Hacker News: sparqlittlestar

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone"

sparqlittlestar — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:26:27 +0000

Doesn't your argument hinge on the fact that roads and sidewalks are public works anyway?

The fact that compliance costs outprices some smaller companies rather shows that we as a society prefer to have accomodations, than live in one where such accomodations are only affordable to the affluent.

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Why does WhatsApp drain so much phone battery?"

sparqlittlestar — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:02:22 +0000

I believe I read somewhere that WhatsApp gets awoken by a silent notification with the cyphertext from the Notification Service, which it then needs to decrypt before generating a local notification that actually gets displayed to the user. This was due to e2e, as/so the Notification Service can't have the plain text.

Edit: as a possible explanation for the battery drain?

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month"

sparqlittlestar — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 05:44:30 +0000

If not reimbursed 100% (like my public transport costs are), your public transport costs are tax-deductible at a staggered rate up to €0.29 per km.

https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontentnl/...

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly"

sparqlittlestar — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:26:18 +0000

Well, I'd like to tell security that

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?"

sparqlittlestar — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:53:11 +0000

You know that's not a good thing, right?

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Uber cuts 23% of people division as new president takes over"

sparqlittlestar — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 07:24:00 +0000

Famously not including drivers.

Expanding on just a snarky comment, Uber stated to have north of 7M monthly drivers ([1], OP mentions 10M, but with no qualification), so 32k/7M = 4.5 employees for every thousand drivers. Even with the cuts. That's a scrum team per 2000 drivers. Idk what this says but thought it to be interesting

[1]: https://www.uber.com/us/en/newsroom/onlyonuber24/

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen"

sparqlittlestar — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 05:22:20 +0000

Interstingly, since 2008 Dutch bankers need to take an oath and whilst I don't think that in itself deters fraud, being fired for fraud would preclude going back to work for another bank (tuchtrecht / disciplinairy law)

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM"

sparqlittlestar — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:13:09 +0000

The very light it emits, the liquid glass lensing animations, etc

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Ask HN: Are Tech Meetups Dead?"

sparqlittlestar — Thu, 28 May 2026 04:55:15 +0000

I looked at Luma, but the website shows that for the part of Western Europe I'm in, it only supports Amsterdam or Brussels. Not even Cologne. Or am I using their website wrong?

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back"

sparqlittlestar — Wed, 20 May 2026 18:56:13 +0000

I've only ever had `first.last@company` as a username or email address, so this `last[:5]initials#` scheme is bewildering. Must lead to strange looking usernames.

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "The Siri for Families Apple Will Never Build"

sparqlittlestar — Fri, 15 May 2026 06:32:16 +0000

My CarPlay with Apple Music shows a QR-code so others may add to the car's playlist. Never used it, coz why wouldn't you trust friends to just open the Music app and add something, coz they rarely have iPhones anyway

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired"

sparqlittlestar — Thu, 14 May 2026 04:46:08 +0000

"That password's already been taken by user 'mekdoonggi'"

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Native Instant Space Switching on macOS"

sparqlittlestar — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 06:26:51 +0000

Press Option to immediately show the close button

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance"

sparqlittlestar — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 07:19:00 +0000

In the Netherlands, its over €2,50

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "United States Completes WHO Withdrawal"

sparqlittlestar — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 06:39:59 +0000

Honestly, ceteris paribus for the US

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "The lost art of XML"

sparqlittlestar — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 06:08:23 +0000

XSLT 3.0 does JSON

https://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-30/#json

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design"

sparqlittlestar — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 08:27:16 +0000

I dislike MS as much as the next guy, but it's the Office mobile app that was renamed to Copilot 365. They haven't yet thrown away the entire Office brand

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn"

sparqlittlestar — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 16:46:02 +0000

Metros may have electrified third rail, but the ones next to DB train tracks are all with a top covered third rail. Usualy power deliviery is via catenaries.

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions"

sparqlittlestar — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:51:27 +0000

I require the VNet integration, but my region (Europe West) isn't supported (yet, over a year since I requested it)

https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/admin/con...

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k"

sparqlittlestar — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 06:22:10 +0000

1. Because fonts are works of art and any artist deserves to be paid. 2. Because there may not be a freely licensed font with the right aesthetics 3. Especially because Japanese fonts require much more work than Latn fonts, with not some hundred glyphs (a-zA-Z0-9 and punctuation), but with thousands upon thousands of glyphs