Confiks

They replied with:

  Thanks for reaching out to us. We deeply understand that this will be a disappointment for you as you can no longer create transfers from Spotify to another music service. This is because it violates our Terms and Conditions. 

  So here's your request to download a copy of the personal data that is likely to be most relevant to you: 

  - Log in to your account page.
  - Select Privacy Settings from the menu in the left.
  - Under Download your Data, click REQUEST. This page also contains instructions for accessing your data and a summary of the categories of data you can expect to receive.

  If you would also like to receive the technical log information we collect to provide and troubleshoot the Spotify service, extended streaming history, or have a special data request, please let us know. 

  Let us know if we can help with anything else. We're just an email away.

And I replied with:

  Regrettably, the steps which you have outlined for me are not in compliance with the GDPR article 20 subsection 2, which states that "the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible."

  Clearly, it is technically feasible to transfer my personal data directly to another controller, as it has been done with SongShift in the past. You decided to disable this method, in violation of the GDPR. Your terms and conditions do not supersede Dutch or European law.

  I demand that you re-enable the API or allow for some other method to allow me to exercise my rights under the GDPR, so I can transfer my personal data directly from Spotify to another music service.

  If you do not allow me to exercise my rights under the GDPR, I will file a complaint (verzoekschriftprocedure) at the Dutch civil court (Rechtbank Midden-Nederland). I expect that you respond with a timeline about when and how I can exercise my rights under the GDPR within 14 days.

Court cases in the Netherlands are relatively cheap, with a fixed starting cost of € 83, and a maximum of ~€ 2300 in case of loss (as compensation for attorney fees), so it actually seems feasible to go this route.

I also want to challenge them on the export taking multiple days to be generated. This also is in violation of the GDPR as "undue delay". Many people cite that they have 30 days, but this is actually the maximum time.

FWIW you can download all your playlists in JSON format with the GDPR export tool in the privacy settings of your account [1]. It take "up to 30 days" for them to email you the ZIP-file. In the cased of the linked blog post, it took them 3 days, which is probably only some arbitrary amount of time to discourage you from using it effectively. The GDPR only states "without undue delay".

Under article 20 of the GDPR ("Right to data portability"), subsection 2 states that "[i]n exercising his or her right to data portability pursuant to paragraph 1, the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible" [2].

Seeing how this has been previously been done, Spotify has already shown it to be technically possible. Enough users should be able to pressure Spotify to re-enable the API.

I just sent a mail to privacy@spotify.com:

  L.S.
  
  I'm a paying user of the Spotify music service. I want to exercise my rights under the GDPR article 20 subsection 2 to data portability to transmit my data, namely playlist information, directly to another controller, namely SongShift.
  
  It is clear that this is technically possible, as it has been possible in the past. However, Spotify has chosen to force SongShift to disable its API. This is in violation of my rights under the GDPR. I demand that you re-enable this API to allow me to exercise my rights under the GDPR.
  
  I expect a notification of receipt within 5 days. I expect a full answer within 14 days. In case of no reply, or no satisfactory reply, I will enter a complaint (verzoekschriftprocedure) at the Dutch civil court (Rechtbank Midden-Nederland).

[1] https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/what-i-got-when-i-reques...

[2] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/

This effect is called hormesis [1] and is quite established for various kinds of stressors. For example also in the context of oxygen depriving breathing exercises and cold baths [2] (which is how I came across the term only this week).

On the topic of bloodletting and blood donations, I found these interesting considerations [3]. There is a correlation of less cardiovascular disease among people who donate blood. Of course there are lots of confounding factors here. The article summarizes them nicely.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24676116

[3] https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2015/11/09/does-donat...

Here's a guided exercise [1], and a video with more explanation can be found here [2]. You shouldn't forcefully exhale completely; just let go of your breath. Also, sit or lie down; don't stand or do anything else.

Initial scientific evidence related to auto-immune diseases here [3], although please don't mistake interviews with Hof with science. For example his comments about "charging your body with oxygen" and "alkaline blood" are completely off; a proper explanation can be found here [4].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybOi4hjZFQ

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpUkR47dmjU

[3] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/20/7379.full.pdf

[4] https://www.daniel-timms.com/wim-hof-method-biology-of-breat...

FWIW a Dutch blog (often satirical, nonsensical, stupid or any permutation of those) also has gotten its iOS app rejected six times due to their stories about covid, but also due to stories about religion and sexuality. Dutch topic about it here [1], automatic translation here [2].

