Hacker News Reader

k_on Ask HN: What happened to “Ferdi” – the “multi-messenger”?

I have no idea why it happened, but there are still some forks [0] around, the last updated one I saw being [1], updated 5 months ago. The opencollective page [2] seems to be still up, with a balance of zero.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20201027131828/https://github.co... [1]: https://github.com/aarongraham9/ferdi [2]: https://opencollective.com/getferdi

k_on Show HN: I made a website for you to travel the world in first-person POV

Took me a while too. The domain (explordle) would have made it kind of obvious given the current trends of wordle clones, but I was misled by HN title which seemed to imply (imo at least) it was some kind of exploration app instead of a guessing game.

Still, enjoying it now :)

k_on Create hand-drawn GIFs on paper

Exactly. Might turn out great for kids as a first initiation to animation, will definitely try with my daughter!

k_on Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

iirc evoland 2 was made with Heaps, and evoland 1 with what then became heaps.

k_on Japan’s ‘killing stone’ splits in two

Eh, good one :) (btw we don't, and I think the whole preschool parents will soon hate us but hey they're the ones lying!)

k_on Dune: Spice Wars

This is built with haxe / hashlink / heaps, which work perfectly fine on linux so there should be no problem getting it to steam deck.

k_on Show HN: Clone your voice and speak a foreign language

Just need a facebook pixel or a google font? Some company (already known for dark practices) could hide behind a "random website" to get more data. /conspiracy

k_on Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

Forgot to add (1994), right?

k_on Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

But look, there are only 2 items left, and 5 have been sold in the past hour. Also, 15 people are also currently looking at this product, so you better hurry and buy it before it's too late! ... or before you think twice and realize you don't need this product at all.

k_on Glitch effect on text in pure CSS

Yeah, got same issue on desktop. I can see how it's supposed to work but it doesn't work on dark themed systems because colors don't match at all.

k_on Show HN: Vado – A platform to encourage people to cycle and walk more

Yeah it does make sense :)

Did you think about a race where you also _lose_ "distance points" when you travel faster than some speed? Like a malus for car use, great malus for plane, etc.

Would be best if it could refrain from removing points when using public transport (which could be somewhat doable giving a lot of public transport routes are public to some extent?)

k_on Show HN: Vado – A platform to encourage people to cycle and walk more

I like this :) 18km/h is a little low imo (looking at my strava stats I'm usually just over 20km/h on my commute rides) but it's a good idea to add a limit

Couple remarks on the website itself:

- enable SSR if possible, having to enable javascript for a static website is annoying

- I guess you created this website on a mac? Be careful with scrollbars when you do; MacOS hides scrollbar but other OS don't and you easily end up with multiple useless scrollbars (like here with 3 unneeded vertical scrollbars)

k_on Ask HN: How do you back up your Android phone?

Apparently android 11 permissions could break syncthing but seems like it can still work fine there?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Syncthing/comments/pxgsj7/does_andr...

k_on Ask HN: How do you back up your Android phone?

Came here to mention syncthing, it's really easy and useful and I set it up after loosing 6 months of pictures/videos... roughly 6 months after my daughter was born :/

k_on A city within a city in Kyiv, whose design was inspired by Legos

> Munchen - Munich, Monaco

As a french, this one caught me off guard. Didn't help that you used the french word as second alternative on first ones, but til that in italian Munich is called "Monaco di Baviera". Now I wonder what's in common between those two cities..

k_on A city within a city in Kyiv, whose design was inspired by Legos

I agree about the waste of space and the seemingly bad design, but there's one thing I like about this: drivers have to use the crosswalk to get to their car, on (I suppose) busy streets. That's something far too uncommon (at least here in France) because car owners are always put first, and could raise much needed awareness. I want drivers to feel the insecurity surrounding cars so they might have a more responsible driving.

k_on [dead]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11

[bad] joke aside, I don't think you're in the right place to ask that ;)

k_on Free Returns Are Complicated, Laborious, and Gross

Another issue with all these free returns is that they try (and often succeed) to make us buy more while thinking less. Why would I consider carefully if I really want something if I can order it, use it for a couple days and _then_ decide if I want it?

k_on Meterorite chunk crashes into house, bedroom, pillow

Saw this [0] on HN a couple months ago, which could hint at how it started.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28272893

k_on The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

I suppose it's about the use of 'v' instead of 'u' in the F word

k_on Show HN: Sprout9 – a platform for students to find tutors

Looks nice, congratulations :)

Just a heads up: you have encoding issues in your "How it works" page

k_on Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

Alternative take: [dev]tools are only as powerful as how well you know them. I'd like to think both firefox devtools and chrome devtools as highly capable, but you'll get way more out of the one you're used to, whichever it is.

k_on Show HN: Checkerboard Programming – write code to match checkerboard patterns

Cool! I think I would have liked it more with shorter names by default, but that's nothing really.

Ended up with a quick solution to all problems so I can go back to work. Please forgive me

Edit: forgot that col/row size wasn't fixed

Edit 2: > Well, that's the end of this small journey.

Not that small of a journey actually, quite a lot of interesting puzzles. Good job!

k_on Spy tech that followed kids home for remote learning

I don't like this example.

It's a _limit_, not the speed at which you have to go. Just go 5 MPH under the limit and you'll be fine. Of course if you always are on the edge there will be moments when you go over the edge, but that's on you.

> Both the speed limit and price of a ticket for breaking the speed limit were set for a world of imperfect enforcement.

I don't have a strong argument against the price of a ticket being set higher because of all this, it does make some sense. But the speed limit isn't lower than it should because we didn't use to catch every fast driver.

It's low because, as drivers tend to forget, they are not alone around the roads and the security of pedestrian (and mostly _children_), cyclists etc. requires, among other things, low speed.

k_on Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

... my bad I missed this entirely.

k_on Revolt: Open-source alternative to Discord

Have been using another discord alternative, ripcord [0] for a while (with native (Qt) UI instead of electron). Recently we ripcord users keep getting soft banned from discord (have to reset our password) [1], is it something this project also suffers from?

[0]: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ [1]: https://dev.cancel.fm/tktview?name=8f8ecd4b60

k_on Scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream

This. I agree about the changes individuals should take (and I do it myself: almost no meat, never owned a car, only used planes a couple times when I had no choice (for work), etc. though I know there are still things I could do better), but a lot of over-consumption comes from greedy companies that force new "needs" onto consumers. Nobody needs an SUV, nobody needs a new iPhone every time a new model comes out, etc. But companies make them think they do.

k_on Are dynamic languages going to replace static languages? (2003)

> I am not opposed to adding strong type checking to JavaScript, but Typescript ain't it.

If you are curious about this, you might be interested in checking out Haxe [0]. It has static typing, type inference, pattern matching [1] (maybe not on par with ML languages, but still good), and can transpile to multiple targets [2] including JS.

[0]: https://haxe.org [1]: https://haxe.org/manual/lf-pattern-matching.html [2]: https://haxe.org/documentation/introduction/compiler-targets...

k_on Hacker deleted all of NewsBlur’s Mongo data and is now holding the data hostage

Similar thing happened to me on side projects a couple years ago. A docker update (or something like that, I don't remember the details) rewrote iptables config and opened my mongodb to the world. I didn't notice and the whole thing got ransomed over and over...

Had some fun using mongodb but I don't think I'll ever use it again =/

k_on If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel (2014)

Seems fine to me given the main objective here is to show distances, not size of things.