News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

teroshan

Re:Wealth Inequality in America drawn to scale on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @10:13AM (#50273953)
> What makes me weary about any such tax is that in practice, it seems to target the broad middle class

If you're talking about the "Zucman tax" it explicitely targets the ultra-high-net-worth individuals because that's the population that manages to avoid income tax and thus pay a lower effective tax rate than the rest of the population.

source: https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/report-g20.pdf

Re:Ghostty 1.4.0 on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @01:36PM (#50262762)
I'm still using Wezterm here due to its Windows support, and I like being able to share one configuration my company Windows and my personal Linux laptops.

I've come to like its hyperlink rules to automatically generated clickable links to Reviews/Issues/Requirements/Linter Errors/... so I haven't felt the need to switch yet to have this feature missing.

I'm eying Kitty though.

Re:Quad9 (DNS Resolver) to Exit France on Thursday October 22, 2026 @11:28AM (#50196754)
Same reason copyright abusers threaten people that help remove the DRM from their Amazon-bought e-book so it can be read on their non-Amazon bought e-reader with a $250,000 fine and five years in prison for circumventing a digital lock using DMCA, because it's what the legal API allows them to achieve their end goal.

It's not about if it makes sense from a moral point of view.

I'm in the exact same situation, still rocking an Aura One with KOReader and can't find anything with that form factor in black/white that satisfies me.

There's something to be said with a device that has a single purpose and supports custom firmware: other than the micro-USB port and the slightly shorter battery charge I don't think I will be changing it soon.

Re:Creating a Garmin "MCP" on Thursday October 15, 2026 @04:38AM (#50100918)
> Imagine how great an Instagram MCP would be. You could create your own feed algorithm (such as the OG algorithm: just pictures from friends based on when they posted). Users would be able to filter out all the influencer content and ads Instagram throws on them. But Instagram would never do this.

See also: the OG App : https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/og-app-promises-you-an-ad-...

This is why I don't understand why MCPs (or in other words open documented APIs right?) are being pushed so much.

What's the value in e.g. Amazon opening up their APIs to competitors, lowering the cost of scraping their data? Or allowing their consumers to more easily analyze dynamic pricing? Isn't the whole point to steer people towards closed proprietary apps that work in walled garden that prevent reverse-engineering and any kind of modification?

> Warhammer grew massively and now has a presence across many game genres (and table top of course)

StarCraft now also has its own figurine tabletop game. No idea what it's worth though: https://starcraft-tmg.com/

Re:Any Nix package, live in the browser on Monday September 07, 2026 @04:00AM (#49595328)
That being said, isn't it the best use-case for slop? Generating working, interactive ideas to sell an idea and kick-start a discussion to see if it's anything worth pursuing?

Rewriting it after that first MVP with a first round of inputs is better engineering anyway, right?

Re:Any Nix package, live in the browser on Monday September 07, 2026 @03:57AM (#49595305)
And verbs seem to clearly be really pricey in terms of tokens
Thank you for writing this.
For some reason I never received any stickers, shirts, or socks here in France.

I do remember them asking about shipping information at some point though.

I'm (unironically) sure it's a multi-faceted issue with a lot of actors having genuinely good motivations to push for this.

That being said I'm also sure those groups are especially vulnerable to fear-mongering [0] and it would not be particularly hard to rile up these bases to work towards the same end goal.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

Officially I'm sure. It gets revived in the 2023 Online Safety Act and is followed by strong EU push for Identity Verification, Chat Control, etc. at the same time. I don't think it's wrong to look at them from the same lens.

It's not necessarily nefarious though: the same ideas/fears permeate all society so it makes sense they pop up together. The work may have already been done by some legislators, ready to be used by others.

But the corporate lobbying for weakening online anonymity and encryption is not something new either, and the benefits are clear. It wouldn't be the first issue large-scale lobbying has taken place in their interests, and for something as critical as identify verification I genuinely cannot imagine it isn't one of the most important issue in surveillance capitalism.

Good news, the end goal that is being pushed by corporate lobbyists is still in sight.

Give it a few years (months if you're an optimist?) and you will have to use your Google/Apple hardware device to formally tie your real identity with your digital identity for every site that has even the slim possibility of being a small danger to hypothetical children.

I'm sure Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg will gladly join this effort to reduce harm to children as well, I'm sure that's high on their priority list. They may even already have the infrastructure in place to handle that digital ID, what an amazing coincidence.

Everything will be fine!

> CEO of one of the biggest publicly traded company picked option that generated more money for their shareholder

Thank the Gods for journalists, maybe some will even get around to reading what they write.

The issue with RSS on my e-reader is 1. the amount of feeds I'm subscribed to and 2. I'm often using my e-reader when I'm offline.

1. is not an issue on my computer/smartphone as I can scroll through the feeds and go through interesting links quickly, the keybindings help me do that quickly.

2. Can either be fixed by downloading all links when online (not practical in my case), or by picking and choosing which articles I want to read later.

I used to use Wallabag for this, but right now my setup is a self-hosted Readeck [0] instance with the associated KOReader plugin [1].

I really like Readeck because contrary to Wallaback (which I also used because there is a KOReader plugin for it) it captures the content from a page from the client-side through the browser extension [2]. That helps with paywalled articles which don't expose the full feed through RSS typically.