[1] https://www.geenstijl.nl/5154709/apples-behavior-isnt-new

[2] https://controlc.com/ab9b13f3

Would anyone have any direction on what kind of projectors North was using for this product? I have no idea where to start searching.

In the same way, I would also be very interested in any further info on Ellsworth's Tilt Five projectors, bottom right-right of [1] (full text of interview [2]). Interesting video with info on the (retroreflective) optics system here [3].

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200722042213im_/https://i0.wp.... presumably shows three generations of the product. From left to right board, camera and projector.

[2] https://skarredghost.com/2019/09/24/interview-jeri-ellsworth...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB4NjMWKV0s

Regardless of your judgement about self-experimentation, and regardless of the fact that a whitepaper is explicitly not a peer-reviewed journal article, the whitepaper [1] is a very interesting and carefully considered document.

They argue throughout that multi-dose nasal vaccines are a severely underlooked avenue for localized immunization.

A main criticism is that an untested vaccine might unintentionally enhance the actual disease. They argue that antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) specifically is less likely because the immune response of the intranasal vaccine is limited to the mucosal tissue [2].

[1] https://radvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/White-Paper-SA...

[2] See [1] page 6

An alternative to this option that might make both camps happy is to use the Business Source License [1] that is source-only for new changes, and automatically become open source after a certain time (default after 4 years).

It allows creators to let customers pay for new features and support, while at the same time 'derisking' vendor lock-in by automatically converting to an open source license.

[1] https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/

If you want to know more about the judgement and Standard Contract Clauses, the FAQ page on Schrems' site is a good start: https://noyb.eu/en/next-steps-users-faqs

While SCCs are not technically prohibited, any company handing over personal information (be it of customers or employees) in many cases can't in good faith enter in such an agreement.

Whether professional usage of Github and other SaaS services can be considered handing over personal information is left as an exercise to and headache of many European legal departments in the coming months.

Please "remember that the community is divided on divisive topics and that the person disagreeing with you is probably not a spy, but just someone who disagrees with you." [1]

Also, specifically about astroturfing: "[T]he overwhelming majority of the insinuations and accusations [of astroturfing] that people come up with about it lead to precisely nothing when we investigate. It's like flipping a coin and having it come up tails a thousand times in a row: you start to look for simpler explanations, and there are clear, simple explanations for why this might be." [2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23835613

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23837456

Thanks for asking the question and putting so much care into stating it.

I have no idea what kind of methods HN employs. I personally always check the posting history when I'm in doubt about the intentions of a poster. Most of the time, I find an extensive amount of fairly well considered comments on a variety of topics. That leads me to the conclusion that the account is 'genuine'.

To state it a bit more naively: if a Sybil attack would require the attacker to craft so many constructive comments in order to evade detection, it could actually have a net positive effect on the community as a whole.

If I look at your other posts, you're indeed pretty constructive elsewhere.

Then, don't you see that the claim you make, that "any comment that isn’t 100% backing the CCP falls to a negative score in a matter of minutes" is clearly false and an exaggeration? That lack of self-awareness is the reason your post is dead in a matter of minutes.

Hey, I can't tell if this is irony or not. Then again, you probably won't read this if it isn't.

This idea is similar to DECO [1]:

"DECO is a privacy-preserving oracle protocol. Using cryptographic techniques, it lets users prove facts about their web (TLS) sessions to oracles while hiding privacy-sensitive data."

[1] https://www.deco.works/

I can imagine such a device would be quite disconcerting to Winston and Julia as well, hidden away in a natural clearing; around a tiny grassy knoll surrounded by tall saplings that shut it in completely.

I too discovered the device in a German hotel. For first-time users, it seems gamified towards the opposite goal. As I was under the shower for far longer than normal, I found out it was slowly drowning a polar bear.

I was looking for a comparison with other tools, and "LibrePCB vs. KiCad" in "comparison with other EDA tools" [1] gave some good measure:

"Although LibrePCB has many cool advantages, KiCad is (currently) much more powerful. It has an amazing amount of features which allow to design very complex PCBs. LibrePCB is still a very young software and thus lacks many features needed to design complex PCBs."

"So, if you are looking for an intuitive EDA tool to quickly design a simple PCB, you should give LibrePCB a try. But if you want to design complex PCBs, LibrePCB is probably not (yet) the tool you are looking for."

