Hacker News Reader

yelling_caton iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27

Unfortunately for us swipers, disabling slide to type on an iPhone makes typing significantly more accurate. I can only guess as to why, but after seeing anecdotal reports over the last year or so from people raving about how much better typing was with swiping disabled I finally got fed up enough to give it a shot myself. It is much, much better, to the point where I'd never re-enable slide to type until Apple finally fixes this.

yelling_caton CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

> As a caregiver impatiently waiting for Daraxonrasib

Same here. Are you and your care recipient familiar with the Optune Pax device that the FDA approved in February?

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...

My father's been using it since April. It's a little cumbersome and only improves overall survival rates by about two months over chemo alone, but we're hoping that it helps him remain relatively healthy until Daraxonrasib becomes available.

yelling_caton Home Depot GitHub token exposed for a year, granted access to internal systems

I was livid when I discovered that my carrier had implemented that with no opt out. I worked around it by implementing shortcuts that disable my iPhone's WiFi when I leave my house until I've returned or reached one of the handful of other places I use it. It's ridiculous that something like that is necessary, though.

yelling_caton Guy running a Google rival from his laundry room

I love this project, but that server setup makes me hope that Ryan doesn't live in earthquake country.

yelling_caton Toronto’s network of pedestrian tunnels

My wife and I had a great time wandering around the Underground City when we visited Montreal. We were there in the fall, but it sunk in just how cold Montreal winters get when we went to a club that had a coatroom the size of my first apartment.

yelling_caton The new geography of stolen goods

The article covers this:

> Around the world, border agencies overwhelmingly focus on imports, hunting for people and drugs. In many countries, exports are hardly checked at all. Anyone can book a container.

yelling_caton Windows 2000 Server named peak Microsoft

Definitely. If 2K supported ClearType I would have stuck with it on my personal machines for another half a decade.

yelling_caton Three AM 911 call, 9 AM salesman

I've called 911 twice for borderline issues and it played out both times just like you said - I said what I was seeing and to let me know if I should call a different line, they confirmed the issues were emergencies, and the rest played out like any other 911 call. Let the dispatcher decide.

On a related note, the valid reasons to call 911 are:

1. A danger to life, property or the environment

2. A crime in progress

3. Someone having a medical emergency who needs immediate assistance

4. A fire

yelling_caton AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

It's an extra step, but a surprisingly simple one. When I opened a checking account recently the bank told me which credit agency they'd use, and I unfroze that account and ChexSystems (another credit agency you should freeze with that is used specifically for new bank accounts) in five minutes using their automated systems. You can supply a re-freeze date when unfreezing as well so you don't need to remember to do that manually once you're approved.

yelling_caton 200 people charged in $2.7B health care fraud crackdown

Most of the article is about Gehrke and King, but the last fraud case mentioned is absolutely vile:

> Another case alleges a scheme in Florida to distribute misbranded HIV drugs. Prosecutors say drugs were bought on the black market and resold to unsuspecting pharmacies, which then provided the medications to patients.

> Some patients were given bottles that contained different drugs than the label showed. One patient ended up unconscious for 24 hours after taking what he was led to believe was his HIV medication but was actually an anti-psychotic drug, prosecutors say.

yelling_caton Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop

When I was a kid HP products were well-supported and famed for their durability. My dad still uses the HP scientific calculator his father bought in the '70s and my uncle has an old PC hooked up to a '90s LaserJet printer that works perfectly well. Retired engineers I've talked to gush about working there in the HP Way days, they were respected and got to create fantastic products that their customers loved.

Now "HP" is a curse word to anyone in tech. It's a damn shame.

yelling_caton Adobe Photoshop Source Code (2013)

This mid-'90s time capsule and the decade-plus of comments below it summarize how a lot of Freehand users felt about the program: https://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/illustrator-v-freehand.html.

yelling_caton Adobe Photoshop Source Code (2013)

I hadn't thought about Freehand in a decade and now I'm angry at Adobe for killing it all over again. It never got in your way and let you fully focus on your work. Illustrator never lets you forget that you're using a tool to create things like Freehand did.

yelling_caton Software Has Eaten the Media

It's interesting to see a post here that flips the script a little, focusing on the negative consequences of growth-at-all-costs for those attempting to create good journalism and reviews as opposed to those seeking to consume them. We don't get that perspective often on a tech-focused site like HN.

It is bizarre that new media companies are funded, staffed, and run with the expectation that they'll scale and profit on the level of successful tech companies. Original, credible content takes smart, trained people time to produce, and you can't scale the business without scaling the number of such people doing that work. You can't automate or leverage AI to cultivate trustworthy news sources or investigate a corrupt sheriff's department. I don't know what business model would work above the micro Substack-funded level, but it's clear that the one that keeps being tried never will.

yelling_caton Evernote will restrict free users to 50 notes starting December 4

I'd evaluated Evernote alternatives for years, but that ludicrous price hike was the kick in the pants I needed to finally choose one (UpNote, for its similarity to early Evernote and one-time $29.99 price for Premium) and migrate to it. Evernote does make exporting notes easy, at least. I moved and validated a decade-plus of them in an afternoon without any formatting or content issues.

There are plenty of notes apps out there now, and at least one company that actually wants business should handle anyone's particular use case. The only reason I can think of to stay on Evernote at this point is sheer inertia.

yelling_caton Oracle Employee Helped Cocaine Dealers Hide $54M in Crypto, DOJ Says

The dealer was security-conscious enough to keep a $2+ million a month dark web drug business going for five years, but blabbed about hiding his assets in plain English from a prison phone he knew was being recorded? Wow.

