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j4_hnews

24 karma · joined July 11, 2019

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j4_hnews··on GeoWorks: The Other Windows (2019)
Massive 10 foot happy birthday banners
j4_hnews··on Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard
I rediscovered Brood War during Covid (free to play). 99% of matchups I lost. But there was one 4+ hour 1v1 marathon on a huge map. Lost that one too but what an incredible game. So many comebacks on both sides. So close. Matching skills is key to a GG.
j4_hnews··on A coding error caused Rogers outage that left millions without service
Paywall
j4_hnews··on Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
They will contract Intel.
j4_hnews··on macOS unable to open any non-Apple application
Adding: 0.0.0.0 http://ocsp.apple.com to /private/etc/hosts solves it.

Can't believe Big Sur is somehow affecting my Mohave Mac! Yikes!

j4_hnews··on Why editorial illustrations look so similar these days (2019)
Perhaps it's a fast turn-around time thing? You want to hijack capitalize on news cycle with an article that gets clicks ... you need an eye grabbing graphic within hours. This style is the path of lease resistance.
j4_hnews··on End-to-end encryption in the browser
One of the problems with hacking the hashtag (#) in the URL is that this fragment identifier is supposed to be used to identify a portion of the document. As such unexpected things can happen when you try to exploit the hash tag for other purposes.

For example, with older of versions of Microsoft Office you cannot use a pound character in a hyperlink:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/202261/you-cannot-u...

Some email applications may unexpectedly strip the tag, attempting to be smart about handling it in the RFC 3986 sense (not anticipating this use-case at all). When the data appended to the # is a dependency to view the link, it can more easily render the link unusable.

j4_hnews··on Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained
Have you read the SpiderOak disclaimer though?

NOTE: Logging in via the SpiderOak website does temporarily allow SpiderOak employees access to your password.

https://spideroak.support/hc/en-us/articles/115001854583-ONE...

j4_hnews··on PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub
Correct. Banks in Canada are already de-platforming customers suspected of using Bitcoin: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinCA/comments/89gsdk/td_canada... https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinCA/comments/9ckikr/rbc_froze... https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/bmo-blocks-cryptocurrency-purcha...
j4_hnews··on Something Special Is Happening in Rural America
Until you get older and realize that you could cash out and benefit from a change of pace.

Get a nice sized house, with money in the bank, grow a garden, listen to the quiet, cut your own lawn, and share the experience with other people, who like you, eventually migrated back to give that small town feel another chance, later in life.

And now that small town has an art gallery. A Starbucks. Some nice restaurants. And town councillors that like you, moved back from the city and have a desire to fix some of what you remember being broken.

Many of the small towns I remember growing up in that were bigoted close minded places, have gradually changed. Not all. But it's happening.

j4_hnews··on Files Are Fraught with Peril
Ok, may have been inspired by. Here's some relevant backstory from 2011: https://www.wired.com/2011/12/backdrop-dropbox/
j4_hnews··on Files Are Fraught with Peril
Also to note, Dropbox was likely inspired by the open source Unison file-synchronization tool. So they have to handle all of the shortcomings and caveats that Unison does not handle out of the box:

Caveats: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases...

Symbolic links: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases...

Permissions: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases...

Cross platform issues (unsupported characters across operating systems and file systems): https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases...

Edit: Inspired by the the Unison Spec (published on 2004) which may be why we have conflict files etc. when using Dropbox http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/unisonspec.pdf

j4_hnews··on What Were CGI Scripts?
More recently, the Netfirms team started another free service: https://www.sync.com/about/
j4_hnews··on Shopify and the Power of Platforms
I've been using Amazon more and more, due to bad experiences using smaller sites (not sure how secure they are, my cc got swiped on one of them). And shipping with Amazon is much faster.

But there's definitely some gems out there!

j4_hnews··on Shopify and the Power of Platforms
Right, but that site is not using Shopify (which was my point). To differentiate and get a competitive advantage - build a better bed bug website, better than the thousands probably already on Shopify, you may need to leave Shopify.
j4_hnews··on Shopify and the Power of Platforms
Amazon Basics?
j4_hnews··on Shopify and the Power of Platforms
WordPress (Automattic) acquired WooCommerce a few years ago.

Marketshare: https://trends.builtwith.com/shop

j4_hnews··on Shopify and the Power of Platforms
As Amazon gobbles up more product categories, there may be less viable categories that potential e-commerce startups might venture into on their own.

This could mean over time, more Shopify merchants would be selling overlapping product categories (the ones Amazon has not yet gobbled up yet).

Which would mean that as a Shopify merchant, you would competing with other Shopify merchants (not Amazon).

How do you differentiate, when the Shopify platform makes the same set of selling advantages available to everyone?

You leave Shopify ...