Hacker News Reader

nonameslefton Cuba is skipping its November 1, 2026 clock change and staying on DST until 2027

4h 40m in midwinter, 20h 20m in midsummer :D (plus nearly permanent twilight) - i suppose that might work if i was a bear that hibernates (and i believe the bears are right about this).

nonameslefton Ask HN: What are your career plans in the age of AI?

Find something outside of tech field eventually (currently employed but getting increasingly tired of staring at various sorts of slop, and where the field is headed), if nothing at all pans out, find a rock cut i can drive into.

Let computers stay a hobby, where it started, on my own terms.

(mid 40s, no family, 20+ years exp, System Admin + coding, including some embedded stuff back in the day + some performance work, but mostly admin -> now Security Engineer)

nonameslefton Association between handgrip strength and incident depression

And vice versa, struggled with years and years of depression in the past, and teetering on the edge of it on and off since, whilst having good grip strength.

nonameslefton What driving across Europe costs in tolls, vignettes, bridges and fuel

I think it is insane, perhaps i did not specify that explicitly in the first comment.

nonameslefton What driving across Europe costs in tolls, vignettes, bridges and fuel

Some roads? Just one ferry has it during summer.

Medical expenses? Public healthcare, but there are per-visit costs in the 20€ range, somewhat more for hospital stays, maximum per year 815€, after that they become free.

People often have employer-provided private healthcare on top of that though, including me.

For prescription medicines there is a 636€ limit per year (after 70€ per year the cost of the medication starts being reimbursable even before that), after that any medication costs 2.5€ per purchase.

nonameslefton What driving across Europe costs in tolls, vignettes, bridges and fuel

To me having tolls on roads or bridges sounds completely insane (we don't have them here, other than one ferry during summer), taxes are already supposed to pay for those (and if they started doing that here, you can be 100% certain that no tax would be lowered in compensation).

nonameslefton Two and a half years without a gallbladder

Was worried it would be worse, all i get from it is that stuff with a lot of fats might cause more frequent visits to the bathroom (something one might not want to eat anyway all that often), before i could not eat a slice of pizza without an attack.

YMMV, people are individuals.

nonameslefton Two and a half years without a gallbladder

~18 hour gallbladder attack where i could not keep any liquids in made me consider bashing my head into the wall next to my bed until i pass out.

(No longer have a gallbladder, thankfully.)

nonameslefton Show HN: Avoid smooth spinners, use low-FPS spinners

I truly wish i could get everything to use the ticking clock one at 1Hz (or maybe 0.5) for spinners, animation in user interfaces causes me anguish in general, so i have to go around filtering them on webapps.

nonameslefton google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

Not just global south, happened all the time to me after first search page of the day until i stopped using them, northern eu.

nonameslefton Another way to leak traffic on Android has been discovered

As a quick kludge use an USB-C wlan network adapter that lacks the functionality for this type of connection (albeit that won't help you with a cellular connection)?

nonameslefton Deus Ex creator Warren Spector is retiring from game development

Also the speedruns for that game contain absolutely hilarious mechanics, like throwing the gas grenade to get the door opened faster at UNATCO HQ.

nonameslefton TinySol, a tiny solitaire game for DOS

Works for me in DOSBox-X atleast.

nonameslefton TinySol, a tiny solitaire game for DOS

Nice, though being a peasant at solitaire i wish it had an option to deal 1 card at a time.

nonameslefton Windows died inside Microsoft, a 25-year veteran on how Azure took over

wish.com / temu.com version of a cloud service.

nonameslefton Who does Anubis actually stop?

Anubis also forces cookies and javascript, which deters me from many of the sites that use it that require neither.

nonameslefton Apricot Computers: An underrated British brand

Seems like it fixed itself.

nonameslefton Apricot Computers: An underrated British brand

Erm, that page just gives me activitystream json?

nonameslefton European Commission's Metsola Overrides MEPs to Force Through Chat Control

Henna Virkkunen

nonameslefton TinyWind: A pixel pirate sailing game with real wind physics (380k+ kms sailed)

https://tinywind.io/wiki/briefing

Shift fires.

nonameslefton Why does Amazon have no Western rivals?

It is in general more awful, i will give you that, but atleast the search there is more likely to give something relevant than amazons.

nonameslefton Why does Amazon have no Western rivals?

Never used walmart, different continent, but i would be surprised if there is a large webshop with a worse interface than amazons.

nonameslefton Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone

Nordic, works just fine, i only have an HMD 'Nokia' non-smartphone (i detest capacitive touchscreens, and my previous ungoogled qwerty android phone broke, waiting for my next one to arrive in 2026-12 or thereabouts).

No QR-code-only restaurants that i have seen, and i would walk out without a word if that happened (even if i had a device that can do that). Bank does 2FAs second part with an SMS, first part is username, password and an otp code from a paper. Bank login is also a very common way of logging into governmental systems, but those only use the username, password and otp code, skipping the SMS, alternatively i could use an id card with a reader, state provides even Linux software for that.

The housing companys winter car engine heating sockets operate with an app, or alternatively just opening the lid and setting the timer yourself.

Additional data point: my dad, when he was still alive (-2025), had a smartphone but wouldn't use apps beyond facebook, did his banking by mailing in signed bills or at the bank in person, without an appointment.

nonameslefton Copy Fail 2: Electric Boogaloo

sysctl kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1 keeps on giving.

nonameslefton Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA

I have blocked it for years with ublock origin, if a site doesn't work, ctrl-w. Nowadays i cannot even use google search because of this, any search will trigger a captcha, hilarious (atleast on chromium-based browsers, firefox lets me get a page or two).

nonameslefton Ask HN: How many tabs do you have open in the browser(s) and why?

1209 across 8 windows, been like this since the year 2000 or thereabouts (netscape with a tabbed window manager back then, then opera), most of them are hibernated. Why? Bookmarks just dont seem to work for me, i do have some thousands of those for stuff that is not related to anything thats going on right now.

nonameslefton What Will You Do When AI runs Out of Money and Disappear?

AGI = Ads Generate Income

nonameslefton Irrational betting craze signals we're on the cusp of a crash

Not much better as that just hands out recaptchas.

nonameslefton Why IRC is better than Real Life (2000)

Also seemed to work over ICMP ping, with "+++ATH0M0DT112", they did not return to the channel.

I think it was some buggy Rockwell modem chips that did not require the delay between +++ and switching to command mode, but it has been some decades.

nonameslefton Jolla Phone Pre-Order

No keyboard, enormous bulbous camera. (Was just dreaming after unihertz said it doesn't deliver to my EU country (after taking my money), guess i'll stick to my featurephone for now).