Hacker News: thisislife2

New comment by thisislife2 in "Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier"

thisislife2 — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:33:26 +0000

The Dutch should be aware that if Netherland has some information-sharing agreements with Five Eyes or Fourteen Eyes, all this data will still be available to the US (and other allies) (hopefully, presumably, with your government acting as the gatekeeper).

New comment by thisislife2 in "How Shamir's Secret Sharing Works"

thisislife2 — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:25:16 +0000

Maybe it's the pronunciation - ente means "mine" and ante means "yours" (in Malayalam) which is what perhaps you may be referring to? (Former South Indian kingdoms and South East Asia have historical cultural ties due to trade and conquest, and thus they share some common words, which I assume is, largely borrowed from Tamil and Malayalam).

New comment by thisislife2 in "Why Did South Africa Relinquish Its Nuclear Weapons?"

thisislife2 — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:47:25 +0000

It is as simple as that. They read the writing in the wall and knew that the native would take back power. They didn't trust, and want, the native blacks to have nuclear weapons. The whites in Africa still have deep political ties with the Anglo-Americans, and that's why we see Trump complaining about "white genocide" in South Africa.

New comment by thisislife2 in "Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses"

thisislife2 — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:29:24 +0000

More here: Microsoft reports are exposing AI's real cost problem: Using the tech is more expensive than paying human employees - https://fortune.com/2026/05/22/microsoft-ai-cost-problem-tok...

New comment by thisislife2 in "The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't"

thisislife2 — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:03:57 +0000

I would say that just the old "stupid" corporate practice of overhiring - for stock manipulation, reduce the talent pool for competitors etc. - Why Do Companies Overhire Just To Lay Off? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCF78a2wTHM

New comment by thisislife2 in "Photo GIMP – A Patch for GIMP 3 for Photoshop Users"

thisislife2 — Tue, 19 May 2026 13:25:16 +0000

The argument over the UI in GIMP and Photoshop is actually based on the kind of "false" premise that Photoshop has a "superior" UI.

It reminds of my first experience using macOS, as a long time Windows user. The first few months on macOS was a totally frustrating and negative experience for me - "What the ...? why does the ENTER key not open files or folders? Why is it going to 'rename' mode? Why doesn't double-clicking the title bar on a window maximise the window? Why are some windows maximised and others take their own custom width? Why is the Maximise button making apps full screen!?" - and so on.

The point is that I had become so familiar with the Windows UI, that every other OS UI suddenly seemed alien - "This is not how a UI should work on an OS". (This was also the reason that I hated Ubuntu's DE, as it tried to imitate the macOS UI I was then unfamiliar with). Familiarity means when you face a new UI, you have to spend effort to re-learn your way of thinking around a UI, which can be a frustrating experience (especially as you grow older). That effort / stress also unconsciously creates a negative impression in your mind about the UI. Both Apple and Microsoft know this and that is why they deliberately make their UI distinct and different from each other - whether it is Windows vs macOS or Windows Phone vs ios. Recently someone (a non-geek) asked me if they should buy a Macbook as they had an iPhone too. As they were a Windows user, I warned them that the macOS UI would be frustrating and to try macOS before committing to it. They did, and ultimately decided against it and chose to stick to Windows (buying a Surface Tablet).

As a former graphic designer, and an experienced Photoshop user, I only considered GIMP as a replacement when Adobe decided to make it a subscription. And just as with Windows to macOS, re-learning to use the GIMP UI was a frustrating experience because I was always thinking of "this is how it is done in Photoshop". Once you let go of that "familiarity", and are willing to actually test if the "GIMP way" is maybe better, it becomes a less frustrating experience. (All that said, while I have got used to using the GIMP tools the GIMP way, the overall GIMP layout does have a cluttered feeling and I do recommend installing Photo GIMP - it won't really make GIMP a Photoshop clone, but it will make it more "familiar" and thus easier to "re-learn" how to use it).

New comment by thisislife2 in "How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?"

thisislife2 — Mon, 18 May 2026 07:32:11 +0000

PC's that can be upgraded form the bulk of the second-sales industry and don't end up in the landfill for a few more years because they can be upgraded / repaired and used for a few more years.

New comment by thisislife2 in "Israel's AI targeting system: how data from a phone become a death sentence"

thisislife2 — Sun, 17 May 2026 09:48:16 +0000

That's the "minor" exception I mentioned. But, as you must be aware, there is also a strong political campaign in Israel to remove this exemption. This is also likely to be a major political issue in the upcoming election.

New comment by thisislife2 in "Nordstjernen Web Browser"

thisislife2 — Fri, 15 May 2026 20:36:52 +0000

Good effort! Did you consider using Netsurf codebase ( https://www.netsurf-browser.org/ ) or contributing to it? (The website is outdated but the development is ongoing and active).

