coldpie

Yeah, it sucks. It could've been a cool technology but they're so locked in to "my way or nothing" and won't consider other usecases or security trade-offs other than the ones they decided on. It's just a complete non-starter with that attitude.

Your understanding is correct and I agree with you. The Passkey spec authors, however, think services should be allowed to ban your client for behaving this way:

[When UV is required, KeePassXC must request user verification or not handle the request]

This implementation is not spec compliant and has the potential to be blocked by relying parties.

https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10406

Proton Pass is on the official Passkey client naughty list[1]. I hope the services you log in to don't choose to ban it because of those big, scary X's.

[1] https://passkeys.dev/docs/reference/known-issues/

Passkeys are a vector for locking your logins to Big Tech ecosystems. They support device attestation, which means the service you are logging in to can require you to only use certain Passkey clients such as those provided by Google, Apple or Microsoft. The Passkey spec authors also maintain a list of "naughty clients"[1], which are clients that allow the user to manage their own data how they want. Services could choose to block those clients for "security reasons," justifying the decision to force you to use one of the Big Tech providers.

Until device attestation is removed or strongly curtailed in the spec, I suggest you do not create any Passkeys. Which sucks, because it's otherwise a pretty cool tech.

[1] https://passkeys.dev/docs/reference/known-issues/

More sources here: https://www.smokingonabike.com/2025/01/04/passkey-marketing-...

I have. Like I said, the results were the same or worse than DDG and Google. It was not noticeably better in any way, certainly not something I want to pay $50 for.

I've asked a number of times on HN threads for specific examples of searches that Kagi performs better on than DDG or Google, and never gotten a solid reply. It seems what people like about Kagi is the customization and surrounding tooling, but the actual search quality is about the same or possibly worse. That's cool, but I don't find it worth the cash personally.

I finally did this: https://github.com/ColdPie1/enough-ai-on-hn

I thought about writing a Firefox extension that would just auto-click the Hide button for any story containing a keyword from a configurable list. Haven't gotten around to it.

Also looking to leave software, lots of options in front of me. Are you still in training, or are you making a living from it now?

I wonder too. About a year ago I dropped a ~1970s Citizen mechanical watch[1] of mine and it shattered into a few pieces. I took it to a small-device repair place that advertised they can fix watches. The guy there said it was out of his abilities, but his business could send it out to some guy in California to repair. I took him up on that and a few weeks later it came back in one piece. So I guess someone out there is making a business of it. Cost me like $200 which is more than I paid for the watch, hahah.

[1] This model! https://www.fratellowatches.com/citizen-homer-second-setting...

I'm a security people. I can say with confidence that a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of these security issues are deliberate. Almost all of them are just dumb mistakes because making good software is really hard and really, really expensive and there is no market incentive to make good software. You don't need to get hired at the safe factory to build an elaborate back door into the production line if safes are actually just cardboard boxes, you know?

It's possible the backdoor is deliberate, I have no idea in this particular case, but the more likely situation, absent more information, is that someone who is earning a middling wage just added the "feature" and didn't think about the security implications because no one cares about computer security.

Yeah I suspect ebooks are even more dire as they have neither the curation of a publisher putting money into physical production; or the curation of a librarian with limited shelf space.

Never regretted reading them

Interesting! I'm surprised to hear you've had that experience. I pick out books at the library largely by the cover & back blurb, not by whether they're popular or well reviewed or whatever. And to be honest, I've picked out a lot of crap this way, where I turn it back in after just a chapter or two. I suspect that frequency of being checked out & popularity/well-reviewed-ness are correlated. So I also suspect (admittedly without evidence) that my algorithm of picking somewhat randomly means I pick out books that are not popular with some frequency, and I've definitely regretted many of my choices. So it's surprising to me that you haven't had any that were terrible.

You get VC to give your company $X00 M to build out AI capabilities, take a $X M salary for yourself, and retire. Doesn't matter what happens past that.

It has definitely grown up with its users, yes. Most of us are in our 30s-50s now, lol.

I guess the WWW itself is what you are asking for. You simply can't scale a single community to include all of humanity. You need some way to filter out abusers, and people will vary widely in where they want to place the line of what counts as acceptable behavior. Given that, you need some way to exclude people from spaces they aren't welcome in, and different discussion mediums in order to encourage or discourage types of behavior. This leads to different communities with different expectations of behavior, and that's exactly what we have on the WWW.

