Hacker News Reader

maze-leon Jan 6 committee subpoenas Meta, Google, Reddit etc. after 'inadequate responses'

> Just read the headline and get angry at… someone?

That seems to be the current state of the internetz everywhere. I have to print that on a sticker or something.

maze-leon Project Cybersyn and the Origins of the Big Data Nation (2014)

I am not arguing for that, they should when the economic situation demands it. And they should be equally eager to drop it when the situation changes. I am all for more pragmatism and less ideology in terms of economic policy decisions, its not a one-way street.

maze-leon Project Cybersyn and the Origins of the Big Data Nation (2014)

What it was is essentially a supply chain management system... Something every big coorporation does today -- some of them on a scale comparable to a nation state.

maze-leon I quit caffeine

Like with every substance, the dosage and regularity of intake are the key factors that determine what it does to you. Coffee can be good for your health, but it also can be detrimental... Every habit can become an addiction, even coffee -- with less severe withdrawal symptoms than other stimulants, but still...

maze-leon Dev corrupts NPM libs 'colors' and 'faker', breaking thousands of apps

> why would anyone want to deal with him after this stunt is beyond me

_faker_ is already gone from our project. The parts of faker that we were using were almost trivial to implement ourselves... probably should have done that from the start.

maze-leon Dev corrupts NPM libs 'colors' and 'faker', breaking thousands of apps

> At the very least, it takes them under a minute to break your app, simply by deleting their package.

Not really, if you pin your versions exactly and don't do auto-updates. This also means that you have to update your packages manually and inspect what the latest versions are doing -- which is good practive anyway. NPM packages can not be depublished any longer as far as I know.

maze-leon “Zero fucks given” in other languages

I always thought the french had a flowery yet descriptive language, but the greeks seem to top it all...

maze-leon The Universe Is Expanding Faster Than It Should Be

Stephen Baxter is one of my absolute favorites when it comes to SciFi literature. He incorporates hard physics with great storytelling in amazing settings few other authors dare to touch. No one manages to imagine the end of the universe better than he...

maze-leon Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

If you want to have a nice, clean search experience like google did in the good old days (before everything was page-rank-gamed and hyper-individuialized) just switch to duckduckgo. Google search has become insufferable, it tries to 'guess' the context of your queries and it fails miserably in my opinion. DDG is not per-se better, but at least it is not riddled with SEO spam...

maze-leon Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

You are probably thinking about "high culture" when you mention "culture". Culture is everything humans do to express themselves, from literature to theatre to entertainment to dancing to philosophy and religion.

maze-leon I moderate /r/kafka; people mistake it as a subreddit about kafka the product

A big fat pinned exclamation on the top of the feed might help... On the other hand, the village-folk probably think Barnabas is behind it and simply ignore it.

maze-leon American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

The way I use booking.com: Search for a suitable hotel or apartment and find their name. Then search for them independently and make the reservation directly. I mean: they have a great search interface and all, but I refuse to funnel money to gatekeepers whenever I can... Stories like this just affirm my suspicions about companies like them...

maze-leon Leipzig: A walk around a city reborn

In Saxony yes, but not in Leipzig. About 50% of my colleagues are foreigners and they all love the city -- it's very international and you can come by with English in most places.

Little caveat obviously: there are also quarters where it's not that simple and you are looked at sideways if you have the "wrong" skin tone -- Grünau, Gohlis-Nord etc. But these are the parts of the city tourists usually don't visit...

maze-leon Leipzig: A walk around a city reborn

Nice to see my hometown on HN! It is also one of the most affordable cities in Germany in terms of housing, and probably the best in terms of quality of life / cost of living ratio...

