burningChrome

Most of the dev conferences around the Midwest have both the QR ticket code and then you can print a physical ticket as well - just in case. Speaking with people who work at the events, physical tickets are a life saver in conference halls where wifi/cell coverage is awful.

Nobody volunteering wants to be the bad guy and tell someone they can't enter the event because they don't have a digital ticket.

Of course a dev conference can be lenient. A Red Hot Chili Peppers concert? Probably not so much.

>> then a fingerprint with a second factor pin as the secondary unlock

Unless you have a 4 or 4XL which are pretty popular with graphene os users. The weird thing is the 4 and 4XL are the only models without fingerprint because Google was pushing its #D Face Unlock System at the time.

The funny part is Graphene by default now disables face unlock on newer Pixel models.

I remember driving several scary roads out in Colorado. The 210 out to Snowbird in a blizzard and a few others legit made my palms sweaty and I wasn't even driving. As a great plains Midwestern kid, seeing my buddy (who was well familiar with the roads) drive as well as he did in those conditions at least helped a little.

It just reinforced I didn't have the constitution live out in CO and drive those roads in those conditions.

There were rumors that that the "Chapitos" in Sinaloa purportedly banned the production and sale of fentanyl in their territories.

There were signs warning of this and if I remember correctly, they murdered two major fentanyl cooks, put their bodies on the side of a road, along with a warning sign and two huge piles of the drug around the bodies.

Depends on the site. If its a small/medium business, every LLM is now looking for "reputation signals" and "authority signals". This means everything from your basic SEO on the site with incoming links, how updated your google business profile is, how many reviews you have, how recent they are. They're also looking at any kind of references from other blogs, substacks, youtube videos, social media shares as well as a number of other things they look for.

I would imagine in smaller industries, flooding the internet with fake information, then linking it all together would be somewhat easier - but it still takes quite a bit of work to get even just the major LLM's to give the consistent responses you want to see.

Updates on this have been slowly trickling out and the best I can discern is you will be able to still install apps from stores like F-Droid, but you have to go through a manual "advanced flow" which will most likely make you wait 24 hours before installing it and make you go through other hoops.

In short, google has referred to this as "increased user friction" to try and deter people from doing this. Essentially not making it impossible; just really frustrating for users so they get sick of the process and just install verified apps through them.

The only way I know around this is to install a custom rom like GrapheneOS or Lineage OS since this change targets Because the policy targets the Google Mobile Services (GMS) framework rather than the foundational Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

>> Ultimately, it is pragmatic for businesses to behave this way,

This is how I realized we truly are in an AI arms race. Literally every app or website or tool I use now forcibly pushes their "AI features" or "AI assistant" on you instead of just letting you use their products the way it makes sense for you. Stripe just confirmed what OP was saying. Poorly built, poorly thought out software is now the norm not the exception any more.

When the social media ban went into effect in Australia last year, kids were submitting photos of their parents and dogs to get around the verification. Not sure how better or worse they've gotten, but the old adage of trying to keep things from kids only motivates them more to get around the limitations you put up.

For reference: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/dog-photos-vpns-fake-ids-how...

Nest door neighbor did this when he just decided on a whim to put in a new driveway and started digging with a bobcat. 10 mins in and BLAM severed the main Comcast coax serving the entire neighborhood that was running under his driveway.

Luckily we were on Century Link so weren't affected by his stupidity. lol

I had better success with earlier versions. For me Siri has regressed so much and had become so unreliable, that having to constantly repeat or rephrase or delete whatever nonsense it was doing was so frustrating, I stopped using it years ago.

Its quite the paradox when Apple is pushing Apple Intelligence so hard, yet their assistant that's been around for 15 years can't do even basic things now.

>> Actually wait, fewer programs, because some things break or have markedly less functionality.

The new liquid glass ui also fails a lot of basic accessibility checkpoints like contrast, readability, and increases cognitive load.

The rounded corners you speak of also hamper tap and touch targets for users with motor disabilities. The rounded corners make icons and other elements less distinct, increasing the possibility of touch or tap errors.

