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Kovah

948 karma · joined July 2, 2015

Creator of Cloudhiker, LinkAce, Game-Quotes.com, and many more websites and apps.

Portfolio + Contact: https://woblick.dev

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/kovah; my proof: https://keybase.io/kovah/sigs/-sBuEO0prQsZmSl1dsb0UsKiGsJS7IhSyEpVcgVL3OA ]

submissionscomments
Kovah··on A week of using Codex more than Claude
> It felt to me that Codex created a much simpler solution in terms of code architecture than Claude.

Wow, I made exactly the opposite experience. Codex loves to make things as complicated as possible, even ignoring instructions and predefined skills. Claude behaves way more pragmatic. Maybe depends on the type of work one does, or even which programming languages/frameworks are used?

Kovah··on 1,741 "informed" consents with one click? GDPR complaint filed
There would be a few fixes, if the politics would be interested in actually fixing this loophole.

- deny is the default: one button to deny everything but one accept button for every partner

- respect DO NOT TRACK, and force software/hardware providers to enable it by default

- making payments for non-tracking illegal

- remove or rephrase "legitimate interest" ruling, because providers use that as an excuse to enable everything

- and probably: prohibit any other dark pattern, or at least make it extremely hard to implement

Kovah··on Show HN: LookAway, a Mac break reminder that knows when not to interrupt
I've been using it as part of my Setapp subscription, and it's a love-hate relationship. On the one side I appreciate the posture hint and the app nudging me to take a break. But ever so often I am in deep focus and get really annoyed when the "long break starting in 1 minute" notification pops up. Most of the time I am in the middle of writing when the break starts, and I click it away fast to not loose my thoughts. A feature recognizing active writing to push the break a minute would be helpful I guess.
Kovah··on Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption
To do what exactly?

Apple does not adhere to EU law. It's their task to either go with the local law, or leave their customers hanging. And I rightfully express my disappointment that they currently do the latter.

Kovah··on Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption
If you are, like me, one of the EU customers that are again disappointed by Apple's behavior, please take 5 minutes to send Apple feedback about that: https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone/
Kovah··on The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
Well, that might be technically correct. Yet it still doesn't feel good to destroy this social group they formed, to decide it's okay that this animal feels alone for that day. That's one of the points of the article as I understood it: is it ethical to play god and decide on that animals' fate?
Kovah··on The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
Another interesting example are hunting games such as Hunter Call of the Wild. I played that for countless hours. While some people simply go for reckless trophy hunting, I thought about most of the shots I took; there's a flock of deer with a single stag, surrounded by does. I knew I would feel awful taking out that single stag, leaving the does behind alone. Could taking it out now be considered "crowd control", how rangers call it? Maybe, under specific circumstances. Or is that just a lie I tell to myself to justify the trophy?

Taking shots on animals living their life in the forest and on the fields imposes a moral/ethical question, especially if you are not being attacked or would otherwise starve to death.

Kovah··on Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian
> Only necessary features, restrictions foster creativity

Interesting. Productivity tools should not force me getting creative to do the simplest things. Ideally, I can make it adapt to my workflow, not the other way around.

Kovah··on Rotten Dot Com
It's kind of a miracle that most of us people who got exposed to all that stuff are still sane.
Kovah··on PHP's Biggest Problem
The PHP website is indeed one of the worst parts of the whole ecosystem. Just look at the landingpage (https://php.net) and compare it with those of other languages. There's not a single piece of PHP code on the page. No "what is PHP", no "why should I use it", and no "that's why PHP is great". It's just a news page showing the latest releases, and a small section for downloading PHP.

And speaking of the website: the docs always have been a pain to use. Even the man pages of most decade old CLI tools have a better documentation. The docs basically only list the functions, explain what they do in cryptic one-sentence descriptions and list the parameters. There are no user-friendly explanations and no curated examples. There's indeed a lot of room for improvements.

Kovah··on Tailscale's new macOS home
The weird duality of Apple: their hardware becomes better with each devices, while their software gets worse with each version.
Kovah··on Tailscale's new macOS home
I would love to get a Windows-like overlay which collects all those damn menu icons. The least Apple should do is giving developers proper APIs to build that, but instead Tahoe broke so many menu bar managers it's not funny anymore. Ice, Sanebar, Bartender,... none of them work reliably.
Kovah··on A Faster Alternative to Jq
I wonder so often about many new CLI tools whose primary selling point is their speed over other tools. Yet I personally have not encountered any case where a tool like jq feels incredibly slow, and I would feel the urge to find something else. What do people do all day that existing tools are no longer enough? Or is it that kind of "my new terminal opens 107ms faster now, and I don't notice it, but I simply feel better because I know"?
Kovah··on Kagi Small Web
Hi, creator of Cloudhiker here. Thanks for mentioning my site! Let me know if you have any questions, issues or ideas.
Kovah··on An interactive intro to Elliptic Curve Cryptography
I'm really not into math and got really lost in the second half of "Adding points on a curve". Just don't understand what the author wants to tell me with the grouping and the role of the identity element, which is called infinity but is zero?

