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edarchis

362 karma · joined September 18, 2017

Born in the 70s, started coding in the 80s, Linux early adopter, FOSDEM, now doing Python and devopsec.
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edarchis··on Clipboard Normalizer
> This app is currently not available in your country or region.

Fuck you Apple.

edarchis··on Live map of public transport in Belgium
Absolutely, the official apps are lacking. Google maps has incorrect timetables and the TEC app doesn't give you any way of knowing when the next bus will be and where in traffic it is. I recently had a bus at say 10:00, I get there at 9:58 and wait until 10:15 for the bus. Leaving the stop and seeing the bus pass a bit later is extremely infuriating. This kind of map lets you check where the bus actually is. Not so convenient on a phone but I'll take it.
edarchis··on OpenLogi
I don't really care about the site but it's an indication that the software might include a trojan or serious flaw. I'm not downloading code with deep system access and risk losing my data/money.
edarchis··on I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
I'll be honest. I discovered him with this post. And I studied in France. I am also familiar with his projects, the obfuscated C code contest and more. Just don't remember seeing his name.

I guess that if people aren't loud on social media, people tend to ignore them.

Respect to those who posted their praise of someone else on social media. We need more of this.

edarchis··on Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes
I got a prompt about trying new apps every week or something similar. The wording, the moment it prompted me were clearly designed for people to just say "ok" and then wonder how apps were installing regularly without any action. I got caught myself, disabled it but still got new app installs later. I killed the whole thing and have been free since. But definitely felt like a scam. And the apps suck.
edarchis··on Why most product tours get skipped
I think that you underestimate the portion of people just letting Youtube play videos in a continuous flow. They are doing the dishes, sewing, folding clothes, watching the entrance of the building... Stating the subject of the video makes a lot of sense for them.

I use DeArrow to remove clickbait titles and thumbnails, so indeed, I don't need that information to be repeated. I don't mind a few seconds at the beginning, what I hate is the person rambling about why they didn't post the day before and what not. That time multiplied by the number of viewers makes me wanna cry.

edarchis··on Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers took 2 minutes to break it
Please stop saying "Brussels" to mean the EU. It's a nasty trick to give the idea that it's some kind of external entity forcing your country to do something. It's not. It's an assembly. And it's insulting to people from Brussels. I don't want this any more than you do.
edarchis··on Android Developer Verification
Play the GDPR card, even if you're not from Europe. Find their DPO and state that you want to appeal the automated decision to a human.

Companies operating in Europe must provide a clear way to appeal automated decisions: https://www.edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-work/publicat...

You might not have a way to actually file a complaint against them but quite often, their legal department will just have a quick look at your case and just give you what you want without bothering to tell you anything. Worth a shot.

edarchis··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)
I think that it's a great opportunity to play with relatives. Each person can explain why/why not and that's probably the main point.

It'll also probably shut the mouth of those who think that they know better. This works with the driving license. Start a test with the whole family and watch the older men get a reality check.

edarchis··on TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption, saying it makes users less safe
> But critics have said E2EE makes it harder to stop harmful content spreading online, because it means tech firms and law enforcement have no way of viewing any material sent in direct messages.

Like they give a damn. I report accounts that explicitly sell fake credit cards, citing laws that make it illegal and 95% of the time "we checked and there is no violation here, we know that you're not happy but don't give a crap".

So the argument of security is utter bullshit and they just want to snoop.

edarchis··on TÜV Report 2026: Tesla Model Y has the worst reliability of all 2022–2023 cars (2025)
This is the problem with this report. It doesn't mean that the cars break down more often, it means that they are so rarely at the shop that the drivers don't notice the used brake pads, tires etc.
edarchis··on Ask HN: COBOL devs, how are AI coding affecting your work?
Not COBOL but I sometimes have to maintain a large ColdFusion app. The early LLMs were pretty bad at it but these days, I can let AI write code and I "just" review it.

I've also used AI to convert a really old legacy app to something more modern. It works surprisingly well.

edarchis··on Anthropic disabled my account after payment cancer patient/medical data trapped
I got banned for asking about the yfinance python module. They had an "appeal" but it was a Google Form that probably nobody ever looks at.

My recommendation would be to get in touch with their DPO (Data Protection Officer) and invoke the GDPR rule that you have the right to 1. have an explanation as to why an automated decision was made about you, 2. ask for a human review. You are out of the GDPR scope but the legal contact might not bother checking and just restore your account. Getting your data is also a right under GDPR but getting your account back would be a better option. I wouldn't mention this or they'll jump on it.

edarchis··on Booking.com cancels $4K hotel reservation, offers same rooms again for $17K
Good to know, you're not the first I hear complaining about this.

