Hacker News: throw_a_grenade

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix"

throw_a_grenade — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 11:24:44 +0000

It's a bit of hit and miss, really. Like every big organisation, it's not a single, coherent entity, but has branches and departments filled by real, flawed people, so in practice it depends on which industry your're in. For example, digital policy bureaucrats are usually extremely competent, like, they do know how the stuff discussed here on HN works. (That they often have differen expectations from what people here want is orthogonal). Automotive industry is on the other hand squarely in bed with manufacturers (cars, but also accessories like child safety chairs). The average is suprisingly good, esp. in comparison with national bureaucracies.

/r/ATC

throw_a_grenade — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:42:49 +0000

Article URL: https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47504343

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Separating the Wayland compositor and window manager"

throw_a_grenade — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 09:18:44 +0000

I'd guess it's because of the general attitude of the project's community, specifically GNOME people and their “my way or highway” style of answering questions e.g. about CSD or other non-critical stuff, not directly related to core protocol. If they were a bit more accommodating to reasonable requests from outside, they'd get less backlash in comments. There's plenty of exemplar behaviour elsewhere in adjacent communities, they could have taken hint multiple times.

That they provide this stuff for free would be a good argument if the stuff wasn't pushed down people's throats with no working alternative and Xorg being discontinued.

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran"

throw_a_grenade — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 13:49:20 +0000

Not OP, but that post clearly was alluding to Hitler coming to power democratically. That they don't need to worry was a very dark joke. Anyway, it's just history.

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "The true story behind the Toronto mystery tunnel (2015)"

throw_a_grenade — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:28:27 +0000

(2015)

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "GNU Pies – Program Invocation and Execution Supervisor"

throw_a_grenade — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:57:16 +0000

I don't, I'm Polish. Can't say for sure for Ukrainians, don't know Ukrainian that well, but my reading of https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%B... and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%81#Ukrainian suggests that пес must be male, but собака is either male or female. I might be wrong.

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "GNU Pies – Program Invocation and Execution Supervisor"

throw_a_grenade — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:43:03 +0000

More like pi+[y]es, but single syllable and no y.

EDIT: Here are three audio files to hear: https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/pies#pies_(j%C4%99zyk_polski)

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "GNU Pies – Program Invocation and Execution Supervisor"

throw_a_grenade — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:31:59 +0000

"Pies" means "dog" in Polish an Ukrainian (пес).

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Upcoming changes to Let's Encrypt and how they affect XMPP server operators"

throw_a_grenade — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 13:33:25 +0000

> [...] it has critical economic impact on many countries, it should be regulated by them?

This was exactly the point of recent (2024) eIDAS update, which introduced EU Trusted Lists. The original draft was that the browsers were mandated to accept X.509 certs from CAs („TSP”s) accredited in EU by national bodies. Browsers were supposed not to be free to just eject CAs from their root programs for any reason or no reason at all, but in case of infractions they were supposed to report to CAB or NAB that would make the final decision.

Browesers responded by lobbying, because the proposal also contained some questionable stuff like mandatory EV UI, which the browsers rightfully deprecated, and also it wasn't clear if they can use OneCRL and similar alternative revocation schemes for mitigations of ongoing attacks. The language was diluted.

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Upcoming changes to Let's Encrypt and how they affect XMPP server operators"

throw_a_grenade — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:44:14 +0000

This is good point. I think it would still be discounted in favour of suggesting another CAs that users can switch to, but you're right, the promise was that cert management would be hands off, and changing CAs is not hands off in any ACME client that I know of. Best Google could do would be to shift the blame to LE/ISRG, because it was ISRG that promised this automation.

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Upcoming changes to Let's Encrypt and how they affect XMPP server operators"

throw_a_grenade — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:39:55 +0000

The point about antitrust lawsuits I concur, but LE is not the only free-as-in-beer ACME. For one, there's ZeroSSL, then Actalis, SSL.com. For some time BuyPass offered free certs, but it does no longer. Last but not least Google itself has Public CA that offers certs over ACME, a fact that I think would be a huge fulcrum for antitrust suit. I would also expect that all other CAs would deploy ACME endpoints to attract at least some part of the cake (note they're in business of being vultures already). So the message will be „go find another CA, here are three examples, sorted randomly like the European first boot UX, just change the URI in certbot config".

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Upcoming changes to Let's Encrypt and how they affect XMPP server operators"

throw_a_grenade — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 13:36:16 +0000

Yes, that's all right, there's already a requirement that they submit to one Google CT log and one non-Google CT log. They thought about it already. The playbook I mentioned they've been rehearsing contains specific threat against backdating certs, they say they'll distrust immediately if they detect, and they have means of detecting backdating on significant scale (esp. for LE, where they submit 100% issued certs, not just the subset that is intended for consumption with Chrome).

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Upcoming changes to Let's Encrypt and how they affect XMPP server operators"

throw_a_grenade — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 09:30:31 +0000

If they wanted, they absolutely can distrust LE. The trick is to distrust only certificates issued after specific date (technically: with „NotBefore” field after specific point in time), so the certs already issued continue to work for the duration of their validity (until „NotAfter”). That way they can phase out even the biggest CAs. Moreover, they have infrastructure in place and playbook well rehearsed on other CAs already.

TL;DR yes, tis a credible threat.

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Microsoft account bugs locked me out of Notepad – Are thin clients ruining PCs?"

throw_a_grenade — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 21:22:39 +0000

If I had such a problem with my OS, I would have changed the distribution.

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native"

throw_a_grenade — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 16:09:03 +0000

> [...] but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer.

This is FUD, 1990s Micro$oft style. I guess nothing particular changed on this front.

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware"

throw_a_grenade — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 06:44:47 +0000

No, of course not. They want to also measure response in the physical aspects (like electricians thot would have to drive some time to arrive on site). They're testing end-to-end, so to say. There's no testing like testing in production.

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Driver killed and several injured after second train derails near Barcelona"

throw_a_grenade — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:43:59 +0000

This is third time. Two months ago a railway was sabotaged on the other side of the EU: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gknv8nxlzo

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Driver killed and several injured after second train derails near Barcelona"

throw_a_grenade — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:38:46 +0000

Now this is a strange coincidence, if coincidence at all.

New comment by throw_a_grenade in "Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide"

throw_a_grenade — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 09:17:33 +0000

The traditional Polish categories of sorting rubbish is „to the burner” and „to the forest”, optionally „to be burned during the day” and „to be burned during the night”.

Intelligence – A Mystery Investigation Game

throw_a_grenade — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 21:03:28 +0000

Article URL: https://intelligencegame.tech/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46387028

Points: 47

# Comments: 9