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basilikum

2,329 karma · joined July 30, 2025

https://basilikum.monster
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basilikum··on Ledger confirms spy chip implant behind wallet crypto thefts
It's "not your keys, not your coins". And if someone steals your keys they also steal your coins.
basilikum··on Thunderbird for iOS
If you ask me for a contact email I will tell you something like jaksmit5@basilikum.monster. Editing the FROM field allows me to write an email to you.

If you ever start sending me spam I can just block that address. Especially helpful with companies.

You can also use it for sorting emails.

It's honestly a basic feature of an email client. Even if you don't have your own domain stuff like the plus sign for aliases exists with many providers (or at least with gmail).

basilikum··on Thunderbird for iOS
The Thunderbird from field is free text. You get a warning about your server having to support it though.
basilikum··on The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s
Do you have any sources that this is actually the case in the industry in any decision making?
basilikum··on Ask HN: Are signed URL previews feasible?
The key exchange for the symmetric session key is authenticated with the private key.
basilikum··on IsEven API
Hit any of the subscribe buttons
basilikum··on Fallacy of Hating the Rich
If you have 1 billion dollars and you choose to waste it in ways that do not contribute to society some people are going to dislike or even hate you for that.

1 billion dollars is enough to make a huge and lasting difference to the lifes of lots of people and it is enough to even build sustainable systems that make this aid sustainable and moderately efficient – at least in countries that are not extremely politically unstable and in or constantly at the verge of war. There are many such countries with significant poverty.

Extreme income inequality is an economic problem in itself. Combating it has positive second order effects because it creates demand in the economy. When everyone is extremely poor there is no one to sell to.

Money alone cannot solve all the problems in the world. There are many systemic political issues that hinder economic development in parts of the world.

No billionaire has enough money to fix all the problems in the world.

These two things do not make the ability of ultra rich people to meaningfully and sustainably improve the life on many people any less true or relevant. If you choose to spend a billion dollar on your mansion rather than charity people are gonna have a problem with it and there is absolutely nothing fallacious about that. Claiming this to be a fallacy because the rich cannot fix the whole world however ironically is a fallacy in itself.

There is no excuse for wasting a billion dollars like that. It's evil. No one should make any excuses for that.

basilikum··on Thunderbird for iOS
But can it do IRC?
basilikum··on IsEven API
You can use "| jq '.iseven'" as an adblocker.

Wrap the whole thing in a function and you can instantly test if a number is even from the terminal. Although I guess people use LLMs for that nowadays.

basilikum··on IRCv3
I'm playing around with IRCv3 currently, specifically persistent channel history (no bouncer).

I've set up an ergo^1 server for experimenting. Channel history is currently in draft stage; and maybe it will be forever.

If any of you want to drop by for some reason and want to try it out: #hn on exp3.irc.basilikum.monster:6697

See here for a list of IRCv3 capable clients (draft/chathistory for history support): https://ircv3.net/software/clients

[1] https://ergo.chat/

basilikum··on Why the ways of interactions, social and devices, haven't changed yet
Sounds like you don't want to actually talk to people.
basilikum··on Tell HN: YouTube is punishing logged-out users
Has been like that for a while. I don't think it's as much about forcing log in and more about monopolizing access to YouTube videos for AI training.
basilikum··on Ask HN: Any solution for bookmarks on various services?
Do you have any idea what kind of interface you want for this or what functionality and ways of usage it should fulfill?

I'm having a hard time understanding what you're looking for. Browser bookmarks seem to fulfill the technical requirements, but you seem to want something different. Maybe a sort of unified feed?

basilikum··on 15-year search for a band that charted once and vanished
Consider uploading it to archive.org.
basilikum··on Toronto-Based VPN Provider Plans to Quit Canada over Lawful-Access Bill
aka your local FBI agent. See ANOM or any of the other honey pots that glowed from kilometers away.

