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floss_silicate

410 karma · joined April 14, 2009

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floss_silicate··on Japan reins in 'stealth marketing' with new regulation
Marketing traditionally encompasses: price, product, placement (distribution) and promotion.

PR, advertising and sales fall under different branches of promotion.

floss_silicate··on Flipper Zero can spam nearby iPhones with Bluetooth pop-ups
...and shared on Hacker News.
floss_silicate··on Can ads be GDPR compliant?
Furthermore, both Google and Meta have quietly conceded that a lot of the digital attribution data they generate is pretty bunk. It’s why Meta developed Robyn, which uses MMM techniques that have long been used to measure effectiveness of traditional channels: https://github.com/facebookexperimental/Robyn
floss_silicate··on Homebrew (brew.sh) guy has gone full blockchain/Web3
This seems really silly.

A better system would be for a service like Flathub to support bitcoin Lightning payments direct to app developers.

Obviates the need for the store to handle payment, developers can handle their tax arrangements personally (and exchange into whatever local currency they use almost immediately to protect against price fluctuations).

floss_silicate··on Quick Start Guide for Flipper Zero
Two decades of blogging and still every company blog links to the blog index, not the brand homepage.
floss_silicate··on Most Salvadorans have already ditched their national Bitcoin wallets
But all the comments in this thread are talking about the failure of bitcoin, when the article is about the wallet software they developed.

That’s the sleight of hand.

floss_silicate··on Most Salvadorans have already ditched their national Bitcoin wallets
There’s a bit of sleight of hand going on with this article, which conflates use of the Chivo wallet software with bitcoin.

But then later the article says:

“Meanwhile, many living in tourist hot spots on the Pacific coast, where Bitcoin usage is highest, have transitioned to other crypto wallets, such as the privately developed Bitcoin Beach.”

So they’re using the currency, just not the government developed software.

And a weird phrasing here “[many] are using it to hold and transfer dollars, El Salvador’s official currency”, implying dollars are the only ‘official’ currency — when by definition, Bitcoin is too.

floss_silicate··on On anti-crypto toxicity
> Finally, most of the internet is powered from warehouses that are purposely built in areas with carbon-neutral electricity. The operators are actively optimising their consumption and investing in carbon-neutral energy generation that match their needs.

This is exactly the same case as with bitcoin miners.

Estimates I’ve seen put renewables as 40-66% of bitcoins energy mix, with this figure rising over time.

The incentive is towards cheaper renewable sources that would otherwise not be viable.

floss_silicate··on On anti-crypto toxicity
But that’s just an argument against any technology that will increase electricity demand, such as EVs.

When the web was growing the electrical demands were similarly criticised:

“The current fuel-economy rating: about 1 pound of coal to create, package, store and move 2 megabytes of data. The digital age, it turns out, is very energy-intensive. The Internet may someday save us bricks, mortar and catalog paper, but it is burning up an awful lot of fossil fuel in the process.”

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0531/6311070a.html?sh=5db...

floss_silicate··on Why the Gov.uk Design System team changed the input type for numbers (2020)
What was unique about GOV.UK is that it wasn’t done by a consultancy.

They managed to build an in-house, central resource (GDS/Government Digital Service) and pioneered a lot of public service design practices which are the template for USDS and others.

However, my understanding is that the GDS team is greatly diminished these days and the consultants are back across separate government departments again.

floss_silicate··on Jack Dorsey has regrets about building Twitter
The limit wasn’t artificial though, it was the number of characters you could send in a single SMS message (160 minus 20 reserved for meta data)
floss_silicate··on A Fun List of Browsers
InternetWorks getting credit for ‘tabs’ here, but looks more like a multi document interface? Which Opera also adopted — before Firefox (Phoenix).
floss_silicate··on Show HN: I developed a native macOS Hacker News client
“Mac-er News”, surely?
floss_silicate··on Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
Appreciated the gigantic RSS subscription button at the bottom of the page.
floss_silicate··on Signal Is a Government Op
I can absolutely see the objectives of US foreign policy (enable citizens of foreign powers to evade domestic surveillance) conflicting with domestic policy (bulk communications collection).

It doesn’t necessarily compromise Signal, but simply highlights that government isn’t always internally efficient or consistent.

floss_silicate··on Signal Is a Government Op
“The internet is a government op to spy on the populace” does appear to be the synopsis of the authors book, linked at the end of the post.

So I suspect this post is really just an elaborate bit of spam.

floss_silicate··on A hacker got all my texts for $16
I tried to set up a Twilio number specifically to handle these services that demand SMS for login.

Weirdly it only works for a minority of services, I expect many use Twilio to send their auth texts and Twilio blocks sending these to their own numbers?

floss_silicate··on Police-issued "courtesy cards" help friends and family out of minor infractions
So this is... actually worse?