Hacker News Reader

fruffyon Thunderbird 78 is available on the Snap Store

I only use Thunderbird on all my devices for all my different email addresses. No other client. Happy with it. Also works nicely for dual-booting and sharing a config between Windows and Linux.

One feature I miss is sync. Something like Firefox Sync would be very useful.

fruffyon The Great Barrington Declaration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics

I would like to avoid devolving into an argument about semantics. My original point is that nothing about the original throwaway line is wrong per se or indicates that they do not know what they are talking about. I find these sorts of nit-picks odd.

fruffyon The Great Barrington Declaration

Stop this please. Herd immunity is not a well-defined term [1]. Their definition is just as valid as yours. "i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable" is a perfectly fine assessment of herd immunity.

[1]https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077

fruffyon Noita – roguelite where every pixel is simulated

This is great, thank you for sharing. I really treasure this game.

fruffyon Just some red flags. No big deal. Just ignore them

I do not know why this writing is always upvoted. I find the blog insufferable. It has this kind of style which makes grand narratives about minor nuisances and seems to warp what really happened. HN loves it for some reason.

fruffyon Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

It's a simple calling and messaging app without the baggage of Facebook integration. That is all people wanted.

It is now redundant but that was not the case 10 years ago. People just stick with it since there is little incentive to adapt anything else. WhatsApp just works.

fruffyon Guitar – Git GUI Client

The founder has some controversial views on how to develop the product, this includes more cloud integration.

https://old.reddit.com/r/git/comments/59j0yq/gitkraken_is_no...

On top of that GitKraken is closed-source and in the past there were concerns on telemetry collection: https://old.reddit.com/r/git/comments/4dgpgd/gitkraken_data_...

Nothing major, which is why I am still using it, but definitely enough to make you wary.

fruffyon Guitar – Git GUI Client

GitKraken has been a godsend, I have been really spoiled by it. Managing big repositories has become a breeze thanks to the visualization techniques it uses. If only the company behind it weren't so questionable about their privacy and monetization policies. I am still on the fence on the product.

fruffyon On Surviving Screens and Social Media in Isolation

I had to make a comment because I disagree so strongly with this sentiment. I am biased of course because I do not like Twitter in the first place, but I genuinely believe Twitter has made this crisis worse than it is.

Twitter naturally "outperforms" all other agencies because it thrives on disaster and outrage porn. Of course you will encounter all kind of alarm bells because that is what gets retweeted. Constantly and year-round. A broken clock may be right twice a day.

>It continues to be a much better source of information than the vast majority of traditional media (and quite a bit better than WashPo IMO, lost a bit of respect for Cal on that one, still respect him a lot though)

I passionately disagree, Twitter is not a better source information. It is merely a firehose of information, which is largely low-grade, easily digestible news that is often incorrect or misrepresented. None of it is vital nor useful. This has nothing to do with following smartly it is about how the website is built. Even if you follow smartly, at best you get an unbiased news aggregator where you might as well go straight to the source. Twitter is instant gratification for news addicts. Everyone wants to be the town herald that gets there first.

Sources on Twitter are also biased, even more so. I rather trust processed and digested news than person X that said Y and shows some shaky video of Z. Best recent example of the disastrous consequences are the comments made by a German official in the Berlin senate (hardly an important position) who went on Twitter to complain about the US holding back masks. That turned out to be incorrect but spread like wildfire and caused an international incident. The "slow" news actually investigated and called him out on it but by then the damage had been done.

fruffyon Albert Uderzo has died

Yes, I was not born when the original German translations were released, so I cannot comment on the reactions in the time. But I can also not recall any media controversy around the comic other than the initial publisher mishap, that is why I am bit confused about these comments. Surely there must be some people that complained to Uderzo but that is unavoidable.

Erbfeindschaft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French%E2%80%93German_enmity) is still alive and well in Germany so it's not like there is no awareness of these sentiments anymore. Although under the EU project that has improved a lot in the recent two decades because both the French and Germans found a common enemy in the Brits ha.

fruffyon Albert Uderzo has died

I think you are talking about the first publisher who tried to insert controversial elements into Asterix. He was somewhat of a nationalist. His license got pulled and the comics got re-released in the normal format. Those were two different things.

fruffyon Albert Uderzo has died

>or at least a very us-centric view

Exactly. Also the black characters in Asterix were not "black", they were Numidians or Nubians. They were characters with agency like any other, the Mansion of Gods comic is the best example.

fruffyon Albert Uderzo has died

There are still subcultures around, too. At least on reddit there is /r/LTB_iel which is a spoof of /r/me_irl: https://old.reddit.com/r/LTB_iel/top/

There are a lot of jokes in those that went over my head as a kid.

fruffyon Albert Uderzo has died

That's funny, I am German and that comic book was always one of my favourites. I never made the connection that it was supposed to be demeaning or that there was a controversy around it. I always took it as being cheeky like Asterix in Britain.

fruffyon Albert Uderzo has died

I also loved the Spirou comics. Le Petit Spirou was very "educational" as a kid.

Agree about the comic book culture, the only people I meet here in the US that have read Belgian comics seem to be other Europeans. But on the other hand, even though I was reading comics voraciously as a kid I knew nothing about DC and Marvel before the comic book movie craze started.

fruffyon Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

I rather consider Wuhan to be the textbook case of a mass-panic in the face of an unknown virus. What I am primarily concerned about is the people's reaction and the economic effects which seem unprecedented (at least in recent decades). This has a much larger impact than the virus itself. Why is the effect so big compared to other pandemics? Is it because of the way infections and deaths are tracked (which might have some influence on the initial perception)? Is it social media and its newly-gained influence on policy? Or because it primarily affects aged population, which makes up a large share of the influential electorate and policy makers?

