Hacker News: zelphirkalt

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Small models also found the vulnerabilities that Mythos found"

zelphirkalt — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 09:59:16 +0000

How do we know the false positives for this "Mythos" thingamabob? Since they didn't release it, and we cannot reproduce it, are we to simply believe their word on this? What if the author of the featured article simply made a claim about that? We also simply believe their word? To me these AI tech companies are not any more trustworthy than a random blog author, maybe even less so, due to all the shady stuff they are pulling and especially since they have not released. Show or it didn't happen.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git"

zelphirkalt — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:20:59 +0000

What's the difference between "snapshots" and git commits? In my mind a git commit is already a snapshot of the repo and the changes one staged. In what way can you move around more freely than what one can do with magit, deciding for files, hunks, or even single lines of code, whether or not they get staged and committed?

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Veracrypt project update"

zelphirkalt — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 19:09:46 +0000

I think the GP is relating to MS services and accounts as utilities that should not be possible to be taken away easily, not about Wireguard.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Veracrypt project update"

zelphirkalt — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 19:07:23 +0000

Even if they somehow were so expensive, that it would no longer scale to their size, that is still not our problem and if anything, a sign that either they need to improve their systems, or simply cannot be as big as they are. Shit happens, scale down, I won't cry for them.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers"

zelphirkalt — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 19:01:35 +0000

I have a feeling, that the resolve to do something about it is waning in the EU, because of the plans to soften up the GDPR.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)"

zelphirkalt — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:41:15 +0000

I found your comment funny and I only realized this pun when I read my own comment after posting it. I hope you keep your humor, despite being downvoted. You are probably downvoted, because people think it doesn't add much to the topic, and not because it isn't funny. (I hope so, at least.)

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Protect your shed"

zelphirkalt — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:19:42 +0000

About the work being more enjoyable when seeing it as a craft: I think it only is more enjoyable, if you can somehow bring part of your craftsmanship into it, and are not overly limited by other people or the sprint or management or any of the other many factors that ruin the fun, like time available, terrible inherited codebase that would take weeks or months to fix, and so on.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

zelphirkalt — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:45:38 +0000

As a first step they could give back some of their illegal settlements. Then over time give back more, until they are back in UN recognized borders. That would be a start. They could also start to persecute violent mobs that chased people out of their own homes and the people in the military covering them. They could also release unjustifiably imprisoned people.

You know, things that basic human decency would demand of them.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)"

zelphirkalt — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:12:11 +0000

And yet that laptop stand is not even the slightest bit slanted, one of the crucial details. I could simply take a book and put the laptop on top of that, to get the same ergonomic features. I am aware that ergonomic use is not the main point, but it would certainly not have hurt to consider that angle at least a little bit.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)"

zelphirkalt — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 01:12:41 +0000

I am guessing these companies were not big enough to make enough of a fuss and have a good legal team? Google likes making money, and if there is the slightest reason to not have to pay someone, then they are gonna make use of that reason. Might even make it onto someone's KPI list of "prevented fraud".

New comment by zelphirkalt in "France pulls last gold held in US"

zelphirkalt — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 10:03:37 +0000

I am guessing that these bases are one of the last things to go. Would be a major diplomatic incident. But then again Trump creates those for breakfast, so who knows when we finally have had enough.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "France pulls last gold held in US"

zelphirkalt — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:54:20 +0000

Would be good to not depend on the US that much any longer, since they have proven to be such an unreliable "partner". Even in a non-Trump future one cannot rely upon some future election not resulting in some similar disaster. Better to pull out, before some hothead gets weird ideas about that gold.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Why are we still using Markdown?"

zelphirkalt — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:42:30 +0000

Because I think, that there are other formats, whose formatting rules are more intuitive than Markdown's formatting rules. For example:

    (1) I can never remember, whether I need to use [] or () first, when embedding an image. In Org mode syntax one simply uses [] for both parts.
    (2) Or whether ** is bold or italic or * is bold or italic. Other formats use the well known / to mean italic, which optically already makes more sense and also doesn't interfere with something being bold or not, because it is a separate symbol. This makes Markdown also harder to parse btw..

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Someone at BrowserStack is leaking users' email addresses"

zelphirkalt — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:19:23 +0000

On the other hand it is always convenient to hide behind the "We big, careless, silly org, we no knows how to handle data.". If we apply too many razors, then they are just gonna cut our freedom away. At some size of organizations negligence becomes malicious, since they ought to have people knowing how stuff should be handled and they most likely ignore it.

What is more likely? Everyone at an organization's IT, sales and data protection department is incapable of doing their job, or someone doesn't give a damn, calculating, that preventing such things from happening costs too much?

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Someone at BrowserStack is leaking users' email addresses"

zelphirkalt — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:12:05 +0000

Working in sales but not being able to handle customer data responsibly (for whatever reason). Not a good look.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function"

zelphirkalt — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:52:57 +0000

SAP software is the bane of most people, who have to use it, except for expensive consultants, who make bank preying on hapless clueless companies opting to use SAP software.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March"

zelphirkalt — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 17:29:38 +0000

I have tried both, installing on btrfs and installing on NTFS (shared with a Windows installation). I think I will get a dedicated gaming machine at some point, which hopefully will not have the same issue.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Why are we still using Markdown?"

zelphirkalt — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 11:43:41 +0000

Saying, that it is the best compromise we know of is going a little far, I think. There are more readable intuitive formats, but they simply don't have the spread, that markdown formats have.

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why"

zelphirkalt — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 19:18:21 +0000

If there was a possibility to hook that device up to any flight critical other stuff, or carry it in the cockpit maybe I would be worried. (am not the GP)

New comment by zelphirkalt in "Proton meet isn't what they told you it was"

zelphirkalt — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:06:57 +0000

> Proton’s launch blog post for their new video conferencing product contains this paragraph: “laws like the US CLOUD Act can compel US-owned video conferencing platforms to hand over any data they store, even if the servers reside outside of the United States. This creates serious compliance challenges for organizations bound by GDPR, CCPA, or similar data protection laws. That’s why we’ve created Proton Meet.”

Actually, it creates an incompatibility, period.

How much I dislike all this weasling around, trying to find a gap, where none exists, hoping, that the law won't be followed to the letter, lack of interest in following the law to its logical conclusion, all in the name of wanting to conduct business in an easier way, even if not adhering to the law. I wish all those companies trying that would be gone. Let us have solutions that are inside the EU, many of us don't want the US big tech crap any longer. I wish that governments and people in charge of public institutions and their tech decisions realized this. Instead they weasle around and try the "But we are using Microsoft in the EU!" as if that is worth a dime.

Try convincing me, that a company like MS in EU won't oblige, when the command from MS in the US comes to send over some data. Good luck!