Hacker News: sparqlittlestar

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "An Apology"

sparqlittlestar — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 05:57:01 +0000

My husband's "shared" his with me and now I don't get warnings anymore, but we're both on iOS

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Anthropic Agents Tried to Fill Out Visa Forms on State Dept. Website"

sparqlittlestar — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 05:20:21 +0000

All testimonials from the Netherlands on that website are from people with no distinctly Dutch names. Sure, a majority could be non-Dutch heritage as it's all very much passport related, but still, none?

And once I tried to click through on a Trustpilot review, there was a 404.

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Our GitHub Actions bill kept climbing, so we moved CI to one box"

sparqlittlestar — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 21:52:00 +0000

This looks awesome and just what I need, with the difficulty of ARC in my corp environment

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one"

sparqlittlestar — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:17:24 +0000

I'm however so confused by Windows' top level of the hierarchy. Like the Desktop contains the computer which contains the Desktop, yet that one doesn't have the computer in it. And likewise for the bin, the Configuration Panel, yet not Settings, etc. etc.

    Desktop > My Computer > C > Users > Me > Desktop

or perhaps even on my work laptop

    Desktop > My Computer > C > Users > Me > OneDrive > Desktop

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding"

sparqlittlestar — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 19:51:23 +0000

It was still there in spring 2026!

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Future euro banknote design proposals"

sparqlittlestar — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 06:16:10 +0000

I onve saw a €500 note when I was exchanging guilders at the fentral bank and asked if I could see one. They showed me, from behind the glass. It's big

New comment by sparqlittlestar in "Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning"

sparqlittlestar — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:24:34 +0000

> over-protecting from a risk is as bad as under-protecting

How would protecting ourselves against 50 °C summer heat (122 °F) ever be as bad as keeping 40° heatwaves or better yet, a return to the 35° summers?

50° means a human mass extinction event. There are no corporate profits possible in that scenario anyway

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