progmetaldev

This one is more dangerous, as there may be backend resources in use that could be optimized, which could drop costs drastically. This may not change anything for your users, but is definitely worth exploring when it comes to getting the most out of your investment.

I totally forgot about RockBox until I saw this headline, like yourself. That kept my first-generation iPod Video running far longer than I would have expected.

In the US, I am seeing biometric authentication, and/or 2fa on mobile apps for financial institutions. The issue is that these same institutions are still running their websites that have the same security that was around in the early 2000's. You can take advantage of the mobile application and get better security, but you're still a target to someone that just accesses the website.

I work on the CMS side of banking, where promotions and current rates are posted regularly. All actual banking is done through a first-party link to external systems. The amount of scrutiny and regular application scanning for vulnerabilities that is done on the CMS software I've built drives me insane, considering the glaring holes in security that affect their systems that actually deal with money. I take security seriously, and it's one of the main selling points of the software I build, but knowing how poorly made these systems are that house what a malicious user actually wants makes me understand how much of society's systems play security theater.

I am with you, customizing your daily tools and saving those configurations is far different from customizing every visual element of your operating system. Being able to reproduce your environment is definitely a worthy goal, but at the same time, I think you'd be limiting yourself by not configuring your production software to your own liking/most-efficient way you work.

I can tell you that there are still quite a few of us out here that are doing the once a year manual renewal. I have suggested a plan to use Let's Encrypt with automated renewal, but for some companies, they are using old technology and/or old processes that "seniors" are comfortable with since they understand them and suggesting a better process isn't always looked favorably upon (especially if your job relies on the manual renewal process as one of those cryptic things only IT can do).

I am sympathetic to what you are saying, but as far as using animation to attract business, you are in the lowest percentage of people that would make a purchase (as well as being on HN, you are probably far below a tenth of a percent for a customer). I also try to prevent large carousels and animations on websites for accessibility, but when it comes to those who convert to customers, the animations are going to win out by a ton. I know you know this, too, but I'm just saying it so you know you're heard, but businesses need to sell.

The number of people that are able to handle accessibility, while also being capable of creating a captivating presentation to drive sales, is extremely low. This isn't an attack on anyone, I wish things were more black and white, but until those with accessibility needs are driving revenue more you are at the mercy of the government and ADA (if you're in the US or anywhere else similar concerns are legal).

Yes, lmz <https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lmz> pointed out that I had mixed up Dave Plummer and Dave Cutler. There are actually multiple videos that Dave Plummer has done with Dave Cutler, which I found very interesting.

Reminds me of Coders At Work, by Peter Seibel, which I read right around the time that I decided to get deeper into software. Being able to read or hear about the process that went on in someone's head while developing something so major was and is still impressive, and motivating.

I 100% agree with you, and don't set cron jobs/scheduled tasks this way. I only use this for displaying date/time to users.

With that said, I do appreciate the comment, and would have to make sure that if I run scheduled tasks in the future, they are run when the user wishes them to be completed based on when that user sets it to be completed (so would most likely not convert to UTC, and save the timezone with the date/time).

You are correct, thank you. Dave Cutler has apparently done many guest spots on Dave's Garage, so many that I confused their names! Appreciate the correction, so I can perform some better searches of Dave Cutler, having only looked into the videos on YouTube.

As someone who is very much into heavily distorted guitar with long feedback loops, I appreciate your comment (especially for the insight). I'm a huge fan of doom/stoner/sludge/psychedelic metal (and all variations of those), where distortion and feedback are often used to create sounds that are difficult to notate. Combined with progressive metal/rock, which is heavily reliant on that jazz/rock fusion, and you get entire genres built around the harmonics and odd sounds that show up from lots of distortion.

I feel that Sunn O))) - named after the amplifiers, are a great example of slow rhythm music that relies upon heavy distortion and feedback to create the atmosphere and primary sound of their music. This is just a modern band, but the experimentation and techniques go back to psychedelic and acid rock from the 1960's, and mostly center around Black Sabbath as "the" band that really created the prototype for the sound.

Monolord, Bongzilla, Acid King, Bongripper, REZN, and SLEEP are some great modern examples that fit what you've described.