If you plan to visit: be sure to check out the Museum der bildenden Künste and a boat-tour through Plagwitz / Karl-Heine Kanal (esp. nice in spring at night).

maze-leon Hacker steals government ID database for Argentina's entire population

I think so, but it doesn't mean that it is a good idea... Every bit that creates an official identity should be handled with great care.

maze-leon Hacker steals government ID database for Argentina's entire population

All this information in one database... Thats the real insanity here. Why would anyone think that this is a good idea? Leave aside security and safeguards for a moment, just compiling this database is neglectful at the very least...

maze-leon Confessions of a Ransomware Negotiator

Then the payment will be done by "underground payment processors" with a hefty extra fee. It wouldn't solve the problem I think, only shift the path an organization has to take.

maze-leon Policy groups ask Apple to drop plans to inspect messages, scan for abuse images

Don't give them any ideas, it's dystopian enough already...

maze-leon A Gentle Introduction to Tensors (2014) [pdf]

I can also recommend this great series on Tensor Calculus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGXr1SF3WmA&list=PLJHszsWbB6...

maze-leon There’s a crack in the iPhone foundation and it could get a lot worse

I think only the Snapdragon SoC is fully supported. So, yes, the google Pixel phones and the Xiaomi Mi A2 are curently recommended: https://calyxos.org/get/

I've flashed mine 2 weeks ago and I am very pleased. Without the Google Services Framework you are restricted to the F-Droid store though (not a problem for me personally). And there are several Apps that won't work even if you install the GSF and the Aurora-Store: Banking-Apps, Online-Check-In for Flights, etc. -- again not a problem for me personally, I fly maybe once every 5 years and use Online-Banking from my browser...

maze-leon There’s a crack in the iPhone foundation and it could get a lot worse

https://calyxos.org/

https://gitlab.com/CalyxOS

maze-leon Why spite could destroy liberal democracy

Just look at OPs posting history... My guess: either a single-issue political troll or a bot as part of a bigger influence operation. One of the main reasons I (any many others) tend to disinvest from this site is because these jokers are increasingly allowed to operate here.

maze-leon OpenHistoricalMap

Yeah, it's very intersting indeed. Roads and street layouts usually don't change that much over the centuries -- they get integrated and amended, but seldom disappear. I was pretty amazed to recognize the street layout of Leipzig in the 1740ies: https://biblio.unibe.ch/web-apps/maps/zoomify.php?pic=Ryh_53...

maze-leon OpenHistoricalMap

It's true, and it is not just a Dutch problem. Basically all major river systems change throughout the centuries: meandering arms evolve and others get cut off; river deltas grow and change shape and of course human activity shapes the landscape (canals, irrigation, drainage of swamps and floodplains etc.). The ancient city of Eridu for example was a coastal city around 5000BC and today lies hundreds of km inland.

maze-leon OpenHistoricalMap

This is also a great resource for a project like this: https://www.oldmapsonline.org/

These are mainly links to georeferenced raster images and databases, not vectors / OSM data. But, still -- I've already spent hours browsing old maps of my home city. For anyone interested in contributing to this project, oldmapsonline might be a great reference.

maze-leon The top-ranking HTML editor on Google is an SEO scam

I wonder why google is not more rigorous about that. Google search is riddled since years with "optimized" content nobody wants. It's become so bad even my non-techie friends are beginning to switch to DuckDuckGo -- which is not better per se (probably worse at contextualizig).

maze-leon Users post more falsehoods after others correct them: study

> shouldn't there be a population of people out there that see this as a desperation move on

This part of the population has left twitter a long time ago...

maze-leon Users post more falsehoods after others correct them: study

It's not that no effects occur in this range, but if they do, they are not discernable from random fluctuations, noise and other statistical (non-)effects.

maze-leon Biodiversity decline will require millions of years to recover

The planet can not support "billions more", it can barely support the billions we have. Maybe on a subsistence level of a basic minimum nutritional value it could theoretically, but not with industrial products, medicine, education, transportation infrastructure, energy, communications equipment and so on.

maze-leon Belarus 'diverts Ryanair flight to arrest journalist', opposition says

Only about 40km from the border: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/fr4978#27cce9a2

I wonder what would have happened if they just delayed until they were in lithuanian airspace.

EDIT: just realized there were fighter jets involved...