Hacker News Reader

pschastainon Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

Kudos to Powell's, I've spent literally thousands of dollars over the years at that magnificent store and will continue to do so; spent hour upon hour there in my childhood getting lost in wonders it holds.

They don't try to undercut smaller bookstores by offering discounts on new books like B&N, Amazon, etc., their employees seem to actually enjoy working there, it's a family-friendly environment and the selection simply can't be beat. If you enjoy reading, please support this business.

pschastainon Brave Browser, wiping history still leaves trace of visited sites

I don't use IOS (yet) so "no" on that front. I tried Brave and was happy with it until these recent revelations, so upon hearing about Braver I simply decided to keep an eye on it.

pschastainon Brave Browser, wiping history still leaves trace of visited sites

Brave Browser continues to behave in ways that are contrary to their stated principles. I dropped the browser a couple of months ago on the heels of the bitcoin affiliate link scandal and went back to Safari and Firefox.

I am keeping an eye on Braver Browser, a fork of Brave with the intention of removing the questionable behavior: https://github.com/braver-browser

pschastainon DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

Completely over-looked the 3rd - that they're human and made an honest mistake that they're attempting to rectify.

But from your attitude I'm guessing that think you've never made a mistake...

pschastainon DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

Braver (https://github.com/braver-browser/) is a Brave fork meant to address this and other issues.

pschastainon DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

https://github.com/braver-browser/

A Brave fork meant to address this issue. Time will tell.

pschastainon DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

From elsewhere in this thread:

https://duckduckgo.com/settings#appearance

Uncheck the very last option "Site Icons"

pschastainon Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

Kinda what voting is for - to change the current gov't.

pschastainon Unofficial Apple Archive

And then Apple went and borked Preview by rewriting it post-Mavericks. Used to keep a VM just for it. Not sure why they decided to "fix" something that wasn't broken but to this day Preview lacks a lot of functionality it once had.

Just a bit of an aside. I'm still somewhat bitter about it :-p

pschastainon Ask HN: Ever worked with a service that can never be restarted?

I remember reading some time ago an old story about folks recovering accidentally deleted system files from the currently running system. Can't find it, I think it was Ritchie who told it but I'm not sure. The long and short is that it might be possible to recover the lost config from what's currently running.

pschastainon AMD is having its day

Full article is behind a paywall :-/

pschastainon Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

Just another example of why I want to be done with Google. Between privacy concerns and the way they drop their own hardware I simply no longer trust them. Time to start migrating away...

pschastainon Apple is evaluating new keyboard mechanisms to make thinner MacBooks

I don't need a thinner MBP; I need ports, a reliable keyboard and a large battery. I'm still using my old early '11 because I don't want to buy a new laptop only to have to send it off for repairs or have to buy a bunch of dongles to get the usability I need out of it.

pschastainon A Kubernetes/GKE mistake that cost me thousands of dollars

Click that little "x" in the upper left corner of the pop-up.

pschastainon What happens when you launch Google Chrome for the first time?

How is Brave shady? Or are you just trolling?

pschastainon Guess I'm Done with Discord

Personally found the post interesting. I don't use Discord but I also refuse to give my number out for verification purposes - as you noted there are other ways to verify a users identity.

Hopefully you don't get too much grief for being a female on the internet with an opinion :-/

pschastainon Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

Paywall; site wants a subscription to read the article.

pschastainon Dungeons Tome – Tool for generating dungeons for RPGs

Went to check it out, and it requires you to jump thru Captcha hoops just to use. I'm not going to spend time clicking on pics training some AI.

pschastainon How to Android without Google

Bummer that they don't support Nokia (yet). I have a first-gen 6, it's a fine phone, but I've been thinking that my next phone will be an iPhone because I'm tired of Google and their invasive tactics. I don't mind advertising and understand the business model that uses it, but I am wholly opposed to targeted advertising that tracks my browsing habits and which sites I visit.

pschastainon Enabling the F4 key in macOS

The keycodes listed in the article are wrong. F4 is 118; F5 is 96. Not sure why it worked for the author. For any interested, a full list of macOS keycodes can be found here: http://macbiblioblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/key-codes-for-func...

pschastainon Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

What about general-purpose software? I've been toying with a software idea for years that has as guaranteed a user base as you could get.

pschastainon Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

Case-sensitive HFS+ is an option when formatting a disk.

pschastainon Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them

I haven't had a Facebook account for years, and my phone number was never associated with it. Yesterday I visited the site on my laptop to look up the page for a tavern that's re-opening. 1/2 hr later I got a text from 32665 with a Facebook confirmation code. WTF; creeped the hell outa me. I replied with "stop" and received verification that "Texts from Facebook are now turned off." I visited their site again to request whatever data they have on me, but even though I checked the "I don't have a Facebook account" button for the request they insist that I log in to finish the process. Not sure where to go from here with it.

[edit] grammar

pschastainon Visual Studio for Mac

> Who are we as programmers to decide what works best for our users? Where did I say that? You seem confused.

And your argument regarding publishing and banking software is a strawman intended to shift the focus away from the real argument - that of choice. Forcing a change on my workflow can have very real effects on my ability to generate income. Why should anyone be ok with that?

pschastainon Visual Studio for Mac

> an arbitrary habit that you've grown comfortable with

You mean a workflow?

Who are you (or anyone else) to decide what works best for me? Am I not capable of making my own decisions? Do I really need a hardware company making those choices for me?

pschastainon GraphicsMagick Image Processing System

Except Preview 8 (post-Mavericks) sucks. Annotations of any kind always appear in the center of the page and have to be manually moved into position, it doesn't easily recognize selections, combined documents don't always retain changes, I could go on. I have a Mavericks VM just for Preview 7.

[edit] grammar

pschastainon Fantasy Land 1.0

Where did you find the "README.md"? The op link has 5 bullet points from the v1.0.0 release notes and a "thanks to..."

pschastainon Fantasy Land 1.0

So what exactly is it? No explanation on Github. Based on the first comment here it seems to be a javascript library of some kind, but nothing on what it does or should be used for.

pschastainon Epsilon Programmer's Editor

From the site (http://www.lugaru.com/why-lugaru.html):

'Sometimes people ask what our company name, Lugaru, means. It's actually a phonetic spelling of the French word for werewolf, "loup-garou". One day in 1984, after finally turning off the computers and noticing the sun had come up, we decided this might be an appropriate name for our new company.'

pschastainon This JPEG is also a webpage

No explanation of what's going on?