Sounds like a company that has enough high paying legacy clients that they still offer a bit of support, but want that free open source work without improving it to make that work easier to complete.

His series on YouTube, Dave's Garage, has really helped me to conceptualize Operating Systems in the past that I used, but didn't really fully understand. I started with Atari DOS, but moved to the 286 roughly around the time it started to become popular, along with MS-DOS. I'm 45 now, so didn't think about things as deeply back then, as far as constraints and why things may have been built the way they were. I think his series really does a great job at looking into both technology and company politics (especially his time at Microsoft).

https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?feature=shared

If you need to worry about ADA compliance (I always do, but not always paid to), this can be difficult to address.

I remember Opera, before it was bought, had the best support for html5 elements and date/time inputs were the best (along with almost all others). Sad to think that a leader in this area was sold off, and not to a buyer that cared about usability and the web the way Opera did.

For this case, I will often ask for the timezone, since that data is often updated on the operating system, but I don't believe it's often for someone to be in the same location and have their timezone change. The software that I've maintained the most over the years (since 2009 up to deploying an update today) requires a login, so I have a client account that includes choosing their timezone. I then use that to convert everything to UTC in the database, and when I retrieve the data, I use it to convert UTC back to their local date/time. I felt that it was the best option, since a user moving to a different timezone should still be able to get dates/times back relative to where they have their current timezone set.

Interested in what you are doing with the iframes. Something with complex authentication? I've been forced to use iframes a few times for 3rd party resources that should have been first-party (mostly with banks and credit unions), and have only had some styling issues on mobile (which have been overcome by using JavaScript and window.matchMedia to check for media queries).

Thank you for your reply, that makes quite a bit more sense to me!

Inkscape makes so much more sense to me than Adobe Illustrator ever made. Maybe it's how I use it, or what I'm looking for as output, but I've been happy with Inkscape since around 2006/2007.

I think it depends on how much control you feel you want to have over your output. AI tools are decent at rendering video, but for those that want full control over the process, I feel like it's going to be a long way to go. If AI is able to generate the full source files to allow things to be modified, then I would 100% agree with you that it's going to be a new age for artists. If you're dealing with raw generated video, or even a frame by frame rendered image, your control is much more limited than if you could shape and customize your models. For most, this is probably fine, but for those that want fine-grained control, there is a far path to go in order to get to that point.

I personally think you're both right, but it depends on when you first started using Blender. You're 100% correct that interfaces at the time when Blender was released were completely experimental, and I'd compare it to trying to navigate AI as an uninformed end user when it first was introduced, versus now. That's where I would put Blender when it was first released. The interface was good for what it was compared to the other popular 3D software at the time, but it's so much better and more evolved now. I'd say that you mentioning shortcuts makes you a power user, which should be the goal when you use any piece of software for your career. I just don't think that people bother to learn as much as you did back when you started using Blender, which I think shows your dedication, but also shows a lack of deep knowledge most (not all) people that start with a new technology have currently. It's not unknown to get a fresh graduate or self-taught person that wants to deep dive into the software they make use of daily, but I feel like it's far more uncommon that it was 20 years ago or more.

Probably not at this point in time. Back when Blender was released, I think there was less reliance on third party libraries (in general), but especially those that would complicate releasing the software as open source later. I don't think this was as much a conscious decision as it was about making sure you had full rights to the code you used back when Blender was started and open-sourced.

Now so many projects take on dependencies that require NDA and proprietary licenses, it's unlikely that this type of creative tool would see the light of day after being closed-source. I can't imagine any industry leading creative tools not getting to market more quickly by purchasing software that gives them an edge for the operating system they are running in. I hope that I'm completely wrong, and possibly there is someone out there that is using software that is easy to rewrite, or replace, if the license doesn't allow open-sourcing.

I was in classes in the early 2000's with people taking multimedia courses, and Blender was just starting to become more well known. The school I went to taught 3DS Max and Maya, which had their own learning curve. I think 3D rendering is just difficult from a UI/UX place, and Blender got in at the right place at the right time. I was in software development, but my friends that had their heart into 3D rendering said Blender was a bit different, but not so challenging as moving between Photoshop and GIMP. That's not anything against GIMP, just a point of comparison, I think GIMP is fine the way it is and haven't been able to follow the UI of Photoshop since CS2 era.

