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MrDresden

3,004 karma · joined October 6, 2013

Computer Scientist.

Android, Kotlin, Java, Flutter, Python, Bash, Linux.

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MrDresden··on The Lamentable Later Life of Lemmings
I had no idea there had been more than one Lemmings game. Remember playing the first one a ton back in the early 90's.
MrDresden··on US Treasuries Have Become Unappetizing for Foreign Central Banks and Governments
European, living within the EU, who loves the idea of the conmon market.

But it is badly implemented and in need of drastic improvements. Just see recent comments made by EU President Von der Leyen and head of the ECB Christine Lagarde on how the biggest obstacles to the EU isn't US tarrifs but internal tarrifs.

Counted up they effectively make goods twice as costly as they should be.

A true common goods and finance market in the EU would be a force to reckon with.

MrDresden··on The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
As someone who also has to deal with the review process on the Playstore, I feel your pain. Reviews timelines have been all over the place for the past year.

I greatly appreciate that I can now get Signal via Obtainium directly from your VCS. It feels like I am sometimes even getting multiple weekly updates.

MrDresden··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
This kind of reminds me of Foursquare from back in the day.

Now a days I just have a few group chats where I can drop this kind of announcement in and see if there are any takers.

MrDresden··on Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
> "Native devs are the old-school ones. Shipping is expensive, so you better get it as right as possible."

Exactly this. After close to two decades building for the platform, the mindset is really to be cautious and make sure everything is rock solid before shipping.

This has more to do with building up a quality tool chain and testing process than being slow.

But sometimes there is a need to ship over the air updates, and for that (on Kotlin) there is Zipline [0] from Cashapp. I haven't used it in anger yet, but I know some people who do and trust it.

[0]: https://github.com/cashapp/zipline

MrDresden··on We built our house for LAN parties (2024)
I can't speak to your situation, but I know that in mine the main blocker for a LAN party with adult friends wouldn't be a lack of interest nor lack of friends (though I don't have a giant pool, and can't even count 18 people I'd be able to even suggest such a thing to) it would be lack of time due to other life responsibilities, that tend to increase as we get older.

My solution has been to play boardgames remote using BoardgameArena[0].

I usually have 2x turn based games going with two separate groups along with a dedicated chat channel, and then do 1-2 live evening sessions over video call with other groups. But all setup to be flexible and made to fit with the constraints of adult life, so sometimes we play and sometimes we reschedule.

[0]: https://boardgamearena.com

MrDresden··on Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
The fact not many launches happen from continental Europe has nothing to do with capabilities of the space industry or lack of expertise, but rather location.

Europe is far from the equator and densely populated so rocket launches from there are more costly, and failures can have a higher risk to life.

Arianne space has had 350+ successful missions after 45 years of operations, with most of those launching from overseas territories.

MrDresden··on Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI
How does this compare to being beholden to a single cloud providers like AWS or Google Cloud?

Has there been a sea change in how investors view these things in general, or is it only AI?

MrDresden··on Retirement Is Dead
I pay forced (happy with it) 11%, add extra and get extra from employer up to a total of 15%.

Used to be in a union (in a sector I don't work in anymore) that bumped that up to 18%.

7.5% is woefully little.

MrDresden··on Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat
Not saying that Dutch farmers don't use a lot of water overall, but they have some of the most effective farming practices on the planet when it comes to water usage.
MrDresden··on Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat
The Rhine, which becomes the Waal in the Netherlands, has been exceptionally low now for most of the summer and caused major issues for shipping.

It has only a single waterlock and so there is no retention of the water in it when a period of draughts like the ones this summer happen.

Germany has had a project for adding water locks to the Rhine ongoing in burocracy purgatory for the last 26 years now, and if this situation doesn't shake things up I don't think anything ever will.

MrDresden··on Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root
Take a look at docker-socket-proxy as a somewhat of a counter to this issue:

https://github.com/Tecnativa/docker-socket-proxy

MrDresden··on Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU
> "Iceland's fishing industry makes up something like 40% of their export."

That number includes everything involving the fishing industry, such as equipment manufacturing. The size of the actual fishing and value-addative processing is often reported to be closer to 12-15% as a share of GDP.

