Hacker News Reader

GlumWoodpeckeron Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union

> iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.

GlumWoodpeckeron Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union

In my view, they are making alternative app stores way more attractive to FLOSS apps, because they will incur no fees from Apple, and the creators won't have to set up an NPO.

Edit: Seems I misunderstood, I just re-read the relevant section:

>iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.

The fact that they are charging money for apps installed from non-App Store sources is ludicrous to me, if they aren't running the store, then they don't get to collect fees on it, imo.

GlumWoodpeckeron I Hacked the Magic Mouse

As a hobby project: cool. But as a solution to a problem, how about not supporting companies that make ridiculously overpriced products with hugely deficient functional designs? Apple consistently makes products that work worse than their competitors', for quadruple the price, but, hey, I guess they "look nice".

...which is subjective, personally I think Apple products look absolutely atrocious, with half of screen real estate of their software attributed to padding, and all their product's surfaces the blandest possible solid colors imaginable. So when a product not only functions worse, is several times the price, but also looks bad, what's left?

GlumWoodpeckeron A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

Also known as "runner's high":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiological_effects_of_phy...

GlumWoodpeckeron Signal commit Username Integration Test

Session [0] is an up and coming, open source E2EE messenger that doesn't rely on phone numbers (and doesn't require them). It also routes messages through Tor. It's fast and reliable, and I always get notifications on time.

It has some disadvantages though, depending on how you use it. Your ID is a 66 character long hexadecimal hash instead of a classic username. Another disadvantage I've found is the paltry 10 MB attachment limit - trying to share a short video clip I made on my phone required several re-encodes to dip below the limit. Even some still photos will hit that limit, depending on complexity. So not very good for sharing media, but great for texting, in my experience.

[0]: https://getsession.org/

GlumWoodpeckeron Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

Powerful article. What strikes me as a layman (non-lawyer, non-law enforcement), is how prevalent these methods of forensic science have become, without any solid scientific basis backing them up - such as peer reviewed studies with quantifiable evidence. You'd think that in order for the state to take the life of a human being, you'd need to prove it using means that are more thoroughly vetted than "[one doctor] who in 1971 suggested the cause might be violent shaking" (emphasis mine).

GlumWoodpeckeron Nonograms - Japanese Crosswords

Also for the 3DS is the Picross e series of games [0]. For a more modern console, the Picross S series of games [1] currently spans 9 whole games on the Nintendo Switch, and is made by the same company that did Picross e and Picross DS.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picross_e

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

GlumWoodpeckeron Ask HN: What are the best-designed news websites you’ve come across?

If the site doesn't transmit any sensitive data, it does not need HTTPS.

GlumWoodpeckeron ChimeraOS: Instantly turn any PC into a gaming console

As a workaround, with a USB remote controller[0] you can put a PC to sleep and wake it up by pressing the power button. That's what I did with my setup of a mac for game streaming[1]. In my experience, the sleep/wake functionality works on Windows and Linux as well, so it should work on this.

[0]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005766837072.html

[1]: https://datalars.com/2023/07/29/using-a-mac-mini-as-a-bedroo...

GlumWoodpeckeron Ask HN: What are the best open source products you've come across?

The *arr ecosystem of open source apps, which provide me with a full stack of media management. Requests, downloads, storage and streaming of my content to friends and family. The ones I use are:

* Sonarr - Automatically downloads TV shows/new episodes

* Radarr - Automatically downloads movies

* Bazarr - Automatically downloads subtitles for TV shows and movies

* Unpackerr - Automatically unpacks archives for importing by Sonarr/Radarr

* Jellyfin - Media server, streams video to apps or browser

* Jellyfin for Kodi - Addon to stream from Jellyfin in Kodi, a media player optimized for TVs/big screens

* Jellyseer - Lets your Jellyfin users request content

Users request content in Jellyseer, or you can add content manually through Sonarr/Radarr. Once you approve a request or add a show, Sonarr/Radarr interfaces with your chosen content source (torrent/usenet), and sends a matched release to your download client. Once the download is done, it is unpacked by Unpackerr if it's archived, imported into Jellyfin's media folders based on type, Bazarr picks it up and looks for any missing subtitles. The user can now stream the content via Jellyfin.

As for hardware, it is running on a homegrown NAS, running Ubuntu Server, with 18 TB of storage configured in RAID 6, and modest specs (8 GB RAM, medium-end Intel processor and an ancient AMD GPU). Works a treat.

Miss me with that "paying for 20 streaming services" bullshit.

GlumWoodpeckeron Quad9 blocks pirate site globally after Sony demanded €10k fine

Their "unfiltered" DNS (9.9.9.10) still resolves the domain:

$ dig canna.to @9.9.9.9

[...]

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 52168

[...]

$ dig canna.to @9.9.9.10

[...]

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 20506

[...]

;; ANSWER SECTION:

canna.to. 300 IN A 46.148.26.194

[...]

GlumWoodpeckeron Ask HN: Which distro do you use? (2023)

I use KDE neon user edition, which is basically the latest Ubuntu LTS base + rolling release KDE packages on top. That way I get a rock solid LTS core with the added benefit of always getting the freshest KDE Plasma updates, which is definitively my favourite DE.

