smileybarry

> I work for a fully remote company with employees from all over the world, including Eastern Europe, and we didn't need to partner with any local company

Because your company already has considerable experience in working remotely in another territory, of course they didn't need any help. Or potentially, they were already contracting a firm for local bureaucratic matters.

> Plus it was never mentioned what these "local partners" get in return

Money? They could sell these bureaucratic services at a markup, where they have experience with the paperwork etc. part of expanding internationally.

Additionally, another commenter said they offloaded some worse talent on them[1], so that's another possible benefit to them.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45500737

And to cover the astroturfing allegations in this thread: no, I don't work for or have any relationship with ProtonVPN, other than being a user.

That's not the conspiracy theory. The conspiracy theory is painting every single commenter as part of said company/PR agency.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409794

Back in 2012 or so, I reused an old netbook (an Asus Eee PC) with an Atom CPU & 1GB of RAM, installed Ubuntu Server, and used it as a home server. It handled the printer, DNS-VPN proxying for streaming, and a few other things admirably for years. (And ironically was resilient to Spectre because its Atom CPU was before Intel added speculative execution)

Eventually, the thing that kicked the bucket was actually the keyboard (and later the fan started making "my car won't start" noises occasionally). Even the horribly-slow HDD (that handled Ubuntu Server surprisingly well) hadn't died yet.

Well, that's essentially Windows Update.

No, they're tightly coupled together. Even same-release updates update both the kernel and the userland syscall-implementing DLLs to match.

Windows 7 is still dramatically less secure by design (i.e. not missing patches but architectural changes) compared to Windows 10, even Windows 8 had some meaningful kernel security features that 7 lacks. This includes sandboxing measures that Chrome & Firefox use, meaning you're still less secure even if you're not downloading shady software.

You're frankly better off applying a bunch of registry changes to 10, using a Education or N (EU) edition "illegally", or blocking DNS than going back to 7 just for privacy concerns. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The Israel Azure region wasn't launched until 2023, and AFAIK has substantially less services available than the others. I know Google's Israel region doesn't have as many GPU options, for example.

Dyamically-adjusting (higher) pricing to take advantage of your spending problem, for one.

From the original post:

> According to the German Automobile Association, manual opening is only possible from the inside, which complicates rescue attempts for emergency services.

The issue, other than complicated internal release, was the lack of an external way to manually open the doors. (e.g.: driver is unconscious with small kids who haven't read the manual)

Twitter -- sorry, "X, the Everything App" -- is suspiciously missing from the list. I wonder what could possibly be the reason.

The only APIs that are locked this way AFAIK are PPL, Defender-disabling, and AV registration, all not exclusive to Microsoft, you just have to sign up to an antimalware developer program and sign an NDA.

> They still have the best sync engine[...]

If you mean differential sync (or "delta sync"), Google Drive added it this year and OneDrive added it a few years ago. Google Drive's client is much worse than Dropbox's, though, with it just randomly breaking on Windows often. I've had good experiences with OneDrive on Windows & macOS, though.

Google Drive added delta sync this year, while OneDrive added it in 2020 apparently.

I also overstayed with Dropbox for that reason, and now I don't see a real reason for their higher $/GB. Though their client is more stable than Google Drive from my experience (which randomly stops working on Windows often enough), OneDrive has been rock solid for me on both Windows and macOS.

> Incredibly, Vault was discontinued by automatically turning PIN-protected folders into regular unprotected ones!

Oh that's great! I currently use OneDrive because of Personal Vault (and other smaller reasons), because no one else offered something like it. I didn't even know about Vault, but I guess that's for the better because I wouldn't want the folder holding my ID etc. becoming accessible to every single app connected to my Dropbox.

There had to have been a better way to discontinue it. Even making the folder require migration on next access would've been better than silently worsening it.

That post is very outdated and was in the pre-alpha stage. At the time you paid (once) to join a sort of staging ground where they also discussed features with users, and asking what they'd prefer. And that buy-in pre-alpha period also ended when the alpha app launched.

They didn't really "sell usernames", unless you also call buying a paid app with social features "buying a username".

And as far as "Gems", looks like bragging rights. This is what clicking (?) currently says:

> Gems are earned by being amongst the very first to Digg a post that trends across the platform. The earlier you are to discovering and Digging the post, the more Gems you’ll earn.

Gems is deceptively named but it's essentially just for posting interesting things that gets discussions or Diggs, or being early to post something. It has nothing to do with crypto etc.

Source: I've been using the app since the alpha started.

I can't find mentions of any enterprise SSDs in the linked Twitter thread, just consumer SSDs ranging from "budget" to "pro" from various brands. The Twitter author later did some basic testing on a list of SSDs and it looks like it's mostly to do with very budget QLC models: https://twitter.com/Necoru_cat/status/1956949132066898080

This feels like an extrapolation by the article author based on the fact Phison microcontrollers are also used in enterprise models.

The irony of getting that popup on Stack Overflow when I clicked that link

Microsoft supposedly aligned with deprecating MV2 back when Google announced it but they've indefinitely postponed it. The KB about it still says "TBD", and there's zero mention of it around the actual browser. IMO it's a good alternative, if you trust Microsoft (I do).

It’s also a relatively “old” Call of Duty entry (2020-2021), in a series that famously ditched its older yearly entries quickly. The newer ones probably work fine with E-cores.

It's mentioned in some ASUS docs, but it's not available on their support anywhere. Probably reserved for big OEMs, yeah.

I would care if I could change it, but you need a proprietary tool that you can't obtain. (Every other way I found involved patching the UEFI and turning off Secure Boot)

I get that, but I'd expect it to be a setting I can change in BIOS, or at least default to the motherboard's model number. Instead, if I build my own, I just can't change it ever because ASUS refuse to release it publicly. Hell, even the shop I used for the previous PC didn't have such a tool. (And if you change it in Windows, it's rewritten from SMBIOS every boot)

Betas at the time were physical and tightly controlled, not a download or a toggle. I wouldn’t really call it “shipped”.

I’m fairly sure my expensive ASUS ROG motherboard (ergo: not even their budget line) also had a “to be filled in by OEM” string that I couldn’t even override. (ASUS have a utility but it’s not publicly available, probably just for computer shops)

No, it's supposed to refute the title & assumption of the article linked here.

They’re usually IoT editions of Windows 10, I.e. still the same kernel but with a lot less bundled apps etc. and a LTS support cycle.

I’m also not sure how much of modern Windows is that big of an attack surface, given that most things are just firewalled off automatically.

Wait until you find out OEMs now make UEFI applications that NetBoot off the internet. Lenovo have a recovery app implemented this way

I assume it’s probably because the baseboard management thing (iDRAC and the like) boot beforehand and can do various USB & ISO manipulation.