I say this as an Icelander who voted yes in this vote, but would vote no next time if any deal would lead to us loosing control of our fisheries or having worse management policies pushed on us.

edit: spelling

MrDresden··on How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
No one can reasonable think that someone who makes a few hundred artisan sales a year and ships them within the bloc should be monitoring what rules and regulations are coming down the pipe.
MrDresden··on Phones should have a 'guest lock' feature
Due to the intent system on Android allowing a pinned application to open another one (for example by sharing something), I prefer instead to create a guest user and add the app in question to that account.

That way no other applications are available to open, accidentally or otherwise.

MrDresden··on Flutter 3.47
While you aren't wrong, in my experience when the amount of nesting starts giving me bad vibes it usually indicates that something can be refactored out as a standalone widget.

Still, Flutter now feels ancient to use compared to something like Compose, in that regard.

MrDresden··on Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
> " It means nothing except your boss didn’t like you."

And in some cases, especially in our industry, that the funding ran out.

MrDresden··on Open-source interactive map for the Aug 12 total solar eclipse
Heavy rain forcast on Wednesday, with sun the day before and after.

Hoping the weather forecast will shift (as often happens here)!

MrDresden··on The End of an Era
> "Most people write a blog post hoping it’ll change their lives, not just the way they think"

Some of us just want an outlet that we control. Even though nobody will ever read it.

MrDresden··on Multiple Mouse Cursors in Wayland
I have a UHK split keyboard with a keycluster module (which has a small trackball) on one the left half and a larger trackball module on the right half.

Even though there is only one cursor it's been a really powerful way to work, being able to control the mouse with either thumb.

Then there are the alternative keybindings that allow moving the mouse using the wasd keys as well.

MrDresden··on Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds
> "And before you ask: Yes, I’m laying this one squarely down before (and partly on the toes of) the tech bros: We could have designed our protocols to be minimally compatible with “a nation of laws,” but the tech bros insisted that compromise was treason, and, as a result, we will lose more privacy than necessary."

It is getting mighty tiring to be continuously put in the tech bro libertarian camp just because of my sex, choice of occupation and stance on privacy.

That being said I don't see it as being impossible for a privacy preserving system to be put into place where the central certificate authority (state) offers a way of authenticating the age of the individual without leaking further information, and the client not offering up details about what is being viewed.

For example Meta wants to authenticate a users age and simply receives a boolean response indicating that they are of legal age or not, without anything more.

This could be implemented quite easily in some European countries that already use government issued electronic authentication systems (Auðkenni in Iceland and DigiD in the Netherlands spring to mind).

MrDresden··on The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia
I just recently got a blood test to confirm if I ever had gotten chickenpox as a child (my mother didn't remember if I had).

Sadly it came back positive for antibodies. I was really hoping I had somehow evaded it, and could get the vaccine as an adult.

MrDresden··on EVE Online's Carbon engine is now open source: Fenris Creations explains why
I used to have a character named Fenris in EVE. Probably shouldn't have recycled them all those years ago.
MrDresden··on Costco is the anti-Amazon
That's not a service they offer everywhere.
MrDresden··on Costco is the anti-Amazon
Costco's is only a model that works in cultures used to having to drive to get groceries.

Having now lived a few years in the Netherlands, I much more prefer the ability to cycle/walk by one of the myriad of grocery stores in my day to day area and grab what I need for todays dinner.

MrDresden··on Immich 3.0
The amount of entitlement on display here is astounding.
MrDresden··on Doing a masters while working in Spain
Being now in my late 30s I worry that the ship has sailed on being able to do a masters degree while juggling adult life as well.
MrDresden··on Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning
> "Another thing that would help is if Europe..."

Europe is a continent with a lot of different countries, all with different laws and regulations. Even the ones who are in the European Union have different rules and regulations.

So please realize that any blanket statements about Europe work as well as making one about the Americas (ie North/South).

MrDresden··on Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school
Yes, but (I assume) that you are old enough to have already gone through elementary school and perhaps further and learned and internalized a model for learning and retaining information.

I think that is what is at risk.

MrDresden··on Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
What did you replace them with? I am starting to look into alternatives my self as I can see the noose they have around their user's neck's slowly starting to close.
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