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rsto

254 karma · joined July 17, 2013

hn@paranoia.at
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rsto··on Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit
It's an interesting project, but I'm confused why they got funded with EU money. Their company is based in Boston and it looks as both of them are living in them US, which suggests neither of them is European citizen or pays taxes in the EU, which ultimately is where the money for these grants comes from. The funding requirements of NLNet state "it is a knock-out criterion for each project to have a "European dimension [...] where a significant contribution towards the vision of the Next Generation Internet initiative also qualifies".

I'm not trying to pick on this particular project, I just found out non-EU projects can apply at all. I hope the majority of NLNet money goes to projects that actually are executed in Europe and build expertise there.

rsto··on Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution
Yes, but I am not aware of an existing proxy implementation that would accept JMAP requests and forward these to a CalDAV server, or the other way round.

What I do know for sure is that it‘s feasible for a calendar server to service both JMAP for Calendars and CalDAV. All our work in that regard is open-source in the Cyrus server [1] and is used at Fastmail.

Apart from the exchange protocol one also needs to convert between iCalendar and the data structures used in JMAP. For this, I am currently working on an IETF RFC [2]. Anyone also interested in implementing conversion between iCalendar and JSCalendar, please contact me! We have a test suite for interoperation tests.

[1] https://github.com/cyrusimap/cyrus-imapd [2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-calext-jscalenda...

rsto··on Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution
The JMAP for Calendars RFC [1] is soon to get published by IETF. Disclaimer: I work for Fastmail and am the co-author of RFC 8984 [2] which defines the calendar event data model used in JMAP.

[1] https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-jmap-calendars-22... [2] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8984.html

rsto··on Garmin Forerunner stuck cycling through triangle screen
Users report their Garmin devices becoming unusable and the devices getting stuck in a boot loop. This not only seems to impact Forerunner devices. I experienced the same on my Garmin Forerunner 255 when I went running this morning.

There's also Forbes article now but it refers to the Reddit post: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewwilliams/2025/01/28/garmi...

rsto··on Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (Dec '22 edition)?
> is exporting your entire archive even a feature Pinboard says it has?

Yes, it's in Settings>Backup>Archive Backup

I think to remember that idlewords even recommended to do it once in a while. Should I not get my archive backup I guess I can still reconstruct most of it from the Internet Archive. It would just be nice if it worked (but my 5-year subscription will run out soon now anyway).

rsto··on Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (Dec '22 edition)?
I paid 5 years in advance after I had zero problems with pinboard for a couple of years. When archiving started to detoriate I contacted support and got ignored. Now I try to take my archive with me and again: it does not work and I get no reply. Maciej has for years marketed pinboard as the sane, stable alternative to VC-money chasing competitors and now for quite some time the service now does not deliver to promise. What you call "drama" most likely are frustrated users who believed in his story.
rsto··on JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019)
Hi, I am one of the people writing and coding these standards at Fastmail. There are IETF standard drafts for JMAP calendars, contacts and tasks in the works (not just by Fastmail). We aim at publishing them in 2023. You can check the progress in the IETF calext and jmap working groups and we appreciate any input on the mailing lists!
rsto··on Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?
I am a long-time user and archiving broke on my account at least half a year ago. Despite two support emails I did not get any replies. Feels quite "unmaintained" to me.
rsto··on Ask HN: How do I get fit and healthy as a software engineer?
I think this is good advice, except probably for road cycling. Both my physio therapist and Yoga teacher told me that sitting on a road bike is counter-productive to improving my flexibility, given that I already sit at a desk most of my day. Especially the hips will stay in the same angle for a prolonged time.

Edit: if OP is concerned about damaging their untrained musculoskeletal system, then swimming is a low risk activity to get started with sports.

rsto··on My Current HTML Boilerplate
As a user of wien.gv.at I want to thank you for your work. It's great to use a website that puts HTML first, rather than a mess of Javascript to render what essentially is just text.
rsto··on Ask HN: Self-hosted lightweight wiki engine suggestions? (MoinMoin alternative)
I can't offer an alternative, but given that you used MoinMoin for years, you could also look into porting MoinMoin to python 3? Most likely you will learn enough about its codebase to add the features you wanted in 2018.

