Hacker News: theideaofcoffee

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption, saying it makes users less safe"

theideaofcoffee — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:08:37 +0000

Same, my default MO is assuming 'e2ee' is broken and unsafe by default. Anything that I truly don't want sent over the wire would be in person, in the dark, in a root cellar, underwater. Not that I've ever been in the position to relay juicy info like that. Hyperbole I know, but my trust begins at zero.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption, saying it makes users less safe"

theideaofcoffee — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:02:27 +0000

You actually choose to believe that these trillion dollar tech monsters run by some of the most despicable people on the planet are being forthright in that they have no ability to do this on behalf of some government request? For something that isn't open source and can't be audited, and can be changed at the next upgrade without any oversight? I find it so much more unlikely that they can't, and that informs my normie use, mostly.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Aromatic 5-silicon rings synthesized at last"

theideaofcoffee — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 17:19:19 +0000

The ‘--‘ is a ligand bond, a fundamental aspect of coordination and organometallic chemistry.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Aromatic 5-silicon rings synthesized at last"

theideaofcoffee — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 17:09:57 +0000

Nah, this is just a strict chemical synthesis problem, no need for the engineers yet, until you want to make ten thousand tons of the stuff.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Dario Amodei – "We are near the end of the exponential" [video]"

theideaofcoffee — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:24:06 +0000

> end of the exponential.

Oh good, hopefully it'll model itself after an exponential rise in any sort of animal populations and collapse on itself because it can no longer be sustained! Isn't that how things go in exponential systems with resource constraints? We can only hope that will be the best outcome. That would be wonderful.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics"

theideaofcoffee — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 21:56:39 +0000

Yet another terrible step toward total oligarchy. Get the fuck out of politics, tech ghouls.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Flock CEO calls Deflock a “terrorist organization” (2025) [video]"

theideaofcoffee — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:59:14 +0000

These wretched wastes of skin that contribute to the surveillance system need to have the full brunt of that same surveillance apparatus turned toward them full time, published for all to see. This should include elected officials that voted for and paid for these systems as well. You don't want a system that allows more anonymous movement? You want that data collected and stored and collated and analyzed without end? Ok, pull down your pants and have yourselves offered up as the first and most prominent ones to be tracked and then see if you change your tune.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Linux from Scratch"

theideaofcoffee — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 19:59:44 +0000

So many good memories I had running through this way back when and it gave such a good and deep look into how a fully functioning system worked. It removed a lot of the mystery of this distro vs that distro and how all the pieces fit together. I still use some of the knowledge I gained from this in my day-to-day work, some of which is sorely lacking by others doing seemingly the same job as me.

I remember going through this and there was a point where you were running a stock, generic kernel before having built a specialized kernel with modules and options you wanted. I apparently ran up against thermal limits on this laptop because power management was one of the options for you to configure. I had to zoom through that section with a box fan pointed at that laptop so I could get power management and throttling to work so it wouldn't randomly shut down. Good times.

I used the same laptop I went through the first time with the same LFS install for a number of years after that until my day job killed my interest in doing this stuff in my free time. I switched to Debian after that and never looked back.

Like others are saying, I always recommend going through this for those that want a deeper understanding of linux, the kernel, and all its accoutrements.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "London–Calcutta bus service"

theideaofcoffee — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 17:43:07 +0000

I've given up on expecting any subtlety or nuance from the painfully literal nerds on here. "Must optimize my route for efficiency because I am an engineer! No fun allowed!" There's a certain depressing lack of joie de vivre.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Things I want to say to my boss"

theideaofcoffee — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 17:33:11 +0000

Easy now, I think it's pretty easy to see that he's talking about "three decades" generally, a decade in his own experience and two or more generalized out. You can know about things that you don't directly experience.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Cloudflare outage on December 5, 2025"

theideaofcoffee — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 00:31:36 +0000

