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daveoc64

2,277 karma · joined May 29, 2019

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daveoc64··on The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
Seems like the solution to the DoS concern is to just limit the site to whatever amount of RAM is currently available on the device - that's what every other browser/OS combination other than iOS seems to do without issue.
daveoc64··on An update on Wayback Machine access
Is scale what we're discussing though?

e.g. a prompt of "fetch <article URL> and summarise it for me" is very close to what a human would be doing with a web browser, and doesn't seem to involve any kind of scaling issue.

daveoc64··on Let's make quality the norm again
That would apply more to things like a washing machine or microwave - things that don't become obsolete quickly.
daveoc64··on What algorithm did Windows XP use to choose your initial user picture?
It's well above the number of images that were in the applicable folder by default, so seems pretty appropriate to me.
daveoc64··on Keep Our Servers Running
The UK has remained a participant in SEPA, even after Brexit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area#Cove...

daveoc64··on Tim Cook Sold Out Steve Jobs (2025)
That article and your memory glosses over the fact that Apple redesigned the antenna to fix the actual problem in later devices - the antenna was changed in the Verizon iPhone 4 (which came out later), as well as the iPhone 4S and all subsequent models.
daveoc64··on Tell HN: PayPal blocks GrapheneOS
GrapheneOS doesn't give you root access.

The OS is designed to offer privacy and security guarantees, which root access breaks, so they don't offer it.

daveoc64··on Show HN: GlassBox – what the browser reveals, and how identifiable you are
The APIs it's relying on to show you that information do implement some anti-fingerprinting mechanisms - things like available memory will be put into rough buckets rather than returning the exact amount you have.
daveoc64··on Renting a sewing machine from the library
The BBC Future website is not aimed at users in the UK, and features content produced by the BBC's commercial arm.

Users in the UK can read it without ads, but it's not generally promoted or linked to by bbc.co.uk

daveoc64··on The UK's New Under-16 Social Media Ban Will Cause More Harm Than It Prevents
> Is there a UK version of the EFF that fights in the courts against this lunacy or does it not quite work the same in the UK as it does in the US.

The government looks likely to introduce the ban as regulation through secondary legislation (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9824zvpz9po).

That is open to judicial review.

If primary legislation was instead passed, that's a lot harder to challenge - Parliament makes the law, so whatever Parliament said applies.

Politics is very different in the UK than in the US, especially when the governing party has such a large majority.

The banning of under-16s from social media has widespread support across the parties in Parliament.

daveoc64··on What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000
There is no version of Windows 2000 for consumers.

Windows Me was the nearest consumer release (2000 came out in 1999, Me in 2000), and did share most of the same UI, but was based on Windows 98.

Windows XP was the first version of Windows to ship with the same codebase for both consumer and business.

daveoc64··on United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert
> However I agree that in purely domestic airports I don't see how you'd prevent general public from accessing bags.

I don't understand this.

Why can't they have a door after the baggage claim that does not permit entry to the baggage claim area?

That's how things work in the UK.

In my local airport, the final part of leaving the arrivals area is the same for both international and domestic flights.

Passport control > Baggage claim (international) > Customs > One-way exit to landside

Baggage claim (domestic) > One-way exit to landside

daveoc64··on Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore
Virtually all of the Kagi results bring you up when I do that.
daveoc64··on Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore
It's a niche service that is almost perfectly tailored to meet the needs of HN users.

It's a paid-only service, without ads - "you are not the product", that lets you hide results from popular (to the mainstream) sites like Instagram and Pinterest, and to filter out low-quality sources like W3Schools, while raising MDN and the Arch Linux wiki to the top.

daveoc64··on Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better
You can download books directly from the Project Gutenberg website using the web browser on most eBook readers - even the Kindle supports it.
daveoc64··on Copy Fail
Ubuntu seems to have updated the page to say that it's a high priority now.
daveoc64··on An update on recent Claude Code quality reports
>My overall feel is that people underestimate the complexity of the systems at Anthropic and the chaos of the growth.

Making changes like reducing the usage window at peak times (https://x.com/trq212/status/2037254607001559305) without announcing it (until after the backlash) is the sort of thing that's making people lose trust in Anthropic. They completely ignored support tickets and GitHub issues about that for 3 days.

You shouldn't have to rely on finding an individual employee's posts on Reddit or X for policy announcements.

That policy hasn't even been put into their official documentation nearly one month on - https://support.claude.com/en/articles/11647753-how-do-usage...

A company with their resources could easily do better.

daveoc64··on South Korea introduces universal basic mobile data access
The UK does have net neutrality, and it's quite strictly regulated by Ofcom, which produces an annual report showing compliance and highlighting any issues it has investigated:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/internet-based-services/network-neu...

Things like restrictions on tethering and using a SIM in a router are forbidden.

Unlike most countries, net neutrality has never been a political football in the UK.

Ofcom groups zero rating schemes into three types:

Type one - government and NGO services (always allowed).

Type two - where categories of service (e.g. video or music streaming apps) are zero rated, but any service fitting into the category can apply to be zero rated by the network.

Type three - any other kind of zero rating.

Things like the VOXI Unlimited Social Media packages fit into Type Two, so are expressly permitted.

For the rest, Ofcom assessed the impact on consumers, which is generally low.

daveoc64··on Expanding Swift's IDE Support
They've always offered a bundle of the command line tools separately to Android Studio:

https://developer.android.com/studio#command-line-tools-only

daveoc64··on TSA lines are so out of control that travelers are hiring line-sitters
As noted elsewhere, that approach doesn't stop someone flying the plane into a building.
daveoc64··on My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)
I've recently purchased a couple of the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition devices, and they leave a lot to be desired.

The wake word detection isn't great, and the audio quality is abysmal (for voice responses, not music).

Amazon has ruined their Alexa and Echo devices with ads and annoying nag messages.

I'd really like an open alternative, but the basics are lacking right now.

daveoc64··on Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
The standard for this in the UK is that you should make a reasonable effort to work out who was driving.

e.g. checking your calendar/diary, looking through receipts or bank statements to work out where you likely were.

There's also a requirement that a request for information is sent within 14 days for minor incidents like speeding or red light violations, so it's not like you have to work out who was driving on a Tuesday morning three years ago.

daveoc64··on LibreOffice Writer now supports Markdown
Based on what others have suggested, I've just tried out pandoc for this, and it's produced really good results in CommonMark from some quite hideous Word documents.
daveoc64··on Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal
That's a normal legal term in the UK:

https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights

daveoc64··on The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
In many countries, it's possible to get a prepaid SIM with data access - without any ID or age requirement whatsoever.
daveoc64··on The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
> if you are paying for internet access you have to be over 18, no?

No, that's not the case.

daveoc64··on When internal hostnames are leaked to the clown
Rachel has blogged quite a bit about blocking badly behaved RSS Clients in recent years.

I'd link you to one of the articles if I wasn't blocked too, and my VPN wasn't also blocked!

daveoc64··on We Do Not Support Opt-Out Forms (2025)
All the comments there seem to suggest that there has been no change and that robots.txt isn't required.
daveoc64··on The latest Firefox version broke ChatGPT website
I'm glad I'm not the only one with this problem!
daveoc64··on Text-based web browsers
It's covered on MDN:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

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