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Scottn1on Show HN: I built a task manager that separates "do" and "due" dates

Why Due over built-in Reminders app on iOS. Reminders has grown into a pretty neat app over the years. With iOS 18 it can even do Kanban view. Reminders on iOS also has the unique system advantage of having it's notifications stay on top of others until marked done. No other app has this permission as others I have tried, the notification just gets buried and I sometimes miss them.

With that said, Reminders remains just a tad basic for me for full life/project management. I just need deeper nesting! Currently in "My Lists" you can only go 2-deep. A folder then a list. I need folders inside folders.

I've been playing around with Twos App (https://www.twosapp.com/) for a month which replicates Bullet Journaling. But it is too complicated I think for my needs. I don't need my notes/journals inside my todo's app.

Scottn1on Introducing passkey support to Fastmail

How about they fix their long-standing security issues first. Particularly their DMARC is set to "p=none" which is essentially disabled at a time large providers are mandating properly functioning DMARC. Anyone can spoof email account of other Fastmail users (1). Their #1 job is email, yet Fastmail has poor security scores still in 2024 (2). MTA-STS should be enabled for any competent email host.

(1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18997054 (2) https://www.hardenize.com/report/fastmail.com/1723612173

Scottn1on Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

Well said. +1

I've supported Firefox as my daily-driver on desktop and laptop since 2016. I feel that a browser should be 100% open-source and used to feel FF also had it's USERS interest at heart. FF was what I relied on to continue to fight for internet privacy in your browser and the growing ad garbage on the web. FF + uBlock was great and made the web a joy for me. I would donate to FF if I could.

I've basically had enough of this. Commercialization has now infiltrated all browsers. There are none left (except for a few FF forks run by who knows). I put up with the many blunders FF has done over the past years like; "Mr Robot" incident, Tracking my default browser in Windows with a Scheduled Task that always comes back after updates, Studies are on-by-default, increasing tracking features added in that were Opt-Out and now THIS latest "anonymous" collection of my browsing habits sold to advertisers. This is appalling.

I'm tired of having to go through all the release notes and settings again to see what I have to disable this time on my own devices plus my clients FF installs and family I've recommended FF to. I can do that with Edge or Chrome.

I'm out FF. I uninstalled FF 128 from my PC fully today (and any others I help support) and will try out Vivaldi for a bit (they seem still pretty grounded DESPITE it not being 100% open-source). and if that doesn't meet my needs I will just use Edge. I'd try Brave but again that is an advertising company at this point that also pitches crypto.

It is a sad day for me. I really am holding out hope for Ladybird next at this point because I don't think FF ever goes back now to it's stand and to what it represented.

Scottn1on Japan: The land that doesn't need Ozempic

I recently wore a FreeStyle Libre for 10 days and one of the most positive things I learned from it was 10-15 minute walk after a meal significantly dropped glucose levels. It would reduce the spike in the range of 5-10% immediately. After I noticed that effect, a quick Google search presented many articles confirming it.

I strive for 7k steps per day since Covid hit March 2020. Some days I may fall a little short if really tired or sore from golf or coaching little league the previous day, but most days I easily achieve it or go well over. I surely don't think 7k is an unreasonable goal for ANYONE - it just takes a little bit of mentality change and effort that just seem taken for granted in the USA from what I have observed last few years.

Things like parking near the rear of parking lots when going to stores. I am amazed now at how often I see people wasting many minutes in their cars just to wait or "hunt" for closer spots when they could have just parked in back and be walking into the store already. Or parents at the park sitting and reading their phones for an hour while their kids play in playground. Teenagers riding electric scooters/ebikes instead of walking or regular bikes, etc.

I was at my in-laws over Christmas and everyone sitting around eating one of the many appetizers to choose from and drinking alcohol, I decided I wanted to go for a quick mid-afternoon walk just for some fresh air. I remember sort of being giggled at when I asked if anyone wanted to go, with a few bewildered looks on some faces. Again it is a change of mentality that needs to happen if obesity is going to be addressed in the US anytime soon. Now, with these drugs available, I'm afraid it will be even harder to get to the root of the problem.

