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christefano

290 karma · joined April 2, 2007

Me:

I work at the engineering firm, Exaltation of Larks, and at the Droplabs network of coworking spaces, which are two companies I co-founded.

In my spare time I'm a public speaker on open source software, high performance websites and internet security, and am a startup mentor and Drupal community manager and organizer.

My new company is Solar Ignition, a venture capital seed fund and accelerator program. We back entrepreneurs working on big ideas and values-based businesses using open source principles.

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christefano··on Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future
Is Memories working for you after the 34 update? I remember it took a long time for the community to update Memories to work with 33, and that experience has me holding off on updating to 34 with the hope that app updates come quickly.
christefano··on Bugs Apple loves
Getting HTML email signatures to work in iOS Mail is a trial and error nightmare, and it requires a second device.

Create an HTML email signature in TextEdit or some other rich text editor on macOS, copy it and paste it on iOS using Continuity Clipboard into the signature text field in iOS’ Settings -> Apps -> Mail -> Signature text field, and pray that it works.

When it does work, it ignores text size. Want your email signature to be in a smaller font size? Too bad.

The only workaround I’ve found is to copy an email signature from another email account that miraculously did copy over successfully, copy it on iOS and paste that in to another’s email signature field, and manually rewrite the whole thing.

Of course, the HTML links aren’t editable, and the Signature text fields don’t enable the “Add Link” item to the hover tools menu when selecting text.

Worst of all, even when the email signature is finally perfect, the Signature text field doesn’t preview it properly. If text is pasted in at a smaller text size, the preview still shows it at the default size. The only way to accurately preview an email signature is to draft a new email and hope the email signature displays like it did originally in TextEdit.

In short, never create a new HTML email signature on iOS. Create in on a Mac (source), copy it over the network with Continuity Clipboard, hope it works, and treat the iOS email signature fields (destination) as a never- or rarely-editable workspace.

christefano··on Bugs Apple loves
That does sound annoying.

I have a dozen regularly typed words that I have had to set up string replacements for (in General -> Keyboard -> Text Replacement) to work around recorrect the autocorrect.

It used to be possible to tell autocorrect to ignore certain words and add them to the system dictionary (by typing the word, having jt autocorrected, hutting backspace and fixing the autocorrected word, and repeating the process 2 or 3 times), but that inexplicably stopped working for me a few years ago.

christefano··on Bugs Apple loves
In the shutdown / restart confirmation dialog there’s a checkbox to reopen apps at login. If there’s a bug with it I haven’t noticed it. You can also run

defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowLaunchesRelaunchApps -bool false

christefano··on More than 75% of Steam games tested are playable or verified on the Steam Deck
Great point about emulation! I thought of a few Retro Games Corps videos I’ve seen when I saw your comment. Is that you?
christefano··on Ask HN: Where else do you get your news?
Wikipedia, yes. Without attribution no. It says they use Wikipedia on the ‘about’ page, where they also say they donate half their profits to the Wikipedia Foundation.

I’m not associated with factsasnews at all; I just took a minute and clicked on the ‘about’ page.

christefano··on The PocketReform is a made-in-Berlin Linux handheld
Link: https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/astro-slide
christefano··on Lego has designed a set that can't be taken apart
Would this be called “lock in”?
christefano··on Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
“One worrying trend I’ve observed among my male investor friends is that they’re much more wary of giving candid advice to women founders than they used to be. They are afraid of saying anything that a female founder might misinterpret as sexism. So, when giving feedback to a woman they don’t know well enough to trust, they talk with less candor than they would with a male founder.¹ When this happens, women are missing out on potentially valuable advice.”

Oh. My. God. Just ask the person if they want your advice.

It’s the same in the (presumably male-dominated) workplace as it is in anywhere, such as giving unsolicited advice to someone at the (usually male-dominated) rock gym.

christefano··on Signal AMA on Reddit
Surprising for me. I just shared the link with my COVID pod, and I’m giddy for the mayhem to begin. Thanks for the link!
christefano··on Signal AMA on Reddit
Great call to action. With other nonprofits I would immediately agree, matching is important. Is Signal in more need than other nonprofits, though? I imagine they’re still sitting on some of the $40 million the Signal Foundation got from Brian Acton, former WhatApp CEO.
christefano··on Soapbox FE v1.1 for Pleroma released
Would love to hear the community’s response to these questions. Post it as an Ask HN if you’re up for it!

Pleroma has been the front runner for a community of mine that has about 1,000 members in the Portland, Oregon area. (In that context, joining the fediverse is a bonus and not a core reason for using Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.)

About half our members are on Meetup and the other half is on Facebook, and the community has definitely bifarcated after we paused our in-person meetups due to physical distancing.

I’m hoping groups and group chats become a thing for Pleroma soon, and those are more or less the 2 features I’m waiting for before scheduling time for the build.

