News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

hn_throw2025

Re:The AI Boom May Be Sowing Seeds of Another Financial Crisis on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @05:58PM (#50359413)
...and yet you're hanging out on a messageboard that's operated by a VC firm for commercial reasons.
A modern OS will use any “spare” RAM as a page/disk cache. Without that, performance will become intolerable sooner, thus driving consumer demand for newer machines and more RAM chips. And a newer model is unlikely to have less RAM in the spec than the older model it replaces…
I moved away from Hugo because I was tired of it breaking backwards compatibility. I found that upgrading my Hugo version meant that old static website projects wouldn’t compile, and needed amendments. I keep an older Hugo binary around as I don’t have time for that now. Any new website projects are Astro, and I will aim to convert the older projects to Astro when time allows.
Re:ThinkRail from JetBrains on Saturday October 24, 2026 @09:21AM (#50221001)
In terms of features, they are the same.
Re:Why Sweden is abandoning its cashless society on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @06:42AM (#50085461)
Where I live, any taxes are built-in to the sticker retail price.

In a shorter term crisis, I can absolutely imagine smaller grocery stores near me using a cashbox for takings and recording purchases with a pen and paper. Any government would be highly supportive of this as it would be essential to prevent anarchy.

Re:Why Sweden is abandoning its cashless society on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @06:38AM (#50085426)
Just because it wouldn’t help with a long-term crisis, there’s no need to overlook the benefit for a short-term crisis. Especially as the latter is far more likely.
Re:Why Sweden is abandoning its cashless society on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @05:48AM (#50084931)
> Should we forego on convenience because we have a bunch of naysayers?

It wasn’t so convenient during the Iberian power blackout last year when all the electronic payment machines were out of action.

Cyberattacks on infrastructure are increasing.

National resilience/contingency is worth thinking about too.

Re:'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us on Thursday September 24, 2026 @10:33AM (#49831196)
Which sounds like a soft subject on the periphery.

There’s still a massive disadvantage if you want a technical role and you think the Internet, Web and Wifi are all the same thing.

…so xenophobic that they voted for both a Liberal Democrat MP and Mayor?
The ECHR says you must give prisoners the vote. Successive UK governments chose to ignore that part.

So don’t be so sure about “can’t” versus “won’t”.

Re:Homebrew 7.0.0 on Monday September 14, 2026 @04:28AM (#49693627)
I managed to sell my battered old 32-bit Thinkpad on eBay last year. I couldn’t put Trixie on it, but Bookworm installed fine.
Re:Homebrew 7.0.0 on Monday September 14, 2026 @04:13AM (#49693537)
> used M2 MacBook Air

And what if you are a developer and need to replace a well specced Mac and don’t have serious budget, especially considering recent memory and storage price increases?

Rather than a coffee table status symbol or a fashion accessory for pretending to write a novel in the coffee shop?

Re:Homebrew 7.0.0 on Monday September 14, 2026 @04:06AM (#49693485)
So discard a working and perfectly good Macbook to be replaced by a new one manufactured by the World’s #1 CO2 emitter and transported probably halfway around the world in a container ship burning dirty bunker fuel.
Re:Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one on Sunday September 06, 2026 @04:39PM (#49590676)
I went through similar feelings switching to the Mac ecosystem (from Linux) in 2012... But I quickly settled on some tools I wouldn't be without now.

Finder is terrible, but I switched for Forklift early on. I think it's amazing, so much better than the Gnome and KDE file managers I used before. It covers so many bases, from being a twin-pane orthodox manager, directory comparer and synchroniser, bulk regex renamer, etc. Handles local directories as well as remote ones via SFTP, WebDAV, S3, Google Drive, SMB, NFS, etc. And switching to Alfred was a real pleasure. I could see where Gnome Do took inspiration from, but it's a pale imitation. I also installed iTerm2 early on, and I use it to this day. Easily the best fit terminal for my purposes.

Re:IBM Bob on Friday September 04, 2026 @09:54AM (#49564708)
Well, you could say Melinda got a big promotion for a while.
Re:Your Racist Linux Distro Is Very Nice (Scott Jennings) on Thursday September 03, 2026 @07:25AM (#49548623)
> But pretending like only people on the far-right and people like DHH are willing to say this is just wrong. This is also the stated outcome of official inquiries of the UK government.

As a German you may not be aware of this, but the scandal has been developing for a very long time. I have seen estimates that this has been going on for as long as 20 years*. Both Tory and Labour governments have resisted a national enquiry, and when the pressure built enough they tried to proactively limit the scope of any enquiry by pitching terms of reference in advance, like no mention of ethnicity.

The findings of the enquiry mentioned by the blog is a private one organised by Rupert Lowe (who I otherwise detest).

* I have often said that if these gangs had been targeting the daughters of Cabinet Ministers and Chief Constables, the abuse would have been stamped out in weeks.

Re:Your Racist Linux Distro Is Very Nice (Scott Jennings) on Thursday September 03, 2026 @06:34AM (#49548272)
I was going to make the same point.

In no way do I endorse Rupert Lowe or the Restore party.

But referring to that blog post as “hideously racist” is exactly why new victims will be made today, and new victims will be made tomorrow.

We are talking about the organised sexual torture of children here. There should be nothing more repulsive to a decent civilised society.

People using terms like that need to take a long, good look at themselves, especially as they are so proud of their “moral compass”.

Re: on Tuesday September 01, 2026 @05:51PM (#49528742)
I think you are correct. It trivialises true evil with silly superficial comparisons. Popular with those who love to shout the word "Fascist" but have no idea what it historically meant.
Re:Polishing Cloth Updated on Tuesday September 01, 2026 @10:34AM (#49522583)
I clean my Apple mobile stuff daily with 70% Isopropyl Alcohol. A 1L bottle is pretty cheap and it lasts a long time. I just spray it on a cloth and wipe with that.