Usenet worked because it was small, a very small percentage of the planet used Usenet.

I think it's pretty clear from the conversation context?

It is the website owner's decision to allow people on drugs screaming obscenities on their platform. They are allowed to kick those people out, and you're allowed to leave if you don't like the people in that community. Good moderation is a requirement for healthy communities.

Years ago, HN used to actually display the score on each comment, like Reddit does. I'm glad they removed it.

The SA forums are still there, happily chugging along. It's been my main hangout for 20 years.

They have much in common with slot machines, yes. It's no accident, many of the lessons from exploitative mobile games are being reused in LLM UIs. Rename "tokens" to "gems" and the situation looks very familiar.

I don't think it's that hard to reconcile. The tools are being massively oversold and we are in a bubble. I think things will settle down to a reasonable middle ground in ~2 years as the checks being written right now start coming due and we are forced to figure out what they actually are and aren't good at. Infinite money distorts markets, it's currently not a good time to be judging these things for the long term perspective.

You know, someone should invent an infinite sequence of ordinal symbols which we could use to place things in a sequence. It could start with a simple vertical line, something like "1". Maybe someone more clever than me can come up with the next symbol.

FWIW I just rent a truck from the home center when I need to do that two or three times a year. Small hassle but a lot easier than owning a whole vehicle.

Well I mean yeah. That's exactly my point, you don't have to do that with the 300mi range. I think 300mi is the "sweet spot" where you're probably going to stop anyway to take a break or whatever, or your trip will be done already, so charging isn't really an issue. 200mi feels on the short side to me, and I think my Brainerd trips are a good example of the difference that 100mi difference makes.

I have often felt that software should have a "Credits screen", like movies and video games do. For developers, QA staff, support staff, etc. I opened a bug to create one for our end-user facing software at my last job, but we never actually did it.

But you're going to stop somewhere along that path already, right?

Honestly, no, I didn't. It's only 2 hours. Having to stop for a 30+ minute charge in each direction would add a significant amount of time to the trip.

I don't really understand why you're being so aggressive about this. We are almost entirely agreeing. 300mi is a selling point for buyers because it means an easier time doing 100+ mile road trips, which are not uncommon in the US. More range is a tick in the "pro" column when comparison shopping, and it could convince someone to buy a car other than this one. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah all of us Americans drive 200mi+ each way nine days a week 'cause the average house is on a 2,000 acre ranch.

I never claimed that.

People often really overestimate their driving habits.

I agree, and like I said I think 200mi is acceptable. But people do like driving in the US. I used to go up to Brainerd from the Twin Cities regularly; that's 135 miles each way. This is not uncommon, lots of people here like to do short road trips up north on holiday weekends. Sometimes I even did both directions in a single day. My 300mi Ioniq 5 could probably do that whole trip on a single charge, maybe with a short stop to bump it up, which will be fast thanks to the 800V architecture. But the 200mi range would take at least one full charging stop, possibly two, which will also be slower thanks to the slower architecture.

Like I keep saying, I don't think 200mi is a deal killer, but it's also definitely a con for the US market. But it keeps the price low, which is definitely the focus here and means it slots nicely into the 2nd family car budget. Nothing's perfect; I still think it's a cool product and will be keeping my eye on it.

You're kinda right.

Our car (2025 Ioniq 5) gets about 3-4 miles of range per hour on a 120V outlet. If you're home for 10 hours overnight, that's at least 30 miles of range each day. Some random article I found[1] suggests the average commute is about 42 miles. So if you include some extra time on weekends, a 120V outlet easily matches the average commute distance. If you drive less than that, or are home more often due to WFH or whatever, then a 120V outlet is definitely enough.

In reality, probably people drive significantly more than that, eg for shopping and seeing friends and shuttling kids around and whatever. So in the end I do agree with you, lots of people will want to get a 240 line to their garage. But an existing 120V line is probably genuinely enough for a whole lot of people, too. It is for my wife & me.

[1] https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/average-commute-distance-us...

100% agreed, yup :)