Hacker News Reader

frabbiton Phacility is winding down, Phabricator no longer actively maintained

Gitlab (as of 11.something) has lots of nice keyboard shortcuts including search projects, searching merges, searching particular files etc. Comments are saved as you type. You can submit a review ith all your comments in one go.

I have not tried multiline or inline comments or changes.

The main differentiator between self-hosted and enterprise seems to be w.r.t. auditing capabilities.

frabbiton Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

Anyone interested in a skeptical take on Canada's self-presentation might be interested in the Canadaland podcast:

https://www.canadaland.com/tag/indigenous/

frabbiton Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

Being uncritical about Quebec's attitude to autochthonous people is a bit complacent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1vDFAQzCZE

frabbiton Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

Quite literally. Except that the government is often the fucking government.

frabbiton Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

I second this demand. It is obvious that Protesants carry out more abuse.

frabbiton 'Unique fingerprints' in Covid-19 could only have arisen from a laboratory

It is not just a case of "back then". The Daily Mail spreads misinformation and hate propaganda right now. It is by any definition a low-quality source.

frabbiton Ditching meat isn’t the answer for climate change. Better farming is

Sheep in hills cause erosion. It seems like quite a big problem. A lot of the land that is unusable for farming should probably be left alone. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/meet-the-greatest-threat...

frabbiton Audacity: Actions we propose to take on PR 835

Sounds like some sort of plagiarism if you are doing your kids schoolwork. Let them do it themselves.

frabbiton Ask HN: What’s a Good Audiobook on Hacking

Cory Doctorow reading Bruce Sterling's _The Hacker Crackdown_ https://boingboing.net/2008/01/13/podcast-of-bruce-ste.html

frabbiton New book contends that Catch Me If You Can is mostly made up

On the general theme of hoaxes: _The Yes Men Fix the World_ is hilarious https://archive.org/details/The.Yes.Men.Fix.The.World.P2P.Ed...

frabbiton Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

Not sure about that, but I do know that if you want to eat capybara on Fridays as your fish dish you should be fine.

frabbiton Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

Proper mincemeat pies contain suet and have a very different taste from the vegetarian ones. So yes, in that case it is a problematic name that conflates two usefully distinct things.

frabbiton The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts

The ordeal at our Capital proves there's a problem that needs to be monitored.

They were monitored. To the extent that the lead of the Proud Boys was actually supplying intel to the feds and the Status Coup youtube channel (which I think was taken off line for some Kafkaesque reason) was recording various pro-Trump people in public calling for such actions.

More monitoring is not needed. Monitoring did nothing to stop the 9-11 Saudi allies from carrying out their mission. The only thing monitoring does is to make people fear to express their thoughts online in case they get into trouble.

frabbiton U.S. human rights report documents China's genocide in Xinjiang

Got a source for that?

frabbiton U.S. human rights report documents China's genocide in Xinjiang

I found this hard to read. Principally I was looking for sources and I found a lot of statements with no easy footnoting of sources.

After looking at the Grayzone/ModerateRebels video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZkxaEC1xjY about the very odd and weak claims about China's behavior in this regard I was hoping that some more diverse, specific and accurate sources would be present in e.g. https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-...

If only a fraction of what Blumethal claims in the video is correct then this is singularly unhelpful and definitely smells a bit.

I look forward to the call for sanctions on the USA by the USA, backed up by appropriate force to support the workers in the gig economy suffering in the same way as the ones in China cited at the end of the report:

Workers in the gig economy were considered contract workers and not under the protections of the labor law. There were reports of app delivery drivers injured or killed on the job. On September 9, the magazine Renwu exposed how online platform algorithms created dangerous conditions for delivery drivers, including by shortening delivery times and issuing penalties for delays. The report prompted two major delivery firms to extend delivery times and reduce penalties for late deliveries.

frabbiton A call to improve London's lighting at night

Has there been a massive surge in crime now that all the criminals feel comfortable wearing their covid-masks? All this stuff is handwaving. Reminds me of all the pre-covid arguments about not letting demonstrators be masked and how muslim women's face coverings would bring society to a crashing halt because you could not interact properly with someone who had a covered face.

In other words: little or no evidence. Just some people have a fear of the dark and others find that the indiscriminate lighting of streets disturbs their repose and relaxation.

frabbiton A call to improve London's lighting at night

I came across this¹ paper which seems to claim that the provision of 600,000 lumen "lighting towers" in a public housing project reduces crime. It may be true, but the same could probably said for plans of unleashing packs of wild hyaenas during the night.

