melff

Can't wait until MV2 is gone in Chrome, I'm curious how much this will diminish real-world effectiveness of ad blockers and if that'll bring browsers that maintain the features ad blockers like to use a bit more market share.

Well, I'd guess for most people it doesn't matter whether the LED-chips themselves, capacitors, or some other part of the circuitry fails. If cost-cut cheap LED bulbs with components driven to the max are the norm, consumers will obviously associate LED bulbs with the kind of problems that causes and not with what LED tech could be if it'd be given more budget to breathe.

yes it is, and I agree their home page is shit. I downloaded it trough F-Droid and didn't really background check it, maybe you wanna take a look at their repo: https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore

I think how error prone the system is shouldn't matter, even it it was absolutely perfect, this is an dystopian privacy invasion.

You can use "Aurora Store" to download apps without a google account, I use that on lineageOS

If you're concerned about your privacy I'd advise against just trying to disable uploading but still giving your photos to apps you don't trust, primarily because of possible future implementation of client-side scanning(they are making steps to mandate that for messengers in the EU atm, for example).

AFAIK android phones upload all sorts of data to google by default, my recommendation is to install a custom ROM (like lineageOS), that will rid you of a lot of these privacy violators without dealing with them individually. If you don't want to do that, avoid google services/apps entirely for anything that you don't trust them with. I'm not familiar with google photos(never used it for (now) obvious reasons), and I don't know what features you need, so I can't really give recommendations on that specifically.

This kind of stuff is one reason why it should be illegal for platforms to censor at will, it should be possible to sue them for censoring stuff they shouldn't be censoring just as it is for not censoring stuff they should be censoring. No matter how much they like to say they are fReEEeE pRiVAte eNTErpRiSes, they provide de-facto public spaces(public as in accessible to the broad public, not as in government-run) and should be treated as such. They shouldn't have the power to be legislative and judiciary of public communication.

Why? Why should be fight for legal recourse first before we tackle the real problem? (At least in this context, legal recourse for unwarranted service termination can also be useful for things unrelated to scanning of private data, but that's not the point) This sounds like the "step back" in the "two steps forward, one step backwards" ideom.

good point

moving everything into the browser is a bad fix for broken software distribution.

Well what you encountered here is IMHO a problem of power, not a problem with your App, guidelines, your marketing, or whatever. The problem is that a third party has the power to stop your customers from using your software. Many people don't have a problem with that until they are negatively affected by it: It's fine to block [insert whatever kind of shitty software you don't like], it's for the users own good afterall.

You are under apples control on the iOS market. And, in my opinion, that's a bad thing. We should try to denormalize this kind of power.

To answer your question: I don't think you can do anything about that especially since your app(judging form the other comments here on HN) ended up on the wrong side of history.

This situation reminds me of a nice little poem by Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Yeah, that's pretty much a "Karteileiche" though, nobody takes that law seriously. This has less to do with germany being overly restrictive in that domain and more with incompetence: The law says something like "possessing hardware/software suitable for hacking is illegal" those who have written this law probably barely knew what software even is. They wanted to make sure they can get those evil "hackers" convicted but misunderstood the nature of what they are dealing with.

The Google Translation is accurate in this case, it's just as vague in German as it is in English

I agree that a lot of theses restrictions are serous restrictions to civil liberties, but they are not fascistic in nature and our attitude towards the government is quite different than the attitude of ppl from the USA towards their government. I see the power of social media platforms and political radicalization as greater problems than pressure or even mandates for vaccines. What bugs be though is that when people voiced concerns about "indirect vaccine mandates"(=pressuring people to get vaccinated by excluding them from social gatherings, etc) the political mainstream claimed that that won't happen and that that are just right-wing conspiracy theories. I think these kinds of lies smell far more like fascism than vaccine mandates themselves

I think the main issues are polarization and the two party political landscape for you guys across the pond. Don't forget that the grass often seems greener on the other side, we here in germany also have a lot of polarization going on esp. in recent times. Also these coalition agreements are not reliable, politicians talk a lot if the day is long, we'll have to wait and see what actually comes of it.