I’ve been downvoted enough with my comments on this blog post where I’m hesitant to add anything else, but here I agree with you. They’re trying to be everything to everyone, where does the accountability of their customers being responsible for running, you know, up-to-date packages come in? Like, you don’t take just a little bit of pride in your work that you’re continually watching CVE lists and exploits and just have a minimum of effort toward patching your own shit, rather than pawning it off on vendor? I simply can’t understand the mindset.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Cloudflare outage on December 5, 2025"

theideaofcoffee — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 17:40:32 +0000

Yes, of course, I want the organization that inserted itself into handling 20% of the world's internet traffic to move fast and break things. Like breaking the internet on a bi-weekly basis. Yep, great tradeoff there.

Give me a break.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Cloudflare outage on December 5, 2025"

theideaofcoffee — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 16:23:58 +0000

Same, my time at a F100 ecommerce retailer showed me the same. Every change control board justification needed an explicit back-out/restoration plan with exact steps to be taken, what was being monitored to ensure that was being held to, contacts of prominent groups anticipated to have an effect, emergency numbers/rooms for quick conferences if in fact something did happen.

The process was pretty tight, almost no revenue-affecting outages from what I can remember because it was such a collaborative effort (even though the board presentation seemed a bit spiky and confrontational at the time, everyone was working together).

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "We gave 5 LLMs $100K to trade stocks for 8 months"

theideaofcoffee — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 23:45:57 +0000

“Everyone (including LLMs) is a genius in a bull market.”

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat"

theideaofcoffee — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 21:28:15 +0000

And this is why (at least for the US) aviation parts have such an onerous paperwork overhead, why a seemingly cheap part like a $.50 bolt balloons to much greater. Granted this aircraft was a UK-equivalent to "experimental" in the US, where you can pretty much do anything to it, I'm of the opinion that doesn't excuse maintenance and adding fly-by-night parts that borders on negligence. Stick to a minimum standard, if not just out of shame of something that could happen.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Proximity to coworkers increases long-run development, lowers short-term output (2023)"

theideaofcoffee — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 15:52:05 +0000

That's great for whoever wants this to justify their fearful, uninspired, fashion-driven back to office policies, love that for them, I hope you get the company you deserve. I also hope all of your best people (read: most expensive) leave, because aren't these dumb decisions always done to prod people into leaving without paying out severance? See also: fiefdom-building by cowardly managers, "leaders" who hate their home life, etc.

I, however, will continue to never go back to an office and will continue to be productive far beyond what I can be in an office. Why is that? Because I'm a professional who is quite good at the work he does and is able to collaborate with people regardless of their location and lead successful projects and can adapt myself to others' working styles. Thanks, hold the babysitting, please.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Slashdot effect"

theideaofcoffee — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:48:11 +0000

It's sad to see its decline. I started reading right around 2000 and even noticed that it started to decline even as early as 2008, after and around some of its redesigns. I know I quit regularly stopping around there probably around that time too.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled"

theideaofcoffee — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 01:07:58 +0000

Not sure what this comment is getting at. Those may be the collection of sites owned by a single company, but there are still -oceans- of porn of every conceivable niche, on hundreds of thousands of sites, some still bigger than those. Whereas there’s pretty much a single, monopolized provider for mainstream video: youtube. And a porn conglomerate is the problem? GP is still correct, there’s still real competition in the space, unlike youtube.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Implications of AI to schools"

theideaofcoffee — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 22:20:28 +0000

How about just dispense with the AI nonsense in education and go to totally in-person, closed-book, manually-written, proctored exams? No homework, no assignments, no projects. Just pure mind-to-paper writing in a bare room under the eye of an examiner. Those that want to will learn and will produce intelligent work regardless of setting.

New comment by theideaofcoffee in "Moving from OpenBSD to FreeBSD for firewalls"

theideaofcoffee — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:57:42 +0000

Agreed. Once you've gone pf you'll pine for it when working with anything else.