alanh

If computers were still ENIAC-sized, then… well, you see where I am going

not to be that guy, but… username checks out! (inb4 hn is turning into reddit)

dan, please set max-width: 40em; on your content. It's unreadable as-is. I will read this later on Pocket.

Same here.

Gmail ignores (or ignored?) dots on the left of the @, so some.person@gmail.com and someperson@gmail.com and s.om.e.person@gmail.com all went to the same inbox. That is gmail-specific.

this is the same problem you get from any identity provider — what happens when you finally delete your facebook? — it's just more obvious with Apple. With a 97% satisfaction rate, most iPhone users don’t want to go anywhere else… but yes, if you want to stay free, you should always create credentials directly with any app or service you use, when possible.

That said, the concept of "Apple Sign-In" for Android and other platforms is an interesting one, not likely in the short term, but possible someday!

Wow, is it just me or is this a mountain-out-of-a-molehill situation? This is not fundamentally any different than “report spam” for email, or a user posting “is 800-xxx-xxxx a legit number?” online, or sending a contact card to a few million of your closest friends.

I appreciate the situation that the journalist found herself in, but if she wants her number to be a secret, she needs to make sure the people she calls know that, too.

I will file the information in this article as “good to know,” not “omg disaster”.

i think the implication is that a platform need not police its content if it is truly p2p and not actually storing or responsible for the content on it. with mastodon, the company is not running the servers people connect to in order to use mastodon, iirc.

well… clearly employees Should Not do this.

Here's what you aren’t seeing, if I may: Consumers see the end product. They intuit rules based on what they see. I only see pictures and videos sent to me, and then they are gone. From this their mental model becomes No one can see media that is not sent to them, and the media is gone after it has been seen. This is strikingly different from the way a developer at Snapchat models the world: We run a big warehouse full of data and media. We present this media to users based on logic that prevents arbitrary non-admin users from seeing others' content and from experiencing that content repeatedly. Oh, and we should eventually get around to writing that cronjob to delete old media. And once we rule the world, we can spend time playing with end-to-end encryption, maybe.

People aren’t stupid (mostly). They are just ignorant (in the literal sense). They are extrapolating in a way that makes sense in a physical world but not in the digital world.

The clearest analogy is that of actual dice vs. video gambling or the virtual spinner in a free-to-play game. With actual dice, what you see is what you get: fair odds. But that virtual wheel is 'weighted' to end on the worthless prize right after the jackpot space nearly every time.

Don’t use blockquotes instead of section headings… please. This makes my skin crawl, but more importantly, it messes up assistive technology such as rotor and text-to-speech.

Psst: Night Eye is a browser extension that has really, deeply impressed me by managing to give almost every website and web app a good-enough 'night mode,' surpassing all the quick-hack filter() solutions and more common extensions like Darken. https://nighteye.app/

the best reason for Edge/Mac to exist is simple: developers, developers, developers.

This is more or less exactly the scenario explored in this classic sketch comedy video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj3pJudQi7A

When I saw this had 400+ upvotes, I kind of rolled my eyes and thought, Wow, HN will upvote the absolute worst idea if it’s an implausible-enough hack. But having actually read your explanation and FAQ, I have to admit every upvote is well earned, including mine. That is really concise and entertaining prose, and the feat is well done. Bravo.

IE7 did have tabs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_7

did you really just paste a viral tweet here without attribution? :/

I wrote this 10 years ago, and it’s as true as ever: Google signals every day that they don’t care about people, just money.

https://alanhogan.com/arrogance-of-google

I agree Buzz was probably the best example

https://alanhogan.com/buzz-is-already-dead (About the UI/UX nobody wanted)

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/technology/internet/13goo... (Failure to respect users and imagine any blowback from violating trust and privacy)

Taking a look at the table in that Wikipedia page, you can notice that while Oakland has more violent crime per capital than SF, SF has more property crime per capita than Oakland. No wonder it can seem that the streets are paved with shattered auto glass.

To be clear, I am saying that personally I see crime daily, whether I am in San Francisco or Oakland, and my co-workers have been sent to the hospital via attacks right in front of our offices on Market Street in San Francisco.

I will also add that I rarely report crime. This is somewhat learned helplessness as I do not expect any results. For example, calling Oakland's non-emergency number has resulted in me eventually giving up after getting nothing but a busy signal over and over. I was attacked by one of San Francisco's street addicts, but as I did not suffer any serious injuries, I did not waste my time reporting it. (I regret this on principle as surely that person has attacked others and will continue to do so.) I also do not report the obvious dealers hanging out on corners by our offices because I know from following the local (Tenderloin) police force's Twitter account that even if they make the arrest, the dealer will be released within weeks (possibly hours or days; not sure) back onto the streets. It is common for them to arrest the same dealers three times in two-month periods. (And no, they aren’t pot dealers; they are arrested with meth, crack, heroin, and other hard drugs ready for sale.)

Working in San Francisco and living in Oakland, I have to imagine that to a significant degree, it is not (just) that there is less crime, but that there are fewer arrests. I see crime every day — literally every day. My co-workers have been sent to the hospital by random street violence. I have not heard of any resulting arrests.

My car and I are stupid in different ways. It has perfect attention and will always brake in time to avoid a fender-bender in traffic. It’s also a lot worse than I am about reading and communicating intent with other drivers or simply recognizing the objects around us.

My Model 3 suddenly changed lanes today for no discernible reason. I think it considered my lane to jump over into the next lane, for some reason. I should have hit 'Record' to save the footage from TeslaCam.

(Notably, AutoPilot is not supposed to change lanes without explicit confirmation from the driver, which is clearly illustrated on the dashboard/panel.)

It's a stretch of road on which I have previously used AutoPilot many times.

i thought the domain was webtv.com for a second. (WebTV was how my paternal grandparents used the Internet.)

I have seen some sites that only show a username field but nevertheless are compatible with my password manager (1Password). What I suspect is going on is that the password field is present but visually hidden (not missing and probably not with display: none, but perhaps by being placed in an overflow: hidden box with a height of zero or a similar technique).

I haven't confirmed this hunch as to the technique but it seems like a good compromise if there is a good reason to hide the password field initially. And I think there are some such good reasons. For example, if you are Google: Not everyone logs in to Google with a password. I have to log in to my work account using our company's SSO provider, so that Google account has no password. In this case, I shouldn't see a password field, as its presence will be more confusing than helpful. Still, a hidden-but-present password field would allow my password manager to work in the case that my Google account does in fact take a password. (Presumably care should be taken to avoid adding extra confusion to users of assistive technology.)

What?

I didn't expect that to be so beautiful.

now this is an idea i like.

your willful misunderstanding is making this thread unbearable.

Meat Gone Bad, an old Mac game. For nostalgia. Would pay a modest amount.