zorrolovsky

Humorous question: Could moving there be a privacy advantage? I can imagine insanely long locations break a good bunch of databases and CRMs, specially legacy ones... I would give my location to every spammer and scammer and refuse to spell it. "Oh yeah... I'm super interested in your product. But you gotta ship it to Taumatawhakatangi­hangakoauauotamatea­turipukakapikimaunga­horonukupokaiwhen­uakitanatahu. Is that ok?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taumatawhakatangi%C2%ADhangako...

I have been running CalyxOS on a Pixel 6a for 6 months and I'm very happy with it. It does everything I need and found no big annoyances so far. A minor issue is MyFitnessPal not reading barcodes but that's it.

I use CalyxOS on a Pixel 6a and a LineageOS on a OnePlus 6. No micro G on any of them. Honestly, I have absolutely no issues with CalyxOS and I use mainstream apps like: UK Banking (Starling and HSBC), Whatsapp, Telegram, MyFitnessPal, some airlines and local bus apps...

I guess your mileage might vary. If you're keen on a particular app and you can't make it work, that's a frustration. So far I haven't found any reason to come back to a standard OS, and I appreciate my phone not sending constant signals to Apple or Google to the tune of hundreds per day.

Me too... and this illustrates the sad state of the internet in 2023. Let's keep hope that things improve somehow in the future!

I see your point but... not sure if I agree. Here's an example:

Mozilla makes Google the default search engine in Firefox for all users. That's FAANG + misinformation + hypocrisy + perversity on my book.

Misinformation because you can´t be serious about privacy if your default search engine is Google. Hypocrisy because they position themselves as a privacy-focused product but they still push Google, Pocket, ads and other nasty stuff. Perversity because they emotionally manipulate users to make them feel safe, while at the same time they make them vulnerable to tracking.

Today I installed Firefox on my iPhone. When you launch the app, there's a child-like drawing of a smiling woman hugging the FF logo. A heading reads "Welcome to an independent internet". Subheading reads "Firefox puts people over profits and defends your privacy as you browse". Whatever you type on the URL bar connects you to Google. So... because of their defaults any user action will lead such user in exactly the opposite direction of what they were promised a second ago. That's perverse and disturbing.

I'm done with Mozilla and Firefox, they need to be exposed and shamed like any other FAANG orgs. I've been wishing and hoping they get things right but this behavior has now been going on for over a decade.

Because Mozilla misleads users with corporate-speak bs, telling them that they respect their privacy when in reality they have a history of doing anti-user nasty stuff.

Today, the public is well aware that G, Meta, Amazon, Apple, etc... spy them and monetize their data to sell ads. So most people using products from those organizations know what to expect.

What Mozilla does is worse than FAANG. They release anti-user and spyware features but they have the nerve to preach in their site, docs, UX, etc about how they "lead a revolution to save the web" and "deeply care for user's rights". Perverse and disgusting.

The overarching assumption of this article is that OS sandboxing is a 'must requirement'.

I would challenge the author to explain why is the extra layer of sandboxing a must requirement. Do we know the size of the problem? As in... how many known websites run malicious scripts with real intent to do harm, and how many sites achieve that goal?. Do we know how many users got hacked because the lack of sandboxing in linux when doing typical web browsing?

My view is that the article blows the problem out of proportion. Security relies to a great extent on user behaviour.

User A visits known domains only, and opens emails from known senders only. They only share card and personal details with known and trusted parties. They only install the strictly necessary apps and from known devs only.

User B visits any site regardless of domain. He shares email, phone number and card data at the earliest chance (ie when trying to buy illegal drugs from a clearnet shady store). He installs dozens of apps, often from unknown parties.

Regardless of OS, browser and other context, user A is going to be safe most of the time and it's very rare that they in serious trouble. User B is an accident waiting to happen...

If the above is true, maybe we don't need a technical solution like OS sandboxing. It would be more effective to create a standard for all browsers where the first screen you see is a big message saying: "Welcome to your 3 second online tutorial: Visit known websites where possible. Don't share your real personal details unless strictly necessary. Share details with known and trusted parties only. In case of doubt, don't trust the other party."