[0] https://codeberg.org/readeck/readeck

[1] https://github.com/iceyear/readeck.koplugin

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/readeck/

Re:Slap ROM Patcher on Monday August 10, 2026 @08:01AM (#49242546)
Absolutely, I should have made it more explicit, thanks for clarifying it. That's what makes this possible and legally compliant.
Re:Slap ROM Patcher on Monday August 10, 2026 @05:19AM (#49241271)
I recently stumbled upon https://www.hackdex.app/ which is a lovely website dedicated to Pokémon ROM hacks.

It's a really vibrant scene, with a lot of different hacks that go all the way to fully-fledged games, but because it's so rich it can be a pain to find what is available and what the latest version of a given ROM hack is.

This website has a neat feature where you upload any base Pokémon ROM file, and it filters all available ROM hacks that are compatible with it via a neat UI. And of course it offers you a one-click download (well, in-local-storage-patch) to the given ROM hack.

Source code: https://github.com/Hackdex-App/hackdex-website

Re:Cyberpunk Video Games on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @08:21AM (#49167718)
> of which there is arguably only 1

IYKYK :)

Re:Cyberpunk Video Games on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @08:20AM (#49167701)
I enjoyed the game for the reasons you mentioned. I'm even able to enjoy the completely scripted and linear railroad shooters just like I'm able to enjoy a Hollywood blockbuster when my mood calls for it.

I have some issue with the initial marketing and the discussion surrounding the game though: choose your own backstory? Absolutely no impact at all, except some pre-recorded wingers in dialogues. RPG with a skill-tree? Absolutely 0 impact, you always have a way to get to a closed room, regardless of the perks you pick. And even if you pick non there is a vent open.

As long as you are aware that you are getting into what is basically a linear story in an open world, instead of another CD Projekt RED game _à la_ Witcher 3 which involved side stories that are as fleshed out as other full-sized games, yes it can be enjoyable.

It still one of the most amazing open-world futuristic games I have personally explored, which is a shame considering the rest of the game.

Re:Cyberpunk Video Games on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @08:09AM (#49167539)
And we can't mention Transistor without shouting out Darren Korb (and Ashley Barrett on the vocals) for its amazing OST:

https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/transistor-origin...

It plays an important role in the story, so it double the reasons to talk about it :)

Re:Cyberpunk Video Games on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @07:45AM (#49167254)
> this game is the best available to allow players to immerse themselves in a cyberpunk setting

Depends what you mean by "immerse". If it means driving through Night City on your bike and enjoying the view, sure.

If it means role-playing as a character and building it your position in the city via meaningful choices with consequences, really not.

Re:Cyberpunk Video Games on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @07:41AM (#49167213)
There is currently (for a week, until 2026-08-10) a Cyberpunk-themed sale going on on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/category/cyberpunk

Re:Ask HN: What are the viable alternatives to DuckDuckGo? on Monday August 03, 2026 @10:32AM (#49156335)
I'll expand on a few reasons why I personally love Kagi:

- Ability to block/lower/raise/pin domains. Some examples of commonly tuned domains are here https://kagi.com/stats?stat=insights

- Shared custom bangs across my sessions. I can add work-specific bangs (e.g. !bug -> Jira search) and have them available across my devices.

- Regexp redirects, to automatically redirect online documentation results of some libraries to the specific out-of-date library we use in a legacy project.

All of these are not as important as knowing there is no incentive for the search engine to enshittify the results to bump some sponsored product in the results, to raise ad-heavy websites to the front to get back some precious ad revenue due to a conflict of interests, and to lower the quality of results in the hopes of making me search a second time so I am served a second batch of sponsored links.

Re:Hacker Public Radio on Thursday July 30, 2026 @01:02PM (#49112717)
https://somafm.com/defcon/

> Want to know more about the hacker dropins [1] we play between songs? Here's a list of the DEF CON speaker drop-ins we play.

[1] https://nerdshow.com/def-con-somafm-clips-with-quotes/

Re:French musician Kavinsky found dead on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @10:38AM (#49098132)
Between letting Kavinsky play at the closing ceremony [0] and Gojira play at the opening ceremony [1], I really can't applaud and thank Thomas Jolly enough for directing the 2024 Olympic ceremonies.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSayp2tArqA

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8Iv5kq93K4

Re:French musician Kavinsky found dead on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @08:38AM (#49096727)
He's rightly credited as having participated in the popularization of the musical and visual "Synthwave" aesthetic:

https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Synthwave

Re:KOReader on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @08:20AM (#49096506)
Not only is it the superior piece of software, the freedom it offers by dissociating the choice of hardware from the choice of software is another example why free software and interoperability is something we should strive for.
The Dolmenwood Campaign Book [0] has been nominated in the both the "Best Setting" and "Product of the Year" category of the 2026 ENNIE award [1]

[0] https://necroticgnome.com/products/dolmenwood-campaign-book

[1] https://ennie-awards.com/2026-nominees/

> another underutilized resource - the public library

As an indication of where things are going on this front, from the same publisher: Sony announced that games are not going to get distributed as physical copies anymore. So no new video games to be borrowed from public libraries, and even if you can borrow older games the new Playstations probably won't even have a disk tray to read them.

Whatever your stance on video games being something that is worth having in a library is, if they could get away with it that's probably their ideal end game for movies as well.

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