Scottn1on Sure. Let Adobe AI scan all of your documents. What could go wrong?

Maybe this can help explain how Acrobat has grown bigger in size than many whole Linux Distros. I was installing Acrobat Standard for a client last week and the install package was 2.5Gb! This just to read and edit PDFs. I was appalled and started to look for alternatives but for a business environment with crucial tax PDFs Adobe is needed. After the install (to Windows PCs) I noticed not only is Acrobat installed but you are forced without choice to install several other things along with it like Creative Cloud.

Scottn1on Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

https://purelymail.com/

https://mxroute.com/

https://www.vfemail.net/

https://runbox.com/

I know these because I have spent time looking the past week for getting off Outlook.com. I've basically settled on Runbox.com as it seems to be the most established and stable.

Scottn1on Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

I too was THIS close to going all-in on Skiff last week, leaving Outlook.com for more privacy, but contact sync with phone was a major annoyance. Thankfully in hindsight.

Scottn1on After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine

I agree, real sad.

I too was a pre-teen in the early 80's and I remember how neat it was to have these "secret" catalogs and/or ads in the back of magazines like Popular Science where I could place some cash (or ask mom for a check while I gave her my cash) in an envelope, put it in the mail and in a few weeks I would have these cool sci-fi gadgets in my hand to play with. I was the only one in my friends group who really knew about this stuff apparently (or was the only one geeky enough to think it was cool.)

It wasn't just Tesla Coils either. Mail order was in it's golden-years in the 80's and early 90's before the internet. I remember ordering everything from electronic components like caps/breadboards, to magic/card tricks, meters, oscilloscopes etc - all in the many different catalogs I had. I used to even order all kinds of fireworks for the 4th of July through the mail as well back then. Not just snakes and smoke-bombs either, but full on Black Cat (the best) firecrackers, bottle rockets and fountains. Literally send in the money and few weeks later I'd have them dropped off at my front door.

Nowadays it is even more amazing as all this stuff is now available in a day or two with free shipping. Heck, I ordered two board games on Amazon the evening of the 19th for with the family the upcoming holiday week and the doorbell rang about 10a the next DAY with them!

But nothing beats that feel of a pre-teen and his secret catalogs ordering with his own saved up cash in an envelope and anxiously waiting for two weeks for some off-the-wall gadget to arrive.

Scottn1on Is a Poe.com subscription better than ChatGPT Plus?

Kagi Ultimate is $25/mo and has access to GPT-4, Claude 2 and Google Chat Bison.

Scottn1on Skiff – Privacy-first end-to-end encrypted email

I opened an account at Skiff a few weeks ago and have used it in limited amount since then. But sending an email to my outlook.com address and my wife's gmail they both went right to inbox on first try. That was pretty impressive considering some long established email providers still go right to my spam at times.

Scottn1on Tipping at self-checkout has customers crying ‘emotional blackmail’

This is getting worse. I was at Jimmy Johns the other day and their POS now blatantly makes it difficult to NOT tip. It doesn't give you a clear option to choose $0, only the three standard options (from memory) of 15,18 or 20%. This on top of my turkey sandwich w/cheese added and chips + drink that came out to like a ridiculous $15.

I was stuck staring at the machine trying to find out how to NOT tip right in front of the register person. I eventually just decided to hit the red button that I thought was canceling the order and it went on to next screen for payment. I was so aggravated in being manipulated into feeling like a cheap non-caring ass I might not go there anymore.

Scottn1on OpenWRT 22.03.4

Me too. On a Netgear r7800 (which is well supported for Openwrt). After much testing, tweaking/changing settings/etc I couldn't get OpenWRT to match the performance of latest stock OEM firmware.

