zenethian's comments

On: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

[zenethian]

As a Minnesotan I would gladly trade Alberta for Minnesota and become Canadian.

[cwillu → zenethian]

While I appreciate the sentiment, that would be condemning a great many Albertans who want nothing to do with separation to a fate I would rather not see a fellow Canadian faced with.

[bluefirebrand → cwillu]

As long as Minnesota would have me I'd happily move there instead of staying in Alberta if this were to happen

[toephu2 → zenethian]

Along with the local Canadian salary it entails?

[zht → toephu2]

Are incomes in Alberta lower than Minnesota?

[cucumber3732842 → zenethian]

I have no doubt Wisconsin would second the motion.

[SecretDreams → zenethian]

I think most of Canada (and probably America) would be okay with trading all the great lakes touching American states + the US west coast for Alberta.

[cwillu → SecretDreams]

Albertans are Canadians, and no, we're not going to condemn them to becoming americans or face dislocation over the actions of some loud idiots.

[janderson215 → SecretDreams]

That would be very interesting. I would love to see how that would play out (particularly with California and DC), but it would kill the political balance in both countries. I think having to consider opposing viewpoints is probably paramount to how we have both flourished historically.

On: LoRA and Weight Decay (2023)

[zenethian]

Every time I see an article about LoRA on here I think it’s about the radio technology LoRa that powers LoRaWAN and just for a moment I’m very excited.

[lgcmo → zenethian]

You and me both

On: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

[zenethian]

You forgot the part where they stole literally everyone’s copyrighted works and trained on it and have not been sanctioned at all for it.

[joquarky → zenethian]

Did they not make backups?

Perhaps we should force companies to return each and every byte of stolen data to their owners.

On: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

[zenethian]

I read the comment as “use it to mitigate against OpenAI bots scraping the web” and not to mitigate Cloudflare.

[0x3f → zenethian]

Well it's the same answer isn't it... use Cloudflare. And hope OpenAI doesn't have a backroom scraping deal with them, which they might.

On: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

[zenethian]

You got some sources or did you just make that up?

Because to hell with UX when it comes to security. Knowing the exact length of a password absolutely makes it significantly less secure, and knowing the timing of the keystrokes doubly so.

[9dev → zenethian]

Yet somehow, none of the other high security tools I have ever interacted with seem to do this for some reason. No auditor flags it. No security standard recommends hiding it.

But SUDO is the one bastion where it is absolutely essential to not offer hiding keystrokes as an obscure config option, but enable for everyone and their mother?

[creatonez → 9dev]

And once you start adding these accessibility problems, people will respond by using weaker passwords.

[baq → zenethian]

> Because to hell with UX when it comes to security.

I don’t think you have any idea how wrong you are.

[plorkyeran → zenethian]

Bad security UX that results in users bypassing security mechanisms entirely is probably the single biggest source of real-world security problems.

On: Oil and gas prices jump after Iran and Israel attack gasfields

[zenethian]

Time to get out our “I did that” stickers, right?

[snypher → zenethian]

I think about this every time I get gas. What was the claimed link between Biden and gas prices anyway? I feel like I missed something.

[kccoder → snypher]

Nothing more than him being president when gas prices were high.

On: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?

[zenethian]

I still have my node address memorized. The very late 1980s and mid 90s were the very best era for the vibe of hobbyist computing. Amazing ANSI art and text driven menus still fill my heart with joy.

I still think that some of those systems are easier to use than what we have now.

I miss the quality of EchoMail conversations with friends around the world. I even ended up moderating a few echoes myself after mods had moved on.

Good times.

On: New evidence that Cantor plagiarized Dedekind?

[zenethian]

I am not a mathematician; I barely knew who Cantor was and had never heard of Dedekind. I would have likely not read the article without the title being so sensational. Your assumption sits upon the tip of your nose.

On: Show HN: Lyra Kids – I built an AI bedtime storyteller for my daughters

[zenethian]

I wholeheartedly agree. I pity any kid whose parents use this product. The AI use is irrelevant; this is just shameful.

On: SwiftForth IDE for Windows, Linux, macOS

[zenethian]

Especially for $400