New comment by thisislife2 in "How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?"

thisislife2 — Fri, 15 May 2026 19:51:53 +0000

Why does the controller need to be on the SoC when the market already has SSDs with built-in controllers that follow a standard and allow you to easily replace it?

New comment by thisislife2 in "How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?"

thisislife2 — Fri, 15 May 2026 19:48:37 +0000

You are concerned about 2 sticks of RAM as "e-waste" (even though it can be reused), but not about a whole Mac ending up as an e-waste because it can't be repaired or run other system softwares?

New comment by thisislife2 in "How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?"

thisislife2 — Fri, 15 May 2026 19:44:17 +0000

Bloated Electron / WebView wrappers also tout the feature of running on macOS - and many are forced to use such apps on the mac too ... what then? Apple deciding how much RAM is "enough" for you is based on the use case it has decided for each category of the device. If that isn't sufficient for you, you are supposed to buy the more "premium" edition, even if your use case for that is rare. Imagine if you suddenly need more RAM for a popular app 2 years down the line but you can't really do anything on a Mac now a days because the RAM is soldered and fixed. Buying upgrade-able RAM is obviously much cheaper, and much better for the environment, than buying a whole new device.

New comment by thisislife2 in "How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?"

thisislife2 — Thu, 14 May 2026 20:09:13 +0000

That's an acceptable compromise to get a system that can be upgraded and / or repaired. Apple already charges a "premium" so nobody (except their shareholders) are going to cry if they make a dollar or two less on each device because of this. Customers do care about such things when they decide to upgrade their device or, more importantly, when they have to repair it.

New comment by thisislife2 in "What the Hell Was Going on with Cigarette Ads in the 70s? (2024)"

thisislife2 — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:59:52 +0000

And to think that in the 1920s, doctors prescribed cigarettes for weight loss. And now the tobacco industry is moving on to weed, and repeating the same marketing tricks that they used to sell cigarettes nearly a 100 years back ...

New comment by thisislife2 in "How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?"

thisislife2 — Thu, 14 May 2026 10:08:11 +0000

Just a thought - stop bloody soldering the RAM and the SSDs. That partially transfers the burden on to the customers and makes their product more repairable ... Mac Minis (with un-soldered RAM and HDD / SSDs) used to be sold with minimum 4 GB RAM, if I remember right). This, way, you can still sell devices with lower RAM, and customers can upgrade in the future when supply increases.

New comment by thisislife2 in "Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7"

thisislife2 — Thu, 14 May 2026 09:48:49 +0000

I once got abuse from an Income Tax official for claiming that an email with the details they requested had been sent to them, as the official opened Outlook and searched for it in front of me and couldn't find it! Had to convince the guy to try multiple different keywords before it luckily emerged in the search results.

New comment by thisislife2 in "Israel's AI targeting system: how data from a phone become a death sentence"

thisislife2 — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:04:55 +0000

It's a country with two power centres and two national armies. Thus, "divide and rule" politics works exceptionally well there and no one should be surprised their lack of political unity is working against them. While the Lebanese army has no love for the Israelis they are acting under US pressure and advise to not get involved as Hezbollah is taking the brunt of the attack, which the US and some Lebanese political actors hope will hope weakens it enough and eventually lead to its merger / absorption. It's an idiotic way to think of, ofcourse, because there is no guarantee that the US and / or Israel are likely to stop the war (or their ethnic cleansing / genocide), or stop making political demands on Lebanon once the Hezbollah is gone. The loss of Hezbollah fighters will mean Lebanon's military actually becomes weaker.

New comment by thisislife2 in "Israel's AI targeting system: how data from a phone become a death sentence"

thisislife2 — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:58:38 +0000

In some ways, Israel is a military State because everyone (with some minor exception) is required to serve in the military. If everyone is a trained soldier, the only true civilians are the children ...

New comment by thisislife2 in "EU browser choice rules send millions more users Firefox's way"

thisislife2 — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:52:08 +0000

Both are true. Firefox could be so much better and innovative with the amount of money it has but ...

New comment by thisislife2 in "Leaving GitHub for Forgejo"

thisislife2 — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:36:51 +0000

I completely share your sentiment about feeling irked about open source code being used to train commercial AI models. However, I think the battle is already lost - the nature of copyright and open source code philosophy (currently) means that there isn't any real way of preventing your code being used to train AI. Look at the legal precedents being set in courts where many of the BigTechs have actually pirated copyrighted media to train their AI, and the court has said "that's acceptable". (Ofcourse, the actual act of piracy - like Facebook did by downloading copyrighted material through torrents - may not be legal, but the courts may be lenient here too as there seems to be an undercurrent of government approval to do anything to win the "AI Race").

And, even if you move your repository somewhere else, can you really prevent anyone from uploading it to Github? To do so, you may have to create your open source license.