Even wired performance was about 3/4 of stock OEM for my 500MB internet speed. I couldn't use any of the cool anti-bufferbloat QOS options in OpenWRT because that made wired performance even worse (despite getting A+ on bufferbloat tests, the bandwidth loss wasn't worth it). WiFI 5G was spotty and less distance in my house plus would randomly just stop for 30 seconds every few hours.

I really wanted an open source firmware running on my consumer grade router and truly appreciate all the developers hard work that goes into OpenWRT - but nothing has changed unfortunately from my similar experience a few years ago with a supported Asus Router I had and tried OpenWRT on.

The consumer-grade router market is a mess and the choices are only between cheap mass market brand names and crappy firmware that is lucky to even be upgraded at all after a year or two. It must be a very unprofitable market because despite many millions of units sold each year and attempts like Ubiquity, etc none have taken off and/or put out anything better than other cheap unreliable stuff as the other brand names.

I would LOVE a ROBUST reliable and supported consumer grade router/wifi brand that isn't calling their higher-end products "gaming". Like what we had when Cisco owned Linksys and we got their WRT line, or Netgear had a "pro" line that was metal cased. They supported their firmware for years and shared open-hardware specs to we could have better 3rd party firmware's as well. I still have a metal-cased Netgear GB switch in use at a client for probably 10 years now!

Scottn1on Tell HN: Google search is getting worse

> (anything NSFW yields no result)

That isn't true at all from my experience. I just tested it and I was able to search for adult videos, etc.

I decided to try Kagi two weeks ago after hearing about it and trying their Orion browser on iOS. So far it has exceeded my expectations. Results have been on par with G/B/D. The new summerizer has been pretty good and I enjoy getting summary of the results at times to save me time (although I've had a few it couldn't summerize or wrong results in past two weeks). I also love the ability to prioritize sites for your future results and the summary ability of individual pages.

I will stick with the $10/mo for near future. It is small price to pay to support their current goals and intentions.

Scottn1on Gordon Moore has died

Gene Hackman (93)

Scottn1on Ask HN: How do you exercise?

Just turned 50 and I try to be active as much as I can each day.

For example the little stuff like: Walk our dog nightly for 20 minutes (about 3/4 miles). Go to batting cages with my son and will hit/throw with him. Play whiffle ball with him on occasion. Park in the far spots when going to the store, etc. I am even thinking about going back to coach little league as I miss it once he aged out.

From March to Sept I also play golf. Mostly the driving range for an hour or so 3x a week as my "meditation". Get out to actually play 18 holes not as much as I used to or would like but still maybe 1-2x a month (Unfortunately not playing as much as I used to these rounds make me question afterwards why I still play this difficult game)

I also have a 24hr gym right by home that I try to stick with simple 2-step routine:

1) 2-3x a week I Treadmill speed walk at 4.2 speed (12 minute mile pace) with a 3.5 degree incline for 9-11 minutes. Then I turn up speed to 11.1 (5:25 minute mile pace) and do three sprints each lasting about 5-10 seconds.

2) 1-2x a week I do a "Body by Science" strength routine. Takes maybe 15-20 minutes.

Scottn1on Stop Listening Please, Google

A while back I was casually driving home in my car in the wee-hours of the night. This is when I also had an XM subscription in my car so it was that long ago, well before Spotify/Pandora where one can listen to whatever you want at the moment. Anyway, I was browsing all the XM channels and for some reason "The Flame" by Cheap Trick popped into my head and I was in the mood for it. While channel surfing I came across the unmistakable guitar chords of the song just beginning. It was super eerie and to this day an unforgettable coincidence.

"Stop reading my thoughts Please, XM"

The point is - in our long lives, stuff like this happens through shear probability alone several times. An advanced search algorithm designed to predict songs based on past history, and who knows how many other available inputs, isn't even in the same realm of weirdness as feeling a song and it appears on the radio.

Scottn1on Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes

>Full waiter experience (seated, handed menu, food brought to table, plate cleared) gets 20%. If the level of service is less than that, the percentage starts to go down proportionally.