I thought I would ask, does this mean that memory restricted environments can be a better target for attack than one with a large amount of memory available? In my mind it seems like this would be the case, but I'm not sure if there is anything in place to protect these types of environments, like intentionally breaking up and segmenting memory so it's not possible to read much linearly. I admit that I haven't touched low-level code since the early 2000's, and earlier than that for anything other than a course requirement, so I apologize if you explained it in your linked article and I don't understand.

I see most comments concentrated on employment. For a scam, think of someone that has been told they have a specific genetic disease, and that information is available in their DNA "data". As a scammer, I can start to send you information about alternative health treatments specific to your disease, that have no scientific backing to them. Since I'm a scammer, I can write anything I want to, like stating that the information is backed by FDA approval and even put statements like that in the fine print to build up my credibility. You could also try and sell fake services that wipe your released DNA information from databases online. There's a lot of potential for scams if you can link what people think is private (DNA), and their email/personal information.

When I was younger, I read a lot of ethics course material, and spent a lot of time thinking about how someone could get around existing laws or technology, and most of it boils down to most people believing what they're told with a bit of coaxing (building that credibility; social engineering). Luckily, I never went ahead using this information, and have actually turned down projects where my morals were put into question, but I think it prepared me to be more conscious of scams and shady advertising. I work for a digital advertising agency, and use an adblocker during my development work so I can see how a site is useful or mostly worthless when someone turns ad networks/tracking off. One of the benefits of working for a smaller company.

I'm not sure if there are any current laws that prevent this, but there are quite a few laws that would prevent an advertising company from getting this information. Like most things, if we're going by a company that doesn't work within the law, we're already going to lose.

What's to stop someone within an advertisement company from reaching out to someone in healthcare IT, and offering a large amount of money for this information? Trying to link this physical data to an online presence is probably not worth the risk and amount of money and time (at this current point in time).

All my searching currently shows that there are only laws to protect against using genetics in employment and insurance, within the US. It doesn't look like there are any other protections in the US, other than unrelated laws like HIPAA compliance. I wouldn't even try to pretend to be able to figure out other countries' laws around this (and probably don't understand US law any further than not being able to find information easily available with search tools).

For myself, I think it's just as much how to word things properly to most effectively get your point across, as it is to be ready if your report has some kind of backlash or isn't seen the way you meant it. You need to be mentally prepared to handle the response you get back, even if it's no response at all after you spent many hours putting a report together and worrying about how to make it just right. Obviously this will change depending on how important what you're reporting on is, and whether your work contributed to that report's findings.

I'm not sure how deeply involved you've gotten into homesteading, and whether you are doing anything in the IT world, but if you are still a bit connected to IT then I'd suggest scratching an itch you have with software. Perhaps something that connects your homesteading to IT, so you are able to use your knowledge from both?

I've worked for smaller companies, and have software I started in 2009 that I am still working on, literally up to 15 minutes ago. I enjoy working with the client, because they are building in an area that seems to be untapped for potential. I've moved across two programming languages, and two database systems, to keep the software running, and feel that my personal investment and belief in what my client is doing has helped push me in a direction where I am almost tied to this software as my client. It's a good feeling, and think perhaps you need a project like that for yourself. The benefit is that you are also homesteading, so you could learn IoT software for your homestead, even starting off with something simple like watching temperatures at night, or reading humidity readings to decide whether to water areas of your garden/food source.

I grew up with grandparents that lived off the land, mostly pushed from them growing up during the Great Depression. I wish I had known to ask more questions of them while they were around, but I did pick up a strong work ethic, along with what I picked up from my parents. Having a project that you enjoy goes a very long way towards keeping an interest in anything, whether it's IT or gardening of vegetables, flowers, or raising animals for meat or labor (or pleasure, but figured that fell outside of homesteading).