I'm pretty sure that if you tell them that you're initiating a chargeback, it'll magically resolve itself.

edarchis··on Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
There is no certification to pass or anything. You just have to keep it in mind when creating your business. It's too easy to just abuse data and then claim that it's too late to fix.

I've been through several startups after GDPR went into effect, it's really not a problem.

edarchis··on Show HN: Pegma, an open-source version of the classic Peg solitaire
Permissions: - control vibration - Google Play license check

Not bad.

edarchis··on Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers
It's funny to talk about internationalization but only support Western date format.

If you are managing hospital admissions in Nepal, you have to be able to provide the date in Nepalese calendar and in the common one. And believe me, the Nepalese calendar is a complex one.

In Ethiopia, you'll have to support 13 months but they'll be close enough to common dates that people will manage mentally. But imagine that you have to handle a quarter of 4 months, one of which is 5 or 6 days long.

If someone has a good reference for a properly international picker, I'm all ears.

edarchis··on A startup’s quest to store electricity in the ocean
Relying on a salinity differential, even between salted and unsalted, seems like a terribly small amount of energy. There are projects to put large spheres at the feet of offshore windmills to pump water in and out. That has some pressure challenges but store a lot more.

The advantage I see for the salinity difference is that you can make them a lot larger than the pumped water ones. But is worth it, I'm skeptical.

edarchis··on A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad
A similar tool, open source and portable Linux/Mac/Windows is Cyme. It works wonderfully well.

https://github.com/tuna-f1sh/cyme

edarchis··on I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
12€/month minimum, that's expensive. It's ok for a professional website with loads of comments but for my personal blog, I'd rather not have comments.
edarchis··on I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
The author is using a random CMS, namely Hugo.

You probably mean a PHP that can be hosted for cheap. But then, you end up with a Wordpress nightmare, even more spam and security issues.

I had a pretty popular blog and some posts gathered hundreds of useful comments. But I was so tired of fighting spam that I threw it all away and started using Hugo too, without comments.

edarchis··on Show HN: PlutoPrint – Generate PDFs and PNGs from HTML with Python
Tried it on Mac too and from Python, it just outputs an empty file, with their own samples. With the command line directly, it complains about reverse mtime /Library/Fonts.

This is the kind of thing that might be fixed with more people attempting to use it, or it could be another pita like having to install an old wkhtmltopdf for Odoo to use.

edarchis··on Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
Visa application is riddled with scams. From the simple website that charges you twice the price to websites that will tell you that you were rejected and then fake your documents to get in with your name. So they're probably trying to see that you're not one of those web servers, a proxy for them or detect some known C2 channels.
edarchis··on My bank keeps on undermining anti-phishing education
gewinnen-mit-wero.de: It is pretty common to use a dedicated domain for a large campaign so that the spam complaints don't hurt the deliverability of your main domain.
edarchis··on Wttr: Console-oriented weather forecast service
I love this one, it's excellent at packing lots and lots of information in very little space.

It's sadly victim of its success and is quite often over quota to its weather API. We should make a paid version that wouldn't have this problem and bring some monetary karma to Igor

edarchis··on Underwater turbine spinning for 6 years off Scotland's coast is a breakthrough
They're not exactly the same thing but for comparison, France has the Rance Tidal Power Station that has been producing 250MW for 45 years. South Korean made a more powerful one at 254MW. This pilot produced 4.5MW when all 3 turbines were operating normally.
edarchis··on YouTube No Translation
What drives me nuts with this is that they'll go for a weird guessing game instead of using the language settings that the browser is providing in every single request.

My browser states that I favour English, then French. My user profile on the website has "English" as language. Yet, when I get to the homepage, it tries to guess my language from my IP. NOOOO.

edarchis··on YouTube No Translation
<edit> as pointed out by @addandsubtract, I misunderstood the extension, it's about audio translation, not just titles. Sorry about that. </edit>

If you're using DeArrow, there is an option to disable those translations.

DeArrow is from the same team as SponsorBlock, it removes the clickbait thumbnails and titles with more descriptive ones. It makes the experience sooo much better. https://dearrow.ajay.app/

edarchis··on New US visa rules will force foreign students to unlock social media profiles
I'm pretty sure that they future queen of Belgium, studying at Harvard, will be exempted for this. It will be used when DHS, ICE or any "officer" wants something against you.
edarchis··on Ask HN: Do people actually pay for small web tools?
A former colleague makes it an interview question. He asks the recruiter what the procedure is if he wants to buy a product or use a service under $100/year. If the bureaucracy is overwhelming, it's a major red flag.

When I was working at Cisco, the general rule was to get manager approval and just go for it. Of course, these days, there are security concerns but for most cases, it's not a problem.

In a different company, it was sooo hard to get anything that they refused to buy JetBrains IntelliJ and forced us to use Eclipse. Most of us ended up buying it ourselves.

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