I adopted a philosophy in life that helped me a lot in this regard. I started to see life as a series of 'games' played by 'roles'. My mission in life is to play my 'games' in the best way possible for my 'roles'. A game can be anything from being a good student, to being a father, to making sound financial decisions, to leading a project, to supporting a project as individual contributor, to making a house renovation, etc.

Once I started to see my work as a 'game' played by a 'role', a lot of stress was taken off of my back. I started to see situations in a neutral light regardless of who were the actors (including myself).

It doesn't matter if it's me receiving or giving constructive feedback, having a difficult conversation or managing a stressful situation. Through this perspective I'm able to abstract from people, power dynamics, etc. and see what's helpful, that's the best way forward, etc.

At first this approach only existed in my mind. I didn't dare to externalize it because I was wary people might see it as odd or disrespectful. As I fully implemented this philosophy in life and at work, I dared to socialize it with good results.

For example, instead of saying "John's performance was poor" I would say "this role's mission is to add value to XYZ, I think we can do better in that area. What support do we need to achieve better results?". And people react really well to that way of framing things. This language adaptation can work well in OP's case. Maybe the manager said "you sucked when doing XYZ because you missed an important thing". You can translate that as... "I don't suck at anything and that's a bad way of framing things. But in the future when my role is in a similar situation, I should do XYZ to have the right insight to do my job". Another tool to manage feedback is to imagine it's not about you but about someone else. Imagine is a friend telling another friend about a situation at work. Would you still think "there's no way person X could have known about that"? If so, a good answer in a PR is... 'if the same situation happened tomorrow, how could I get better insight, or know who to talk to, to achieve better results'?

Something to highlight here is that there's always two sides of a coin: it's great that you want to learn to take constructive feedback as a growth opportunity and not as a personal attack. But maybe if your gut feel gets constantly irritated is because you have found a genuine case of toxic work environment. "Snarky comments in a PR" raises a red flag to me. To be professional means to treat others with dignity. If that's not happening is time to consider jumping ships.

So, OP: well done in keeping yourself in check. It's hard to take constructive feedback well, but it can be done with tools like the above and others. While doing so, make sure you're not surrounded by toxic colleagues and leaders and when that's the case, run fast and far and don't look back.

Fun factoid about the Rimac Nevera: it's a crappy name in Spanish (European flavour). Nevera means fridge and it's used in everyday language. It sounds really uninteresting.

Now that we're a bit off topic... let's talk about Mitsubishi Pajero. Also used in everyday language in Spanish and it means 'wanker' (UK) or 'jerkoff' (USA). They had to change the name in some markets because it sounded really funny and/or awful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero

Aside from the risk of breaking things, there's the risk of data leaks and enabling surveillance through negligence or intentional back doors.

Hardware and software companies have a story of implementing anti-user features in very shady ways (ie silent update to T&C allowing the org to track and share data with third parties and/or brokers).

I don't care if my smart Philips light bulb shares all its data with god knows who. My router? that's the device that manages all connections including critical ones. I want it to be impeccable and transparent. That's why I refuse to buy from manufactures that require a could account like Eeroo or that require weird connections to work properly like Tenda (a friend had a Tenda mesh and it wouldn't work if we blocked connections to Baidu, Weibo and others)

"Thread like this" are popular and entertaining for a variety of reasons. You assume that they're only about making money, stealing someone else's ideas, etc. but that's not necessarily the case. To me, the interesting bit of these threads is to understand the human thought process behind a successful idea: ie was the founder happy with life or in a bad place, working full time or freelancing, was it an impulsive thought or something carefully planned...

It's hard to disagree with the fact that brand identities are being stripped back of personality (aka all look the same). I wonder if there's a cause related to our social context: - It could be that this is the moment in history with the most visible amount of brands out there. It's inevitable that two designers land on a very similar solution without knowing about each other's work - It could be intentional: we live in the era of information noise. Brands are happy to strip back their personality and identity so that the message (their ads) can take the spotlight - Visuals are being dumbed down to increase usability: consumers are tired of making sense of strident brands, so they appreciate keeping it simple

... or maybe I'm just inventing things.

