Hacker News Reader

McDevon The ProtonMail Android app is now open source

You can still upload the app with your signing key. But it's also true that Google now push developers to leave the APK signing process to them

McDevon Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

The bonus might not have been paid until this month though, the start of the new financial year

McDevon McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

>When Amazon accidentally sells expensive camera equipment for 99% off on Prime Day

I've always wondered how much of those are actually mistakes, and not just media stunts

McDevon Java 14 Feature Spotlight: Records

And Kotlin data classes: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/data-classes.html

McDevon Ask HN: What do you regret you didn't know when programming for iOS or Android?

I'm a self taught programmer and started developing for Android in 2012. It took me a while before I realised that you needed third party libraries to do absolutely anything useful as the platform APIs were so poor and undocumented. There were gaps everywhere and you needed to write tons of boilerplate code to do things properly.

Image loading was often a huge source of crashes due to out-of-memory errors and doing it properly wasn't trivial [0]. Libraries like "Glide" and "Picasso" solved this.

Using the camera hardware was awful. Device manufacturers would implement things differently, and break the camera API unexpectedly. Only recently [1] are we starting to see sane, consistent camera APIs.

Making network requests felt extremely clunky, and the platform JSON implementation wasn't performant, or easy to use as you had to manually parse everything. Retrofit [2] made talking to REST services much easier.

I could go on and on, but I'm sure there's plenty others here who can do that here. These days Android development is much, much more enjoyable. Kotlin has pretty much replaced Java in the Android ecosystem, and there's great reasources around on how to architect your app to make everything testable and easily scalable such as the architecture samples [3]. I've worked on a few React Native projects in the last year. I'm not a fan of it, but I definitely see the industry heading to some cross platform solution eventually.

[0]. https://developer.android.com/topic/performance/graphics/loa...

[1]. https://developer.android.com/training/camerax

[2]. https://square.github.io/retrofit/

[3]. https://github.com/android/architecture-samples

McDevon Police begin operational use of live facial recognition technology in London

I'm not sure what you mean by that being the point in brexit. Theresa May voted for remain and introduced bills like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016

McDevon Apple lawsuit tests if an employee can plan rival startup while on payroll

From my experience it just creates another question for the interviewer, i.e. "What were you doing during this period?".

Similar to how banks view gaps in employment as additional risk when applying for a mortgage for example (at least in the UK).

McDevon 88% of Americans use a second screen while watching TV

This is why I love the cinema. I'm forced to watch the actual movie. Even if it's not great, it's 2 hours where I will be focused on something and not mindlessly scrolling. Sometimes I even enjoy the movie!

McDevon Open letter concerning Facebook's proposals to apply end-to-end encryption

A bit strange after reading this headline: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/20/uk_conservatives_br...

McDevon Show HN: Angeldust – a fast and efficient video game

Same for the UK.

McDevon LocalStorage or WebSQL unexpectedly cleared

Ouch! A recent Reddit post immediately came to mind:

https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/ea86jt/users_re...

McDevon Show HN: Learn by Doing Projects for Engineers – Real Dev

>If you're a company agreeing that philosophy, we would love to connect. Join us by contributing a task, or let us know about your ideas.

Do these companies who "contribute" tasks get to see the source code for the submissions?

McDevon Smart TVs like Samsung, LG and Roku are tracking everything

In addition to push notifications, they kept pushing their TV+ app to the first position of my apps selector. I kept removing it. Then I just switched off internet access. Smart TVs are dumb.

McDevon Developers mentoring other developers: practices I've seen work well

While you're looking for a mentor, take a look at this guide and see if it helps. https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap#back-end-...

McDevon Google's ‘Project Nightingale’ Gathers Personal Health Data on Millions

Further down:

... privacy experts said it appeared to be permissible under federal law. That law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, generally allows hospitals to share data with business partners without telling patients, as long as the information is used “only to help the covered entity carry out its health-care functions.”

McDevon GDPR fines were meant to rock the data privacy world

I work at a lot of startups as a contractor. The disregard for privacy and user data everywhere I go is astounding. They're all in survival mode.

McDevon Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

Users on this site are predominantly American. Most Europeans would share the sentiment of the parent comment.

McDevon Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

Just tried this, saw the following error:

google (unexpected crash: CAPTCHA required)

I like the idea though

McDevon I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy (2014)

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#2015

McDevon AirPods Pro

I'm using a Macboook touchpad and still couldn't get past the first few slides. Scrolling felt horribly unnatural with all the jumping images.

McDevon The state of Android updates is still dire

The ability to allow apps to use your location only while you're using the app is particularly useful. iOS has had this for a while now.

McDevon Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

It won't disappear from anyone's device. New users simply won't be able to download it.

McDevon Town in Iceland Paints 3D Zebra Crosswalk to Slow Down Speeding Cars

I can imagine a motorcyclist absolutely bricking it. I don't find this smart or that amusing.

McDevon Show HN: Swap-a-Doodle, a cross-platform social drawing app

This is cool and really easy to use! I love how it captures mistakes you make (the undo actions) when sharing it.

McDevon Monzo urges 480k customers to change their pin numbers

>about a hypothetical event

Not entirely: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44121901

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/28/warning-sig...

McDevon Monzo urges 480k customers to change their pin numbers

>Is this like Sentry? Does it send a stack on a crash?

It's just like Sentry and does send back stack traces on a crash or any error the developer chooses to send back.

Crashlytics part of fabric.io, which was bought by Google and is actively being integrated into Google's Firebase.

McDevon A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

I love it! Now you just need to make a platform announcement addon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qa7KL1VScw&t=70

McDevon 1Password: Standalone / Local Vault Option Gone?

>once you are in, you are on the hook forever or you don't get access to your precious passwords

You can still view your passwords after your membership is cancelled.

>Looks like it's time to consider alternatives?

I've switched to Bitwarden and haven't looked back. It's not as 'shiny' as 1Password but they seem like a great company and everything works for me so far (using iOS, android, macOS, Ubuntu, and Firefox).

McDevon BlueJeans also runs a webserver when installed on macOS

Unrelated note:

>"Your browser isn't supported

This browser won't play nicely with some features on this site. For the best experience, update your browser to the latest version, or switch to another browser."

What on earth is that supposed to mean? Update to what browser? (Using Firefox on Android, latest version)

McDevon First fine for the application of GDPR Article 25 in Romania

As long as it's enough for them to fix whatever they were doing wrong, I'd say the fine doesn't necessarily have to be punitive