I have implemented the same policy of 20% BUT with strict process to make sure it isn't 20% of the full bill:

1) I tip 20% on the Sub-Total amount after subtracting all alcohol (see #2). I am not tipping 20% on the sales tax as well. So don't make a common mistake and tip on the total, go with sub-total.

2) Subtract alcohol from sub-total, calculate 20% on that new sub-total and then I add $1-2 MAX per drink or $5 for a bottle.

With the price gouging on alcohol at restaurants/bars (particularly wine - which they literally charge for a glass what a full bottle costs in the store) I refuse to tip 20% of their inflated prices. Sometimes wife and I can have 3-4 drinks total at a long dinner and can be like $50-100 just on alcohol. No WAY I am over-tipping our waiter $20 to walk the drinks over to our table.

This process drives my wife crazy sometimes and she calls me cheap, but just flat out giving 20% on the full total of the bill is over-tipping. Steakhouses drive me nuts too because they can be very expensive and 20% tip on the full total could be $60! That is just dumb for someone performing the same job at Applebees of taking order and bringing food/drinks to table.

Scottn1on Ask HN: What are some of your “buy it for life” purchases?

Kirby vacuum cleaner.

Bought it in 1999. Don't even remember how much I paid for it but they are usually pretty pricey. Yet I Still have it and going just as strong. I've taken it in to local Kirby service store for "tune-up" twice in these 24 years (both when moving) where they just adjust stuff and blow out motor, etc. But other than that it has had just belts and bags over the years as that is all it has needed. I also replaced the cord with a longer one 10 years ago. At this rate it may outlast me. I've actually considered just trading it in for a newer model for no other reason than just wanting something newer looking.

Scottn1on Ask HN: Which password manager is the most secure and why?

I keep my KeePass file on PC, sync to Onedrive, download to my phone from Onedrive iOS to have locally and use this app on iOS to open it.

https://authpass.app/

Works great.

Scottn1on ChatGPT playing a not so simple game

For being so impressed with this past few weeks, I still get stuff like this and realize the end of humanity because of AI isn't near worth talking about:

>How many homeruns did Aaron Judge hit in 2022

>>Aaron Judge hit 0 home runs in 2022, as the season was cancelled due to the >>COVID-19 pandemic.

Or:

>Give me a word that rhymes with Quinoa

>>Phenomenon

Scottn1on Ask HN: Best board games of 2022?

Being a fan of MLB baseball since I was a kid, I've recently rediscovered my love for tabletop dice baseball like I used to play as a kid in the 80's. Been introducing my son to it as well.

I'm a) surprised that some of the pretty older games (strat-o-Matic, etc) are still going strong and b) there are many newer games that improve on the concept and bring better accuracy and flow to the game.

Scottn1on Ask HN: What Are You Doing?

On the eve of me turning 50, I am playing a tabletop dice baseball game on my desk while reading HN {obviously}

Scottn1on Everything SBF is doing is in singular pursuit of not going to jail

Or he goes on the run soon and we never see him again. Someone who was fraudulently handling billions surely has a few millions somewhere that isn't accounted for. Other crypto scam artists have disappeared after taking funds. Ruja and Kwon are two I can think of and SBF had access to more money than either.

Scottn1on Everything SBF is doing is in singular pursuit of not going to jail

And he is very carefully setting the tone with carefully constructed statements that this ISN'T what he did and it makes me sick. He knows the more he says things like:

"A mistake that I feel pretty embarrassed to have made [is that] I substantially underestimated what the scale of a market crash could look like,”

"I had embarrassingly little knowledge about what was going on,”

The more he can claim the innocent 'i was just to naive and dumb' to have done this on purpose and 'I've learned my lesson' BS that all will be hard to indict without solid evidence. I don't believe for one second what that loser says right now. Cuff him!

He is a sociopath and should be in jail for long time for all the immense harm he caused in running a known Ponzi of literally billions. He is no different than Madoff or Holmes. Acting like a messiah and a fake genius for all these years while full well knowing he and his cohorts were fraudulently offering unrealistic investment returns. Living rich off people's deposits they will never get back.

