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lbschenkel

125 karma · joined December 4, 2016

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lbschenkel··on Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
Exactly. The traditional design language is that an arrow besides a button indicates that the button will show a drop-down when pressed (traditionally without a line separating the two), or that clicking on the button will do the default action while clicking on the arrow will show all the actions (traditionally with a thin line separating the two).

Reusing that design language but making the button and the arrow two completely different buttons with their own actions sets wrong expectations for no good reason.

lbschenkel··on Jiff: Datetime library for Rust
Not exactly. It was heavily inspired by Joda Time, but it also improved the design in a lot of ways. You could think of it as Joda Time if the designer could go back in time and design it again with all the hindsight.
lbschenkel··on Companies embracing SMS for account logins should be blamed for SIM-swap attacks
Actually it happens. I live in Sweden and I travel to Brazil to visit family. If I get a SMS on my Swedish number, I get charged the equivalent of a 1-minute phone call. The reason is that the Brazilian telecom I'm roaming in sees a foreign number from Europe as a perfect opportunity to get some easy money, and charges my provider, which passes on to me.

Note that the law in Brazil forbid telecoms from charging to receive phone calls or messages, even when roaming. But I guess the regulations don't extend to foreign users that are on international roaming, or companies do it anyway counting that the person will only find out after returning home and won't know how to fight it. Authorities are not set up as well to receive complaints from non-residents.

lbschenkel··on iPhone that fell from hole in Alaska 737 MAX flight is found, still open to Mail
I'm just the messenger and I'm not claiming it's fair, but this is standard procedure everywhere in the world: when you buy a round-trip ticket (single PNR), if you are a no-show for any leg then you're forfeiting the whole ticket. If the ticket for example includes a train ride to the airport, and you don't show up for the train ride, you're forfeiting the flight as well.

Some airlines might not enforce that if you're deemed an important enough customer for them, but I just want to bring this up because being a no-show in the outbound flight and keeping the return flight is not a right that customers have in general, basically in any IATA airline. It's not really Lufthansa specific, those are rules that the whole industry applies.

lbschenkel··on Officially Qualified – Ferrocene
Portuguese doesn't distinguish between those either: both are "segurança".
lbschenkel··on The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)
> I'm also pretty surprised that people think email metadata from government is legitimate open data. Do you think it should be public how many times you have emailed government and gotten a response, and to which departments? I don't.

In Sweden, when you contact the government by web form or mail, they warn you that every communication is by law part of the public record (metadata and contents), and you should not include anything sensitive that you do not want divulged.

lbschenkel··on Ask HN: What is your policy regarding smartphones for your children?
I totally agree with that. Easier said than done, though, if you live somewhere where this is not the norm and you may get scolded by the authorities (luckily not my case).
lbschenkel··on Ask HN: What is your policy regarding smartphones for your children?
The problem, I think, is that in our generation many of us had at least some freedom to leave home and roam and socialize when we were bored. Nowadays bored children don't have the same escape valves as we had.

This is not an argument defending screen time, just recognizing that it is a difficult problem with no easy solutions.

lbschenkel··on If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity
Same for me. I visited my company's US branch in San Francisco (I work in Copenhagen) and the colleagues there were horrified that I was planning to walk to a nearby Best Buy (~10 minutes walk). They didn't actually let me do it — they insisted to give me a car ride until I relented.
lbschenkel··on Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal
Even if that was the case: compared to the subscribing companies themselves selling not only that information, but also your personal data to the highest (and lowest) bidder?
lbschenkel··on Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
Let is keep it to South America then.

Do you think you're disrespectful when you write "Peru" (Portuguese dropped the diacritic from "Perú") or "Colômbia" (now we added a diacritic that is not in the original "Colombia")? What about "Paraguai": why is "Paraguay" so hard to type that we had to change it?

And this is coming from a sister language, Spanish.

I think you're not paying attention to how languages work.

lbschenkel··on Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
Remember that they are not typing in Portuguese, and in other languages places have other names/spellings.

I say this as a Brazilian myself, who is fond of the original spelling.

I live in Scandinavia, and do you feel it is fair for me to criticize you for writing Gotemburgo and not Göteborg, or Copenhague and not København?

The article is in English, the conversation is in English, and like it or not places like São Paulo are spelled without diacritics in English.

