Hacker News Reader

nxtblon Firefox 156 shows ads in the address bar (dubbed "Firefox Suggest")

Edit within the browser via about:config or add them in the user.js file, easier to make it permanent and portable

nxtblon Helsinki Hacker News Meetup

They could easily use both, if necessary.

Or link them and more via a Matrix server - but that would require a bit more work to do.

nxtblon Helsinki Hacker News Meetup

> We use a WhatsApp group for co-ordination. The time and location of the meetup is announced there.

That's a hard no. You really, really should use Signal instead.

nxtblon EFF is leaving X

My first thought was that 5-10 posts a day is just too much. Can't expect everyone to read everything and also react to each one.

nxtblon 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

Same here, not logged in to X and works just fine with Firefox.

nxtblon PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

Results appear to vary. 2.5-3.4MB with 2560x1600 resolution. Firefox + uBlock + uMatrix + DDG essentials.

nxtblon Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps

From https://keepandroidopen.org/ :

"As of the date of this update, it exists only as a blog post and UI mockups. The community is being asked to accept a product announcement as a functional safeguard five months before the mandate takes effect."

"Until Google provides a shipping implementation that can be independently verified, our position remains unchanged: all apps from non-registered developers will be blocked once their lockdown goes into effect in September 2026."

nxtblon Android developer verification: Balancing openness and choice with safety

No. From TFA: "There is a one-time, one-day wait"

nxtblon Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps

3) And how can we keep on using F-Droid and other app stores?

4) How can we install apps made by devs who won't do the verification dance with Google?

nxtblon How the Sriracha guys screwed over their supplier

Because the "new" layout is awful.

nxtblon Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

There are many brands making proper shoes/boots for winter hiking. I would recommend taking a look at Haix, Lowa, Salomon Quest series, Lundhags and Meindl.

nxtblon Firefox Getting New Controls to Turn Off AI Features

Same file works everywhere. Just leave out the ones that are different on platforms:

- browser.download.dir

- browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk

And instead of making a "google doc" a plaintext file would be better.

nxtblon Ask HN: Who do you follow via RSS feed?

Too bad that their new interface is awful. Wastes so much space, and cannot normally collapse the left bar at all. So first thing after updates or login is to hit "Support" and "Click here to switch back to the old version". It's way more usable and doesn't waste space for unnecassary things.

nxtblon Proton spam and the AI consent problem

Sounds like they just don't care about privacy, do they? Guess showing them https://i.redd.it/0imry50rxy961.png still won't change anything..

nxtblon Nova Launcher added Facebook and Google Ads tracking

"In-app purchases" another annoyance of the play store, can't see prices without installing an app. So question for users of Octopi, how's the pricing?

nxtblon The Myth of the ThinkPad

Good idea, especially if it caters for us in Europe, too.

nxtblon The Myth of the ThinkPad

I'll take a good trackpoint + three buttons below space bar over any and all trackpads. Can't stand using them. Of course I also have separate thinkpad trackpoint II keyboard and a good mouse to use when on a stationary desktop - they're easy to carry along, too.

nxtblon Ask HN: How to go back to listening to MP3s?

I only stopped to collect FLACs instead, whenever available.

When Spotify came, I tried it, made playlists etc. One of them had 1000+ techno tracks in it, from 90's mostly. After a while, half of them had disappeared due to licencing expirations etc.

That was the lesson to not trust external services or rely on always-on data for streaming - I can stream it all myself from my own mp3/flac files when required.

Mostly using MOC (Music on console) to play locally, and on all mobile devices I have my collection on a sd card or in internal tb memory for the one that does not have a sd card slot anymore. Music folder player full version by Zorillasoft for Android devices - works well, as I keep the collection neatly organized and foldered.

nxtblon Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo

Well, not directly. When adding a keyword, I put it in the name of the bookmark in parentheses. Thus eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/newest is with the name "(hny) HN new" and keyword hny. When typing hny in the address field the bookmark comes up and I'll just tap it. You can also search only from the bookmarks.

nxtblon Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo

This functionality has always been available in Firefox: Just add a keyword to a bookmark.

nxtblon How to Firefox

from TFA:

    Filter lists update only when the extension updates, no fetching up to date lists from servers (this is a big one!)

    No custom filters, so no element picker which allows you to point and zap

    Many filters are dropped at conversion time due to MV3’s limited filter syntax

    No strict-blocked pages

    No per-site switches

    No dynamic filtering

    No importing external lists

nxtblon How to Firefox

.. and then there are panorama extensions, which ease handling a lot of tabs immensely. No other browser seems to have anything alike. No, the grouping of tabs into tabs does nothing compared to this.

https://github.com/projectdelphai/panorama-tab-groups and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view...

nxtblon I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

Been doing that, but especially in the last few years sites have been dropping RSS support and won't bring it back no matter how you reason for it.

For example, job seeking sites:

https://tyomarkkinatori.fi/ is the national "job market" for the whole of Finland. Municipal and state employers are obligated to publish their openings there. That site has been in development for years and from 1.1.2025 onwards it replaced the old one - which supplied RSS feeds. Tyomarkkinatori does not and when asked, they will only reply that RSS is not going to be supported and that's the end of it.

https://indeed.com doesn't provide feeds anymore.

Neither does (yet another Finnish aggregator) https://laura.fi

nxtblon Thunderbird for Android Now Available

They are keeping both:

"Quite a few people seem to love K-9 Mail and have asked us to keep the robot dog around. We believe it should be relatively little effort to build two apps from one code base. The apps would be virtually identical and only differ in app name, app icon, and the color scheme. So our current plan is to keep K-9 Mail around."

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/12/when-will-thunderbird-f...

nxtblon Group chats rule the world

1. & 3. I hate all channels and everyone who does that. Useless and distracting. Hence I never hung around in general chatter channels..

nxtblon Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

Whatever online sources you read, follow or want to read, it's much more efficient and less time-consuming to concentrate them all in a proper feed reader.

Subscribe everything there, classify and sort them as you wish, use the reader service to remove duplicates. If you want to read just the headlines, you can, or the full text articles with pictures, that too, or just based on the images, also possible.

Of course you can also directly share the articles, your full or partial subscription feeds and comment on them.

After Google Reader's demise was announced, Inoreader (.com) replaced and exceeded it very quickly and I'm still a happy paying Pro user of it. They have too many features to mention here, just take a look at https://www.inoreader.com/blog/ .

nxtblon Moving to Estonia

So we're still getting the fb excuse/apologism. Anyone could have used - and many of us used - plain old email, then irc, various messengers et al before zuck came. Back then, at that time, there were other ways to keep in touch and still is, just much more. All of them are better in terms of privacy.

nxtblon Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

Open in [X] Firefox Focus

and it forgets everything when you close it.

nxtblon Ask HN: Why aren't games marketed as the work of director X like movies are?

They used to be, at least during the Amiga heydays.

Sid Meier's Pirates!, Civilization, Colonization, Railroad Tycoon etc. [1]

David Braben presents Frontier - Elite II

Also after Populous, games like Powermonger, Black & White etc were all known to be "by" Peter Molyneux.

Then there were also isometric shooters by some John Carmack

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier#At_MicroProse