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eivarvon I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

A more precise wording might be "... Google also blocks anything that's implemented in an embedded framework (e.g. CEF, webviews) and does not use browser-based OAuth authentication."

eivarvon I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

There's probably more here, but one thing I can think of is fingerprinting the client as part of the automated risk assessment, deciding whether and when to block attempts, trigger MFA, and recognize specific devices (and potentially tie them to specific users for whatever reason).

eivarvon How can the quality of political information be improved?

Teach critical thinking (including logic, cognitive biases, epistemology, etc.) and source criticism in schools.

Misinformation, propaganda, conspiratorial thinking and other bad ideas is nothing new.

Give people the tools they need to differentiate between information with various degrees of truthiness.

eivarvon Why can't I write code inside my browser?

    Here’s my pitch: build a browser that comes pre-installed with node.js, an IDE and a simple runtime environment.

Welcome to all editors written in Electron.

eivarvon Ask HN: What are you working on?

Yeah; in most cases it depends on how the specific apps use OS-features, but I've also implemented a way to make app-specific extensions (i.e. define which files are involved in handling a specific app's state), so that users can customize and potentially extend the functionality and share these definitions (maybe even contribute upstream).

eivarvon Ask HN: What are you working on?

Resource (and battery) usage + human context switching/information overload.

eivarvon Ask HN: What are you working on?

https://cleave.app

Cleave is an application that lets users persist OS state as a "context" - saving and loading open applications, their windows (and their positions), tabs, open files/documents and so on. Think of it as a workspace or project manager from an IDE, but on the OS-level.

Started because of frequent multitasking of heavy work with limited resources. Made it because I wanted to switch between studying, working, reading, looking for an apartment, etc. without manually managing all states or consuming all resources.

I'll release an Open Beta (macOS) as soon as I finish license verification and delta updates, but I keep getting sidetracked...

eivarvon What Is Social Cooling?

This is also known as a "chilling effect"; A prime example of this is the self-censorship [0] of Wikipedia-readers after Snowden revealed that the US government was collecting data on people reading Wikipedia articles.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect#Chilling_effec...

eivarvon Ask HN: Is working for FAANG as big of a deal in Europe as it is in the US??

The problem is that it doesn't really prove anything other than that the person managed to get hired by FAANG.

eivarvon Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

You might be right, but I think it's disingenuous to market it as though this "solves privacy". Worst case, people are lulled into a false sense of security.

Data-storage + authorization doesn't solve any (new) technical privacy-issues; this is "data protection" rather than "data privacy" in my book.

eivarvon Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

Interesting in a technological sense, but what problem it solves isn’t obvious to me. It lets me granularly authorize first party access what data I have in my pod, but there can’t be any technical guarantees with regards to illegitimate sharing or otherwise copying (many might at least cache, for instance) – nor about what is collected and shared outside this system.

I keep seeing data-hubs and identity-providers touting themselves as solutions to the web's privacy issues, but I don't see how they actually solve anything.

It seems like an attempted technical solution to a social problem to me.

The real problem with data based services (ads, Google search, etc) is really that a bunch of data is collected opaquely, unethically, and in some cases illegally. The whole system including data brokers and real time bidding is out of control.

eivarvon Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

Or, you know, different.

Virtual desktops (which is the same as spaces in macOS), has nothing to do with Cleave in itself; you still have virtual desktops under Cleave.

I don't know what problem activities attempt to solve, but the problem I'm trying to solve with Cleave is grouping what's currently running on my system after a specific task or a project I'm working on – both for human reasons (concentration, information overload, etc.) and computer reasons (resource expenditure, etc.)

eivarvon Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

I remember trying to compare these before (but not what I ended up thinking), so maybe it's better if I just explain what it does:

When you change your "context", all of your open apps and their windows (on all spaces, on all screens) are closed. The apps and their windows from the context you are switching to open – their positions and working state recalled from when you were last in this context.

You can only be in one context at a time; Think of it as a workspace or project manager in an IDE, but on the OS-level.

eivarvon Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

https://cleave.app

Cleave is an application that lets users persist OS state as a "context" - saving and loading open applications, their windows (and their positions), tabs, open files/documents and so on.

Started because of frequent multitasking heavy work with limited resources.

Made it because I wanted to switch between studying, working, reading, looking for an apartment, etc. without manually managing all states or consuming all resources.