I agree with your sentiment. To address privacy concerns I decided to use a privacy-oriented fork: LibreWolf - https://librewolf.net/. I use it as a daily driver for all my use cases and it works like a charm (inc extensions).

It is frustrating that Mozilla/firefox position themselves as user friendly and privacy-focused but they don't walk the talk. It's all marketing lies so my sympathy for the org is on an all-time low.

This post seem to blame victims for the problem, and that is not fair. People can be in dark places mentally, struggle with disease, family issues, etc. Not everybody is mentally sharp 100% of the time to identify a scam attack and fight it back.

The problem is not victims, the problem is scammers. There should be better mechanisms to quickly clamp down on them. In this case, it would be really good if there was a mechanism or institution where the victim could report the scam and once verified it would gather information from Google, Dropbox sign, the bank receiving the funds, and other tools scammers use to build a case against the scammer in the relevant jurisdiction, and avoid them using the same tools for further scams.

My strategy to repel scams is to stay humble. Mo matter how much I think I'm prepared to identify scams, I am still vulnerable and I will continue to be vulnerable. Arrogance is your worst friend if your objective is to stay safe. No matter how many ceremonies you do when you're 16, in the right context and with the right words, you will still fall for a talented social engineer.

I dislike live chats but many users and businesses see value in such functionality... who am I (or the author) to demand they stop?

There's a mantra in UX that says: "you are not your users". The way I interpret that mantra is that you shouldn't assume that your opinions, preferences, motivations and behaviors are the same as other users'. In other words, a single experience or use case will never cover 100% of the needs of all users.

Sorry to state the obvious, but different people have different needs, and they see value in different things. To demand that "XYZ" stops because one person doesn't like it is so wrong and myopic... it's actually a pet peeve of mine. It's fine to share your experience "When I open my email, I do XYZ" but for the love of god, never make the sweeping assumption that your experience covers everybody else's' needs or opinions.

> either push users to upgrade devices, or push to sign up to paid services. Pushing for both at the same time is greedy.

Pushing users to upgrade devices is unethical and harmful. Apple does it all the time and they should be held accountable for that.

Discarding old devices and creating new ones destroys the environment and increases pollution. The best device is the device you already own!

Their successful business strategy results in environmental destruction and other issues. Wh

I use a condenser mic so the audio going out is top notch. The mic is the one offered with the Scarlett 212 bundle but you could use any decent mic.

HQ mics are great because you can fine tune the volume. It's high enough for my voice to come across strongly, but low enough to avoid background noises, people hearing themselves through my speakers, etc.

The idea behind my set up is to have a hands-free and always-on working room. I just walk in and know that everything is ready to start a call. Just click a button to make a call or accept it. No need to fiddle with headphones, adjust volumes, check if sound is working well, etc.

The only exception to this set up is when I have a confidential call, in which case I use my phone or headphones.

Everything is wired, as wireless sound devices are just not there in terms of quality and avoiding annoyances (see the HN thread called 'The first minute of every phone call is a torture now)

That was a great read. It got me smiling!. It's not often that you find fellow control freaks in the wild. Stephen Wolfram's personal infrastructure sounds overall great, but it crumbles in the sound department. If you're going to be on calls for hours every day, for everything that is holy please get a hands-free set up. The most ergonomic object is no object at all.

I use a Scarlett 212 mic and sound card paired with a decent pair of speakers and my working room works like a charm. Everything is set up so if I start a call any device I can walk though the office and have a conversation with someone like they're in the room. 10/10 would recommend.

The other day I casually found Neocities... a sort of Geocities revival that I found interesting: https://neocities.org/browse

I also like Fosstodon, a FOSS-oriented Mastodon instance. Plenty of interesting people to browse and follow: https://fosstodon.org/explore

I share that view.

From a usability perspective, Apple's approach is great. From a privacy rights perspective... it's very bad.

