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Programmaticon Clementine: modern music player and library organizer

>What is the difference if any between playing as you say directly from the library and a single transitory playlist.

I don't like having a transitory playlist, I find it to be cluttering. It should play the next track in the library (or shuffle). If I make a playlist, it's to group similar music together.

I would like to be able to double-click on a track in my library and then tune out again until I don't like the music it's playing, rather than managing an interim playlist and having to intentionally add the album I want to listen to into it.

Programmaticon Clementine: modern music player and library organizer

I'm not familiar with the exact history leading to the fork of Amarok. Did the 2.0 version make a change to that effect, or was it just seen as going in a different direction overall than the userbase behind the 1.4 fork liked?

Programmaticon Clementine: modern music player and library organizer

I really like Clementine as a streaming music player and use it quite extensively for playing and discovering Digitally Imported's streams without having to browse through the site. I really like DI's downtempo station for work, and I like that Clementine is cross-platform so I can use the same player on my work and home systems. Kudos to the team for having such a broad and deep selection of streaming providers integrated into it.

My one complaint is that the music library paradigm in Clementine doesn't feel cohesive, so unfortunately it is relegated to streaming music for me. I really don't like that I can't play music directly from the library and have to make a playlist: it feels very cluttering. This is even (or especially) true for streaming stations, in order to try a new one out it must be added to a playlist. If I could change one thing about Clementine, it would be to allow playing of music directly from the library.

Programmaticon Are you a grammar pedant? This might be why

I tend to find it easier to hold a discussion with those that say what they mean. I personally have found the type of person that says "You know what I mean." in response to corrections of the "they're/their/there" sort to be intellectually lazy in many of their endeavors (and in support of the one of the article's premises, typically "outgoing" as well).

The type of person that sprinkles their text with whatever word seems appropriate enough and leaves you to figure out what they truly mean is offloading their cognitive work onto you, to the detriment of communication and understanding.

Programmaticon The US Government has no credibility to compel anybody to weaken security

Don't forget CALEA[1], which is done in plain sight: Telcos don't have the ability to build infrastructure that could frustrate law enforcement's attempts to listen. They were so used to the state of affairs where they could listen to conversations that it was legally mandated that technology cater to their tastes at the expense of privacy and security.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

Programmaticon Answers to your questions about Apple and security

I do not agree with this line of reasoning, and personally find it ridiculous that the court can compel companies to subvert their own novel systems for government use (e.g. require access to suspects' OnStar), but:

This seems, to me, to be similar to CALEA[1] requirements that compel telco companies to implement infrastructure that allows wiretapping. I do not have firsthand experience, but on the face of it telcos are specifically forbidden under CALEA to implement devices or technology in their infrastructure that could prevent "lawful intercept" from occurring. This particular instance does not seem to have a CALEA justification, but that may be a temporary problem.

I think that they are setting themselves up for a win/win scenario and may not be concerned with the legal footing being ironclad. If they win, great. Otherwise, fighting for and losing this case is the stepping stone to going to congress to get a CALEA analog for US companies making communications devices.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

Programmaticon The IPv6 Numeric IP Format Is a Usability Problem

I would hope that the firewall guys are using a layer of abstraction in their rules rather than just putting the IPs in each rule individually. Network and protocol objects are fantastic, because you can assign names to network resources and then write rules that refer to hosts and networks by human names.

As an added bonus, if a resource changes addresses you just update the object and all of your rules are updated.

Programmaticon How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

>Why would Wired care about people that use ad blockers and never visit their site again? They're really no value to Wired so why expend resources on them?

Blocking users that use ad blockers and will never visit their site may potentially block a significant chunk of their intended audience. That audience may then share interesting articles with others who are not running ad blockers. I would assume that the cost of serving a single article to a portion of users who will not view ads may be insignificant in comparison.

Programmaticon The power of the command-line as a programming environment

What would be the correct way to structure something like this in pure HTML?

Programmaticon Can't sign in to Google calendar on my Samsung refrigerator

If you're on Android, Nokia's Here application has fantastic offline navigation maps.

Programmaticon Comcast injects JavaScript into webpages to show copyright notices to customers

Perhaps a captive portal and redirect would be a "nicer" way of doing this. At a bare minimum, it's less intrusive, and it's an accepted practice when using a provider's internet (especially wireless). Injecting JS into a page that I've requested from a third party server would erase my trust in that provider, and I would immediately cancel my service the first time my provider performed that action.

Programmaticon The White Man in That Photo

None of the issues you outline are racial issues.

Feel free to call a system racist; I'll likely agree depending on the merits of your argument. But people that hate others due to their race are racist, no matter how you couch the issue.

The conflict and resentment that people feel when they are accused of being racist due to only their race works counter to the cause of solving problems, not towards resolution. It encourages in-group/out-group mentalities on both sides and is unproductive toward the goal of equality. When you say that one class of person engaging in the same act as another is different because of their race, you are saying "we will never be equal."