To correct for under-/overrepresented groups you need to change your hiring decision based on the groups of the applicants. And preferring hiring based on these groups (sex, race, etc) is sexism and racism in my books.

> and [I] use my influence to help correct that as much as possible without sacrificing operational readiness.

So racism/sexism is okay as long as it doesn't hurt operational readiness? Or do you not consider this racism/sexism, if so how are hiring decisions based on race/sex not racist/sexist?

> certain radical ideologies do not acknowledge neutrality

So what? Why can't we acknowledge neutrality because some other people don't?

> You're part of the problem.

Not actively pushing back against something doesn't make one "part of the problem". It makes one a bystander, and no, bystanders are not part part of the problem they are neutrals. They could be more "helpful" for our cause if they where not, but they are not part of the problem, they are "untapped potential" if you will.

This kind of rhetoric bullies people into action and even tough I agree that we should push back in this case, this kind of bullying is not okay.

hmm..., making critical infrastructure directly dependent on other (possibly hostile) nations sounds like a good idea. What could possibly go wrong?

Btw, didn't china had widespread outages due to market failures recently? If so calling china "the world leader in the development and deployment of grid technology" seems... let's say a bit off.

A phone is a product, the iOS app platform(or app distribution on iOS to be more precise) is a (monopolized) market, not a product.

You're conflating the phones themselves with the secondary markets they create.

The problem is that Apple has a monopoly in selling/distributing Apps to iphone users. This is not the case on other operating systems, technically not even on android(eg. Samsung) and has nothing to do with a "monopoly on their own products".

I don't think Taiwan is too keen on breaking TSMC's monopoly, not to mention all the other international politics around this.

Pardon me, I think you misunderstand what I claim they have a monopoly on. They (obviously) don't have a monopoly on the mobile(or mobile software) market. They have a monopoly on the iOS software distribution market(a secondary market spawned by apple themselves). On an iOS device you cannot install a different App Store, therefor the end-user has no other choice than using Apple's App Store to download/buy software(=monopoly).

TL;DR iphones don't have a monopoly, the _AppStore_ has.

On Andoird the situation is a bit murkier, you technically can install software from outside Google's playstore, but you have to click trough scary dialogs(warnings about the danger of doing so), and App Stores installed that way don't have the same device permissions than googles play store have(you have to manually confirm each software update, for example). so yeah, on android it's debatable, but that's a story for another time.

I think the opposite is true. Modern Hardware is more than fast enough for pretty much all end-user applications(except maybe high-end gaming, but that's not sorely needed), we're just too wasteful with all the performance we've already got.

> The App Store was ruled in court not to be a monopoly.

The App Store is a de-facto monopoly, it may not fit the legal definition of a monopoly but it practice it is (or what other App Stores can end-users install on iOS?). I'm not making a legal argument.

> Apple sells tools and parts to anyone who wants them

Where can I buy the tools needed to pair serialized replacement parts with the system? Regarding replacement parts, I don't work in the repair industry so I don't have first hand experience buying apple parts, but Louis Rossmann is telling a different story, do you have a source contradicting him?

> it’s silly to suggest that their repair policies have anything to do with them buying a lot of silicon from TSMC.

I'm responding to your claim that apple never had a monopoly on anything.

> Apple has never had a monopoly on anything.

They do on thier secoundary markets, (esp App Store) but they are also being monopolistic with replacement parts and repair.

I know, what's wrong with that?

> That being said I have a gaming PC and consoles too mostly becasue of the exclusives

That's one of the reasons I hate consoles on an ideological level. Unless there are technical reason that make porting the game so hard that it's just not worth it, the only reason for "exclusives" to exist is to fuck over consumers.

> This might not count for XBox users, which can use the controller on their PC.

I use PS4 controllers with my PC(linux), pretty sure they work with windows too. What controllers cannot be connected to a PC?