Hacker News Reader

EchoReflectionon Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas

Meta is an addictive toxic shithole and a blight on the world. I deleted my Facebook account about 5 years ago and my life has been way better ever since.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-m...

EchoReflectionon Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

so appropriate, literally just saw incoming email from "Shop" (a company I'm sure I was "obliged" to use because some other company that I actually wanted to use told me "we now process all of our transactions through 'Shop'!" This email reads:

We wanted to let you know we’re updating our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy (“Terms”), which applies to the products or services you use, like Shop and Shop Pay. We periodically update our Terms as our services evolve, and to address new laws and regulations. We’ve also made them easier to read.

The changes will take effect on November 6, 2023. Here are some highlights:

• Broadened the description of the services and features we offer to you and how these services work • Addressed new compliance requirements around Shopify’s role as a platform Privacy Policy

• Explained how we use your data for advertising, and provided information about your consumer rights • Integrated the Privacy for Customers policy, improving transparency about how we process personal information when you interact with a merchant • Updated language to better reflect how our products work, such as Shop • Re-structured parts to add detail about the information Shopify collects and why, how we use it, and how we may share it.

---

Now I "need" to figure out how to delete that account/request erasure of all my personal data. Just did that with "23andme" yesterday and it was pretty straightforward, but still I have to kick my past self for being naive enough to sign up for this crap in the first place.

EchoReflectionon Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman

depaywalled version: https://archive.vn/2023.10.02-162231/https://www.nytimes.com...

EchoReflectionon Can’t send email more than 500 miles (2002)

I remember reading this years ago. happy to see it again, in the sense that it's a fun read.

EchoReflectionon We’re all just temporarily abled

I am not really in IT either, although for a few years I worked for a software company (as customer support, not programming or engineering). I've only ever posted 2 things here, and they were things I was sharing, not my own writing:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230212152245/https://www.gigab...

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfkem5e5Iqg

(https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=EchoReflection)

In 2013 I was in a very serious motorcycle accident (coma for 1 month, 2 broken legs, broken hip, broken left arm, several broken ribs, collapsed lung, multiple skull fractures, inner ear bones damaged on both sides. My brain damage was such that my short-term memory was basically zero for a long time, as well as damaged nerves that control vision. The road to recovery was/is long, I still have what are referred to in the medical world as "sequelae", which just means "ongoing effects or symptoms", but, long-story-short, I really, really, really believe that we can all improve our lives and our brains if we A: want to, and B: try. I highly, highly recommend the book "Atomic Habits" by James Clear: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/atomic-habits-an-easy--proven-...

Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Atomic-Habits-Audiobook/152477926...

And Jordan Peterson's books "Maps of Meaning" and "12 Rules for Life" were pretty life-changing.

Jordan Peterson has a LOT of really helpful content on YouTube (a lot of people don't like him bc I guess he's kind of "conservative", but I think it's more the case that he thinks postmodernism and "wokism" are detrimental to a healthy society.

https://www.youtube.com/@JordanBPeterson

Andrew Huberman has a lot of great, helpful videos as well. https://www.youtube.com/@hubermanlab

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequela

Good luck on your journey.

EchoReflectionon Downloading a video should be “fair use” as recording a song from the radio

I make no claims as to the presence of malware (or lack thereof) in the links in this comment, and I'm not condoning or endorsing anything, nor am I stating an opinion on the ethics of downloading YouTube videos for any purpose, but for the sake of adding information to the table, there are still options available:

https://newpipe.en.softonic.com/android/download?utm_source=...

and,

https://yt3-music-downloader.en.softonic.com/android https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/

and: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/easy-youtube-...

And I'm sure many others. I guess as long as the situation is such that it is not stupidly easy to figure out how to get around the restrictions that "prevent" downloading YT videos, workarounds and options will continue to be available. Information is very hard to lock away if it is on the internet and available to the public to some degree. I imagine he situation is considerably different in more totalitarian countries like China and North Korea, where content and online activity is scrutinized/monitored by the government more "thoroughly".

It seems hard to find a line in the sense that recording technology is becoming more and more common, as is the trend of social media companies wanting the masses to "share" their experiences on social media. Hypothetically, if I record a concert with Snapchat spectacles and then upload the snap to YouTube, am I committing some kind of copyright infringement or am I simply sharing an experience with my "followers"? I have actually had videos of concerts that I recorded on my phone taken down from YouTube, even though it wasn't like I recorded with a professional camera or even that the recording sounded particularly good, but I guess some content management stoolies on YouTube (and I imagine Vimeo and maybe LBRY/Odysee/elsewhere) are paid to try to take down content that appears to be bypassing the creators' ability to collect money for their material.

EchoReflectionon Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

Modern white-collar work wil never go back to the way things were (nor does it need to). Pros and cons to that of course. The path of least resistance (saving the costs of lighting/heating/cooling/plumbing/office-maintenance, etc) will triumph.

EchoReflectionon Water

It does calm down, but never stills. But the ocean never stills, so I would still give this full credit/an A+

EchoReflectionon At this company, we are family

several years ago I became an "ultra high net worth individual" (through unexpected events involving a car accident and an inept (but very large) insurance company, and with the help of my closest family members I/we decided (for legal reasons) what was to be done with my wealth in the event of my death. Deciding which family members (I have a pretty big family, if I count aunts, uncles, cousins, but only two grandparents left) to whom I would want to leave what amounts of that wealth was very surreal. Kind of felt like putting monetary values on family, which I guess in a sense it literally was.