However, after looking at the next section and playing with the chart I immediately got the idea where the whole article is heading. Interesting to see how this works.

Kovah··on Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok
Unfortunately, I can second this, both as a developer and a user. His IMHO childish behavior has ruined his image for me, and is not a good lighthouse for the Fediverse itself. Also, as a OSS veteran myself, I see it extremely critical that he is starting new projects all along, denies to get proper help and build up a maintainer team, and leaves older projects in the dust. Pixelfed is the one product he might should focus on, jet it feels like the platform is in maintenance only mode. Pixelfed is a wonderful addition to the Fediverse and deserves to be on good hands.

Maybe, and this is a very personal opinion, his product success and the Kickstarter campaign raising over 100k made him feel like he's better than everybody else. And one can see the effects.

Kovah··on Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android
The sad part is, that Apple used to make somewhat stable, functional software. I started with the iPhone 3 and a bit later with Mac OS Snow Leopard. It all started when Mr Cook decided to serve the shareholders, instead of focusing on Apple's core values. The software went downhill in such a speed in just a few years. And moving out of the ecosystem is a painful, if not unbearable, task that barely anyone loves to do. At least I can't even think about moving back to Android.
Kovah··on Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android
I recently tested Swiftkey after Typewise is sadly abandoned. It's sooooo much better than the stock keyboard. Not only is the auto-correct working incredibly well (garbage like witjoit is correctly transformed to without, which Apple Keyboard can't), Swiftkey also manages multi-language typing astonishingly well. Last but not least, I can customize it. I am also not signed in to my account, so no settings or whatever is stored on Microsoft servers.
Kovah··on Another GitHub outage in the same day
I consider moving away from Github, but I need a solid CI solution, and ideally a container registry as well. Would totally pay for a solution that just works. Any good recommendations?
Kovah··on Bugs Apple loves
I have searched for a proper keyboard replacement. But there is not a single one that 1) works properly without major bugs, 2) adheres to privacy standards (because no way I am sending all keystrokes to Microslop) and 3) does not cost a fortune. Typewise came close, but seems abandoned now.

If anyone has a recommendation, please reply.

Kovah··on Bugs Apple loves
I really wish Apple would allow us to swap out the Finder with something else, so files open in that other app instead of the Finder. This works reasonable well on Windows, where I "replaced" the Explorer with Directory Opus.
Kovah··on A website to destroy all websites
Sorry for the shameless plug, but I built [Cloudhiker](https://cloudhiker.net) exactly for this: exploring great websites.
Kovah··on GitHub Actions has a package manager, and it might be the worst
Yeah, only works if all used Actions would use SHAs too, which is not the case.

Positive example: https://github.com/codecov/codecov-action/blob/96b38e9e60ee6... Negative example: https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/54808ecff253fb71615161...

Kovah··on Resurrect the Old Web
Bunny Fonts is a fully compatible, GDPR-compliant, drop-in replacement for Google Fonts. https://fonts.bunny.net/
Kovah··on I ditched Docker for Podman
> Kubernetes YAML is on the same level of complexity as docker compose

> Some 100-line docker-compose could easily end up as 20 yamls of 50 lines each.

Yeah, nothin to add here.

Kovah··on Developer's block
There's so much good advice in this article. My number one point that i learned the hard way during two decades of writing software: take breaks when your body tells you to. It's an absolute killer if you force yourself to work on your projects just because there's stuff on your to do list, new issues on Github, or whatever. Just stop working if you don't feel it.
Kovah··on Nginx introduces native support for ACME protocol
Ah I see, thanks for the clarification!
Kovah··on Nginx introduces native support for ACME protocol
Could you elaborate on the separate key per zone issue? It's possible to create different API keys which have only access to a specific zone, and I'm a non-enterprise user.
Kovah··on Show HN: Workout.cool – Open-source fitness coaching platform
Yes I have a gym membership and they offer sessions with a personal trainer for a flat fee per hour. Talked with my trainer, told him what I wanted to achieve and he wrote a basic plan based on that. Then we went around the studio and he explained all exercises and how to do them properly.
Kovah··on Show HN: Workout.cool – Open-source fitness coaching platform
No. I indeed paid a human to set up a training plan and show me how to correctly execute the exercises. Highly recommend that to anybody starting with weightlifting. There's so much you can do wrong.
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