Svip (u/Svip) - Readit News

Svip commented on Show HN: HN Wrapped 2025 - an LLM reviews your year on HN hn-wrapped.kadoa.com?year... · Posted by u/hubraumhugo

hubraumhugo · 9 hours ago

Appreciate the feedback, will try to iterate it to greatness further. It's still a bit hit or miss, but I've made a few improvements:

- improved prompts with your feedback

- added post/comment shuffling to remove recency bias

- tried to fix the speech attribution errors in the xkcd

Svip · 8 hours ago

Perhaps it should also avoid putting too much emphasis on several comments to the same story: there was a story about VAT changes in Denmark, where I participated with several comments; but the generator decided that I apparently had a high focus vat, when I just wanted to provide some clarifying context to that story. I wonder how comments are weighed, is it individually or per story?

Specifically this roast:

> You have commented about the specific nuances of Danish VAT and accounting system hardcoding at least four times, proving you are the only person on Earth who finds tax infrastructure more exciting than the books being taxed.

Yeah, but I did it on the same story (i.e. context).

Though the other details it picked up, I cannot really argue with: the VAT bit just stood out to me.

Svip commented on Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates jack.bio/blog/licenseplat... · Posted by u/lafond

alexfoo · 3 days ago

> I'm imagining someone driving in England and the police having no way to input those letters into their system.

I would assume the UK has worked out a way of dealing with this having had plenty of years of foreign plates being driven around the country.

Any Danish license plate driven in the UK will almost certainly have to a be an EU style plate with the blue band on the left with the "DK" country code. If someone needs to send a fine to the registered owner of this plate I'd guess they'd be handing over the camera footage/images to a contact in the relevant country and letting them confirm what the exact plate is.

(There may be some weird exemptions for old classic/vintage cars that can continue to be driven on their original number plates, in which case you really don't know who to contact.)

The UK is very strict on license plates. I don't think there's any valid reason for driving a car without some form of a license plate on display (cars being driven on trade plates placed in the front/rear windscreens are the closest thing I can think of). I'd expect the UK Police to pull over any car that didn't have plates on it if they spotted it. It's certainly considered very suspicious in the UK if a car is missing either of its plates.

There are plenty of examples of normal ANPR cameras failing to capture plates properly. Or even sillier examples like this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-58959930

This story got referenced by the associated Government body here: https://videosurveillance.blog.gov.uk/2021/10/27/the-camera-...

Svip · 3 days ago

My understanding is that most countries just don't bother; I once drove around North America on Danish plates; since European plates are much wider than North American style plates, none of their cameras could scan my plates; so camera-only toll roads were essentially free for me. I consider that it happens so rarely anyway, that they don't bother.

Similarly, I've been flashed for speeding in France, which does have cameras adjusted to my plates' size, but they also didn't bother sending a ticket. Germany - on the other hand - will send you a ticket, but since they allow Ö, Ü, etc. on their plates, their system can probably handle Æ, Ø and Å as well.

Edit: Obviously, they don't bother to a degree; severe infractions will obviously make local law enforcement do something, but it's a rather manual process. Most countries are signatures to a treaty, that recognises other countries' plates.

Svip commented on Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates jack.bio/blog/licenseplat... · Posted by u/lafond

Svip · 3 days ago

In Denmark, you can buy a vanity plate (ønskenummerplade) for 8'000 DKK (needs renewal every 8 years), and it can be between 2 and 7 characters long; but the best part is that they permit all Danish letters, including Æ, Ø and Å. One could likely write a script quickly to check these platforms for short combinations, such as ØÅ, which appears to be available.

Svip commented on The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy aliveness.kunnas.com/arti... · Posted by u/ekns

Svip · 21 days ago

Amusing the title is the "Copenhagen Trap" (I know it's a reference to the Copenhagen Interpretation), since Denmark actually have laws about duty to help.

The Danish penal code § 253[1] punishes people with up to 2 years in prison, those who - without high risk to themselves or others - intentionally do not help someone after ability, who is clearly life threatened.

Additionally, the Danish rules of the road § 9[2] have rules for acting in the event of an accident; specifically, that they have a duty to help.

