Hacker News Reader

polygoton Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

I had an old iMac G3 when I was a kid, and I was searching for a file or an app in Finder (I don't remember which), and I accidentally double clicked on an applescript file because it froze for a few seconds. The rest is history.

polygoton Logging Everyone Out

I had a similar issue happen to myself (not on wikimedia or anything related to wikipedia.) I clicked on "login" by accident without filling in my credentials and I was logged in as either an admin user or a user called "Adam".

polygoton Ask HN: Thinking about making a tutorial to create a QR code without a computer

Good question, and I'll have to check out that link. I'll probably be targeting teenagers but I'll shoot for the lowest denominator without being patronizing.

polygoton Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

I made a browser extension which replaces links in articles and stackoverflow answers with archive.org links on the date of their publication (and date of answers for stackoverflow questions): https://github.com/alexyorke/archiveorg_link_restorer

polygoton That coworker who never stops refactoring

I'm not the OP, but I think they mean that the tests will slowly become out of date (if nobody else is updating them.)

polygoton Announcement of LibreOffice 7.0

Very interesting. I'll have to consider this when I can get the feed discovery process more efficient

polygoton Announcement of LibreOffice 7.0

Here's a repo I made with RSS links to the LibreOffice torrents: https://github.com/alexyorke/oss_rss/tree/master/libreoffice

I'm looking into ways to automate updating this feed, stay tuned. If you have more suggestions let me know and I can add another feed.

polygoton San Francisco flattened the curve early. Now, coronavirus cases are surging

http://archive.is/5kSVB

polygoton Launcher wipes entire SSD when uninstalling

> If you have installed Minecraft Dungeons in a custom directory, there is a chance uninstalling Minecraft Dungeons Launcher and/or the game will remove the entire parent directory and everything in it.

It doesn't erase the entire disk when uninstalling (just the parent directory), however, the bug is still extremely troubling.

polygoton Facebook to shift permanently toward more remote work after coronavirus

There's a lot of people who are treating remote work as binary; it has to be 100% remote or 100% onsite. I think that some will benefit from it (those whose commutes are long for example), and some may have children at home and thus can't work as productively.

Could it be possible to work from home most of the days, but not all of them?

polygoton Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

> Changing a file’s extension does not guarantee that it will be converted, but Spencer was still able to submit the demo test with no problem.

In what situations does the file format auto convert when you change the extension?

polygoton Unpacking HP Firmware Updates

Mirror: http://archive.is/O6Sn7

polygoton Ask HN: I'm building budgeting app. What features would you look for?

Alert me when a bill is over a specified confidence interval.

For example, if my bill is $10/month +- $5 (std), then it will alert me if it exceeds $6.49 more than the $10/month (the 80% confidence interval.) This is useful for phone bills which can go up by a certain amount (e.g. long distance) but don't have a fixed threshold. If they're over by a few dollars for a few months then I've probably added an add-on, but there's no "fixed" amount that it should be, just that it's not too much more than it was.

polygoton Tax change in coronavirus package overwhelmingly benefits millionaires

http://archive.is/cucsR

polygoton New iPhone SE

Does anyone else get severe graphical corruption on Windows 10 using google chrome while scrolling that page?

polygoton YouTube download-and-convert website for ancient browsers

What are the advantages over pasting the YouTube link into VLC's stream from network stream? Are the codecs not supported in 10.3's VLC?

polygoton LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles

Also, it outputs XML and RSS too: https://www.reddit.com/r/ubuntu.rss and https://www.reddit.com/r/ubuntu.xml

polygoton LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles

If you add .json to the end of a Reddit URL, it will return JSON data. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ubuntu.json . It also works with comment threads and posts.

polygoton Processing 40TB of code from 10M projects with a dedicated server and Go

I'm very interested in this data; if there is a torrent, I would be able to seed it if needed.

polygoton Algorithm allows video editors to modify talking-head videos as if editing text

Reality TV is probably going to have a hay-day with this

polygoton Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

Are they removing url-rewriting requests as well? Perhaps adblockers could modify the URL of the ad to go to a different domain (example.com) rather than blocking it entirely.

polygoton Apple introduces 8-core MacBook Pro

Check for thermal throttling. Dust can severely slow down a laptop, even though task manager says that it is only using 10% of the CPU.

polygoton A Collection of Dev Checklists

Seems to have been fixed as of two seconds ago

polygoton Mail a Letter Online

Depending on where your friend lives, you can address it to a post office. However, your letter would still need your friends full name on it to get it picked up.

polygoton The Web is missing an essential part of infrastructure: an open web index

I don't think it's very democratic if it's only hosted on Amazon S3. Effectively, this gives Amazon control over the data.

polygoton Microsoft resumes rollout of Windows 10 version 1809, promises quality changes

There's a "stable" software option available for organizations for Windows 10 Home.

I switched over to the "Semi-Annual Channel" in Windows Updates advanced options. The "Semi-Annual Channel" is for "widespread use in organizations" versus the "Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted)" which is "ready for most people."

Also, the updates can be deferred for up to 365 days, but I'm not sure if that would slow the updates down rather than just delay them.

polygoton I have resigned as the WordPress accessibility team lead

Microsoft Outlook for Enterprises does that; it has a “lite” mode which is for people with older browsers, older computers, or have accessibility needs. However, my reasoning is a bit flawed as just because Microsoft does it doesn’t mean it’s correct.

polygoton Verizon Says 44,000 Managers Qualify for Company Buyout Offer

This policy sounds slightly similar to Amazon paying employees $5000 to quit. [0]

I suppose that it is intended to increase worker motivation during reshuffling and reorganization when morale is likely to be low.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/why-amazon-pays-employees-50...

polygoton A Data Hoarder Is Downloading the Metadata of Roughly 10B YouTube Videos

Forgive my naiveness, but would it be better to use a database (say MySQL) to store the metadata to avoid filesystem limitations?

polygoton Deepfakes for dancing: AI to fake those dance moves you always wanted

While these results certainly have drawbacks, it does set a prescient as to how we can use video evidence.

In ten or twenty years, can video evidence be considered legally binding? If someone else can make someone else do virtually any movement, how do we know that someone else committed a crime? With voice and facial synthesis, virtually anyone can do anything. Photo evidence can be easily faked (via photoshop), videos can be faked, audio can be faked; do we continue to create methods of identity verification that are continually complex?