I was originally leaning toward OpenSocial, but ActivityPub for Drupal had only just reached alpha within the last few weeks.

christefano··on iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro
Samesies. Having even close to the purported 6x speed improvement when taking low light photos would be amazing.
christefano··on iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro
Gender is a spectrum and not a binary. Here’s a playlist of TED talks that you might be interested in:

https://www.ted.com/playlists/459/the_gender_spectrum

“These talks break down what it means to live outside society’s traditional (and outdated) understanding of gender.”

Note: Replying to the parent whose post has been flagged.

christefano··on iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro
I try to, if only so that I can get ahead of the headlines and opinion pieces. I like to form my own opinions first.
christefano··on iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro
Interesting idea, though I’m not sure this is a good idea. Exposing one’s nose defeats the purpose of wearing the mask.

As an aside, I’m super curious to see whether Face ID works with the transparent PurME masks.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/purme-a-gas-mask-you-can-...

christefano··on iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro
> Touch ID (combined with a home button) is a lot faster. You can reach into your pocket or handbag, put the finger on the button and press it while you're taking it out. By the time your phone is out it's unlocked and on the home screen. I don't recall seeing people failing to unlock their phones while paying with Apple Pay before but now it's a reasonably common occurrence if they didn't "prime" it ahead of time.

I was excited when I discovered this, but I now consider this “feature” to be a security issue. I used to “prime” my Touch ID-equipped iPhones until I accidental authorized an in-app purchase because my thumb was pre-placed on the sensor.

Never again.

I had modified the Accessibility settings so that resting a finger on the sensor would unlock the device, and when reverting that setting I still ran into the same issue.

christefano··on iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro
And the screen size, too…

It wasn’t until home widgets became a thing that I actually began entertaining the idea of getting a Pro Max.

christefano··on Tearing Apart the Wyze Outdoor Camera Base Station – Surprise, Its OpenWRT
“Well this is interesting, this little guy is running OpenWRT. I guessed all of the normal user / password combos I could think of and didn’t get anywhere – If anyone has any ideas on how to get into this shoot me a message / comment!”
christefano··on Ask HN: Google Drive/Office 365 alternatives
Thanks! I found this helpful.

To anyone else also just learning about Mail-in-a-Box:

“Mail-in-a-Box is based on Postfix, Dovecot, Z-Push, Roundcube, Nextcloud, Apache SpamAssassin, Postgrey, Nginx, @konklone’s nginx config, and more.”

christefano··on Microsoft Edge Just Dropped These Brilliant New Features to Beat Chrome
Welcome to Forbes :(
christefano··on That UPS you bought for your home server may not be as useful as you think
I’m sorry for your loss.

It sounds like you used a Back-UPS unit instead of a Smart-UPS, which I’ve heard switches to battery 10x faster than the Back-UPS.

After learning this I won’t use a Back-UPS for anything where meaningful data loss might happen. They’re great for lights, cable modems, WiFi routers, etc., though.

christefano··on Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
Hit the same key combo that invoked the character picker (⌘⌃Space in my case).
christefano··on Pleroma: A Mastodon-compatible open and federated social networking server
ChatMessages info here: https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/-/merge_requests/...
christefano··on When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]
Thank you for weighing in. Hearing from more devs is what this thread needs, IMO, not rumor mongering.

Great website, by the way!

https://www.nikolaapp.com/

Out of curiosity, can you say whether Tesla has approached you for acquisition?

christefano··on Putin says Russian Navy to get hypersonic nuclear strike weapons
Had to look up “hypersonic,” so consider this back of the envelope math from an interested amateur.

Hypersonic is the term used for speeds over Mach 5. Mach 1 is equal to the speed of sound, however the speed of sound varies at different elevation.

Sound travels slower in mediums that are less dense, so the higher you go in elevation the slower Mach is.

Mach 5 is about 6,125km/h (3,805.9mph) at sea level, and about 5,339 km/h (3,317.5mph) at 35,000ft, which makes is where you’ll see lots of commercial airliners.

Source: https://www.quora.com/How-fast-is-mach-5-speed?share=1

christefano··on Inventing the Beach: The unnatural history of a natural place (2016)
What are the historical views and experiences of people outside of Europe?

Sadly this article is written exclusively from a Euro-centric perspective. Even the “Inventing the Beach” part of the title is colonialist.

christefano··on Thread: Why deep reading clubs are fucking rad
All on one page with Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1285415881120481280.html
christefano··on Do You Dare Switch Jobs in the Coronavirus Economy?
Archive.is: http://archive.is/wip/AOSTK
christefano··on Portland police declare riot as anti-cop protesters torch union headquarters
Not just the title. The article is heavily biased. Framing protestors as “vigilantes” implies wrongdoing, and using words like “protestors facing off with police” with no other context implies that protestors and police are equal or comparable in force. It’s not even close.
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