Hacker News: witrak

New comment by witrak in "Our position on open-weights models"

witrak — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:10:02 +0000

Russian bot detected?

New comment by witrak in "Our position on open-weights models"

witrak — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:25:40 +0000

Lol! Does it matter? Using an unclear acronym in the first reference to an object, besides adding energy waste (for the execution of unnecessary searches by users unfamiliar with the subject), may only give the author of the comment the thrill of "being well informed, an insider".

New comment by witrak in "Ukraine's secret weapon: The bright pink 'Flamingo' missiles"

witrak — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:07:47 +0000

[citation needed]

New comment by witrak in "What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph"

witrak — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 22:21:05 +0000

You dare to compare a Wikipedia article (even a short one) to an SE "article," which is, according to SE's own rules, narrowly and up-to-the-point concentrated on an equally narrow formulated question?

New comment by witrak in "PSA about abuse of cat(1) command. Don't abuse cats"

witrak — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 20:59:49 +0000

Exactly. It allows for a consistent pattern:

cmd1 | cmd2 | cmd3 | ... | cmdn

New comment by witrak in "Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs"

witrak — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 21:04:20 +0000

>A product can be both

LOL... A tent is a single product. What about a car? Do you expect to pay separately for the aluminum in the motor and gearbox, as well as for the entire car?

New comment by witrak in "Encrypt your PC's disk without giving the keys to Microsoft"

witrak — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:38:28 +0000

Is the described method good for Enterprise and IoT Windows versions?

New comment by witrak in "Show HN: A 2mm micro-bearing ring that spins like a real fidget spinner"

witrak — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 12:01:52 +0000

>They just want you to log in. This costs nothing.

You pay with your data...

New comment by witrak in "Email immutability matters more in a world with AI"

witrak — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 21:24:25 +0000

>> What matters is domain age, IP, and compliance with DKIM/DMARC.

>Maybe it was my IP, but I cycled a few with my hosting provider and none of them made a difference. If I am unable to reliable obtain a 'trusted' IP, what good does it do?

That's true. I have a Class C IP range and a domain registered for 30 years and yet Gmail still started ignoring my email server a couple of years ago...

New comment by witrak in "When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”"

witrak — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:43:39 +0000

Perhaps, but if you set your browser language to US English you have dates displayed as MM.DD.YYYY and there's no way to change it neither to European nor ISO (YYYY-MM-DD) format.

New comment by witrak in "When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”"

witrak — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:30:04 +0000

Your concept appears to have coherence until you consider that numbers are not necessarily expressed in decimal notation. What about hexadecimal numbers in filenames? Should they be sorted your way?

And what about very long strings of digits in the filenames - so long that they are too long for even the longest available numerical representation? In some apps, they are converted to floating point...

New comment by witrak in "GNU Midnight Commander"

witrak — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 07:07:42 +0000

It seems nobody remembers the reason for the F-key assignment in the original i.e. Norton Commander... The assignment was very logical and easy to remember (and use) on the original PC keyboard, where F-keys were located in two columns on the left edge of the keyboard: F1, F2, then F3, F4, and so on. You can immediately see the advantages of the F9 location (the leftmost key at the bottom) and of the proximity of the Browse and Edit keys. I used my left thumb to press F10 - it was in the correct place almost without palm movement...

Nowadays I almost don't use Mc (except for file manipulation) because the Linux version has a serious weak point - it blocks the most important keystroke in shell: Tab. It is of course traditionally reserved for panel switching but this role could be deactivated when instead a single command line zone MC would allow to have a multi-line (in NC it was 3 or 4 line) zone for the shell scrolled display. This way it would be possible to have the full-size panel display (with the Tab switching panes) and one keystroke away reduced-size panels with full functionality of the shell tab key in the alternative panel mode... Another disadvantage is the complicated way of changing settings (especially the colors and file attributes display format) in practice forcing trial and error mode... True, it's not needed often but spending hours on it is rather deterrent.

New comment by witrak in "Password1: Scammers exploit variations of your logins"

witrak — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 14:26:50 +0000

Until there are no unified, standard solutions this is too difficult to be achieved in practice.

New comment by witrak in "Good EU regulations"

witrak — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 10:16:44 +0000

What the hell is gpf? I don't like to be forced to search the web to find each locally used unit.

And when will Americans finally learn that instead of the imperial system of units, the rest of the world uses SI?

New comment by witrak in "Good EU regulations"

witrak — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 08:35:57 +0000

Hmm... In all the cases I saw the prices were mentioned in EUR not USD as the unit. I consider it a clear indication that the discussion participants are mainly non-Americans ;-)

New comment by witrak in "Good EU regulations"

witrak — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 08:07:55 +0000

>most car manufacturers have 3-10% gross margins.

I remember some analysis saying that it is true for classic versions like sedan. But on SUVs it is a couple of times bigger...

New comment by witrak in "Million Times Million"

witrak — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 12:25:34 +0000

It is used in all European countries (I don't know any European country that doesn't use it). I know the long scale under the name "European" and the short scale as "American".

New comment by witrak in "AGI and ASI Will Hack the Human Subconscious via Subliminal Messaging"

witrak — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 21:37:30 +0000

If you substitute subliminal messaging with any other technique allowing:

- to influence human behavior, - to prevent an effective countermeasure, - to be controlled by a single issuer, you - use in a selective or mass scale mode against a freely selected population,

then you have an equivalent recipe without SF flavor, because the same analysis shows that humanity cannot defend itself.

Of course, you can ignore existing social media and some cybercrime threats... unless they get included in the military weapons arsenals.

New comment by witrak in "AT&T Email-to-Text Gateway Service Ending June 17"

witrak — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 04:51:14 +0000

As a result there always be a company accepting messages with false sender identity so scammers can operate easily...

New comment by witrak in "AT&T Email-to-Text Gateway Service Ending June 17"

witrak — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 04:37:12 +0000

Because to check email your active participation is needed so you must start an application while to accept texting no such action is needed. Thus for short information (read-and-forget) short messaging (SMS or RCS) is more convenient. Of course, you could use a specialized application to check your email account and filter those needing immediate notification, but if such a service is already available what is the reason to generate additional much bigger traffic?