Details about my installation: It has proven to be quite resilient. The installation's life started as Kubuntu 18.04 in late 2018, then upgraded to 20.04, then, using some nifty tricks from a Gist I found, I migrated my Kubuntu install to KDE neon a couple of years ago, which I then eventually upgraded to the 22.04 rebase when that came out. I've had a package conflict here and there and the occasional issue due to this migration path, but always been able to rectify it fairly easily. The installation has also survived a full system upgrade, first migrating from HDD to SDD for the system disk, and during 'rona, a full upgrade of motherboard, processor and RAM, all with no issues. Just booted without any complaints. That was nearly never the case when I was a Windows user, if I changed anything, it would throw a hissy fit. Needless to say, I'm happy with the status quo :)

GlumWoodpeckeron KDE for Travelers

I love KDE and am a daily and heavy user of Plasma, but the Itinerary app didn't work for me at all. I installed it from F-Droid and planned on adding a trip to a convention I am attending in August, but none of the steps of my trip worked. I tried adding the train trip, which wouldn't work because the search for the first station didn't return any results, and there was no button to add it anyway. I tried importing my ticket to the convention and the booking confirmation for the hotel, but both gave an unhelpful toast notification saying "Nothing was imported". If it can't support any of the steps of a trip, I don't feel like this is ready for production. Another (albeit minor) gripe was that you can't swipe from the left to open the left sidebar, forcing you to manually click the hamburger button in the top left of the screen, which is annoying when using a rather large phone.

GlumWoodpeckeron Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://datalars.com/

Random tech and Linux musings :)

GlumWoodpeckeron Things I wish I’d known before fulltime RVing (2017)

On a conventionally oriented map, south is always down, and north is always up. "Down south" and "up north" are also very common phrases when discussing relative geographical locations, due to the same reason.

GlumWoodpeckeron Jellyfin: Free software media system

Is Docker not an option? As far as I can tell, Docker is available on FreeBSD, and Jellyfin has a Docker image available, I've been using it for a few years at this point (on Linux, though).

GlumWoodpeckeron Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

Yes, that is a shame, but that can be worked around by sending it to something like PhantomJS, headless Chromium, or any other scriptable browser that will actually run the JS on the page and render it in the background. Very heavy as you're basically running a full browser in the background, but totally doable.

GlumWoodpeckeron Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

This probably wouldn't be possible due to browser sandboxing.

You could however, use a tool like External Application Button [0] in order to send the URL of the page to a script/program, which in turn can make the body of the page parsable by downloading the URL it gets, automating some action on it. I use it pretty often to automate downloads with yt-dlp or opening a picture directly in GIMP from the browser, but since you're invoking a bash/python/whatever script, the possibilities are basically endless.

[0]: https://github.com/andy-portmen/external-application-button

GlumWoodpeckeron Man battling Google wins $500K for search result links calling him a pedophile

>What recourse does Google offer if false, defamatory information is found in their search results?

Last I checked, Google was a search engine, an index of websites, not a judge of the contents of those websites.

>What would stop an organized cyber crime group from creating websites with false, defamatory information about people and blackmailing them for payment in order to take down the false, defamatory information?

Libel laws, for one. The correct course of action here, if the claim is not true, would be to sue the publisher of the false information for libel, which would be a guaranteed success, as it is provably false.

GlumWoodpeckeron Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

This is mostly just a Debian problem, due to their "no non-free software" philosophy, which extends to device drivers. I have never in my days booted a Debian install that worked with wifi out of the box, and I suspect I never will, due to that philosophy.. For that reason, I've stopped trying and I default to Ubuntu (-based) distros instead. All it takes to get rid of snaps forever is `sudo apt purge snapd`.

GlumWoodpeckeron Your reading should be messy

Category 3: Anything that isn't disposable or a tool. Most stuff can be of value to others once you are done using it. I treat all my stuff with care, because some day I might want to sell it, or give it away to someone. Whether it's a book, electronics, kitchenware, or furniture doesn't really matter; The value of the item (in money or in usefulness to the recipient) will always be higher the better condition something is in. You also are less likely to have to buy replacement items if you are careful with them in the first place. I agree in that you shouldn't treat everything like porcelain, but there is definitely value in treating your things with care.

GlumWoodpeckeron Tracking the Fake GitHub Star Black Market

The scary part is that this doesn't seem too far off, with the current proliferation of large language models like the GPTs..

GlumWoodpeckeron Tracking the Fake GitHub Star Black Market

The article notes this, and like any spam detection method, it has a degree of false positives, but it seems very low (less than a percent according to the article). I'm sure an official implementation of this could take more internal, non-public factors into account, like IP addresses and clustering of account creation times, to make it even more accurate and drastically reduce the amount of spam users.

GlumWoodpeckeron Please write a breaking news article about a leaf falling from a tree

This was my first thought as well, I was giggling throughout!

GlumWoodpeckeron About communication safety in Messages

Start off by reading the linked article. The feature is opt-in, and has to be manually turned on. It only triggers on child accounts where this is enabled. It is designed to protect children from being taken advantage of by stopping both incoming and outgoing nudity.

GlumWoodpeckeron A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website

I did a wholly unscientific test on the example listed on the bionic reading website. I finished reading the normal example in 12 seconds, and the bionic reading example in 11.5, which I'd say is within the margin of error/normal variance. I don't see the advantage of this, but I'd love to see evidence that suggests otherwise.

GlumWoodpeckeron Show HN: Is it cut short? See if a TV show ended with a cliffhanger

This is a Chrome bug, it does not happen in Firefox. I replaced the icon with a 16x16 icon instead of 256x and now it also behaves as expected in Chrome. Thanks for the report! :)

GlumWoodpeckeron Show HN: Is it cut short? See if a TV show ended with a cliffhanger

I'll add that show, thanks!

GlumWoodpeckeron Show HN: Is it cut short? See if a TV show ended with a cliffhanger

I hadn't caught that, thanks! I'll look into it when I get a chance!

GlumWoodpeckeron Show HN: Is it cut short? See if a TV show ended with a cliffhanger

As a matter of fact, this site submits no HTTP requests at all aside from the initial fetching of resources on page load :)

But I see what you mean, I might put in a delay when updating results.