Unless they are focused on decreasing bloat, I don't think that this will happen. There are lots of utilities and other software that still uses GTK2. I doubt that GIMP was the last tool left to prevent dropping GTK2. I found this from ArchLinux, search for "gtk 2":

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Uniform_look_for_Qt_and_GTK...

Plus you can search for "GTK 2" dependencies. Some sites seem hopeful to move to GTK 4, while others wish they could move to 3, and some talk about upcoming 5.

I would say absolutely not, for something that is actually run as static. How many websites could run as static, versus the clients that pay for those websites that believe they need to make a change at any time without going back to their web developers? In my experience, most clients rarely change their websites, and often request changes from my employer after having paid for a solution that allows them to have control should they want or need it. Due to this, I still need to run a dynamic website for truly static content.

A large part of this issue is web development being totally foreign to most users, and clients being burned by past developers that disappeared when needed the most, or hit with a large charge for an update that seems to be "simple". This pushes clients to want a solution where they can make the changes, and that leads to a dynamic website for static content. If you were to stop taking this type of business to further privacy, there are probably tens or hundreds of other companies in your own city that will gladly take on the work.

This absolutely is dystopian, but also current reality. Unless you are able to run completely privately online, the Internet as a whole has become dystopian because shutting down bad actors has been thrown into the hands of individuals instead of part of the backbone to how the Internet functions. Just my two cents, as a developer that needs to use these resources, but also runs a VPN on my phone and desktop nearly all the time for privacy (as well as some speed benefits, depending on the VPN provider).

This is also my experience. If you are dealing with clients that can pay to have their content cached, and not hit the originating server, that's great. To me, that sounds like what Cloudflare offers. Unless you have the ability to push an entire website into a CDN, there are things like query (GET) parameters on a URL that will bypass the cache and hit the server. This means that only using file caching is not viable unless you are running a completely static website. Most websites allow the client to make changes to the content through some web based GUI, and you have things like pagination where the maximum page number may not be known ahead of time for your CDN.

I have dealt with DDoS attacks with and without a service like Cloudflare, and without something like Cloudflare, the costs are extremely high. These are not clients pulling in millions of dollars of sales, even per year. There are IP blocks, but sometimes those bots are running on networks shared with the client's customers. Most clients I deal with couldn't fathom dealing with a static website, even if I could give them a hidden backend that pushed all files to a CDN for caching. I have enough trouble explaining why a page isn't showing recent changes, even with a big button stating to press it if your page changes do not display (integration with the Cloudflare caching API).

Bots, human fraud, it's all a balancing act while trying to give your clients the easiest solution possible for them to run their business online. Without a massive hosting budget, it's not feasible to provide for an easily maintainable client solution, that is also easy on their clients, and prevents abuse from bots and those that would cause fraud or damage.

When it comes specifically to Cloudflare, it does not have to be this way. A site operator can choose to set their own rules for triggering CAPTCHAs, it's just that most don't actually bother to learn about the product they're using.

I use Cloudflare through my employer because I deal with clients that aren't willing to spend a few hundred dollars a month on hosting. In order to keep up with sales of new websites for these clients (where the real money lies), I need to keep hosting costs down, while also providing high-availability and security. Bot traffic is a real problem, and while I would love to not require using Cloudflare in favor of other technologies to keep a site running quickly and securely, I just can't find another solution near a similar price point. I've already tweaked the CMS I use to actually run with less than the minimum recommended requirements, so would have to take a more hostile action towards my clients to keep them at the same cost (such as using a less powerful CMS, or setting expiration headers far in the future - which doesn't help with bots).

If anyone has suggestions, I'd be open to them, but working for a small business I don't have the luxury to not run with Cloudflare (or a similar service if one exists). I have worked with this CMS since 2013, and have gone into the internals of the code to try and find every way to reduce memory and CPU usage so I don't need to depend on other services, but I don't see too many returns anymore.

I am all for internet privacy, and don't like where things are going, but also do work for lots of small businesses including charities and "mom and pop" shops that can't afford extra server resources. In no way do I use Cloudflare to erode user privacy or trust, but can understand others looking at it that way. If I had the option to pick my clients and their budgets, it wouldn't be an issue.