HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Strom

4,372 karma · joined November 25, 2010

I am from Estonia and have been programming since 2001.

Check out my secure file transfer app written in Rust https://exomem.com

Personal site: https://www.kaurkuut.com

submissionscomments
Strom··on Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all users
Depends on the specific implementation, but in theory this doesn't limit any functionality for SSO. Data can be shared via mechanisms other than cookies.
Strom··on EU to set 40% board quota for women by 2026
It would be an EU directive, which means that member states will have to write new laws that accomplish this.

However don't get the wrong idea that this was just decided by someone in Brussels and it's a directive now. This is just a draft for a potential directive. This has not been approved by the European Parliament or the European Council. [1] Long way to go still.

--

[1] "Once Parliament and Council have formally approved the agreement" https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/et/press-room/20220603IP...

Strom··on The term ‘Viking’ as it is commonly used is misleading
> [..] time period (~800 to ~1050) [..] the first time we appear in history.

Some interesting new developments with that recently. In 2008-2010 two Viking ships were discovered in Saaremaa, Estonia. The ships (or the bits that's left of them) have been dated to be from around 650–750. There were some 40+ Swedish men buried with these ships after some sort of battle. [1][2][3]

These findings move Viking military action outside of Scandinavia to a time before Lindisfarne. The archaeologists believe the men died in a battle some time between 700 and 750, perhaps almost as much as a century before the Viking Age officially began.

--

[1] https://www.archaeology.org/issues/95-1307/features/941-viki...

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269403778_RESEARCH_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salme_ships

Strom··on Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams
As someone who has used Zulip for years, I consider the named threads to be the reason to use Zulip. When used properly, it makes following discussions actually possible without being drowned by other concurrent messages. I'd say Discord is superior in many other ways, but for me this one killer feature still makes me prefer Zulip for work.
Strom··on Dragonflydb – A modern replacement for Redis and Memcached
A lot less features. If you don't care about the missing features, then it might be a completely reasonable replacement.
Strom··on RED is suing Nikon for infringing on its video compression patents
I have a guess, but I haven't actually researched this specific case to be sure.

intoPIX seems to be based in Belgium. I'm not sure exactly what type of patents RED has, but there are types like software patents which don't exist in the EU. Or perhaps it isn't about the type and RED just straight up doesn't have EU patents even if they theoretically could. Combine that with intoPIX (and I haven't verified this) only operating inside the EU, or at least outside of the US. You end up in a situation where RED would have difficulty suing intoPIX, because intoPIX doesn't operate in a jurisdiction where RED holds the relevant patents.

Once Nikon enters the picture, things change. Nikon clearly has US presence.

Of course it could also just be that RED doesn't care about small fish and only started caring now because Nikon has the potential for a lot of revenue.

Strom··on Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it
> Are there people to watch an "Adam Project" and a "Bridgerton" (I assume these are interesting shows) every month?

In case the specific shows threw you off, those were meant just as examples of quality. They don't mean that people would literally rewatch the same show.

As for are there people who watch shows every month? Absolutely, many people watch an episode of a show or a movie every evening.

Strom··on Details on AMD's Quirky Chipset Solutions for AM5
How much extra latency are we talking here? Anyone have any actual numbers?
Strom··on The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give
> If 80% are good submissions it’s a useless filter and should be dropped.

How did you arrive at this conclusion? I can easily imagine that this process is so laborious that plenty of people don't even submit anything. Like the person who wrote about this on reddit. -- Now what reason would we have to think that the people who don't want to go through the process would also be 80% good? This may be a very valuable filter for Canonical!

Strom··on $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
What criteria of the definition doesn't El Salvador fulfill?
Strom··on $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
Bitcoin also has the backing of a government - El Salvador.

I would rather argue though that even government backed currencies are fully dependant on trust, not government usage of it. Just check out any government currency hyperinflation event.

Strom··on Intel's New Chimera: Alder Lake
The key to understanding the popularity of stories that contain "well known information" is that not everyone has the same life experiences. For every piece of info you know, there are a lot of people who have never heard of it. Including on HN.
Strom··on No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing
Stable relationships are possible without marriage. Some people view these as synonyms and others see that as a clear mistake.
Strom··on The Uber Bubble
> Imagine making the same argument for 7 year old chimney sweeps in Victorian England

That's quite an extreme example you got there, but as a former child worker myself I feel qualified to push back. I did hard physical labor at a warehouse at the age of 13. [1] This was a key opportunity in my life. With the money I earned from this hard labor I bought my first computer that helped solidify my computer science career. I could then spend a lot more time [2] on computer contract work, which meant I moved up the class system significantly with my finances.

So whenever I hear of these think of the children arguments, I think back to my own origins and how these protections are also mechanisms for preserving class hierarchy and making sure that children of less well off parents don't make any progress during their earlier years. To force the children to accept the lifestyle and means of their parents as a reality of their own lives.

That said, normalizing full time working instead of school isn't great either. I personally only worked summers (3 months of school break where I'm from) and so working didn't impede my school education. Thus I think better child labor laws would allow working when it doesn't interrupt school work. Unfortunately the child labor laws that I encounter are always blanket statements based on age.