Where is his ex girlfriend? The one who actually RAN Alameda. Why are we not hearing about her at all? She should probably be first in cuffs

Scottn1on CVE-2022-41924 – tailscaled can be used to remotely execute code on Windows

Thirded

Or Get Tailscale in the Windows Store so it could auto update for all the endpoints out in the wild I don't control (company laptops, users home PCs, etc). Trying to get TEN people to manually update today was a pain, I can't imagine even triple that.

Scottn1on Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

Yes. My morning coffee sipping routine consists of scrolling Google News (US, Business, Tech, Science and Health) and clicking on articles I'm interested in reading further. Then I venture over to finance.yahoo.com and glance that while also checking my stocks. During baseball season I check MLB.com headlines. This takes me anywhere from 20-40 minutes.

At night after kid goes down I then go into my RSS reader for another 30-45 minutes. That consists of daily headlines from HN, along with some economic and tech sites.

I miss the days of getting newspapers delivered and that was my only news. Something about reading a physical page and smelling the fresh newspaper. Been LONG time though.

Scottn1on Brave browser now blocks cookie banners

Ohh Don't forget Firefox, for all it's privacy preaching:

- Hijacking all your DNS requests to Cloudfare by default

- installing a scheduled task to Windows PCs to phone home your Windows default browser setting choice (And if you delete this task it gets re-installed again at each update)

- Firefox Studies are OPT-OUT. I've seen a study active on initial install already (and sometimes THREE studies running at once in a recent Linux install).

- Google set as the default search despite many privacy oriented options available

- Unique ID generated upon install.

- A marketing company metrics enabled was included in Android/iOS (see link). See above about Unique ID and IP address collection to see how this could have been abused.

I have used FF daily since basically Opera went Chrome-clone. BUT having to research how to turn off all these things above and what you mentioned with telemetry etc over the past few years has REALLY sat bad with me to point I am ready to jump ship as well and let them figure out themselves why they continue to bleed users. Bring back Colorways again for v106 along with cutesy sayings?? UGH. But FF still is the lesser of evils imo among desktop browser choices.

https://www.ghacks.net/2021/04/18/mozilla-will-remove-leanpl...

Scottn1on Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab

Vivaldi has the best vertical tabs implementation I've used. Edge would be 2nd. Sideberry would be great if it was easier to rid of the horizontal tabs in FF when Sideberry is active. Horrible having the horizontal tabs still while also having vertical tabs and only some CSS hacks fixes it.

Brave has vertical tabs coming soon as they are in nightly I believe.

Scottn1on Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab

Same here... I read comments all the time in browser threads about these issues in Firefox and I must be lucky or my basic install with just uBO is the difference (I also don't use any Google websites outside of search and Youtube). I have been daily FF user on both desktop and laptop for 4+ hours a day since I left Opera when it changed to a Chromium base and I can probably count on one hand the issues I've had with FF working with sites properly. One was a repeatable memory leak that would crash FF like 4 years ago that I submitted as a bug report and it was fixed in next release.

To me FF is just as fast in general browsing than anything else. I routinely try other browsers and I just feel "wrong" using any of the Chromium based others of Edge/Brave/Vivaldi when FF needs us right now. It needs the us to stand against non-open source web browsers and as an alternative engine to the web. I really like Vivaldi and would be my 2nd choice (then Edge then Brave, refuse to use Chrome) but it isn't open-source nor does it do anything to protect privacy.

If FF is giving crashes, issues at sites etc please try at least refreshing your install in the options and don't install so many extensions. Even better backup your bookmarks and uninstall it while making sure to also delete all users\$username\Appdata folders as well then reinstall.

Scottn1on $120k a year for Slack with 1k users

Don't remember where I found this but here is a good comparison of many Slack/Teams alternatives.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHal...

I'd like to see something like Matrix, Wire become more mainstream but will be impossible task with Slack/MS already entrenched into so many orgs.