Hacker News Reader

plusCubedon FarPlay: Low-Latency Audio over the Internet

What's the difference between this and Sonobus [1], which is open source and also supports iOS/Android?

plusCubedon How do I opt my access point out of Google Location services?

Google and Apple both have WiFi geolocation databases. As far as I can tell there's no way for an AP to opt-out of Apple's database.

Interesting tidbit from [1]: "In older versions of Apple's mobile OS (1.1.3 to 3.1), Apple relied on Google and Skyhook Wireless to provide location-based services -- so Apple left data collection to them. But ever since April 2010, starting with iPhone OS 3.2 and continuing into the current iOS 4 software, Apple has started using its own databases to provide location-based services to iOS devices."

[1] https://www.wired.com/2011/04/apple-iphone-tracking/

plusCubedon How do I opt my access point out of Google Location services?

I remembered that Apple has such a database too, and interestingly, here's a project that reverse-engineered queries to Apple's Wi-Fi geolocation service: https://github.com/zadewg/GS-LOC

plusCubedon Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

Fair enough, "same" is overstating it - edited.

plusCubedon Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

Interesting, similar to Google[1]...

I wonder if 3 days in-person will be the new paradigm for big tech companies.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/6/22422518/google-hybrid-wor...

plusCubedon FDA approves Pfizer vaccine – UC Santa Cruz scientists explain how it works

To be clear, the FDA has not approved the vaccine yet, but an FDA advisory panel has endorsed it [0].

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-pfizer...

plusCubedon Improving urban GPS accuracy on Android

Oh interesting, lots of good discussion on HN about that post too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16887276.

Particularly someone asked whether Uber could scale the approach. I couldn't find how many cities in which Uber uses corrected GPS, except a 2018 Verge article that says "15, launching soon globally". Either way, seems like the answer is Google has the data to do it. And Google can bring it to every (non-China) Android phone.

But yeah, Google's post is very light on technical details. It'd be interesting to see if their approaches were similar.

Edit: also of note, Uber used server-side correction (at least in 2018), while Google downloads 3D tiles to the device.

plusCubedon Cloudflare One

Gotcha, so Cloudflare One = Access (BeyondCorp) + firewall/filtering/Wireguard VPN/logging/... ?

plusCubedon Cloudflare One

Correct me if I'm wrong, my read is that this is a competitor to Google's external BeyondCorp solution[0]? (They reference the BeyondCorp papers in the post.)

[0] https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp

plusCubedon Facebook says Apple blocked it from informing about App Store 30% fee

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24301332

plusCubedon Good vibrations: acoustic technologies in cars

Regenerative braking largely minimizes conventional braking on Teslas.

plusCubedon Microsoft’s ‘can’t uninstall Microsoft Edge’ support page

Question: Is it possible to uninstall Safari on macOS? (without shell commands)

plusCubedon Silicon Valley’s Vast Data Collection Should Worry You More Than TikTok

> The employees revolted so strongly the project was cancelled.

Exactly - the buck stopped at company leadership beholden to internal/public reputation, rather than a central authoritarian government with the power to make you disappear.

plusCubedon TikTok: Logs, Logs, Logs

Context: All internet companies in China operate under China's Cyber Security Law [0]. Among its consequences: "Companies could be asked to provide source code, encryption, or other crucial information for review by the authorities".

(Tangent: TIL Apple's operation of iCloud in China is by a government-sponsored data company named Guizhou-Cloud Big Data [1] as a result of this law.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Security_Law

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351

plusCubedon Google’s problems are bigger than just the antitrust case

DuckDuckGo "most commonly" uses Bing for link search results, so it would mostly be redirecting queries to Microsoft: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

plusCubedon Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

Ah got it. Maybe the first-person part can be added to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ?

plusCubedon Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

Tom Scott, an educational YouTuber. (I am not him, the title was changed by a mod I think)

plusCubedon Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

Edit: title was changed, I am not Tom Scott

I am not too familiar with how Brave and BAT (Brave Attention Token), so please chime in. Here's how Brave describes the BAT YouTube donations system: https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-expands-basic-attentio...

From my understanding, users of the Brave Browser select which YouTubers to donate to, but they don't know whether the channels have opted in to receive donations? What does Brave do with unclaimed donations? Someone pointed out this concern in an earlier submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15730661

Furthermore, OP said that they might not be following GDPR due to collection of YouTuber data (to assign donations). IANAL, anyone know how compliant this is?