All a bit too Panopticon for me.

1. https://urbanlabs.uchicago.edu/attachments/e95d751f7d91d0bcf...

frabbiton A call to improve London's lighting at night

Sounds like heaven to me. I really dislike the absence of dark. Especially during the summer when it is hot and I would like to increase airflow by opening up the windows.

The claim, in favor of such widespread lighting, is that it makes something "safer", but the evidence seems weak on that:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/02/what-...

frabbiton New Brunswick monitoring more than 40 cases of unknown neurological disease

Not to mention Rappie Pie https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2020/03/17/some-in-qu...

frabbiton Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

IntelliJ IDEA's Powershell support (via plugin¹) is very poor. Both VSCode (predictably) and Atom are superior. It is the one reason why I keep VSCode around.

1. https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/10249-powershell

frabbiton Variable tyre pressure wheelset is a mountain biking breakthrough

Interesting. White Crow had a similar idea 4 years ago. https://bikerumor.com/2016/05/03/optimal-traction-fly-white-...

frabbiton Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

Certainly took away from the experience for me. Also the constant clapping was irritating along with the guy going "yes, yess" towards the end.

Not enough info, too much "personality" and "team work". Waste of time watching it really.

frabbiton Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

What is it about that that excites you so much?

Is it the idea that life could originate elsewhere and that there might really be aliens?

Or is it the idea that Mars could support some sort of colony?

Or the hope of completely novel microbiology?

frabbiton Chick Corea has died

I like the yesenadam list below, but this is some of what I am enjoying recently:

Bad Bad Not Good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTloZPT62IM

Kamaal Williams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmGe8n_8Za0

Yussef Dayes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLWygV_OGc0

The Comet is Coming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpfpYTmohAk

Vijay Iyer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGb1etHM3Sk&list=PL9coQz2INo...

Terrace Martin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqHAeaCHHkY

Maybe there will be something palatable in that for you... maybe not :)

frabbiton Chick Corea has died

Good stuff... but.... Yussef Dayes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwVtIPeYIeQ

Add in Rocco Paladino on bass and Tom Misch on guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7GaK516Wkk

Or Rocco Paladino on bass and Charlie Stacey on keyboards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLWygV_OGc0&t=2414s

frabbiton Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

Katherine Maher is someone that was flagged up recently as what we could call "politically interesting". I wonder if that is why it was deemed time for her to move on:

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/11/meet-wikipedias-ayn-rand-...

While some may object that this is just The Grayzone's biased take on their disagreements with Wikipedia's odd listing of them as not a reliable source it raises some interesting questions.

Seems like the upper echelons of the USA is just as loaded with political operatives as the old East Germany, USSR or China today.

Oh, and I love wikipedia. It is one of the best things to come out of the internet expansion. Even better than the old CIA World Factbook.

frabbiton Microsoft Security Adventures Game

Apparently OpenSource software contains vulnerabilities exploitable by hackers, but in good news Microsoft can sell you some cloud thing that protects you against it.

The hacker must have compromised the company's website through the open-source software vulnerability I saw in Azure Sentinel, she thinks

This is a slow moving soap-opera with the most boring plot, characters and products ever.

But it is woke. Except for the fact that all the bosses are men.... except the nasty boss lady from marketing.

frabbiton Ask HN: Tips for Linux User on Windows?

Learn to use Powershell. You might not like it if you are a BASH wizard, but it has a large number of modules which ease administration. Even if you manage to spend most of your time in WSL2 and VisualStudio/IntelliJIDEA you will still need to administer and interrogate your host OS. Powershell is the sanest way to do that.

You should probably see what you can do with Chocolatey/Scoop depending on security policy. Package management in Windows is severely deficient compared to GNU/Linux distros but those are possibilities.

frabbiton Ghost cities and abandoned areas with a declining population

Dark skies, peace, quiet. All these make me enjoy being away from conurbations. I especially dislike the lack of darkness in winter.

frabbiton Ghost cities and abandoned areas with a declining population

So you discount the idea that when people have the choice not to have large numbers of children (good healthcare to provide for old age, easily accessible contraception) they prefer to have fewer children?

Also, the central premise of the article seems to be in dispute:

Professor David Coleman from the University of Oxford said: 'Much has been written about the 'Death of the West', with its threatened demise reportedly due to the low level of reproduction in Western countries. We show that this so-called decline has been exaggerated and trends in European fertility have been misunderstood.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150427211644.h...