[1] https://librepcb.org/compare/

Here's an excellent talk that addresses your question: Open Source is Insufficient to Solve Trust Problems in Hardware [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzb37RyagCQ

When interpreting this, please also consider the warning [1] by Tedros Adhanom et al. in a letter in The Lancet:

"[I]t is very important to adhere to WHO's recommendation that the BCG vaccine is used for COVID-19 only in randomised controlled trials. (...) [T]he BCG vaccine is already in short supply, and indiscriminate use could jeopardise the supply needed to protect children against tuberculosis in high-risk areas."

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Museums really try to hold on to the 'copyright' on their reproduction, for example by claiming that the act of reproduction can be seen as creative, and not purely technical. See for example this response by the Van Gogh museum [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21671790

I appreciate your analysis, but "the reason this post appears to be on the front page" is not necessarily to "cover for the president's strange assertions about sterilizing blood". It has sparked some nuanced discussion about the article – for example about the oxidative stress being the main driver – that slowly floats to the top and can clarify other discussions elsewhere.

In that way it's good that submissions only contain the article URLs, as the merit of the article is discussed, not the submission.

Indeed, sorry. I was under the impression that every daily ratchet-key was independent, and only the inter-day keys were linked. The conclusion of your post still is not possible however. I edited my post.

> It means that contacts with infected persons can't be linked across days, and it means that I can't build an app that alerts me that someone who was previously infected just walked by.

Edit: This actually turns out to be correct, but your conclusion:

> It means that contacts with infected persons can't be linked across days, and it means that I can't build an app that alerts me that someone who was previously infected just walked by.

Is not possible, because every time secrets are made public, the secret key is reset.

[1] https://github.com/DP-3T/documents/blob/master/DP3T%20White%...

Various issues that have been open for quite a long time [1].

[1] https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/issues/4758#issuecomment...

> Not true, getting a lower dose of the virus initially gives your body more time to develop antibodies.

Can you substantiate that claim with any evidence, preferably by citing published articles? I'm not disagreeing, I just wasn't able to find any myself.

Has anyone found anything on the health implications of mounting 220nm lamps [1] indoors, beyond the issue of damaging human DNA? In other words, if you assume those lamps to be safe to living cells due to the light not penetrating beyond the first layer of dead skin cells, what other problems might there be?

Our skin surface contains a lot of living bacteria. Different strains seem compete with each other, and for example an overgrowth of staphylococcus aureus seems to be correlated with skin issues. In that sense living bacteria protect our skin. How would an far-UVC 'antibiotic' lamp influence bacterial repopulation later? Either on skin and in spaces. Would it impair immune system development?

Viruses seem far more fragile than bacteria, so perhaps a low-power far UVC-lamp will be enough to kill viruses but leave the bacterial populations on skin and objects intact

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21058-w

It isn't purely about the (energy density of the) chemicals themselves, but also about the available reformation / hydrogenation processes. As far as my limited knowledge goes, the processes for methanol have seen more development, but formic acid has a potential for simpler and smaller systems in less demanding circumstances (pressure, heat). [1] was the first comparison I stumbled upon.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110536423-002

Here [1] is another interesting low-cost version of ventilator. It's an immersion two-phase continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, of which all the parts are printable. The patient still needs to be able to initiate breaths themselves, but it will cost a lot less energy to breath.

Combine it with a (admittedly lot harder to make) homemade pressure swing adsorbtion system that delivers high-oxygen air, using zeolite sieves and alternating pressure [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHiRTMQCf1Y

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylj4oOnlIY0

Formic acid might be a possible solution for the volumetric capacity problem, although it is still very much in its infancy. See [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22449894

What I often don't see mentioned in the discussion about using hydrogen power is solving the volumetric capacity problem of storing hydrogen.

One potential solution is to instead use formic acid as stable energy storage. There have been recent advances in catalysts that make it feasible to convert hydrogen to formic acid and back again. Formic acid is stable, not very toxic, and has an energy capacity of 1.77 kWh/L.

The only party I know of that is trying to bring this to market is Dens [1], formed out of a student group at the University of Eindhoven [2]. Their website is a bit high on the rhetoric (including trying to coin "hydrozine"), and their mockups looks like, well, mockups, but there are real technology advances behind this, for example their trial with a city bus [3] (Dutch).

[1] https://dens.one/our-products/

[2] https://teamfast.nl/technology/

[3] https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/deze-stadsbus-i...