We will see how this entire issue will be treated in a year. I presume that even if it still prevalent, it will normalize in the eyes of the public and everyone will move on with their lives. And that point we will also have corrected and more accurate numbers and statistics, just like with every other outbreak.

fruffyon Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

Where? Or how?

fruffyon Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

>The economic damage is the damage caused by the reaction, not by the virus itself

Exactly. I wonder what would have happened if this entire virus was treated similarly to the seasonal flu.

fruffyon Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

I do not think I have ever witnessed a reaction so extreme to a disease that is comparably mild (I understand that the elderly and immunocompromised are at higher risk, I am referring to young, able-bodied people). This applies to Germany as well as the US. I notice the effect it has on co-workers who tend to follow social media and are constantly panicking. Constantly discussing rumours from Twitter and even staying home because they are too afraid to leave the house. The unchecked spreading of news definitely seems to have an impact on the population's behaviour and I find it somewhat concerning to observe how easy it is to push people into a frenzy.

Maybe the perspective is also a bit skewed because people that post online often tend towards the paranoid and fearful type (somewhat of a conjecture), so there might be a self-perpetuating bias. Users that are not concerned do not bother to post so everyone just reads panicky posts.

fruffyon YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

What do you mean? Gucci Gang is a pretty well known hip-hop track liked by the "youth". I am not surprised it was recommended to your son since most of his peers probably have watched it.

fruffyon ACM signed letter opposing open access

>yet mysteriously waffles on the actual value they provide in exchange

I honestly cannot really think of one. For example, conferences organized by ACM still cost an enormous amount of money to just attend and largely break even by accepting company donations. The grants there are also largely provided by companies.

fruffyon Alienated, Alone and Angry: What the Digital Revolution Did?

There is a stark difference between the lifestyle in American and, say, European cities. There are less public places or specific establishments for people to hang out. Sidewalks are small and restaurants rarely offer seating outside where you can just people-watch. Few pedestrian zones, and if there are, they are frequently tourism hell-holes full of chains. I cannot speak for rural life, which is likely extremely different, but in cities in the US everything is designed to extract money out of you and every public place is heavily regulated (for example, the concept of a public park or beach "closing" at dusk is a baffling concept for me).

This is merely an impression by me though, so take it with a grain of salt.

fruffyon What are your options for cognitive enhancement?

Well, the problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is unreliable and often subject to bias. It is just not very useful to a reader because they are missing both the context of the experience and the political predisposition of the writer.

If you already have a certain mindset you are going to dismiss evidence to the contrary, too. You may just be confirming your opinion by only acknowledging positive samples. For example, you may not even know about the subset about psychedelic users who are perfectly normal and "un-hippy" because they do not tell you about their drug use. Likely, if you observe habitual and open drug-use you may also encounter a specific personality type.

>when neither the people writing the articles, nor those reading them probably know very many people with any experience.

I also would dispute that, drug use in the US is not that uncommon, especially under millenials and university graduates. So it is quite likely that both readers and authors are familiar with psychedelics.

fruffyon How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

I always wonder about the person that is responsible for designing these kind of schemes. What is their daily job like? What are they thinking about their work? It might even be fun because you are essentially competing against ad-blockers in cleverness.

fruffyon Feeling stuck? Write a poem

As another person to whom poetry does nothing this is also a good example. I listen to a lot of Hip Hop, but the lyricism was never part of the appeal for me. I view the rapper's voice as merely another instrument. This includes the flow or cadence they may use.

fruffyon What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

I do not know. Those are hardcore players so that was expected. A lot of people are looking for the community feeling and a slower playing pace which does not focus on min-maxing. Classic can definitely give you that.

fruffyon World of Warcraft Classic Relase

My bad, I mistook the character transfer with the faction change service. Still, I remember there being a push for it which seems to be confirmed by the wiki: "initially, there was a 6 month cooldown between character transfers. In late February 2008, the cooldown was reduced to 1 month. In July 2009, the cooldown was reduced to 3 days."

Regarding heirlooms, they were introduced in WotLK:

"Heirlooms that increase experience and scale based on character level were introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion."

The line is blurry, but I believe that a trend was definitely noticeable even in late Burning Crusade. In particular, efforts to attract a broader player base. It is unfortunately surprisingly hard to track and timestamp all the controversial changes introduced to the game.

fruffyon World of Warcraft Classic Relase

I'd disagree that Wrath of the Lich King was pure Blizzard, in fact I'd claim the final patches of Burning Crusade marked the beginning of the end for many players. IIrc, monetization efforts such as faction transfers[0,1] and pets were introduced during that expansion and "casual-friendly" tools such as the dungeon finder[2] and heirlooms[4] were developed to attract more players. All of these changes were already extremely controversial.

[0] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Transfer

[1] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Faction_Change_service

[2] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeon_Finder

[4] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Heirloom

fruffyon Report on Microsoft Office and Windows software: still privacy risks remaining

I was not able to find concrete sources but I think that has more to do with the expensive pricing of iPhones and Apple's former image as a somewhat invasive and consumerist company. I remember there being a decent amount of distrust against their vendor-lock-in techniques.

Overall, I would say consumers' privacy-sensitivity in Europe expresses itself largely in the increased usage of Telegram, Tor, Firefox, and Linux compared to the US.

fruffyon After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed

I have a Spotify subscription but still download music because I prefer owning a library instead of just renting it. However, pirating is becoming harder and harder. Because of Spotify and other service participaton in piracy has declined substantially. File hosting is almost gone, all I see is dead links. What.cd, the greatest archive in the world has been taken down, such a pity. I think a lot of people have moved to soulseek or rutracker, but in general the Internet seems to be cleaning up.