Or should an article in Portuguese in a Brazilian newspaper write Deutschland instead of Alemanha?

lbschenkel··on How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]
Reporting the passport lost or stolen is generally not a good idea. Legality issues aside, when a passport is reported lost or stolen then it is marked in the system as invalid. Depending on the country it will be reported to Interpol's STLD database [1] which can be checked by immigration authorities in other countries.

In the end you'll have two passports but one of them is now useless and it will be flagged the moment you actually use it for traveling. It may not be pleasant when you're abroad and the authorities catch you using an invalid travel document.

I guess it makes more sense if you never intend to use the old passport again for crossing borders?

[1] https://www.interpol.int/en/How-we-work/Databases/SLTD-datab...

lbschenkel··on Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
To me, Google Reader was the best social media site that I ever used. A lot of my friends used it: we followed each other and we would be sharing articles that showed up in our feeds that we found interesting. So most days I had these curated suggestions in my feed. We could also see each other's comments. It was awesome.
lbschenkel··on The E-Ink Badge
I thought it as well, but then I bought a Kobo (Aura One back then) and I'm super happy. And it is much more hackable: there a countless patches to the official firmware, plus installing koreader is a piece of cake.
lbschenkel··on Best and worst decisions I’ve made
Yes! I always choose the variable rate for this reason alone.
lbschenkel··on Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes
Brazil is also a federation, it is larger than continental US, and has much more complicated taxes that also vary per state and per municipality (county) -- and yet we have "European-style" laws that require that the advertised price is the full price. It has been like this since forever.

If Brazil, a much poorer country in comparison, can do it then so does the US. I think that arguments in the contrary don't hold any water and are poor rationalizations ("US is special").

lbschenkel··on A fake job offer gone wrong
In Sweden we have direct debit (autogiro), but we also have e-invoice (e-faktura), which I prefer and think it's the best of both worlds: the invoice and the charge are sent electronically to your bank (usually ~3 weeks in advance), and you approve with one click -- scheduling a transfer of that amount on the due date. That gives you the chance to verify if everything is correct before you pay, and does not give the company any permission to withdraw funds from your account.

This is what I usually do: (1) check my bank 1 week before the end of each month, (2) eyeball the amounts for all e-invoices, (3) approve everything with a single click.

lbschenkel··on Intentionally making close friends
As a Brazilian living in a Nordic country and working in a different Nordic country, I can corroborate that the expectation from the locals here is that everything in planned in advance (with plenty of notice: 1 week or more); I can also corroborate that Brazilians in general do things spontaneously.
lbschenkel··on The layoffs at Klarna
In Brazil, where I am from, the big achievement that warranted a celebration used to be graduating from university (I guess you call it college in the US). For many families the celebration was also the gift — those things don't come cheap.

But in the last 30 years or so, I have noticed that many now celebrate completing high school, completing primary school, or even completing kindergarten (!) — and not just something symbolic or small, but big events.

Maybe I'm just old and grumpy, but this rubs me off in the wrong way: I also believe that these "achievements" are things that you are simply expected to do. Congratulations and positive reinforcement are always welcome, but when there is an expectation of a reward then to me it crossed the line into something unhealthy.

lbschenkel··on Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
I was a kid during hyperinflation years in Brazil: 80s to early 90s, sometimes higher than 70% a month. To this day I'm very frugal, and I have a strong aversion to having debt of any kind: the only kind of debt I ever had was a mortgage and I paid them off as soon as I possibly could. I can only sleep well at night if I don't owe any money to anyone.

I cannot be sure, but I have this feeling that it is due to my formative years in that kind of environment.

lbschenkel··on Scotland starts renewed case for independence
They used a loophole: to adopt Euro you need to be in ERM-II for a while as a pre-requisite, and Sweden found out that there is no rule imposing a timeframe for it to join ERM-II so it is deliberately not joining. IMO this is complying with the letter of the agreement it has with the EU but not the spirit.

As far as I understand, the EU closed this loophole for new members but it is turning a blind eye for Sweden.

It is fascinating to me that in practice there is this reversal of roles: Sweden is supposed to adopt the Euro and yet has a free-floating currency, and Denmark that has an opt-out deliberately chose to be in ERM-II and has a currency that is pegged to the Euro.

lbschenkel··on Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)
You're right about the limit, I have mixed them up. It's 1000 USD when arriving by air or sea and 500 USD when arriving by land. Yes, the amount is pretty low.

