News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

wvh

Re:If IPv4 Were Land on Friday October 30, 2026 @06:18AM (#50301952)
I think I had HE and Surfnet tunnels in the very late '90s already. IPv6 sure is taking some time...
Re:I Returned My iPhone Duo on Friday October 30, 2026 @05:53AM (#50301749)
Maybe you're like me and give careful consideration to your purchases for several years, going down the rabbit hole and learn to know about the specs, pros and cons better than any salesperson or even the engineers that made it...
If operating a (even encrypted) wireless mesh net gets you gulag or death penalty, not very far.
Re:Quad9 (DNS Resolver) to Exit France on Friday October 23, 2026 @05:09AM (#50206285)
Respect. I'm not a big fan of politics, but have you ever tried to explain your mission to EU legislators and try to make them understand your viewpoint? There seem to be some quite strong-handed tactics to make content disappear from the internet, and having some of those in charge understand that this is not the way forward might turn out to be very important to all of us in the future.
Re:AI was great until it was not on Thursday October 15, 2026 @05:57AM (#50101442)
I feel there are workplaces and career choices where those people go who want social contact and fulfil personal utopian ambitions, not necessarily having profit in mind, and jobs where you go to make money efficiently. And these days, the divide between those has gotten very large to the point many jobs have no personal contact or room for personal growth, interests or artistic skill anymore. It feels the sane middle ground for sane people who are looking for a sane balance has been or is being hollowed out.

And when that workday is done, everybody goes home by themselves to scroll some more.

Exactly, the younger generations just stay at home, on the internet. So social drinking has mostly disappeared. Those that really want to get totally drunk probably still do though.
I'd say that here in Finland, the decline in alcohol use has more to do with global trends, especially with the younger generations. The problem though is that there has not been any replacement for the social lubrication required here for people to attempt to be social. Purely based on my own experiences, people are less social, go out less, and therefore use less alcohol.

Feels as if the death of religion is followed by the death of bars, restaurants and other places to go out to in the evening, especially after Covid, leaving even fewer places to meet people.

It's true that people up here tend to get very drunk collectively as the evening drags on, which has always bothered me as somebody who doesn't drink alcohol... First everybody's very dry and awkward, then it's fun for an hour or so, and then things start getting over the top and pretty mental. Compared with central Europe, people don't slow down a few glasses in.

But all that is changing as it seems many people just stopped going out at all. So people might drink less alcohol, but I'm not sure that indicates an improvement of mental health or social coherence. The internet is making people lonelier.

I'm a trail runner in Northern Europe. Hoka has been omnipresent there for the last few years, as has (traditionally) Salomon.

Not sure I've seen much Hoka outside of trial running circles here yet.

I'm thinking about sneakers used for actually doing sport though.

Re:Live map of public transport in Belgium on Monday September 07, 2026 @06:00AM (#49596317)
Fascinating... I have a thing with maps. Does the information come from a central server that runs some open-source protocol for public transport, or is this gathered from different endpoints in different formats?
Re:Nebula Sans on Thursday August 27, 2026 @05:59AM (#49462272)
This is interesting, I didn't know about Nebula. Anything to support less intrusive platforms and stop being followed for months by horrible content because you clicked on the wrong video.
My aunt died of this last year. It took all of three months. That has given some food for thought in my family over what the most humane and merciful way to die is; 5 minutes and a heart attack, three months and this, or several years in other forms of cancer and tumours.

Ignoring the pain aspect of the disease, three months seems not to be a bad time to come to grips, say your goodbyes, tie up loose ends but not prolong suffering indefinitely and waste away.

Also, hail to healthcare systems that facilitate legal euthanasia.

Please don't let it become acceptable to be yelled in the face every few minutes of the day by ads, commercials, notifications and other attacks on our perpetually overstimulated brains, most of which we have no control over at all.

To have a healthy relationship with technology requires holding manufacturers and service providers responsible for our mental health.