Programmaticon The White Man in That Photo

> My ultimate point: it's not clear to me that an ethnic group that is not part of the 'majority establishment' can be 'Racist'.

I truly loathe this argument because it allows people to engage in hatred based on race while saying that their hatred is not racism. Hatred breeds hatred. I don't understand why people would judge me based on my skin and say that I have a hand in oppression, when I have no power over them. Why am I judged for actions of people who are not even my ancestors, because the color of our skin is the same? Is that not the very problem that we're trying to solve?

I feel conflict and resentment when I am told that I am oppressing people and that I should be hated for it because I am simply white, and frankly I think that's the end goal for the media as they are fanning the flames of racial tension. Don't give in: judge individuals on their merits. Judgment based on race is racism.

Programmaticon It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

> Optimizing eating habits (without causing starvation) is much easier than running an extra 10 miles on a treadmill. This disparity in effort is obvious if you ask obese people if it's easier to eat a glazed donut (consume 200 calories) or run 6 mph for 20 minutes (burns 200 calories).

Anecdotally, I find that the initial bit of exercise makes the biggest impact. The added benefit of the "exercise first" approach is that after exercising, I find that I don't even want the donut. If I try to tame food first without exercising, I crave worse food which makes that effort considerably harder.

Programmaticon Crypto problems you actually need to solve

> Offline key exchange is inconvenient enough that it prevents GPG from being used as encrypted-by-default mail.

I would love to simply sync users' keys between their devices and encrypt opportunistically like OTR does. Offline key exchange would only be necessary for verification purposes at that point. I see user key management as the harder problem than exchange.

Programmaticon Dear Volkswagen: you are probably doomed (but not because of diesel)

Appreciate it, the tl;dr focuses it quite a bit! Being able to return the product would be the simplest way for the buyer to be made whole, and would be incredible of VW to offer. I'd personally wait to see what the emissions fix looks like before exercising it if they offered it.

Programmaticon Dear Volkswagen: you are probably doomed (but not because of diesel)

I own a TDI myself and this article seems a bit hasty in its logic. I have mixed feelings at present, but the author's feelings don't seem to be well thought out:

> As someone who just recently bought at VW diesel - my first VW ever, and almost certainly my last - I can of course only speak for myself. But everyone I've talked to feels pretty much exactly as I do. And if after some more independent analysis, the numbers come back and they are even close to what we currently read in the press (10-40x more pollutants than advertised), I will sell the car immediately even if it is at an almost total loss.

I agree not to reward Volkswagen's fraudulent behavior, but if everyone is made whole as a result of this saga I am not sure that I have an issue with Volkswagen moving forward. I certainly would not sell my car. The only actions that make sense through the author's lens of wanting to be environmentally conscious would be to fix the emissions or crush it. Selling it appears to just move the problem to someone else.

>There is one, and only one reason why I would consider buying a VW in the future: massively beat Tesla at their game. Abandon all fuel-powered development today and invest every single cent into long-range electric cars, and build the electric charging infrastructure throughout Europe and the US (and the rest of the world). In addition, the development of the self-driving car has to be your top priority. The car of the future has no human driver in it, and of course you know this (anyone at VW who doesn't, let go of them immediately).

The author believes that an entity engaged in a scandal for shady software cheats should engage in making software that once again has the ability to impact people other than their owners in order to make amends for their current software cheat?

I can't say as I agree. I believe the amends that they need to make are: 1) fix the emissions issues in all current and future cars, 2) make the environment whole to the fullest extent possible. I'm not sure what options are available for this, but fines and funding third party research would fit the bill if nothing else, 3) make the owners of the cars whole: If the emissions fix alters the car's attributes negatively I want to be compensated for the delta from the car I actually bought.

> The new CEO, Matthias Müller from Porsche, thinks autonomous vehicles are an unjustifiable hype. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not: the VW board thought that the best person to replace the guy who oversaw the cheating software scandal (or was unaware of it) is a guy who seems to have even less appreciation of the ongoing software revolution.

Finally at the end of the article we get to some actual meat!! That is unfortunate, and would be worth putting at the top of the article and expanding on.

Programmaticon Volkswagen’s Diesel Fraud Makes Critic of Secret Code a Prophet

> When I search for a word or phrase on Google, I'm running code remotely on their server. Yet no one feels like I should have the right to see that code. Why?

Because I have not paid money to Google purchasing a tangible thing. If I buy any tangible thing, it should honor the doctrine of first sale, and I should be able to modify my tangible thing as I see fit. It is my property.

Google is akin to a remote service provider; I send in a thing, modifications to my thing are made, and then I get the thing back. I don't ask my warranty repair firm or any other entity that provides a remote service how they did it. I simply make a request at an agreed-upon price (or agreed upon terms: you'll provide ads in exchange for the service) and if the terms are not satisfied I will not hold up my end.

