Hacker News Reader

BugWatchon Freenode ops take control of 700 channels

There are at least 10 different clients, and I'm only referring to those that are listed on the Matrix website.

BugWatchon Facebook will ignore data collection ban issued in Germany over WhatApp rules

In this case, plenty of us won't be shedding any tears.

Oh hai! This is your daily site's cookie/privacy pop-up analysis:

(-) site does "legitimate interest" toggle shenanigans which are defaulted to ON and there is no disable/disagree to all for them.

(+) the "non-legitimate" interests have a disagree to all.

These are things I will not stand for, ergo I care not to read the website, since it is disrespecting my time and expects me to show each and every "vendor" to checked whether it has "legitimate interest" toggle, and to manually turn it off. No. I'm sick of it. To hell with your website.

Signed,

-- frustrated now-not-user/reader

BugWatchon Fascinating beasts (and where to find them)

I was "afflicted" in a similar manner.

BugWatchon Searching the web for under $1000/month

bit rot, dies (my HN client offers no edit option)

BugWatchon Searching the web for under $1000/month

Well, there are also data integrity issues to take into account... in the simplest terms, you'd actually need 3x the available storage to "guarantee" that there won't be any bit nor data loss if a single drive (our of three) - does... Add a potential (mandatory?) off-site backup, means of restoring it, and... Not even getting into the bandwidth cost can of worms.

Again, this is in very simple (and low-scale) terms.

BugWatchon I found my Grandpa’s notes 20 years after he died (2020)

Trust me on this: do a simple phone capture (photos) as immediately as possible. We always delay things, and then they get lost irrevocably - in fire, flood, during the move, accidentally destroyed. Do plan doing the "capture proper", but do this simple one ASAP - it could take 15-30-60 minutes, but at least you'd have some sort of a backup.

Unfortunately, I am speaking from experience: just recently, I discovered that many years of my own notes were quite water damaged by a leaky pipe I wasn't even aware was there... and the slowly dripping water found its way to it through and over a random maze of random things worthy of the Rube Goldberg himself.

BugWatchon New proof reveals that graphs with no pentagons are fundamentally different

Additionally, hexagons are the bestagons.

BugWatchon CEOs are hugely expensive – why not automate them?

I nominate Firefox Corporation and their CEOs as a proving grounds and guinea pigs, respectively.

BugWatchon Grandfather of a US President Made His Fortune Illegally in Prostitutio

Accidental "Prostitutio" contraction instantly made me imagine a "Factorio" inspired clone (can't even fathom how that would have worked).

BugWatchon Show HN: DbGate – open-source, cross-platform SQL+noSQL database client

Thank you! I will just second this as a requirement. Many of us don't install anything if we can help it, and prefer to keep our software library as separate from the OS's current install/instance as possible.

BugWatchon Rediscovering Hamming Code

Since it's a "digital horror", a "Hammer code" would have fit quite nicely.

BugWatchon U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

In that case, some "people" should be dismembered and/killed.

BugWatchon Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

And I'd add the only subpar-in-Firefox issues are caused by Google "accidentally" crippling performance of their pages/services, coupled with others optimising just/primarily for Chrome.

(But also, what Mozilla has been doing to Firefox last few years if both a travesty and a good thing.)

BugWatchon Windows 10 taskbar is now pushing Microsoft Edge web apps

raises hand sheepishly

All my auto-updates are off. I only update "manually" and one thing for the duration, so that I can isolate any eventual issues.

And Microsoft Updates specifically are banned for at least 6 months. I wasn't affected when it occurred, but I sure as hell won't let them exercise their incompetence of the "update deletes your data, users are our testers in production" kind upon me. (INB4: Yes, I do backup.)

BugWatchon Screw it, I’ll host it myself

Self-hosted VPN (if you're physically away from home) + directory sync app (in my case, SyncMe [at the moment; might switch to SyncThing]).

BugWatchon Facebook Analytics will no longer be available

And US, too.

BugWatchon Streaming subtitled box sets is the new Eurovision

> You woudn't see a cowboy dress in NYC.

Well, there's the Naked Cowboy. But I guess he's missing the "dress" part of it (aside of "keeping the hat (and boots) on").

BugWatchon Streaming subtitled box sets is the new Eurovision

Sounds "real"(istic-ish?).

BugWatchon Explore Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables in Europe

Croatia is missing.

BugWatchon Amazon keeps trying to troll US Congress members in perplexing new PR strategy

I have recently started writing down a (private) list, provisionally called "cookie assholes" ("monsters" would be too cute), for those of-special-note entries like this, with dark patterns and similar crap, potentially with eventual intent of reporting the offenders to the GDPR enforcing bodies.

Maybe a community-driven auto-block/auto-reject/auto-hide rules - 'cause I'm sick and tired of being expected to sit down and manually off-toggle the 300-600 toggle switches without "Reject all" option (of course, I "cheat"); and to fish around for "hidden" sections, with different-but-functionally-the-same controls; and to avoid their "legitimate uses" (yeah, right).

In short, I'm adding them on the list.

In any case, anyone else aware of similar initiatives, block lists, addons, or similar solutions?

BugWatchon Ever Given Ships Erratic Route into Suez Canal

I'm going to assume that "Ever Glued" is not a mistake, but a happy little autocorrect accident.

BugWatchon Mozilla plans to remove the Compact Density option from Firefox's Customize menu

Don't install it. Use portable Firefox. I've been using portable variants exclusively for the last 10 years.

BugWatchon Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)

@~"Cheese is cheese."

And I guess that's the moment when the French "delegation" collectively gasped, and left the table in protest? :D

BugWatchon Apple has gone to extraordinary lengths to make scroll bars invisible

There is this photo organizing software, Phototheca [0], which is the best photo organizing software I have found thus far (at least according to my needs and workflow [insert appropriate XKCD here]).

A version from a year+ or so ago used nice, colorful icons [1] in the sidebar to access the main functions. The late(st)? They made the icons grayscale... on a gray-ish background [2]. It is really giving me a bad user experience, since I have to stop and read the text every time, instead using the RGB-shorthand (aka color) that is way faster to my brain.

This could have been fixed with a simple option in the configuration dialog, but TMK it is not.

I guess the flat icons are soon to follow, too.

[0] https://lunarship.com/

[1] https://lunarship.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Phototheca_...

[2] https://giveawayoftheday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/b0a1...

BugWatchon Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

While I love Matrix and support their mission, this pricing is quite a bit steep, as well as the 5-person limit being too restricting. They will price out large majority of people who actually could/would want to switch.

BugWatchon Show HN: Redbean – Single-file distributable web server

I still use the classic version of Tiddlywiki that is a single self-contained self-editing html file, and I "app-ify" it on Windows by changing the extension to *.hta.

But having the similar solution with the SQLite, would be a perfect combination.

BugWatchon Firefox Compact Mode Might Get Removed

...meanwhile, TMK, session managment proper APIs that were promised pre-quantum migration still haven't materialized. There still is no session manager that is on par to ye Olde Session Manager by Kraft (IIRC names accurately).

I hate that part of new Firefox, that loss of customization/-ability.

BugWatchon OpenStreetMap charts a controversial new direction

US(-Amer)icans.

BugWatchon Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

Ah, that must be famed "Beetlejuice(, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!)" technique.