It has been proven that big tech firms are in bed with govs, and allow them to violate citizen's rights at their convenience. Is it a good idea to trust them with all your data, accounts, etc? Hell, no.

I think firefox has everything you need already. I use librewolf in linux but any firefox on a desktop OS should behave in the way I describe below.

> i want rich bookmark behavior. This points needs specifics. What do we mean by rich? what are the outcomes we're trying to achieve?

> i want to be able to quickly load common favorite news sites & blogs. > or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites. This can be easily achieved through folders in a bookmarks toolbar. For example I have a folder called 'News' with my top 4 sites. When I open the browser, I just right-click on the 'News' folder, click on "open all bookmarks" and those sites open on a tab each. One click and half a second... very efficient!

> or pick up where i left off on a research rabbit hole. > and i want it to be intuitive, efficient, and a prominent UX feature set. In a rabbit hole window with X tabs -> right click on the tabs area -> select all tabs -> bookmark tabs -> then from there you can create folder 'rh 17 August' Next time you open a browser, just right click on that folder and open all. When done, just delete the folder. Once you learn this, it's a one or two second process so it's very efficient in my view.

You might argue that this option could become a one-click thing (ie a right-click menu item called 'save all tabs as bookmarks' and use an automated name) but that brings a whole new range of problems (cluttered interface for users that don't want this, and therefore decrease in overall UI efficiency)

> i'm not alone right? No, many people like me relies on bookmarks. I share the frustration others shared around the bookmarks toolbar being hidden by default. However, by using standard behaviour I manage to make bookmarks work in a pretty efficient way.

This topic has been on my mind for a couple years now, and it's interesting how I came to a similar conclusion as the author.

There are a ton of things I really enjoy doing: running, boxing, playing music, writing, drawing... however, I always struggle to get started. It always feels like a chore and I'm baffled as to why. I should be excited about initiating any of those activities, but I'm not! The moment they enter a to-do list, I know they also enter the realm of procrastination and avoidance. It's weird.

As I grow older and more experience, I realize "it's all in the mind". If you have the right mindset towards the activity you want to do, you have 80%+ of the job done.

Using running as an example, I went from running a couple days per week to running every day. Why? Simply put, a mentality shift. Before, I would think about it as "I should run at least 30 mins, 3 days per week". Now, I think about it as: "Let's move a bit, go to that nice canal by the river". In a nutshell... I moved my mindset from "I must be disciplined" to "let's play", pretty much as the author states.

Thanks for the update! I was not aware of the situation and just joined the new community. I like the way they start the new page by suggesting users to create a threat model. My threat model is almost zero (I don't do anything interesting that deserves surveillance) so to me, it's a matter of principle. I rather pay 1€/month rather than having Google scannning my personal emails. I rather donate to Linux Mint rather than having Microsoft monetize my desktop experience with crapware and ads.

Not sure if you do it for privacy, ethical or practical reasons, but here's my journey: I removed my life from Big Tech (FB, TW, Gmail, YT, G Drive, MS, and other anti-user/spyware/malware companies). It was surprisingly easy to do and refreshing spiritually.

First, philosophy: this article resonated so much with me that I made the brave step of deleting my big tech accounts and switching to Linux: https://medium.com/hackernoon/leaving-apple-and-google-my-ee...

Then, execution. This site will help you to find user-friendly alternatives to your spyware apps/OSs/services: https://www.privacytools.io/

I am now with a setup that maximizes privacy and giving money to ethical companies: Phone OS: LineageOS and /e/ Desktop/Laptop: Debian and Linux Mint Browser Mobile: Bromite Browser Desktop: LibreWolf (firefox fork oriented to privacy) Maps and GPS mobile: OsmAnd Mobile app store: F-Droid, Aurora Store Search Engine: DuckduckGo, SearX Email: Posteo (1€/month) VPN: Mullvad (5€/month) Online drive: NextCloud-based service ie /e/ foundation

Once I researched the above and checked the companies/projects are trustworthy, I started using them with surprisingly low bumps in the road. For mobile OS I went radical and didn't even install microG (a package to enable G services so some apps work well). I still can use my favorite apps, including banking (although if you root your phone you might have issues)

I made the switch on my personal devices from Win/MacOS to Linux a couple years ago. God! it's so liberating not to live behind walled gardens, dark patterns, corporate giants tracking every click you do and selling and/or misusing that information... let's remind ourselves to donate to FOSS causes. In a world where there's no FOSS option, I'd seriously consider not using technology vs having to cope with the sheer incompetence and/or malice of modern software design, led by Apple, MS, Google and co.