[1] https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2025/1294#P253 [2] https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2024/1312#P9

Svip commented on IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act prestonbyrne.com/2025/11/... · Posted by u/pinkahd

jmward01 · a month ago

Let's start with a bang. Passports and strictly enforced borders are dumb and this is a clear example of exactly why. Increasingly the digital world -is- the world and arbitrary geographical boundaries are causing nothing but problems. We are taking the ideas of physical borders and passports and, badly, applying that broken idea to a virtual space with typical results. It blows me away that the real problem with strictly enforced borders, virtual or physical, is that they almost always are used to enforce political ideology and rarely do they actually afford protection in any other way. Strict boarders should be looked at highly skeptically and always viewed as a temporary solution that should be solved diplomatically and/or socially. We don't need things like this going from city to city, county to county, state to state but wherever we see an entity that puts a strict boarder in place, virtual or physical, we suddenly see conflict and political games. There are real issues to consider here but the UK is definitely wrong, and creating more long term problems, with this 'solution'.

Svip · a month ago

With the invention of steam ships, railways, aeroplanes and the automobile; travel became almost trivial. In conjunction with those inventions, states also became a lot more involved in people's lives; culminating in large welfare states. 3-4 centuries ago, a state did not care much about who lived in in their territory; these days, they are likely to provide them benefits, and have certain obligations according to international treaties about how to treat people within their own borders. These state operations, along with obligations, makes states care a great deal about who enters or leave their territory.

Svip commented on Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15 apnews.com/article/denmar... · Posted by u/c420

tokai · a month ago

>considering that it considered fake SMS train tickets to be document fraud, even though the law text never explicitly mentions text messages

That has nothing to do with the medium of the ticket and is all about knowingly presenting a fake ticket. The ticket is a document proving your payment for travel. They could be lumps of dirt and it would still be document fraud to present a fake hand of dirt.

Svip · a month ago

Except the Supreme Court deemed the case to be of a principal nature, and granted relieve (i.e. no cost to either party), since it was disputed whether a fake SMS train ticket counted as document fraud.

Svip commented on Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15 apnews.com/article/denmar... · Posted by u/c420

Telaneo · a month ago

It'll be interesting to see what they can cook up at home. Chat Control was pushed in large part by Denmark, and Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard is on record saying some pretty disturbing things regarding the right to privacy online.[1] Now for this, they don't need the entire EU to go along, and any laws already on the books might prove ineffective to protect against means that end up achieving similar goals to Chat Control.

Denmark's constitution does have a privacy paragraph, but it explicitly mentions telephone and telegraph, as well as letters.[2] Turns out online messaging doesn't count. It'd be a funny one to get to whatever court, because hopefully someone there will have a brain and use it, but it wouldn't be the first time someone didn't.

[1] https://boingboing.net/2025/09/15/danish-justice-minister-we...

[2] https://www.grundloven.dk/

Svip · a month ago

Whether internet is covered by § 72 seems undetermined; as far as I can tell the Supreme Court hasn't made a decision on it; but considering that it considered fake SMS train tickets to be document fraud, even though the law text never explicitly mentions text messages: it seems clear that internet communication ought to be covered, if challenged.

Regardless, this wouldn't run afoul of this. This is similar to restricting who can buy alcohol, based purely on age; the identification process is just digital. MitID - the Danish digital identification infrastructure - allows an service to request specific details about another purpose; such as their age or just a boolean value whether they are old enough. Essentially: the service can ask "is this user 18 or older?" and the ID service can respond yes or no, without providing any other PII.

That's the theory at least; nothing about snooping private communication, but rather forcing the "bouncer" to actually check IDs.

Svip commented on KDE is now my favorite desktop kokada.dev/blog/kde-is-no... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

blenderob · 3 months ago

XFCE or LXDE anyone? Honest question - If you use XFCE or LXDE or similar minimalistic DEs, are you happy with the choice? or do you feel somethings are missing that are available in KDE, MATE and the likes?

Svip · 3 months ago

I've been using XFCE for the better part of two decades now (I still run into people upset about the changes XFCE made in 2003, i.e. 4.0), and I am perfectly satisfied. Though as the saying goes: what I don't know I don't know; so I may be missing out on a better experience, but at least I am content enough that I don't bother seeking it out.

Though, my monitors are also from 2010, so a lot of the visual problems people have with XFCE, I don't.