It's insane to think how much brain power, computing power, electricity and component lifecycle wear have been wasted through the years, yelling random stuff at me; or even worse than random; often stuff that is directly harmful to me.

As somebody who – not entirely willingly – is working mostly remote, the only interruption in the day I have from the outside world is the sudden loud inane noises of commercials.

Re:You have been mislead about lightbulbs on Saturday August 01, 2026 @09:50AM (#49134447)
We need a powerful non-profit / semi-governmental organisation that regularly tests all these things and tells it like it is. Something like Stiftung Warentest in Germany.

People can make up their own mind about going for cheaper electronics or aiming for longevity, but at least we would have a clearer picture of who is contributing to that pile of electric waste and we could make more informed decisions.

Re:Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick on Friday July 31, 2026 @06:50AM (#49121515)
It's not racism at all to be weary of (any) political system, its overreach and the incentives of the people living in it, be it China or America or Russia.

The word racism is vastly overused these days.

This. If any country won't treat you like a guest, avoid travelling to it.

If it's your own, that's harder to do – time to fight and change the system before it gets worse and will swallow you whole.

I've been digitising my music collection since 2000 and still buy CDs or, if available, lossless FLACs. I really wonder how many people still bother "owning" the music they like instead of "renting" it. It might be irrational, but buying it and owning it feels very different than getting it over the radio or some streaming service.
Re:$100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol on Friday July 17, 2026 @07:26AM (#48945982)
This. I generally much rather watch a live video of the band performing the song interspersed with some behind the scene footage than some random badly acted (non-AI) slop video on top of the song.

If you like the music, you probably want to feel some connection to the people making that music.

Re:$100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol on Friday July 17, 2026 @07:08AM (#48945865)
A lot of iconic scenes were at the discretion of the actors in those scenes. One wonders how much personality and complexity you can really get without the skills and idiosyncrasies of everybody in front of and behind the cameras on a real movie set.

My point being there's a lot more complexity in not producing slop than it seems.

Because the software industry doesn't pay anymore for constraints or doing things "the hard way". Everything is high-level language and by tomorrow. The day after it doesn't exist anymore anyway.

I'd wish to get a project that's low-level, multi-year and high quality of engineering and longevity. Make the best you can – something to be proud of.

If the US would truly try to raze Iran, they would do so at immense cost, both financially and reputationally.

I have to wonder what your definition of "winning" is.

> In this situation I just don’t understand what people expect Russia to do??

To stay within its borders. And that counts for the others on this planet, too.

Perhaps darker than the initial mild optimism of the early internet.
Re:Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine on Thursday July 02, 2026 @07:23AM (#48759687)
It would hurt, for a while. Then people would wake up and slowly better solutions would appear. Not unlike post-Trump NATO. But the US would have lost its leader position and a large market.

I think the EU needs a kick under the ass to stop its comfortable inertia.

That's not how democracy works. You have responsibility and accountability. These people can and do real harm.
Re:Software Is Made Between Commits on Friday June 12, 2026 @06:44AM (#48502360)
But do these intermediary commits run? I wouldn't mind making smaller commits, but usually wait until the changes result in a bunch of code that compiles and does what it should. It sounds as if you do checkpoints that don't necessarily result in working code or pass tests. Not that that is wrong, but it is a very different philosophy. I usually expect what I check out to compile and sort of work. I can't really pick up somebody else's train of thought midway.
PGP had the right idea, but the system is too hard for the average person.

With "system" I refer to building a web (or multiple!) of trust, based on parameters that you decide upon.

It is a slippery slope. I'm just hoping that a more surgical drone strike against a weapons factory will create less victims than the blunt force of a ballistic missile aimed "in the general direction of".

In a way, technology could enable one party to "outwit" their opponent by taking away the means to wage war without causing random loss of life.

The moral question is if you've unknowingly contributed to war, death and destruction, or if you are actually helping drones to accurately find real targets – which hopefully are not innocent civilians but legitimate military targets.
I guess one can only optimise the system for the majority following the beaten path. Some folks just have to find a way both through the world and through their own head.

Older »