I use a glassware/window type Microfiber that I got from the Supermarket. For the Apple Watch, I use a cheap cotton handkerchief from eBay because a Microfiber snags too much on the metal mesh bracelet.

It’s been really effective. The IPA does mean the Oleophobic coating will wear off faster, but it doesn’t last that long anyway and the IPA stops dirt and smudges building up.

Re:Iceland rejects reopening talks on EU entry on Monday August 31, 2026 @03:31AM (#49506709)
…the difference being that someone like Cummings at the time didn’t have the heft of the Establishment behind him. Anyone can “call” for anything, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. The “Peoples Vote” or secondary confirmatory vote was favoured by a large group (perhaps a majority of) MPs, the people who have the power to pass laws.

The examples I gave in Denmark and Ireland were of real re-runs of ballots organised by the state where the outcome was changed. Beyond the treaties of Nice, Lisbon and Maastricht I could have also mentioned examples in France and the Netherlands where the pro-EU lobby had a second bite of the democratic cherry by being able to make amendments to treaty proposals before organising a second ballot relatively close to the first. This is not something that usually happens after a referendum, which is why people link the EU with “keep voting until you get the right answer”, which I personally think is profoundly anti-democratic.

Re:Iceland rejects reopening talks on EU entry on Sunday August 30, 2026 @04:44PM (#49502586)
There were plenty of calls for a confirmatory vote (aka "Peoples' Vote", as if people didn't vote the first time) after the Brexit result in 2016. This was averted because Johnson won the election in 2019 and thus had a mandate to trigger Article 50.

If Remain had won 52% to 48%, you can bet that no second confirmatory vote would have been suggested. Can you think of an example where the pro-EU side won but the result was so close that it was felt a a second vote was needed? That is my point.

EU treaties were voted against by referendum in Denmark (1992) and Ireland (2001 and 2008). There were second votes where the treaty was subsequently passed in all three cases.

Re:Iceland rejects reopening talks on EU entry on Sunday August 30, 2026 @11:34AM (#49499607)
Isn’t it odd that there are only suggestions for followup confirmatory votes when the pro-EU camp don’t get their way, never the other way around.
Re:Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX on Saturday August 29, 2026 @04:12AM (#49487965)
You’re welcome…

There are things I will probably miss from Cursor, as they used to iterate on DX goodies quite quickly. For frontend tasks, I liked the idea of Cursor Browser being able to do a devtools-like selection of an element tree to be included in the chat context. I’ve been told there are similar extensions available for vanilla VSCode, so will have to see how good they are.

Re:Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX on Saturday August 29, 2026 @03:39AM (#49487793)
I recently cancelled Cursor.

The features you mention are in Antigravity IDE v1, which I am trying as I still have a Gemini subscription.

No idea how long it will be around for, as Google Antigravity2 (more like Claude Code) is clearly the favoured way forward, plus the new Antigravity for VSCode Extension*, which I didn’t like as much when I tried it. It offers the same accept/reject hunk workflow, but I don’t know about editing in place. It doesn’t feel as if it has the tight integration of Antigravity IDE v1, which feels as if it was designed to challenge Cursor.

Having said that, much of the time I use Google Antigravity2 alongside a Jetbrains IDE. You can still review all diffs within Google Antigravity2 and attach comments to any line on order for a followup prompt to make amendments. But I still prefer the review and accept/reject hunk workflow.

* https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Google.g...

Re:I close SSH port 22 (and what I use instead) on Sunday August 16, 2026 @06:10AM (#49318602)
Sure thing. I really meant that my Oracle Cloud account is protected by my YubiKey, and when I provision an instance I set a strong, pre-hashed password for the local account in the CloudInit configuration. If I ever need emergency maintenance access, I can use the OCI instance console from the dashboard rather than SSH. SSH itself is configured to accept publickey authentication only, disallow root login, and only listen on the Tailnet IP range. So the password isn’t part of the normal SSH access path.
Re:I close SSH port 22 (and what I use instead) on Saturday August 15, 2026 @10:23AM (#49310836)
By MFA I meant the Yubikey plugged in to my home office Mac; I don’t do sysadmin on the bus.

But I take your point… I try to make sure I print out recovery codes when offered, and keep them hidden in a safe place at home.

Re:Gemini 3.7 Flash on Saturday August 15, 2026 @05:43AM (#49309162)
I meant in real practical terms, not higher concepts.

I am fine with not having a private island or a network of influential friends, but I am really really glad I’m not defecating in the street.

Re:I close SSH port 22 (and what I use instead) on Saturday August 15, 2026 @05:31AM (#49309104)
I agree with you.

I’m reading this thread and wondering if I’m missing something, why people are still talking about port knocking, port obfuscation, and fail2ban.

I use a cloud VPS. I ssh in via Tailscale. The cloud provider firewall blocks all incoming connections except traffic originating from Cloudflare IP ranges on port 443. My host plays dead to portscans. I check with nmap periodically. I have a break-glass backup terminal login option via my cloud provider dashboard (secured with MFA) in case Tailscale failed and needed investigation and repair.

This has worked well for me on AWS and Oracle Cloud. It’s quick and easy to set up. You need a timed service to refresh the ingress IP ranges, but any LLM could spit that out in a second.

Re:Gemini 3.7 Flash on Friday August 14, 2026 @03:58AM (#49295843)
Quantitatively, yes. Qualitatively, no.

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