I will release an Open Beta (macOS) as soon as I finish license verification and delta updates, but I keep getting sidetracked...

eivarvon My Experience at Apple

At least where I live (Norway) your employer doesn't have a say in whether you're organized or not, and wouldn't necessarily know if you are – but you'd typically have an elected representative in companies of a certain size or with a certain number of employees.

Most unions I know of operate on a country-level.

eivarvon Ask HN: Where are containers for desktop applications?

What would be the upside?

I'd be interested in hearing what problem this would actually solve.

eivarvon Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

These could also be described as examples of violent behavior by drinkers of water, for that matter.

There is nothing pointing to a causative relationship here.

eivarvon Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

You're very right; it's probably a combination of confirmation bias and the fact that this has been result has been shown by just about every serious study on the subject so far.

Besides: claims of a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior was never backed by anything other than assumptive moral arguments, much less studies (or even coherent reasoning and valid logic).

eivarvon I Bought Apple Silicon

    More seriously, while program overheads have undoubtedly gotten higher, that's always been in exchange for something else, even if non-technical, like a better developer experience and platform support.

Software architecture usually entails trade-offs in many directions, between NFRs, etc. – but it feels to me like the intepretation of the performance-scale (as well as developer experience, really) is warped by two things:

- Many devs aren't familiar with the real breadth of possibilities and discount some approaches without understanding them (using "developer experience", "platform support", and "too low level" as excuses), thereby skewing towards familiarity and preference. As most devs are familiar with web tech, this tends to win out. Other legitimate issues might not be even be understood (HCI, attack surface, accessibility, etc.)

- The performance hit might not be significant enough to notice on a dev-grade machine (e.g. M1-processor, 32GB of RAM, etc.) and/or in isolation, but will become noticable when regular users run several apps built using the same heavy stack.

The latter is particularly apparent if you try to run multiple Electron-apps simultaneously on a low-to-medium specced laptop – which I find pretty egregious as a user, as multitasking computer systems has been a thing for a while now.

My interpretation is that many people (or companies) will usually write software that's no more performant than what they can get away with – which can be summed up, if cynically, as "users won't see any major performance gain or increase in capability in their day-to-day usage because of shitty software."

eivarvon Show HN: Offline-First Personal Kanban

wxWidgets is pretty good, and beats the alternatives because it actually uses native widgets where possible. Lots of language bindings too.

eivarvon Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

Well, there's the entire field of databroking (likely completely illegal under GDPR, not to mention unethical from the start) and real time bidding related to this.

Given the sorry state of privacy-compliance in general (whether that's ignorance of the law or consciously taking a risk) I seriously doubt that the field of adtech is much better.

eivarvon Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

    Now that the third-party tracking ecosystem is slowly drying out I'm curious what advertisers will come up with to circumvent these new measures.

Probably fingerprinting – not to mention the fact that ad-people are lobbying both legislators (including the EU) and standards bodies (like W3C)... and in the latter case they're also directly contributing to the standards.

eivarvon Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

    If you ever wonder "why the fuck can't I tell where one piece of the UI ends and the other begins"

When Material Design was first launched to the public, I was astonished of just how bad some of it was – and how Google, with all its experts and resources, had managed to ignore so much basic HCI.

I wasn't able to recognize and distinguish different types of widgets from one another, and the design language broke with established principles. It wasn't evident how to interact with an element on the screen based on its visual qualities.

eivarvon Ask HN: What's are your personal automations?

I automated the computer-tasks related to my human context switching.

This resulted in an application called Cleave, that lets users persist OS state as a "context" - saving and loading open applications, their windows, tabs, open files/documents and so on.

Started because of frequent multitasking heavy work with limited resources. Made it because I wanted to switch between studying, working, reading, looking for an apartment, etc. without manually managing all states or consuming all resources.

As a person that used to have multiple virtual desktop, each with multiple apps with multiple windows, which had multiple tabs, etc. it has certainly made it easier to focus on one task at a time, knowing that I can resume another task from just where I was.

Open Beta (macOS) as soon as I finish license verification and updates, but I keep getting sidetracked...

https://cleave.app

eivarvon My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

Didn't mention EU, but to be specific: members of the EU or the EEA.

eivarvon My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

If you're targeting European users, you need to comply with the GDPR.

eivarvon What would happen if computers never got any faster?

So what?

RISC-V is a specific (RISC-based) ISA. ARM is a family of RISC-architectures, which does not include RISC-V.

Apple's M1 is an ARM SoC. It does not use RISC-V.

eivarvon What would happen if computers never got any faster?

M1 isn't RISC-V, but a custom ARM.