And even if they are not backdoored at first, once the state knocks on the developers door with the great offer that their kid will grow up with a father who is not in jail people's principles might change quickly.

basilikum··on Self-Hosting on the Dark Web
No
basilikum··on Self-Hosting on the Dark Web
You probably want to add the Onion-Location header to the clearnet site so Tor Browser can automatically inform the visitor about it: https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/advanced/oni...
basilikum··on Meta Blocks President Lula's Facebook Page, Campaign Ads 2 Weeks from Election
You don't need to censor access to the platform itself. Just declare the group for what it is: a criminal cartel. Then just make it illegal to do business with criminal organizations: no Brazilian ads on Facebook anymore.
basilikum··on PipePipe: NewPipe hard fork implementing SponsorBlock
How do you ensure people upload the original video and do not tamper with it?
basilikum··on Two-tier encryption in the UK
Some laws that are fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
basilikum··on Two-tier encryption in the UK
> Yes, I know, defaults.

You gave the answer yourself. If the person you are writing with has E2EE enabled for message backups then just exclude that chat from backups on your end or enable E2EE for that chat. That means if you take the restore route without having access to the keys that conversation will not be restored.

You could even let people overwrite that setting. Preventing screenshots or copying has nothing to with this. Apple is claiming that message are end to end encrypted when in reality their defaults are set so that they are not. That is a lie and al they would need to do to change that is to change those defaults.

basilikum··on Ask HN: Dead Internet
It shows comments and submissions that have been removed by either the system, mod action or flagging through the community. The former two get marked as simply [dead] and the latter as [dead] [flagged].
basilikum··on Don't Use AI to Write
Proofreading yes, automatic "corrections" no
basilikum··on Don't Be Nice
Why is your bar that they must be hurtful to everyone? What do you suggest to do when they direct the same behavior only a certain group in the space? You say that it does not have to be political and I agree, but what if it is? What if they see that group as a legitimate target for political reasons?
basilikum··on AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible
As I explained in another comment the false negative rate is irrelevant in this context.
basilikum··on AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible
The false negative rate would be interesting but is irrelevant in this context. I was replying to a comment claiming that most people take issue with the ethics of GenAI rather than the quality and that people have a high false positive rate. I raise myself and my experience with people I know as a counter example.

There might be AI generated things in my every day life that I do not recognize as AI, but that's not what's being discussed.

basilikum··on AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible
I trust Pangram's stats to be a good baseline.
basilikum··on AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible
I can say that my false positive rate is very low which is enough in this context.
basilikum··on AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible
I don't think this is true. There are people who claim everything is AI – maybe even to bolster their ego.

But for a lot of things I can with high probability discern between AI and human in every day appearance and I know many other people can as well. One of the things I look for is specifically certain types of extreme... not just flaws... just overall atrocity. When I read posts submitted to HN I often realize that something is bad writing before I can specify this to AI text. Pangram almost always agrees with me. Here is a recent example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49715657

I don't doubt that there are certain scoped tasks that certain models are quite good at. But in my every day life I constantly encounter AI slop that is so bad that I take it as a personal insult that someone thought it would be okay to subject me to it; to presume that I am so tasteless and numb and have no quality standard whatsoever.

I mean just look at the example posters at the beginning of the article. "The problem with these is not so much that they’re bad." Yes, yes it is. They are horrible. I cannot understand how anyone can describe them as anything but that.

basilikum··on How to Write with an LLM
You are moving the goalpost. OC is not talking about thoughts having to be unique. You can very much read someone else's thoughts, examine them critically and come to the conclusion of agreeing with them. You might then write a comment like OC putting these thoughts into your own words – maybe abridging them, placing different emphasize according to what you find most important or even adding new ideas – and quote or paraphrase something you found very fitting.

That is completely different from generating words that are not an expression of your thoughts or at the very best take some concise thoughts from the prompt and stretch them into a lengthy word soup.

Of course there are people who just parrot other people's thoughts without understanding them. That's closer to using an LLM. But you can often see how well someone understands something and how much reasoning of their own they put into it through their writing. And for the writer writing is a very good way to reflect on their own thoughts and to get them into order. Proper writing is thinking.

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