Hacker News: stubish

New comment by stubish in "What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical"

stubish — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:29:25 +0000

Not sure how you can say that about upstart. It was pretty much the accepted successor to shell scripts for an init system, for a few years until Redhat started pushing systemd. You would probably be using it now if Debian hadn't gone with the Redhat systemd over OpenRC and upstart.

New comment by stubish in "What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical"

stubish — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:20:09 +0000

Similarly upstart, from 2006, widely deployed before Redhat brought in systemd. And got dropped when Debian decided to go with systemd. Surprising how this gets misremembered given the hate systemd initially received.

New comment by stubish in "U.S. uses hundreds of Tomahawk missiles on Iran, alarming some at Pentagon"

stubish — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 06:56:30 +0000

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme... goes into a lot more detail on many more of the munitions and the supply and manufacturing chains.

Over 11,000 munitions in 16 Days of the Iran War

stubish — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 07:37:06 +0000

Article URL: https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/over-11000-munitions-16-days-iran-war-command-reload-governs-endurance

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47552423

Points: 5

# Comments: 2

New comment by stubish in "Model Collapse Is Happening, We Just Pretend It Isn't"

stubish — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:09:56 +0000

Where does clean data come from, and how do you know it is untainted? I can't think of any source of novel information that might not have been smoothed by LLM tools. In cases like 'the news', it is impossible as what is being reported may well be smoothed content like press releases and public statements. It seems kind of inevitable, where the more popular the tools are, the less untainted information gets produced, and the harder it is to find it.

New comment by stubish in "Firefox introduces Split View: Two tabs side by side, right where you need them"

stubish — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:39:05 +0000

I hope that isn't a simple drop down selector listing all tabs... feature might be a complete non-starter for some of us with a few too many open tabs.

New comment by stubish in "GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating system"

stubish — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 23:33:30 +0000

Fewer and fewer countries. I think none of the countries I've been too where I've purchased a SIM without ID allow that anymore. It is required to try to limit purchase by scam call centers and to enable phone number portability.

New comment by stubish in "We were right about Havana syndrome"

stubish — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 01:34:42 +0000

Most people are also using keyboards less, spending more time waggling their mouse or having a break watching youtube. And people who are mostly employed to type, doing data entry or similar, have problems and physical therapists who understand the problems.

Carpel tunnel and RSI also predates computers. Musicians still suffer this sort of injury, generally by forcing themselves to keep playing when it hurts. Poor computer ergonomics just made it popular.

New comment by stubish in "Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure"

stubish — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:35:41 +0000

The pilot is for people unable to get to a polling booth. Traditionally, we use postal votes for this. But postal votes enable voter fraud (primarily selling your vote), so we can only use it for a small portion of votes or results become too suspect.

So paper systems require ballot boxes and polling stations for the vast majority, which makes elections expensive, complicated, and generally problematic. And unpopular, with low turnout, particularly during flu season and pandemic.

New comment by stubish in "Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure"

stubish — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:25:15 +0000

This is an eVoting system - not at a ballot box. There is no printer. And even if there was, a similar problem can occur if you lose the keys. And you need keys because the printout cannot be voter verifiable, or you enable the various forms of vote fraud that anonymous ballot boxes were introduced to stop.

New comment by stubish in "In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a game-world(2022)"

stubish — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:21:38 +0000

Sentience as defined in the paper is a really low bar. Personhood probably requires consciousness, if we could define and test for that.

New comment by stubish in "In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a game-world(2022)"

stubish — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:19:03 +0000

Good on them for defining what they mean by 'sentience'. I think it is the definition where my thermostat exhibits sentience.

New comment by stubish in "Hardening Firefox with Anthropic's Red Team"

stubish — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 06:15:15 +0000

Seems very similar to turning on compiler warnings. A load of scary nothings, and a few bugs. But you fix the bugs and clarify the false positives, and end up with more robust and maintainable code.

New comment by stubish in "10% of Firefox crashes are caused by bitflips"

stubish — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 03:18:19 +0000

Does Dell design and/or build their own laptops? Depending on the year it is likely just their brand and specs, designed and built by an ODM.

New comment by stubish in "[dead]"

stubish — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 02:18:45 +0000

Curious if we are already seeing effects because of this in significantly reduced calcium and phosphorous levels, or if any reduction is largely dietary. Conversely, can you really use calcium and phosphorous levels as a proxy if they are driven significantly by dietary changes?

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

stubish — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:21:17 +0000

Starts off with a flawed assumption, playing into the hands of people who want surveillance.

"The only way to prove that someone is old enough to use a site is to collect personal data about who they are. And the only way to prove that you checked is to keep the data indefinitely."

If you start by legislating that you can't collect personal data or ID, then you are forced to do your age verification through other means. And legislate the government can't see what websites a user is visiting if you can to stop overreach. End result is a workable solution, zero knowledge proof or similar where government (the source of your ID documents) signs a token brokered by a proxy.

But when you start arguments from the position of 'no way to do this without violating privacy', the end result will be to violate privacy, because it seems an awful lot of people are demanding age verification and will sacrifice if they believe it is necessary.

New comment by stubish in "Colorado proposal moves age checks from websites to operating systems"

stubish — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 11:12:52 +0000

People are already annoyed, which is why society is demanding the stuff already age restricted for decades or even centuries actually be restricted on the Internet. The battle has never and will never be about allowing kids free access to porn. The battle is about restricting it in a way that doesn't endanger them or their privacy. Failing to do that is what ends in a dystopia, where tech and governments use society's demands as an excuse to move us further into a surveillance state. Like the proposed laws being discussed, centralizing data in an easily subpoenable location.

New comment by stubish in "Colorado proposal moves age checks from websites to operating systems"

stubish — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 07:22:41 +0000

Maybe better, but still doesn't address the underlying problem. Governments print bits of paper and citizens need to scan and upload them to be validated by a 3rd party. Lots of obvious waste there. Legislating this approach is just entrenching it. But I guess it is cheap for the government. Sane approaches require the government provide a service which 3rd parties can query age with (indirectly, via anonymizing proxy). No need for those bits of paper to be involved at all, disclosing far too much information.

New comment by stubish in "Minnesota judge holds federal attorney in civil contempt"

stubish — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 02:21:33 +0000

Trick is to not get into the unwinnable situation. I think the correct response is to not shield clients from blame when they refuse or are unable to comply with court orders and throw them under the bus. Which is what Julie Le did when she informed the court the violation was intentional, and was fired for.

"Julie Le, was removed from her post in Minnesota after she told Judge Jerry Blackwell the violations were the result of both a personnel shortage and lackluster procedures intended to ensure orders are followed." “And, yes, procedure in place right now sucks. I’m trying to fix it,” she said. “The system sucks. This job sucks.”

New comment by stubish in "US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere"

stubish — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 01:35:03 +0000

Governments around the world could setup, in solidarity with the US, freedom.ca, freedom.eu etc. Hosting provided by Pornhub. Maybe Pornhub could even start registering the TLDs now where available.