>> In addition, a great number of people have decided to stop publishing their code publicly,

A lot of my peers who have been in tech for more than a decade are all doing this. They're effectively backing out of the industry. Their attitude now is they're ready for retirement in their 40's. They're only building and working on side projects and only sharing with people they know, nobody else.

One thing I'm seeing right now is the amount of institutional and domain knowledge being lost is a on a massive scale. The more startling fact is nobody seems to care - as if vibe coding and LLM's are going to fill this gap.

>> Unless you have Bill Gates money, you don't have access to a mental health professional

I'm not sure where you live. I know almost all colleges in the US have walk in free mental health counseling, along with free telesupport. My company has onsite mental health professionals who you can talk to or call at any time. There are free mental health clinics all over my city. There's mental health professionals who did daily outreach with the homeless and addicts in our city.

This doesn't even start to list all of the available apps you can download from your health care provider for free resources that are available to you.

This might have been true 30-40 years ago, but even over the last decade during and after covid, healthcare providers have put a huge emphasis on mental health and counseling to give people an abundance of resources to help them - when they need help, not in four days when someone is available.

Fascinating.

It would seem OP is spot on. I just used this and it reduced the front page of 30 posts to 14.

> Then you end up with shit performance or broken sites in Firefox

I work for a large corporation. A few years ago, they removed FF as a browser people could use at the company and removed it from the internal app store. Then, if you had a version, they forcibly uninstalled it.

As someone who's a developer, I needed access to be able to test on. Never forget going into the tech support office and saying I need this installed to be able to test my code. Support guy says, "Yeah sure mate, let's get that reinstalled for you." Tech guy downloaded it, started the install, and suddenly got a pop-up warning him it was against company policy to have this installed on your machine. It then auto-removed the app files he just downloaded. We sat there dumbfounded. "I guess we're going to have to escalate this mate." he said with a confused look on his face.

Almost four months later, support finally relented, but put in so many barriers to get installed that only a handful of devs have it on their machines now. I get emails almost daily, "Mate, I need you to test this in FF." or "Is this breaking in FF?"

I guess the reason given was FF lags in updating their certs, making a prime target for malware attacks so they just killed it so they wouldn't have to deal with it.

Just kind of strange that my entire career I was constantly told I needed to test this on any and all browsers available because they all have their nuances and you never know what might break something. To moving to a time where I'm testing on a single browser and calling it good? Man, times they are a changing.

>> I think that over-reliance on analytics has had a similar effect

I lost track of how many times the directors would tell us, "Since the analytics say A, we should do B." then the research person says, "Sure Jim, great idea, lets get a few rounds of useability research and confirm it first."

Then the always predictable thing happens: Users never align with your analytics. Seeing data and seeing someone struggling to do something basic with your interface is totally different. When directors see these videos, it really makes them see how important research is and not just relying on data to make decisions. Right now, anything the research team wants, they usually get - its had that profound of an impact on our leadership team.

I can't think of an application outside of travel or long commutes on a train where I would use this. For a daily driver its too big to fit into a pants pocket and the price tag is TGH.

> founded as a mayonnaise company, which now sells consumer packaged goods, software as a service, and surveillance technology.

The visual of this is completely hilarious.

Just started reading Shawn Levy's book, "The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont" which relates the history of the hotel, but I found the history of Hollywood and LA fascinating. Its a huge part of the story of the hotel and development of the areas surrounding the hotel.

All of her devices are Apple. She's made the decision she's ok with the tracking, which is her decision alone. I'm not going to force her to give up her entire system just to make me happy.

That's not how marriage works.

Its not just the broadcasts are advertisements. Its completely engrained in every professional sports league now. They now all have some kind of multi-year contracts with casino's, betting platforms and prediction markets. This is way beyond advertising now. Our local sports talk show has an hour long show that precedes the pre-game that is 100% all about NFL gambling for Sunday's games.

Not only are you seeing the advertisements for these platforms and their betting apps, you're having a coordinated focus on actively pushing it in a myriad of other ways as well.

I realize this is true. This is more of a personal choice since apps like Venmo can still track you on Graphene:

GrapheneOS does not strip proprietary tracking code embedded directly inside third-party apps like Venmo. If you log into Venmo, the app collects your financial activity, device analytics, and interactions

Venmo requires a verified account tied to your real identity, phone number, and bank account, meaning the service already knows who you are regardless of your operating system.

