Hacker News: webstrand

New comment by webstrand in "Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold"

webstrand — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:46:47 +0000

Container tabs, independent proxy config (chrome only respects system-wide proxy), vertical tabs, and functional adblockers are the four big features for me.

New comment by webstrand in "F-15E jet shot down over Iran"

webstrand — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:34:30 +0000

Ah, you mean Empire Earth. I loved that game, it had a great soundtrack.

New comment by webstrand in "Building a Mostly IPv6 Only Home Network"

webstrand — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:09:35 +0000

IPv4 pricing isn't a good enough reason? If all of my devices had nice ipv6 connectivity I could ditch the public ipv4 addresses, but I have to keep them so that my ipv4-only devices can still reach them.

New comment by webstrand in "Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft"

webstrand — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:53:02 +0000

Just because something is copyleft doesn't mean the person who gave you the binary you're using has to supply you with the code the used to build it. That's what the GPL does.

New comment by webstrand in "Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft"

webstrand — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:10:41 +0000

Its purpose "if you run the software you should be able to inspect and modify that software, and to share those modifications with your peers" not explicitly resist copyright. Yes copyright is bad in that it often prevents one from doing that, but it is not the purpose of the GPL to dismantle copyright.

Reducing it to "well you can clone the proprietary software you're forced to use by LLM" is really missing the soul of the GPL.

New comment by webstrand in "I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services"

webstrand — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 19:21:02 +0000

If nothing else the _perception_ of it is enough to have had a chilling effect, my own parents were concerned and affected by it enough to tell me where not to play outside so that I wouldn't be seen by randoms.

New comment by webstrand in "When does MCP make sense vs CLI?"

webstrand — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 18:18:58 +0000

yeah, I would rather it did that. You run Claude in a sandbox that restricts visibility to only the files it should know about in the first place. Currently I use a mix of bwrap and syd for filtering.

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

webstrand — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 08:13:56 +0000

To wit, if you get to vote for the HOA board but not for the government that can override every decision the HOA makes, are you meaningfully enfranchised?

They're arguing that due to the failure/stalling of the two-state solution, the PA is effectively not a national government. It administers local services, like policing, courts, infrastructure. But it doesn't control borders, tarrifs and duties, or airspace. The Israeli military operates a parallel legal system that can detain and prosecute them, all under a legal framework that they have no vote or say in. I think its fair to call this a kind of disenfranchisement?

New comment by webstrand in "A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification"

webstrand — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:37:58 +0000

The liability exemption is a moving target

> good faith effort to comply with this title, taking into consideration available technology and any reasonable technical limitations or outages

could easily be read as meaning "facial recognition technology exists and is available, not using it is a business decision, failure to use it removes the good faith protection".

If the lawmakers didn't intend this, then they didn't need to add all the wiggle words that'll let the courts expand the scope of this law.

New comment by webstrand in "Oat – Ultra-lightweight, zero dependency, semantic HTML, CSS, JS UI library"

webstrand — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 15:01:32 +0000

That one is highly inconsistent, on some platforms its useless. For instance on Chrome/linux entering historic dates via the datepicker takes minutes to slowly scroll through the years. Always build your own datepicker, you know better what UX pattern will best suit your application and your users.

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

webstrand — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 22:33:04 +0000

I wonder if this is a potential "off switch" for the internet. Just hit the root ca so they can't hand out the renewed certificates, you only have to push them over for a week or so.

New comment by webstrand in "The RCE that AMD won't fix"

webstrand — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 23:32:57 +0000

The MitM happens when the client sends packets to the fake IP, I think the argument goes.

New comment by webstrand in "The RCE that AMD won't fix"

webstrand — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 03:28:09 +0000

Oh you mean that it's a popular way of initiating the interception part of MitM, got it.

New comment by webstrand in "The RCE that AMD won't fix"

webstrand — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 03:17:43 +0000

Really? I thought MitM was always intercepting/manipulating traffic from or to the victim.

New comment by webstrand in "The RCE that AMD won't fix"

webstrand — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 03:14:50 +0000

MitM isn't even necessary, a rogue DHCP server configuring a malicious DNS could attack this.

New comment by webstrand in "Mobile carriers can get your GPS location"

webstrand — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 18:02:45 +0000

No? If the device is connected to a cell, they can still triangulate it just like normal.

New comment by webstrand in "Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers"

webstrand — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 16:28:44 +0000

Its the same argument for high-density hog farming. If the use of private property may impinge on the neighbors, either through invasive noise, or costs to public utility infrastructure (power, water) then the community ought to have some insight and input, same as they have input into whether a high density hog farm can open right on the border of the community.

Yes some people see the datacenters as part of an ethical issue. I agree its not proper for permits to be withheld on purely ethical grounds, laws should be passed instead. But there are a lot of side-effects to having a datacenter near your property that are entirely concrete issues.

New comment by webstrand in "No knives, only cook knives"

webstrand — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 17:09:05 +0000

I've tried simple whetstones, and haven't yet got the knack of not dulling knives on it. The bizarre sharpening contraptions take the knack out of it, same as the pull-through knife mutilators. It may not be the best, but it is better than it was. Unlike a whetstone where you may very well end up with a knife duller than when you started, if you don't have the knack for keeping an angle or removing the burr or any number of other ways to mess up.

New comment by webstrand in "The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis"

webstrand — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 17:11:26 +0000

This is anecdotal, America is geographically quite large. For a lot of people, where these events are happening are more than a days drive away (10 hours or more), it's not happening "here".

A lot of people here _enjoy_ the authoritarianism, judging by the votes, the voter turnout, and the private discussions I've had with my neighbors. They believe this is good for the country and that there'll be more opportunities for their kids.

A lot of other people are holding out for the midterm elections, to see if the will of the majority shifts, because otherwise its risks open civil war. And maybe just a touch of American exceptionalism—this can't actually be happening here, it'll all blow over—and distrust in the story that the media is feeding them is accurate.

And some are just fatalistic, this isn't really a surprising turn of events. America has been creeping toward this for more than a few decades, since Regan at the very least.

New comment by webstrand in "Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage"

webstrand — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 15:47:44 +0000

Doesn't seem like LLM generated text to me. Even prior to ChatGPT some journalists preferred to write in a novel-style with extraneous fluff like that.