I understand how opinions like the one OP expressed can be interpreted as arrogant by many people. And you're probably right in saying that many of those Reddit comments reek arrogance.

But to bring a different lens to the topic: to me, articles like this are about protesting the way social interactions are designed and blindly followed by many people, not signaling superiority.

So I don't read OP as "I'm better than anybody else", but as "There must be a better way of interacting with others and sharing interests. I dislike the current way".

The article resonated with me because I think the concept of "parties" is overhyped. I've done a lot in my life and yes, there's a good side to them. But there's also plenty of BS going on: power dynamics, shallow conversations, etc.

The problem is, parties are a sort of a sacred dogma to the vast majority of people. Friends and aquitances will often tease/insult you you for not going to them, or for going and not staying late enough.

I don't understand why the hype. Why are parties the "ultimate and only" way to have fun and interact socially for some people? There are dozens of other ways to interact with people.

For example, I rather have one to one catch-ups with friends because when you get small talk out of the way you can deep-dive into topics. Because of that, I'm an anti-social outcast for many people. "The weird guy that doesn't go to parties". I think that's what the article is on about: societal pressure to individuals so they interact in a certain way and bend to stablished norms, when such norms are not enjoyable for such individuals.

Nowadays is hard to buy a non-smart TV and that means consumers (almost) don't have a choice anymore. Once that happens, we're at the mercy of manufacturers and we know how much they respect user privacy.

Companies like Samsung are already pushing hard to monetize their TVs, selling ads and shoving them down users throats. Imagine what a Samsung TV + Mobile combo can do to profile users: age, sexual preferences, political views, etc would be very easy to know by the manufacturer.

Going on a rabbit hole around TV privacy, I've read some TVs could connect to a nearby wifi if it's open access, or use HDMI as others pointed out. They can also capture images and sound and send it home to "improve sevices". I'm not sure how much of the above is real vs paranoid fears, but the prospect of this scenario being standard practice in the future is both possible and scary.

Call me paranoid but to avoid some folk on the other side of the world having a list of what I watch and pictures of my family I use the 'service mode' on my Samsung TV to switch off wifi capabilities and bluetooth. I also factory reset the device every few months. I'm not even sure that protects me 100% but at least I try. Because once your data is on the wild, got knows how secure it is, and what malicious actors can do with it...

The trick that worked for me is to be absolutely ruthless.

I don't allow myself to bookmark "read later" pages again. I have to options: either I read the page here and now, devoting my full focus and attention, or it's gone forever.

I suggest you read about the power of focus, and also work on the damage that the fear of missing out is causing you. Yes, there are millions of interesting topics and insights out there, but you can only read one at the time. So ask yourself: "if I had to learn about one topic today (or this week), what would that be?". There is no later, there is no tomorrow... it's either now or never!

To me, both statements are true.

Sex work is empowering because it gives opportunities to people that they wouldn't have otherwise.

It's also very exploitative and risky, both for workers and clients.

In an ideal world, we would find a way to make sex work less exploitative and risky. In the real world, prostitution is a complex problem as old as humanity itself...

Very interesting comment! Any ideas on what are we supposed to do in this world? I keep on thinking we need to take a step back, come back to evidence and logic and make things right. But deep inside I know that's not going to happen. In the post-evidence world, it's too easy for people without moral to grab power and benefit. That is, it makes it easier for those in power to grab more power. That's why things will remain the same for a while.

Is the solution to simply smile and carry on? Is it time for a (non-violent) revolution?