Regarding visitors, I believe the fees are not really enforced because you can argue that the goods will not stay in the country and enforcement could hamper tourism. But if someone shows up with two brand new laptops still in the box, they'll probably have some explaining to do in case they're selected for customs checks and want to convince them that they're strictly for personal use and it's not an import.

I still stand behind that such rules are the norm, not the exception. The problem in Brazil is not the rule, but the low limits. Regarding EU residents when visiting the US, very similar import rules still apply but the difference is that (1) the limits are higher, and (2) it's easier to take the things out of the packaging and argue those are your personal belongings that you left EU with [1], and (3) the majority are not checked. But even in EU the fact that you're not caught does not mean that the rule does not exist: when you purchase things abroad and they add up to more than your tax-free limit, you are supposed to walk through the "goods to declare" line before leaving the airport, just like in Brazil.

[1] In Brazil if you want to make this argument you have to report your item to customs when leaving the country and then you get a receipt that you can show on your way back to prove that you left the country with it. If you don't have such receipt, customs can argue the item is new and purchased abroad.

lbschenkel··on Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)
It applies to Brazilian residents and on paper even to visitors: any time foreign goods pass the border. The fact that is inconsistently applied does not mean the law does not exist, so be prepared if they happen to single you out and enforce it.

It is definitely about both mail and your luggage. The link in my previous reply specifically mentions luggage, including a whole FAQ. Tax free limit when entering by air is 500 USD.

May I ask where are you from? I am a bit puzzled by your surprise because I do not know a single country that does not have similar laws. The whole EU has analogous rules, for example (and I live in the EU). Those absolutely apply to your luggage, and also mail. The difference is in implementation details such as what qualifies as personal use, what is the tax-free allowance, and what are the fees. But the concept itself is not something odd that only Brazil does.

lbschenkel··on Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)
Any country. This is not specific to Paraguay. Basically you have a personal tax-free allowance (which is pretty low, but I do not know the exact amount) for items brought into the country and everything beyond that has import tax applied, which will vary according to the kind of items you are importing.

This is not different from many (most?) countries, except for the fact that the typical import tax in Brazil is probably way higher than the average country.

https://www.gov.br/receitafederal/pt-br/assuntos/aduana-e-co...

lbschenkel··on Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)
I think the "Paraguayan route" is very-well known to most Brazilians. However, a small FYI since you might not know this: you still have to pay import/customs fees when bringing the purchases from Paraguay into Brazil, so if you do it legally you might save very little money compared to buying domestically. Most people buying from Paraguay are smuggling (or they pay "professional smugglers" to do it for them), and that's where most of the difference lies.
lbschenkel··on Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)
For the record, given that the parent poster believes that "later arrested on fraud charges" is relevant to the conversation, I feel compelled to mention some important details that were left out:

- Brazilian Supreme Federal Court annulled all the cases brought against Lula because the judge overseeing those cases (Moro) was found to be biased and have violated due process [1][2][3]. Leaked conversations from Telegram revealed that the judge and the prosecution were actually working together and conspired with the explicit goal to put Lula in jail.

- UN human rights commission also concluded that due process was violated [4].

- Lula was found guilty and arrested before the 2018 election. He was either leading the polls or a close 2nd. Judge Moro responsible for the sentence that blocked him from running and removed the main adversary for Bolsonaro was later offered the position of Minister of Justice for the Bolsonaro administration, which he accepted.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luiz_In%C3%A1cio_Lula_da_Silva... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-supreme-court-... [3] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210625-brazil-judge-... [4] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/04/brazil-crimi...

lbschenkel··on Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol%C3%ADtica_Nacional_de_Info...

- The law is from 1984

- Military dictatorship ended in 1985

- First election post-dictatorship happened in 1989

- Lula, the first left-wing president post-dictatorship, was elected for the first time in 2002

lbschenkel··on Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)
As a Brazilian who later emigrated, I believe you may be underestimating how expensive things can be in a developing country. A nice desktop may cost a year of wages. When I lived in Brazil I could do way more with less, out of necessity.
lbschenkel··on Google has been DDoSing Sourcehut for over a year
I'm not a Go user so I don't really know how to Go proxy works, but if webmasters had a way to opt out via robots.txt or specific status codes (429) and then the proxy at Google sends a response to the client meaning "try it yourself" (i.e., try again in direct mode) then it could have been an adequate solution for this scenario.
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