Hacker News Reader

Oddskaron Microsoft no longer signs Windows drivers for Process Hacker

From what I've seen the invasive data harvesting often does not come from developers themselves, but is rather requested by product and BI wanting to get more insights into the customers.

It's hard to really stand up to that kind of situation.

Oddskaron 14-inch MacBook Pro review: A Mac Pro in your backpack

The body text of this is very hard to read on Windows (Firefox & Edge) since the text appears to be bolded.

I would change to font-weight 300 or something like this.

Oddskaron Microsoft no longer signs Windows drivers for Process Hacker

You forgot a pretty relevant part:

Hashed MAC address: a cryptographically (SHA256) anonymous and unique ID for a machine.

Although I disagree that they should have this to begin with, it being anonymized is still a pretty important detail.

Oddskaron Microsoft no longer signs Windows drivers for Process Hacker

I expect professionals to be able to distinguish between the two instead of being suckered into some sort of hive-mind thinking of "all data gathering bad hurr durr".

I'm absolutely all for privacy and limiting unnecessary gathering of data. But there's nuances to this discussion and labeling everything that has any amount of telemetry as "Spyware" does not do anyone any good.

Oddskaron Microsoft no longer signs Windows drivers for Process Hacker

I would say the intent very much dictates the what and how of Telemetry as well. There's a huge difference between gathering data on feature usage of VSC vs e.g. slurping up the code from its users.

A lot of software lets you opt-out from Telemetry gathering when you install it. I would not think Spyware would do this.

And I feel like saying it's "only in the way collected data is used" really makes a small thing out of something that is very important. There's a very big difference in doing something maliciously and doing it to genuinely try to make your software better!

Oddskaron Microsoft no longer signs Windows drivers for Process Hacker

It's honestly weird to see "Telemetry" labeled as "Spyware" by a technical people that, quite frankly, should know better.

Spyware is NOT the same as gathering Telemetry data.

You can also just turn off Telemetry in VSCode in the settings.

I think a vast majority of people on HN gather data on customer usage of the products that they build. Because it ultimately makes us able to tailor the products better for our customers. It's just ignorant to put this in the same category as applications that slurp up as much data as they can for e.g. ad-profiles or to sell that data off to the highest bidder.

Oddskaron An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

On the contrary I think it's a very good meme. This kind of hiring process should be shunned and shamed.

I have never come across this in Europe and I hope I never will, and I certainly don't partake in this circus when I interview people.

Oddskaron MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch

Pro tip: if you can switch some tests from using JSDOM to Node as the test environment they will run significantly faster.

Oddskaron MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch

I think the e-waste angle is mostly unrelated.

Is it though? I was able to replace a broken Macbook screen a couple of generations ago. It was hard and took a while, but I managed. I'm very sure I would not be able to do this given this kind of screen.

I guess we'll see when the first tear-down comes out. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the only way to fix the screen is to replace it together with the webcam.

Oddskaron MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch

To be fair, a decked out i9 laptop can easily end up in the same price range. So I don't think it's that outlandish really.

Oddskaron MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch

smaller bezels

Not really, no. The Dell XPS for instance has just as small bezels but without a notch.

Oddskaron MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch

It's laughable incompetence and hubris, honestly. If you read any material from the original UXers of Apple they would have said the same. "Fingers on glass" can never beat the tactility of having actual keys. The versatility it affords mobile devices in terms of gestures and such is inappropriate for professional devices where we need speed and accuracy.

Oddskaron MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch

Yes. Yes I would.

I would rather take a bezel and reduce the amount of e-waste this custom garbage has on the world. Add to that this will most likely make screen replacements significantly harder and more expensive.

Oddskaron Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

It’s interesting isn’t it, why did we stop talking about power users and catering to their needs?

Oddskaron Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

Oh I absolutely agree. MacOS in general is not very good for power users out of the box.

Oddskaron Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

From their support docs:

Note: Anything you listen to in a Private Session may not influence your music recommendations, e.g. Discover Weekly.

Oddskaron Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

I disagree that your reasoning is entirely sound. It's a bit of an elitist point of view I suppose; but fundamentally I don't think all customers are created equally in terms of importance. One could even in this day and age call some of the more important ones "influencer" or something similar.

While the general customer base might not be served by this feature, what if a subset of the customer base enjoys this feature to an extraordinary extent? Maybe it fixes a lot of problems they have with the service; and negates a lot of complaints they otherwise would have posted.

Would it still not be the correct choice to "clutter the UI" with this?

I don't think it's as easy of a choice like you're trying to make it.

But I could also be jaded by the fact that Spotify for years has trying to pull me into listening to all kinds of odd European folk music that I have no interest in what-so-ever.

Oddskaron Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

That already exists.

Profile > Private Session

Oddskaron Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

The algorithm clearly says that you're German. Maybe you should just embrace it.

Oddskaron Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

Of course they can't add this: they're too busy rebuilding the UI so the (I assume) new Art Director can climb the corporate ladder.

Oddskaron Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

Is this being sarcastic?

Oddskaron Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

It really shouldn’t. Most pro users absolutely don’t need a 4K webcam.

It should have a better camera, that much I agree with.

Oddskaron Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

I have the same problem. I build different modes into my keyboard via QMK that I can switch via special key combos. It works okish, with the exception being that modifiers just work differently on Mac with Cmd not really cleanly mapping to Ctrl — don’t you find this annoying?

Oddskaron Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

My reaction to some of the posts in this thread just make me feel old.

Backlit keyboard is a significant plus - yeah yeah you touch type but uncommonly-used shortcut keys in the dark sucks.

Can’t you just .. turn on a lamp? Why would you do this to your eyes?

Please put the webcam at the top (lookin at you, Dell XPS...) so people don't have to look at my dirty fingernails and up my nose.

Having used this myself for a number of years; I honestly in hindsight cannot comprehend how Dell could let their flagship laptop launch with this. How on earth did they try this and go “this is acceptable”? Boggles my mind.

Oddskaron Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

This is a very poor replacement for something that really should be instant and cerebral like app shortcuts.

Oddskaron Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

My friends couldn't stop praising the UX but even after a long time trying to get used to it I still am annoyed by the application switching keyboard shortcuts, lack of ability to set system wide shortcuts for launching basic things like terminal.

Hammerspoon is the answer to all of these. The common solution is to rebind caps lock (using Karabiner Elements) to be “hyper” (cmd + alt + shift + ctrl) and then bind global keyboard shortcuts with that using Hammerspoon.

Oddskaron Ask HN: What is your preferred notebook screen size and why?

Ultrawide is overrated for dev work imo — not to mention getting a decent one is really expensive. And even the more expensive ones have issues, unless you really splurge. 1440p is the sweet spot of providing sufficient screen real estate while not breaking bank for monitors that are still decent.

Oddskaron Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

I’m gonna add good webcam and sound to the mix. These are essential for remote work.

I would argue this is almost impossible with a laptop. Even if the webcam could manage to capture a decent resolution, it would almost always be placed at an awkward position relative to your face compared to an external webcam.

External microphones are so far superior to internal ones that once you start noticing it’s all you hear when people talk via their echoey noise-suppressed-via-magic internal microphones.

I get it; I’m nitpicking. But my point I guess is that even good laptops have a lot worse remote conference setups than most people think.

Oddskaron Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

I still prefer my 2015 MBP keyboard to the 2021 one. It’s honestly crazy that they somehow regressed on this given so much time passed.