--

[1] The local child working laws didn't allow this back then already. I was lucky enough to be matched with a warehouse manager who didn't care too much about child working laws.

[2] I had already started my computer contracting work before I ever got my first computer. I used public computers to do this work, e.g. a public free internet point at the local hospital. Not ideal and very limited usage time, but when there aren't other options it's great.

Strom··on PSA: React 18 calls code twice in strict dev mode to detect side effects
Text alone is already a painful domain [1][2] and text is just a small subset of the full UI domain.

--

[1] https://gankra.github.io/blah/text-hates-you/

[2] https://lord.io/text-editing-hates-you-too/

Strom··on Tell HN: iOS Signal eats your disk space
That stale bot is quite the sight. It seems the Signal team has fully adopted the ostrich strategy for dealing with issues.
Strom··on iFixit and Google Are Launching a Genuine Pixel Parts Program
Android literally has the Linux kernel. Can't get more same than that.
Strom··on I stopped advertising and nothing happened
First let me say that ads in general definitely work, I'm definitely not arguing against that.

What I'm talking about in specific is search ads where the ad is for a term that ranks organically high anyway.

It's not just imaginary either, I've done a lot of over-the-shoulder customer observing. Just recently I saw a friend search for "dropbox" and then click on the first result in Google, which is a paid ad by dropbox for dropbox. They rank #1 anyway!

Now in dropbox's case it might be worth it, because they have enough competitors who would like to steal that ad spot. However for most businesses that's not the case for their top terms.

Strom··on I stopped advertising and nothing happened
That's a good point. It's a lot harder to cannibalize organic traffic with non-search ads.
Strom··on I stopped advertising and nothing happened
> It's pretty easy to tell if an ad is working when you turn it on, and your email list growth rate instantly doubles -- and all the traffic is coming from a new traffic source.

Maybe for a real tight definition of instantly, but generally this is not true. Imagine the following scenario:

1. You run an ad for ComapnyName.

2. An enthusiastic customer promotes your business in a local bar.

3. The bar attendees search for CompanyName and click on the first result.

Because you ran an ad for CompanyName, the first result is going to be your ad. You will see very nice ROI on that ad. What you won't see in any stats, is that these people would have probably found the organic link anyway, because they were already motivated and searching for CompanyName in particular.

> Obviously, if we were to run Google ads on search traffic, we would check whether our organic search traffic dropped when we turned the ads on, but that's a different point

That wouldn't help either in this imaginary scenario, because these bar attendees are a spike in traffic. Plus if the ad has been running for a longer period, then you won't have accurate organic search traffic stats anymore either, because it's already cannibalized.

Strom··on I stopped advertising and nothing happened
> you should be able to track whether a customer originated from an ad click vs. SEO

That's easy to track, but answers the wrong question. It answers whether the person clicked on the ad or the organic link. What we actually want to know is whether this person would convert even without seeing an ad. The only way to answer whether a person would still convert without seeing an ad is to make sure that they don't see an ad.

Strom··on I stopped advertising and nothing happened
> If you can't answer that question, then you're not running a proper advertising campaign.

What is this proper advertising campaign? Does it include turning off ads for terms that rank organically high anyway?

Strom··on Steam: Half-Life 2 Hardware Survey (2004)
> it has killed indie gaming

That's quite the take. I'd say Valve did more good for indie gaming than anyone else with the introduction of early access. Almost all the indie gaming being done in my social circles is through Steam's early access program. Before that people just didn't play indie games.

Strom··on Steam: Half-Life 2 Hardware Survey (2004)
Korea definitely has non-red blood in plenty of games. PUBG has blue blood in Korea for example.

https://img.gurugamer.com//resize/640x-//2021/03/29/the-red-...

https://www.reddit.com/r/PUBATTLEGROUNDS/comments/7z0aot/how...

Strom··on Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?
It's funny isn't it. Nobody goes around threads screaming DON'T LISTEN TO POLITICAL ADVICE, go talk to your local POLITICAL PROFESSIONAL. Yet it is not that different. The best local politicians will obviously have amazing insight. On the flip side, just like with local politicans, most local medical professionals will just be following flow charts that they vaguely remember and won't actually give you any personalized or up-to-date insight.
Strom··on I hate what video games have become
You need to pay for champions, they are not unlocked for free.
Strom··on New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
Moxie Marlinspike is the creator of Signal, a popular secure messaging app.

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

Strom··on Google will soon ask Australian users to show ID to view some content
Yes this same system is already enforced for Europeans and has been since 2020.
Strom··on Cyberpunk 2077 Update 1.5
This is the dedicated PS5 release. As for why - it's because the PS4 can't run all the features in this patch.
Strom··on Cyberpunk 2077 Update 1.5
Yes it's the dedicated PS5 release. You need to uninstall the PS4 version from your PS5 and download the new PS5 version. Updating won't work, you'll still have the PS4 version.
← PreviousPage 9 of 34Next →