Programmaticon Let's talk about iMessage again

> Another perspective on iMessage -- one I've heard from some attorney friends -- is that key server tampering sounds like a pretty good compromise solution to the problem of creating a 'secure golden key' (AKA giving governments access to plaintext).... I see two problems with this view. First, tampering with the key server fundamentally betrays user trust, and undermines most of the guarantees offered by iMessage.

That horse has left the barn already. Services like OnStar have been repeatedly used and abused by law enforcement; once the service is created, the government gets a warrant (sometimes?) and undermines the service without any regard for the trust in company providing the service. We are not likely to be able to change that reality without a serious overhaul/oversight of the government's warrant scope and process.

Programmaticon UK surveillance “worse than 1984” says new UN privacy chief

I see two main differences between traditional and cctv-enabled surveillance, the first being that traditional surveillance requires participation and the second being that traditional surveillance is deployed after suspicion.

These are not minor differences; participation means equal opportunity and "fair play", and it can't be stored for future use and retroactively used against people for future perceived transgressions. There is a limit to the traditional surveillance that a society would bear, while the latter is nearly invisible. It is a powerful tool to be able to track your political enemies at any point in the past.

Programmaticon EFF, AdBlock and Others Launch New “Do Not Track” Standard

I use RequestPolicy which is a plugin that allows you to control which third-party scripts are allowed to be loaded per domain. It is very lightly curated; they have a small set of default rules that allow sites to load "third party" sites that they control (e.g. their own CDN).

I have found that most sites work (including the one hosting the article being discussed) well enough to read, or even completely true to the author's intent (depends on if CSS is self-hosted or on a CDN that I haven't whitelisted). I even find that often it is actually more pleasant to have a basic experience when CSS doesn't load.

Sites that require me to allow a lot of third-party scripts and content to work force me to weigh the expected usefulness of the content vs the scumminess of the site. The creepier and more plentiful the third parties are, the more likely I am to press the X...

I very rarely have to allow Google and JQuery in my day to day browsing.

Programmaticon TPP negotiations threaten to forcibly commercialise state-owned bodies

If they all stand to profit from it and have influenced democratically elected governments to participate in it specifically without the people, doesn't it actually make corruption the more plausible cause?

Wait, nevermind. I forgot that giving government officials money is free speech now. Carry on. ;)

Programmaticon No Surprises (2009)

It's not about how hard it is or isn't to disable. It's about how a lot of users suddenly wondered what scummy software they downloaded that put that button in their browser, only to be left feeling extremely dirty when they found out it was Mozilla.

It makes you wonder what other liberties they'll take to make a couple bucks and when the other shoe will drop. It has made me start actively evaluating alternatives, when previously I considered it to be the best.

Programmaticon No Surprises (2009)

Wow, thank you for posting that. Very informative. The post and the NoScript reply [1] both raise some interesting points about how to compensate plugin authors for their hard and continued work that seem like they're still not addressed six years later. I have never really stopped to consider either compensating plugin for their work and I rely on them daily.

1. https://hackademix.net/2009/05/04/dear-adblock-plus-and-nosc...

Programmaticon No Surprises (2009)

Look into RequestPolicy [Continued], it prevents those third party sites from even loading data via a request in the first place. It's very nice having that level of control if you find it to be worth the time to fiddle with a few sites' request settings. I find that I prefer the simplicity in a site loaded without a lot of third party BS (and often not even CSS for sites that use a CDN for it).

Programmaticon No Surprises (2009)

Hah. I actually am very happy with my music solution (for now). I buy CDs and rip them with iTunes to MP3 on my media PC to a network drive, and then manually sync my phone. I can play it on anything by opening a folder.

The UI is essentially put in CD, wait, have music, and sync phones occasionally.

What is your current setup that you're happy with?

Programmaticon Guido on Python

Twisted too: https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/milestone/Python-3.x

Twisted and wxPython are a great combo and will keep me on 2.7 as long as they are not ported.

Programmaticon No Surprises (2009)

You raise an extremely good point that describes my feelings lately perfectly.

How do HN folks manage the inevitable change in and monetization of popular and useful products?

I'm having serious heartburn consuming updated products (e.g. Win 10 and FireFox). It seems that the forced dichotomy is Control, Ease of use, Features within 3 years: Pick two. I had been really happy with my customized FireFox and locked down Windows 7 from the control and usefulness standpoint but FF has been taking liberties that parent notes and Windows has a "new direction" than the standalone value they provided with Win 7. Now it feels like they're yanking the rug out, and constantly evaluating the large amount of technology I rely on is tiring.

Programmaticon No Surprises (2009)

No it's the standard that they demand of the add-ons and not the browser, you see.

Programmaticon In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

All it takes is a landmark case of cop vs. civilian where the camera legitimately broke but the cop was in the right yet cannot prove it and then their life is ruined if the case is automatically decided in the civilian's favor.

I think there's a middle ground somewhere between "toss the case because the bodycam footage went missing" and "lock up the cop and throw away the key"