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footoverhand

40 karma · joined May 3, 2013

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footoverhand··on How much AI can a maintainer get away with using without losing their humanity?
Not quite sure the right answer, if AI usage is increasing and the project is valued by human maintainers, then the number of volunteer maintainers should increase. The other extremes are either leveraging AI more, or banning AI contributions.

I imagine it comes down to what brings each particular maintainer joy and if that keeps them working on the project or not. If it's too much like work, then they will eventually stop maintaining it without incentives.

footoverhand··on How I Use Unspent Tokens
Thank you for sharing, it is inspiring to see other's ideas. I sometimes use it to create projects that would be a nice to have, my latest project was a go project called hookguard, a go binary that enforces deterministic safety rules for AI coding agents.
footoverhand··on Ask HN: What options do I have for self-hosted end to end encrypted group chat?
Delta-chat? Email based.
footoverhand··on Secure Messaging Scorecard
While verifying some of the claims of the EFF's scoreboard, I discovered a website which scores programs by their policy decisions and security [1].

I also find it interesting that mumble wasn't mentioned in this secure messaging scorecard, but since this is the first step of a multi-phase project, I imagine the EFF will be updating it.

[1]. https://openintegrity.org

footoverhand··on Design for Assembly in KiCad
This is the first time I have seen the KiCad library on github, that would presumably make sharing generated footprints and parts easier. For the board I produced of in 2011, I shared my library on sourceforge as a zip with no clear installation directions. I mostly learned KiCad from David Jones nice tutorial[1].

I'll check out KiCad in a few days to see how easy it is to share a design with someone else, to see with the latest version if library parts can be easily shared. Thanks for the links and helpful suggestions of consulting the IRC channel for support, I wouldn't have considered the IRC channel.

[1] http://www.alternatezone.com/electronics/files/PCBDesignTuto...

footoverhand··on Design for Assembly in KiCad
Great article. It has been a few years since I last laid out a board in KiCad, the biggest thing I remember is that importing parts and footprints took a lot of work and it wasn't a very straight forward process.

Does anyone have a good workflow for managing and exporting parts so that people can go and download your cad files and libraries to reproduce your board?

footoverhand··on [dead]
A better title would be: Open Source webmail client with Gmail-like conversations

It seems like an interesting project and I wish this developer the best of luck in their fund-raising campaign. Their motivation for developing namail is so that they won't be subjected to the advertising in the standard Gmail interface, while keeping the webmail interface.

I would be pretty interested in a Linux client that has an old gmail like interface, but works on downloaded mail. I currently use mutt since it seems to be to be the best offline mail program for my particular workflow.

footoverhand··on Steps You Can Take Right Now Against Internet Surveillance
Tor is the lazy man's attempt at anonymity. I wouldn't trust it since it receives the majority of its funding from the US Government, and that government is the reason many are looking for anonymity.

For better anonymity, ditch your cell (tracking device) and use open wifi networks, with a fresh MAC address each time (you can't necessarily trust routers at $Coffee_Shop to not identify who you are).

footoverhand··on Hacker News in the Terminal
I was first interested in this post since I do most of my HN browsing via newsbeuter/w3m which are terminal applications. To post, the easiest way seems to be to just pull up the story in my web browser.
footoverhand··on How War in Syria Turned Ordinary Engineers Into Deadly Weapons Inventors
An easy way to determine if the US supports a group is to look at the language used to describe that group. Are they "freedom fighters" or "terrorists"?

France is fighting "terrorists" in Mali, not "freedom fighters". The US supports the Syrian "rebels", not the Syrian "terrorists".

footoverhand··on Foreign Student Dependence
Well there's a good chance that those job postings are created after they have the H1-B visa candidate already selected. List exactly the candidates "qualifications" so that no one is eligible. That way they can claim that there are no local engineers that can do this very specialized work.

/ns unfortunately...

footoverhand··on Foreign Student Dependence
As an American Electrical Engineering Master's graduate from one of the mentioned schools, the program I was in was flooded with international students (mostly from India, some from China, a few from Turkey).

What I found interesting is most of the Indian graduate students came for a masters, most of the Chinese graduate students came for a Ph. D. There were too few Turkish graduate students to make a generalization about.

I think this is good because most of the time, American's can earn nicely with their Bachelors in Electrical Engineering, so there's little incentive to pursue higher education. Having got a Master's in Electrical Engineering, I wouldn't recommend it as a way to further your career. The classes were interesting, but so far I haven't found a job that needed those specialized classes.

footoverhand··on D.C. Council approves ‘living wage’ bill over Wal-Mart ultimatum
If 40 hours working at minimum wage is not enough to live on, shouldn't the minimum wage be raised?
footoverhand··on As NSA Worries Cloud Dropbox, Tonido Offers its “Personal Cloud”
I think the safest thing to do is to avoid all cloud services that aren't essential to you. Downloading all of your email and removing them from cloud providers (gmail, yahoo, etc...) is probably a good idea too.

All of the cloud providers provide a convenience at the cost of security and privacy. The cloud providers might be just fine if you don't care about your privacy.

footoverhand··on Steve Wozniak speaks out against NSA spying: this is not my America
It would be much better to not trust Internet services with your security, because you'd still have to trust them.

A better solution would be to add your own encryption on top of all of your communications, and to toss out your cell phone. Patterns can still be created by what websites your IP visits (or any VPN exit that is linked to you), who you contact, and where you go. Deploying a relatively secure communications system ends up with you talking to a few people "securely", but not anonymously.

It also depends on how much you trust your OS (Microsoft has been working with the NSA since 2007, in what ways, we may never know).

footoverhand··on Russia promises legal action over NSA surveillance scandal
It's interesting that this event may spur countries into making their own electronics, rather than depending on multinational corporations which may include "special features" for the US government.

This encouragement of nationalism may be what we need to reduce the number of unemployed.

footoverhand··on Pilot SSH is now available on Android
Why should customers trust your closed source app, when no one but you can inspect the implementation?
footoverhand··on Rsync.net Warrant Canary (2006)
It's a neat idea, but you'd still need to trust rsync.net. If you start with the assumption that you cannot ever trust them, then you can use them(if needed) as a 3rd party storage site for encrypted files.
footoverhand··on A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry
Do you have any plans to support Seamonkey?
footoverhand··on Your iPhone works for the secret police
Your Burnerphone is an interesting idea, but how does it compare to buying a prepaid wireless phone from a brick and morter store with cash?

Can your phones be recycled? What carrier are you using?

footoverhand··on Simple solution to the password reuse problem
I think it would be simpler and easier to remember one password to your non-cloud based password program such as Keepass. That way, you can create not only random passwords, but random usernames (since usernames are one key to unlocking your account).

The disadvantage of this approach is that your more restricted on where you can login to services (since you'll need your password manager there, and a trusted computer to run it on).

footoverhand··on Show HN: Free hi-resolution photos for your website. 10 new photos every 10 days
Why do all of the photo's have Apple products in them?

I would recommend displaying the license in which these high resolution photos can be used, because "free" isn't a license.

footoverhand··on Kim Dotcom to Google, Twitter, Facebook: I Own Security Patent, Work With Me
Perhaps he missed the memo which clearly states that patent's are used to protect multinational corporations and governments, not individuals or small corporations.
footoverhand··on Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
I've been using them for quite a while and found their service to be reliable. Even their webmail access is decent. A con is that their spam filtering isn't as good as gmail.
footoverhand··on Who really runs Wikipedia?
If one wants to know the official narrative of the US government or the EU, you only need to glance into a recent history book distributed in schools, or Wikipedia.
footoverhand··on Internal Microsoft email: Next Xbox will work even when your Internet doesn’t
While the internal email does indicate that players will be able to play offline, it does not indicate if the games themselves will be tied to a account like Steam games.

We will have to see if Microsoft will allow the used games market to continue, or if it will be killed like many publishers want.