Venmo can see your IP address and any location data you permit the app to access, or data derived from your connection

Is it just me or am I seeing more and more of this stuff happening on HN?

On my smartphone I'm not using Google Play Services so when I open the app, all I get is the search box.

I told a friend this and told him this flips the script on the Algo. Now instead of YT telling you what to watch, YOU are in control of what YOU want to watch.

We have to start breaking this cycle somehow. This is a great way to do it.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll check it out today!

When we're out in public? Yes.

If its time sensitive? Yes.

Like I said, its something that's annoying, but this is the cost of keeping my privacy. My wife uses Apple for all her stuff and she understands. By any account I wouldn't say this is a "burden" per se. She opens the app, hits a few buttons and hits sends. Hardly something that I would consider a burden.

I have a motorola smartphone. I don't have google play installed. I mainly use obtainium for app installation. Its a bare bones phone and it drives my business partner crazy.

"Just log into our instagram account and. . .right, you don't have insta installed on your phone."

"Can you log into our scheduling app and. . . right, you don't have that installed on your phone either."

Some of the more painful things you have to deal with:

- Chromite and Iron Fox filtering out a ton of stuff so a lot of sites simply don't work

- Organic maps is slow and hard to use compared to Google and Apple maps.

- Fairmail that blocks a ton of images and other code - which is good, but had to get used to seeing everything blocked visually.

- Not having any banking apps on my phone. Every time my son needs a few bucks in his account, my wife has to do it if we're out.

- The open source weather apps are not very accurate. Usually within a few degrees, and the radar is hit or miss.

Kind of odd that we have to try so hard to ensure our own privacy. I'm up for a new phone this Fall so I'll most likely be moving to a newer Pixel and will get Lineage or Graphene installed on it.

>> What is the main use case for X these days?

More of a political echo chamber than anything else. I mothballed my original account when things were getting spicy which was primarily focused on dev, UI/UX, and InfoSec news. I finally went back and have had some great interactions with people about technical stuff that interests me. Right now, the data center and AI discussions are getting intense along with Omarchy, lol. If you steer clear of the political stuff, you can find some good stuff still.

>> Is it still as popular as it used to be?

Probably not but it still ranks ahead of sites like Reddit. Its like the 13th, 14th most popular platform right now. I log on mainly just to see if I'm missing anything. Other than that, most of the engagement I have is curiosity and just fun stuff like seeing people posting retro games, stuff like that.

>> Whenever I do see it linked on here it seems to be because one of the big tech CEOs has said something on it.

X is now kind of the social media cul-de-sac . It used to be one of the go to places for breaking tech, popular cultural and political stuff. Now its usually two or three days late to the party on anything worthwhile. So the posts from the CEO probably made the rounds before you finally saw it on X. lol

Best line in the story:

I had spent my whole life dreaming of making my own overnight success on the internet, but had taught someone with no ethics how to do it instead.

This is such a great line and one I know so many people related to as soon as they read it.

You're a great writer, thank you for this today.

The US isn't expanding fossil fuel extraction, its quite the opposite. They're funding the modernization of existing plants in order to take older plants offline:

June 2026: New coal-fired plants in Anchorage, Alaska, and Mt. Storm, West Virginia, would total 2.85 GW. They would be the first new U.S. coal plants to come online since 2013.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-announces-850m-moderniz...

Meanwhile in China (from 2023):

China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021.

"Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas," she says. "We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined."

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...

Meanwhile in India (2026):

India plans to increase its coal production by nearly 100m tonnes to 1.15bn tonnes in the 2025-26 fiscal year to help meet the country’s rising demand for electricity to support economic growth and contend with heatwaves, which have become more severe and more frequent because of the climate crisis.

The planned increases come despite signs that the world is beginning to turn its back on coal in favour of renewable electricity, Global Energy Monitor said.

The US could switch every ICE vehicle to EV's and install solar and wind turbines in every inch of the country and it won't combat what's going on in China, India and other developing countries that rely on coal for cheap energy.