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otachack

983 karma · joined November 30, 2016

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otachack··on A 30-hour workweek in America? It nearly became law
I believe the pandemic moved most white collar work to work from home. This has allowed softer work requirements in terms of hours and needs to step away from the desk.

Seeing posts of employers imposing spyware to monitor employee keystrokes / time at the desk should serve as warnings and must be pushed back. Historically, pushing back meant union-driven actions. WFH brings a challenge to how union-seeking employees will organize moving forward.

I believe we should absolutely push for 30 hour workweeks or 4 day weeks.

otachack··on Google Pixel 9 Pro
Hold strong! I replaced my 5's battery about a year ago after it started bloating. I usually draw the line though when security updates cease. Staying with the Pixel line is easier but I'm trying to divest from Google in general and moving to a different phone would be a big step.
otachack··on Porting my JavaScript game engine to C for no reason
Agreed! While I loath JavaScript it was immensely impressive that a masterpiece like Cross Code came from it.
otachack··on Intel's Day of Reckoning Arrives: 15,000 Jobs Will Be Eliminated
How else will the poor shareholders and top execs get their fair share??
otachack··on For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
I have a feeling that is most people out there.

I observed a friend of mine click on a malicious ad link recently in front of me when driving a presentation for a community meeting. It was shown as an overlay for a seemingly harmless site I found. In my home with a pihole I didn't see any of the ads.

I felt terrible that I was partially responsible for her clicking it. This knowledge and habit of ad-blocking and secure computer usage takes factors of time, effort, and money to learn, and not everyone is going to, or is capable of, devoting what's needed.

otachack··on Spot the Drowning Child (2015)
Second on the "good swimmer drowning" part. I once swam in a pool with a few cousins of mine. I was around 18 and just finished a life guarding course at school. One cousin was around 11 years old.

She was panicking next to me in the pool all of a sudden and climbed on top of me. She wasn't heavy but her human effort to grab and exert pressure to use me as a float to stay above water forced me under. It was hard to get back up for air, and very sudden to which I didn't have a ton of air to begin with.

I remembered training, which was to pull the victim down with you to short circuit their brain into letting go, and it worked. I was able to swim out from her area, surface, catch a breath, and go help her to the shallow end.

otachack··on Twilio confirms data breach after hackers leak 33M Authy user phone numbers
As alternatives: I use Authenticator Pro on my phone and keep encrypted backups whenever I modify it. I know others have pointed out Aegis.

The issue is starting the migration out of Authy. Assuming Authy has no easy export, I suggest you migrate over a few entries at a time (maybe from top down) while keeping account of transfers somehow. You can have authenticators live side by side in the meantime!

otachack··on People want 'dumbphones'. Will companies make them?
Check out the YA book "Feed", it tackles that issue.
otachack··on OpenProject – open-source project management software
Enticing, I'm always open to trying new management tooling.
otachack··on 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later
I have similar material. If it's reassuring, we all were just kids/teens and learning of the world. I feel a lot for the youth after us that made the Internet more accessible and, at times, more permanent.
otachack··on Descent: A classic 3-D first-person shooter (2012)
This is an amazing story! Thanks for sharing and hope you have less stress in life.
otachack··on Find My Device on Android
One way is to support orgs like EFF that push for policy change to force Google and other powers-that-be to give you fine grain control.
otachack··on Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content
I remember this from HN or otherwise when looking for an alternative solution: https://cryptpad.org/

There's a public instance in France to try it out.

otachack··on Picotron Is a Fantasy Workstation
Why not both? If you can afford it, of course.
otachack··on Shoes makes building little graphical programs for Mac, Windows, Linux simple
Decker is well and alive. It does have its own programming language but the effort put into it and the project is astounding.

https://internet-janitor.itch.io/decker

otachack··on Shoes makes building little graphical programs for Mac, Windows, Linux simple
DragonRuby is not defunct and actively receives updates. It also sponsored several game jams. The last update, according to their Discord, was on January 25th 2024.

RubyMotion I can't really vouch for.

otachack··on 46% of Americans didn't read a book in 2023
If anyone is struggling to read a book, I suggest short stories! A lot easier to ease back into it.
otachack··on Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV
Hyundai did skimp out on standard anti-theft mechanisms which led to a significant number of car jackings upon discovery and viral share via TikTok.

https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/kia-hyundai-car-thefts-se...

Every manufacturer has got a story at this point.

otachack··on Show HN: Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with random HN users
The weather?
otachack··on Sourcehut network outage post-mortem
¿Por qué no los dos?
otachack··on Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
Pico-8! There are also zines people have made with straight up "type this in and it'll make a game" like many HN-friends here have gone through with BASIC and other languages.

Seeing how young your kid is they may fall off it but I think pico-8 is immensely accessible to anyone and contains all the tools needed for making a game.

otachack··on AsmBB – a lightweight web forum engine written in assembly language
"silly exercise in time wasting beyond its academic and comedic/entertainment value"

I love this as it expresses how I feel about JavaScript :P

otachack··on I'm sorry but I cannot fulfill this request it goes against OpenAI use policy
I don't use Amazon at all anymore. In fact I uninstalled the app yesterday!
otachack··on I applied to 250 jobs and timed how long each one took
Seriously, at that point candidates should ask for a 1099 along with a settled rate.
otachack··on Blot turns a folder into a website
I laughed, thanks :D

If there's anything to learn about humanity it's that we apply this technique in many ways.

otachack··on Beeper – Moving Forward
To me it's just applicable from my end on the Android app. It explicitly says the other members don't see the group name.
otachack··on Librum: Open-Source e-book platform
Agreed. If the library of data, ebooks in this case, is owned by the user via files then it seems P2P is the way to go.
otachack··on What is the point of a public key fingerprint?
Because of tampering. If an attacker can produce a pair where the public key's last 40 chars match the victim's public key last 40 chars they effectively have a public key to dish out via MITM.

How feasible it is to produce said pair is another story.

otachack··on Fastmail Employees Form a Union
What about Netflix's practice of using an employee until they aren't of any use then disposing them? A practice that applied to an employee that helped draft it?

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/inside-netflixs-n...

Or how, when the pandemic hit, people realized even with all the perks a Google/Apple campus gives you it was still preferable to stay at home, or even move to a more preferable place, and avoid the tour bus commute? Not to mention the lack of transparency in pay which will stagger individual negotiation efforts when employers apply, or attempt to apply, a WFH tax.

otachack··on Fastmail Employees Form a Union
There's a very strong, anti-union sentiment in HN IMO as it's contrary to the "bootstrapping" image venture capitalist that drives so much here. But if fellow readers put aside any resentment and look at it objectively: we prosper in ways due to past unions, and hopefully see it as a tool to push back on broken hiring/firing processes, at the least.

Low hanging fruit: We all think we are strong or can bounce back to a new job easily. What happens when we cross that line of ageism we hear about often? Not everyone is going to be able to retire in their 40s/50s. A union can push back in this practice.

What about not being granted lengthy paternal leave to spend with new family members and the state you reside in doesn't offer assurances?

What about the lengthy contracts we all fool ourselves into signing, thinking the companies won't come after us as long as we treat and be treated as "part of the family" and we leave it to luck and withstand unfair practices to not rock the boat?

We even tell ourselves "HR is not our friend, they are there to protect the company" and in the same breath say "unions are useless"

Like I've been hearing: It's better to start and be in a union when you don't need one.

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