid more?

If every coal miner could suddenly produce 10x the amount of goal, do people say "well now we can just hire one coal miner instead of 10". Or do they say "now thousands of new project which were not economically viable due to the high price of coal are now viable, meaning we actually need to increase our total output beyond even 10x of what it was previously."

New comment by sharperguy in "New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers"

sharperguy — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 14:16:22 +0000

This bill would effectively make prusa illegal, which is my main issue with it. I refuse to buy anything else if it is not open in the same way.

New comment by sharperguy in "Y Combinator will let founders receive funds in stablecoins"

sharperguy — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 12:09:47 +0000

Not all stablecoins are intended as investments. For many it's just a way to send money internationally without dealing with the SWIFT system, waiting periods, banks losing payments etc.

New comment by sharperguy in "Show HN: Adboost – A browser extension that adds ads to every webpage"

sharperguy — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 14:42:19 +0000

I still wonder about that. I don't have a contract with the advertiser to provide genuine data back about what ads I've clicked and what I haven't. The website operator does have such a contract and so cannot hire a bot farm to spam click the ads.

If it's something that's been held up in court already then of course I have to accept it, but I can't say the reason seems immediately intuitive.

New comment by sharperguy in "Two kinds of AI users are emerging"

sharperguy — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 11:49:17 +0000

Surely making use of a new tool that makes you more productive would increase your value rather than decreasing it? Especially when, knowing the kinds of mistakes AI could make that would affect your codebase negatively in terms of maintainability, security etc would require significant experience.

New comment by sharperguy in "That's not how email works"

sharperguy — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:42:04 +0000

They know that you likely read some email from HSBC and if you happen to read the same one again they will know it was the same one.

New comment by sharperguy in "Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark"

sharperguy — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:04:52 +0000

Mesh networks like meshtastic have shown that they can be run on very low power meaning they can continue to route messages with the power from small solar panels. This makes them more useful in disaster or wide scale power outage scenarios than only as an anti-authority measaure.