Hacker News: ufocia

New comment by ufocia in "Deodands put a price on objects that caused death"

ufocia — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 21:37:30 +0000

Haven't read the article, but there are far more accidents at sea than just shipwrecks, which would be probably the most extreme type of accident.

New comment by ufocia in "German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol"

ufocia — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 22:32:23 +0000

Bad design choice is probably why they open sourced it.

New comment by ufocia in "DeepSeek v4.1 Flash"

ufocia — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:30:56 +0000

... an attempt at regulatory capture.

New comment by ufocia in "DeepSeek v4.1 Flash"

ufocia — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:27:14 +0000

Regulatory capture

New comment by ufocia in "Oldinsurancemaps.net is now a Charter Project"

ufocia — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:58:46 +0000

Would be great to non-destructively scan the lower layers and date code them at some point, if/when possible.

New comment by ufocia in "Oldinsurancemaps.net is now a Charter Project"

ufocia — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:56:36 +0000

That's on current copyrights, not public domain works like these really old maps.

New comment by ufocia in "RAG Is Simpler Than You Think"

ufocia — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:11:56 +0000

Wow! Terrible layout. Shouldn't fully justify on a small screen.

New comment by ufocia in "Artificial Intelligence Policy"

ufocia — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 04:04:09 +0000

Most of this policy is unenforceable.

New comment by ufocia in "Asus Bike Booster"

ufocia — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:58:30 +0000

I totally thought this was about bike theft.

New comment by ufocia in "The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)"

ufocia — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:39:01 +0000

Sad comment really. I could make a counterargument that it could've gone to an alcoholic who wasted his liver, which would be equally uncalled for.

New comment by ufocia in "The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)"

ufocia — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:06:17 +0000

Very interesting insight. OP essentially lost at playing chicken.

New comment by ufocia in "Japan develops a method to recover up to 90% of lithium from used EV batteries"

ufocia — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:55:43 +0000

> Of course it should be done anyway as there will be a lot of used batteries in near future.

The necessity for recycling those batteries, without more, does not logically follow from their relative abundance in view of the purely economic perspective you posit. Why not just bury them?

It may be the scarcity of lithium that may drive us to take otherwise expensive steps to recycle such batteries.

The conclusory "of course" sets the argument up for a failure from the outset. Though it is not the only flaw.

New comment by ufocia in "Japan develops a method to recover up to 90% of lithium from used EV batteries"

ufocia — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:47:19 +0000

Poison hemlock is a carrot. Socrates and I would consider it toxic.

New comment by ufocia in "Japan develops a method to recover up to 90% of lithium from used EV batteries"

ufocia — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:43:19 +0000

There are other toxic substance like phosphorus in "lithium" batteries. Some "lithium" battery chemistries, though reportedly not LFP, contain cobalt, a very toxic heavy metal. Besides, there isn't a clear definition of what is a heavy metal. Even iron and copper, used in LFP, are considered heavy metals by some.

BTW, lithium itself is highly toxic too.

New comment by ufocia in "Japan develops a method to recover up to 90% of lithium from used EV batteries"

ufocia — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:24:20 +0000

Still slop. This article appears to conflate battery recycling with lithium recovery, two distinct steps to achieve high lithium reuse.

New comment by ufocia in "Japan develops a method to recover up to 90% of lithium from used EV batteries"

ufocia — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:08:16 +0000

Agreed. For example, what does the color of lithium hydroxide used instead of sodium hydroxide have to do with anything? They are both white.

New comment by ufocia in "Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor"

ufocia — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 02:50:46 +0000

Yes, poor comparison to what's now a relatively low end model.

New comment by ufocia in "Medieval-style fortifications are back in the Sahel"

ufocia — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 15:12:09 +0000

"Newly walled towns are a sign of shrivelling state authority" was my thought when I saw the walled off Capitol.

It is sad when the government needs walls to protect itself from its own people, a sign of weakness. To add to the irony the Capitol used to be, quite literally, the "people's house."

New comment by ufocia in "Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as protection"

ufocia — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 15:17:00 +0000

How so? Please elaborate.

New comment by ufocia in "The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy"

ufocia — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 05:21:42 +0000

Children can buy their own devices. School issued devices are not under parent control. Parental controls and school controls are laughable. There is no incentive for OS vendors/retailers to provide robust solutions to this problem. PII industry is essentially pushing regulatory capture.