EchoReflectionon All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

Oh awesome, maybe California can overtake Colorado for "most in-debt state in the US". Economic stewardship is nonsense anyway.

EchoReflectionon Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

https://archive.vn/M2Qe1

EchoReflectionon Newpipe.net removed from Google search results due to DMCA take down request

The Internet is too global/ubiquitous (except in evil shitty countries like North Korea, China) to make dividing content availability by region realistic in the long run.

EchoReflectionon Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

I've been "trapped" with evernote for a long time because I put more than a decade's worth of stuff into it, and their exporting tools are shit. Literally I "exported" whole notebooks and what I got was just the titles of notes and no content. Ugh. Guess time to just sit down and spend a few hours doing tedious, tedious tasks for a while. Notion and Obsidian are great though.

EchoReflectionon Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

so one doesn't have to deal w/ WaPo paywall nonsense: https://web.archive.org/web/20230701144801/https://www.washi...

EchoReflectionon Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

That is such an elegant, concise, and accurate description of the situation. Bravo

EchoReflectionon Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo developer in drama-filled AMA

Video removed. Looks like even archive.org might not have caught it fast enough. https://web.archive.org/web/20210828142953/https://www.youtu...

But Chomsky is overrated anyway imo. Really smart, but an Ivory tower elite at the end of the day.

EchoReflectionon Thousands of subreddits pledge to go dark after the Reddit CEO’s recent remarks

It is way overdue for redditors to switch to Mastodon or something similar.

EchoReflectionon Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo developer in drama-filled AMA

#quitreddit

EchoReflectionon Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo developer in drama-filled AMA

Intention matters. I can forgive incompetence much more easily than I can forgive malice. Usually US law leans that way too (manslaughter vs murder).

EchoReflectionon India ruling party's IT cell used AI to show smile on arrested protesters' faces

I saw this a few weeks ago and I keep coming back to it when I hear about news like this: https://youtu.be/zdlBFOp-jxE

EchoReflectionon Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

i bought my pixel 7 pro direct from Google store and i have the option to unlock the bootloader...

EchoReflectionon Mass layoffs and absentee bosses create a morale crisis at Meta

the faster Meta crumbles into oblivion the better. Zuckface and Twitbook and Crapchat and all the other "social" media platforms are literally just data-harvesting programs that are, like the fashion industry, just trying to make money (which is fine) by manipulating human behavior and perceptions/ideas about what "normal" is.

EchoReflectionon NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

twitter and NPR are both liberal echochambers, although NPR has "high credibility".

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/npr/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a...

https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-tw...

re: NPR:liberal bias but not egregious

https://nypost.com/2017/10/21/the-other-half-of-america-that... (I realize NY Post leans way right)

EchoReflectionon How to be a -10x Engineer

seems like that article is/was kind of a sick joke. i feel like reading an article about "how to waste your time/other people's time" is...a waste of time.

EchoReflectionon The day Windows died

linux has lots of flavors and one can run virtual/emulated OSes on i imagine any of them. Win11 sux big time though, no doubt. I actually had a Geeksquad dude visibly grimace when i told him i accidentally "upgraded" to Win11 and he helped me wipe the HD and put win10 back.

EchoReflectionon TikTok Ban Bill Is Patriot Act 2.0 Trojan Horse [video]

nailed it. sophistry indeed.

EchoReflectionon TikTok Ban Bill Is Patriot Act 2.0 Trojan Horse [video]

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/3/28/bid-to-ban-tikto...

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/16/1137076864/fbi-says-china-cou...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelposner/2023/03/27/tiktok...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/politics/spy-balloon-technolo...

https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-spy-balloon-us-penta...

China is not an ally of the United States. The Chinese government wants what is good for China. Shouldn't be a contentious or confusing idea.

EchoReflectionon Judge decides against Internet Archive

this is very disturbing, but definitely not unexpected. surprised it took this long, actually. fortunately i think it will still be a long-ish time before the thought-police can take down all the parts of the internet that clash with the "sensibilities" of the scrooge-like, pro-paywall, pro-restriction curmudgeons in their ivory towers.

https://www.alltechbuzz.net/best-internet-archive-wayback-ma...

https://www.guru99.com/best-internet-archive-wayback-machine...

https://startupstash.com/internet-archive-alternatives/

https://www.topbestalternatives.com/internet-archive/

https://alternativeto.net/software/internet-archive/

https://rigorousthemes.com/blog/best-archive-is-alternatives...

i realize the last link is "alternatives to 'archive.is' " and not "alternatives to 'archive.org'/the wayback machine", but it's still pertinent/in the same ideological arena (obviously).

As MLK Jr said* "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Apparently Dr. King adapted that line from Unitarian minister Theodore Parker:https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/15/arc-of-universe/#:~....

i've archived this* page (this ycombinator page) at: https://archive.vn/AZNoN

EchoReflectionon DPReview.com to close

maybe time for some enterprising/interested individual at https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ to start going through...

EchoReflectionon Punctuation Matters: How to use the en dash, em dash and hyphen

Or commas (?). "Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable."