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hn8726

538 karma · joined May 3, 2024

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hn8726··on Benchmarking Windows Against Itself, from Windows XP to Windows 11
I'd love the same test but with various Mac versions, and with Intel and Arm machines
hn8726··on HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden
> I assume HSBC are using the "antivirus" use case.

There's an exception for banking apps

> Apps that have a verifiable core purpose facilitating financial-transactions involving financially regulated instruments (for example, dedicated banking, dedicated digital wallets) may obtain broad visibility into installed apps solely for security-based purposes.

hn8726··on HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden
It's still possible, you just need to declare which other apps you query for. Even then, there are loopholes that still let you query for all apps installed on the device.

But HSBC app declares "<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES"/>" permission, which requires an explicit approval (https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...) but

> Apps that have a verifiable core purpose facilitating financial-transactions involving financially regulated instruments (for example, dedicated banking, dedicated digital wallets) may obtain broad visibility into installed apps solely for security-based purposes.

hn8726··on Schizophrenia sufferer mistakes smart fridge ad for psychotic episode
> Make sure smart-devices make extremely clear that they can be used to show ads, and include trivial instructions to disable ads

The other way around — make it clear that the devices are capable of showing ads, and provide instructions on how to opt-in to them (and no cookie-like prompts either)

hn8726··on Schizophrenia sufferer mistakes smart fridge ad for psychotic episode
And how often in practice are terms and conditions attempted to be enforced in the first place? No need to challenge them if you can ignore them
hn8726··on Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign
It looks like Anrhropic has great visibility into what hackers do. Why would it also see what legitimate users do?
hn8726··on Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix
I mean it does make sense though - robo taxis (of one company) are much more homogeneous than any two human drivers could ever be.
hn8726··on Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
I installed this on Android, and unless iOS experience is massively different, this is not a good example:

- there's no touch feedback (ripple) on many of clickable components. Some that do have it look non-native, inconsistent and sometimes gets stuck

- the search bar on top app bar in `search` tab looks very non-native and non-standard (it's elevated on top of elevated app bar already)

- the lists look iOS-y, especially settings

- the settings list item has weird glitch where it loses background after touching (but not clicking)

- collapsing comments is pretty choppy (on a Samsung S25 so a pretty powerful phone)

- can't swipe down a bottom sheet (with post options/actions)

- it's just not android-y — the navigation is weird, the design is all over the place,

It's not unusable and it's a good tradeoff for a small team I guess. But this is nowhere near the experience a native app can provide, and has lots of small papercuts that would make for at least a slightly frustrating experience. It is a decent app don't get me wrong, but it's clearly not native

hn8726··on Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
> It stands to reason that Apple wouldn't have developed this feature [liquid glass css property] if they weren't using it. Where? We have no idea. But they must be using it somewhere. The fact that none of us have noticed exactly where suggests that we're interacting with webviews in our daily use of iOS without ever even realising it.

There's some jump from _a property exists_ to _it must be used_, but a massive one from _a property exists_ to _Apple uses it everywhere and we never notice it because they are done well_.

hn8726··on Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
Maybe this https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-ma... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30648424?

On mobile the webview app experience is crap and it's immediately obvious that an app is not native. Simply nobody asks customers how they like it. The management assumes that as long as nobody complains and the users don't leave in droves, the experience must be impeccable.

hn8726··on Feed the bots
Otoh if, as a human, you use a known (even leaked on the website) password to "bypass the security" in order to "gain access to content you're not authorized to see", I think you'd get in trouble. I'd like if the same logic aplied to bots - implement basic (albeit weak) security and only allow access to humans. This way bots have to _hack you_ to read the content
hn8726··on Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco
I'm sorry but the article seems pretty biased, and doesn't really give any argument for why what happened would be in any way justified. Author keeps adding their own interpretation to Github comments and events, which — just by looking at the contents — are needlessly negative. For example [1] where commit message states

> We've been continuing to backport bugfixs to the 1.7.x series just for Heroku, but unless Heroku joins Ruby Together I don't have enough time available to make sure that continues to happen.

but OP claims it

> was interpreted as leveraging his control over Bundler as a pay-to-play scheme

I'm sorry but not supporting outdated versions of an open-source tool for a business is perfectly reasonable.

Similarly, [2] was again is described as "was interpreted at the time as indicating the feature would be withheld from Bundler because Heroku had failed to pay Ruby Together.". This is not at all how I read it — the comment just says that the open source project has priorities and not all of them can be implemented given the level of funding it has.

These are just two examples, but the article is riddled with wording like "blatant copying", "brazenly hypocritical", "was interpreted as [a bad thing]" etc.

I just feel like reading a clearly lopsided political piece intended to incite negative emotions towards something/someone. There are just enough facts to make it sound fact-based, but enough of author's own feelings and interpretation that I'm not at all convinced.

In fact, towards the end the author even states that there's been ~6 years where nothing of note happened, before the current drama. That seems like a relatively healthy situation?

[1] https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-ruby/pull/385/com... [2] https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/issues/1811#issuecommen...

hn8726··on A Postmark backdoor that’s downloading emails
Seems like the package has been removed from npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/postmark-mcp. Which is too bad, because there's no way to verify the claims from the article
hn8726··on A Postmark backdoor that’s downloading emails
The "postmark-mcp" from the article seems like some random guy's package though, postmark has its own official mcp server as well: https://postmarkapp.com/lp/mcp. It's like installing ublock extension but published by a 'coder3012' account
hn8726··on Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community
> But right now it belongs to the rich people who fund the work on Ruby and Rails. That’s DHH and Lutke (Shopify CEO).

Do you mean "right now" as in _now that they hijacked the Github repositories and locked out the previous owners_, or "right now" as in _for some time now, since they've been funding some Ruby work_?

hn8726··on Porting a library to a different language with a sentence
> How would you verify that the ported code actually works if you don't port the tests and examples?

Port tests, run them against unported code. Port code, run it against unported tests? That way you also verify that the public api hasn't changed

hn8726··on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees
I did that — picked a booking, it redirected me to Expedia and showed a $0 rental! But then when I changed my region on the top bar from US to "Rest of Europe", that booking no longer worked. When I then search (on Expedia) for the same location and dates, I get very believable prices (200-300 EUR). When I change the region back to the US and search again directly on Expedia, I see the same scam $0 offer as previously.

I think this supports precisely my point — in EU all the fees are presented such that you can get the service without any hidden costs

hn8726··on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees
Can you give an example? I just checked a random rental website for France and I got a very clear `From $xx` price and I could — in one step — go to checkout with that exact price by simply not selecting any other options.

Sure you will have upsells but if a price for a service is presented, that should be a final price. You can't tack on "resort fees", the price presented must be inclusive of all the required charges. For example as much as I dislike Booking.com, the price they show for a room includes everything — tax, mandatory cleaning fee and city tax if applicable.

hn8726··on AirPods live translation blocked for EU users with EU Apple accounts
Ok so it's not "airpods live translation" really, but "ios live translation" and there's no technical reason to limit it to airpods?
hn8726··on ReMarkable Paper Pro Move
Isn't that an argument for Remarkable? You had the cloud functions for free and you've been grandfathered in. New buyers always knew that they'd need a subscription for that. Seems perfectly fair, even if you dislike the functionality (which is still very optional)
hn8726··on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android
> developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users through sideloading or to use any app store they prefer. We believe this is how an open system should work—by preserving choice while enhancing security for everyone

I guess words don't don't have meaning anymore, how can you claim to have an open system in an announcement about closing it down?

It's also telling that the big supporters of this are apparently corporations and governments. Admittedly I don't know what "Developer's Alliance" is but they don't seem to care about developers very much, and I wouldn't surprised if they were just a "pay us to say what you're doing is good for devs" kind of thing

hn8726··on Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity
Can't agree. While there are some evergreen postings, LinkedIn job applications still landed me a couple of interviews (and much more compared to cold applying on the company website). And then there's recruiters reaching out which landed me even more interviews + my current - genuinely great - job.
hn8726··on Good system design
What's the best resource to learn those things in practice? Other than _just trying_ yourself? I'm a senior dev in another area who wants to get into the backend development, but unsurprisingly has limited time to spend on learning a completely new thing,
hn8726··on PHP 8.5 adds pipe operator
Kotlin also has extensions function `let` (and a couple of variants) which let you chain arbitrary methods:

``` val arr = ... val result = arr .let { column(it, "tags") .let { merge(it) } .let { unique(it) } .let { values(it) } ```

You add function references for single-argument functions too:

``` arr.let(::unique) // or (List<>::unique), depends on the function ```

all without adding a special language construct.

hn8726··on Ollama's new app
LM studio just changed their terms to allow commercial usage for free and without any restrictions or additional actions required.

I've used Msty but it seems like LM studio is moving faster, which is kind of important in this space. For example Msty still doesn't support MCP

hn8726··on Dropbox Passwords discontinuation
Dropbox "ai" already exists too: https://dash.dropbox.com/
hn8726··on Show HN: Companies use AI to take your calls. I built AI to make them for you
Another thing that usually works is saying "I'm returning the call"
hn8726··on Intel CEO Letter to Employees
The letter says

> we plan to end the year with a global workforce of about 75,000 employees as a result of workforce reductions and attrition

so it looks like the explicit reduction might be lower, but accounting for people leaving on their own, the final amount of employees should be ~75k

hn8726··on ESP32-Faikin: ESP32 based module to control Daikin aircon units
This is very interesting, I've been increasingly frustrated with Daikin's approach to mobile control and the incredibly poor execution of the original wifi module/automation:

- the wifi module and temperature sensor are right next to each other, which was causing the unit to read temperature 2-3 celcius higher than actual due to wifi sensor heat (measured by another temperature sensor on the other side of the unit). This was fixed in a software update, but seems like poor design

- it looks like the original wifi module uses a lot of power, at least according to the app readings. Didn't verify this one, but it tracks with how much it heats up even if the unit is completely off

- no way to connect an external temperature sensor, so even with a software fix to the temperature sensor reading, my room is consistently 2-3 degree celcius colder than the set temperature

- there are no release notes for the official firmware updates so you never know what can break if you update (but an update did fix the wifi module heating issue)

- the (new) app had power usage data for the past couple of years. Now they decided to only store a year? Or maybe just deleted the old data. Either way, now it's lost without any notice or way to archive it

---

That said, how likely is it that Faikin causes a hardware failure in an indoor or outdoor unit in case of a software bug? I'll definitely try it but I'm a bit uneasy with an open source software designed for what seems like a massive range of devices, and no way for the maintainers to accurately test against each one

hn8726··on XMLUI
> Before Compose took over as the new direction for Android app development, the Android Studio designer IDE had a very VB6-style designer where you could drag and drop components, while the underlying UI files were all XML based.

It's important to note that pretty much nobody used the visual designer though. The resulting xml was pretty terrible, writing the UIs manually (in xmls, while looking at preview) was infinitely better

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