Even if the phone monitors didn't know what Ether was they'd sure as hell pay attention to open talk about stashing millions in tax havens. The transcripts (https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-11/castelluzzo.complaint.pdf) are not subtle.

yelling_caton WeWork plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week, source says

Only your coworkers can see what you're up to in a glass meeting room at your company office, though.

yelling_caton WeWork plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week, source says

Exactly, and the facility with real conference rooms that we switched to had nice solo workspaces as well. The decor was a little more corporate, true, but we somehow struggled through that.

yelling_caton WeWork plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week, source says

I'd used WeWork offices for solo work with no issues, so I didn't do sufficient diligence when I booked a conference room at one for a confidential client meeting. The room's walls were all clear and so thin that any conversation above a quiet murmur was easily heard from the hall outside. I asked the onsite manager for a more suitable room, but she told me they were all like that there. I ended up sticking the easel pad on the room's conference table and we spent the afternoon whispering to each other as we huddled around it.

Not checking things out in advance was on me of course, but it never dawned on me that their meeting rooms would be designed by people who'd apparently never been in a meeting before. In any case that was the last time I set foot in a WeWork.

yelling_caton Double Commander – Changes in version 1.1.0

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for. It looks like I'll be sticking with Forklift 3 for the long haul.

I did just install Double Commander on my Steam Deck, though. It's a vast improvement over Dolphin.

yelling_caton Double Commander – Changes in version 1.1.0

Have any Forklift users here on MacOS tried Double Commander? A two-panel file manager of some kind is a hugely useful productivity tool, I'm just wondering if there's a reason to switch to this one. If not I'll give it a go when I have some free time.

If anyone on MacOS doesn't have a similar tool already you should definitely grab this. A two-panel file manager that supports bulk renaming is really handy.

yelling_caton Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

A niche sub equivalent succeeding on, say, Lemmy would either require the existing reddit sub to close and migrate there or for the Lemmy active user count to grow to the point where a critical mass of users interested in that niche want to discuss it there. There needs to be some way on Lemmy to promote those forums as well. A couple of niche forums I'm subscribed to are gaining a little traction, but I only found out they existed when they were mentioned on the reddit subs they're based on.

yelling_caton Dining like Darwin: When scientists swallow their subjects (2015)

The Voyage of the Beagle is a fun read, with many little asides about what the animals Darwin ate tasted like. Puma meat was one he called out as particularly delicious and remarkably like veal.

yelling_caton Acronym’s new computer with Asus is bonkers, but that’s the point

24-year-old me would have been Googling where to buy this by the time I was halfway through the article. It's not for me any more, but Acronym definitely hit what they were going for with this. Laptop and phone design used to be a lot less homogeneous than it is now, and though our devices are vastly more powerful and functional these days they definitely lack a sense of fun. I applaud anyone working to bring that back.

yelling_caton Origins of the Sicilian Mafia: The Market for Lemons (2017)

Many of the largest gangs and criminal organizations active today began as self-defense or neighborhood defense groups.

"The Bloods was initially formed to provide members protection from the Crips." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloods)

"Originally, [MS-13] was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Angeles area." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-13)

"The inmates who formed the Nuestra Familia gang banded together to protect themselves from the Mexican Mafia" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuestra_Familia)

"The [Los Viagras cartel] began operating as a self-defense force (grupos de autodefensa comunitaria) in 2014." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Viagras)

yelling_caton At this company, we are family

Yeah, paying high performers big money to leave over skills mismatches makes sense for a FAANG but would be suicidal for a startup.

yelling_caton Why do cats knead?

I'd always assumed my cat drools when she gets a good knead on simply because she's purring so hard, but it makes sense that it's related to nursing behavior.

yelling_caton BBEdit is 30 years old as a commercial product

That was the killer BBEdit feature for me, back when I was building my first static web sites. Making precise global layout changes without using a web template system felt like magic.

yelling_caton Using ultrasound attack to disarm a smart-home system

For six months Siri interpreted my requests to call anyone as "Call Paul." It still might, but at that point I gave up and changed Paul's name in Contacts to stop accidentally bothering the poor guy.

yelling_caton It's difficult to read an audiophile guide as an analogue engineer

What snares a lot of well-meaning music fans into wasting money on audio woo is that the first upgrades can be mind-blowing. Let's stick with headphones for simplicity. Pairing, say, a $400 set with a well-mastered album you've listened to hundreds of times and you'll discover sounds in it you've never noticed before - the singer's breathing, whispered background vocals, a guitar string's squeak. It even feels like each instrument is playing from physically distinct places! If the headphones are wired you might next add a $90 DAC/amp combo and - wow, you really feel the bass and sub-bass now! So what will take you to the next level?

The honest answer is that absolutely nothing will provide improvement like what you've just experienced. Tripling your headphone budget gets you a number of beautiful, well-engineered cans with sound signatures tailored to your favorite sorts of music, but with improvements on the order of "that midrange has more detail, nice" than "holy crap!"

Woo-selling companies target anyone still convinced at that point there is some next, higher level of audio bliss they can reach with the perfect combination of kit. Cables made from exotic materials, fancy power conditioners, rocks and stickers have glowing "reviews" and marketing pseudoscience about sonic transparency and skin effect. They do nothing and give the audiophile industry a bad name, but they'll be with us until suckers stop paying for them.