If the upstream project is dying, you might not only do yourself but others a favor by reviving its codebase.

rsto··on Face recognition in European police forces
Austria is one of the countries listed in the article, and it refers to an Austrian newspaper which reports that police plans to use facial recognition starting late December 2019 (https://futurezone.at/netzpolitik/das-kann-die-gesichtserken...).

On a tangent, the Austrian constitutional court of justice just today ruled that security forces are not allowed to use traffic camera data beyond using it to enforce traffic laws. They also forbid police to install hidden malware on people's phones ("Bundestrojaner"): https://www.vfgh.gv.at/medien/Kfz-Kennzeichenerfassung_und__...

While the use of facial recognition might not be a good thing in any case, it looks to me as if currently police is limited only to use it to retrospectively investigate serious crimes ("schwere Straftat").

rsto··on Why It’s Hard for Startups to Create Wealth in Europe
The 1€ GmBH isn't available in all (most?) European countries. I know that Germany introduced them a couple of years ago. It's great if you live in the country where you register the GmbH, but it can get lots of tax paper work quickly when your country of residence differs from the country where your company is registered.
rsto··on Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
The article states a number of laws this proposition is most likely to conflict with. I very much doubt it will hold in court, and certainly someone will sue. I guess it won't even land at the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

But even if I'm right, it still damages the public discussion on privacy and civil rights. It is one of many steps pulling public opinion in a frightening direction.

rsto··on JMAP is on the home straight
Yes, in Cyrus IMAP we take care to follow the latest spec. It's the version that drives the JMAP backend at FastMail.

The JMAP website has a list of other clients and server: https://jmap.io/software.html

rsto··on Ask HN: What happened to Pinboard?
I'm also concerned about pinboard. I have a long-time archiving subscription and just recently extended it for the next 5 years. When my bookmarks didn't archive since October, I mailed support. No reply, but now all bookmarks are archived again. I'm not sure if something got fixed, or I just got lucky.

It's obvious that Maciej has put all his attention into political campaigning over the last year - good on him! But the pinboard blog hasn't been updated since 18 months, and the quality of its minimal-by-design service starts eroding.

I really do hope he can clarify here or on his blog what's the future plan for pinboard. I always liked pinboard being very down to earth with the marketing, but that's no excuse for ignoring the paying customer base.

rsto··on $36k Google App Engine RCE
I guess IC means "Intelligence Community", but what is a LEO? A Google search didn't provide meaningful results.
rsto··on Ask HN: Where do you deploy to in 2018 and how?
Thanks for sharing, I'm considering bare metal as well for a project. Is latency between the two data centers an issue for you, e.g. is one of your two servers running a SQL database as master?
rsto··on We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything
> it’s much more effective to focus your effort on one thing.

This is the gist I got from this post, and while I agree with the statement I think it is too simplistic.

I am one of those persons that "have a long list of goals, desires, and wants for your life" as teased in the article. I think it's clear that focus helps to achieve an item on that list. It's the issue of deciding what to focus on, when multiple items are competing for the 24 hours we have per day. Most life-advice, as the article, starts off with stating the conflict and immediately jumps to the conclusion. The hard part is in the middle.

Personally, I came to the conclusion that everything I postpone to a later stage in life might just as well never materialise. If I can't live with that thought, then it has to be done concurrently.

That's probably different for short-term project that the article uses as examples, but these typically aren't the items I'm conflicted about.

rsto··on Ask HN: Does CalDAV as a service exist?
Just yesterday I launched the launch page for my upcoming calendar as a backend service: https://blobcal.com/ ! CalDAV support is one of the features I plan to implement if there is demand.

But looking at your current app website, it looks to me as if you don't necessarily require to manage your user calendars. Just getting your app information in their calendars is probably enough, whatever 3rd party provider they are using? In that case https://www.cronofy.com/ might be a good fit.

rsto··on Is it ok to copy the TOS or PP from another site and modify it for my own uses?
IANAL, but if there isn't a license explicitly stated you must not reuse it (without permission).

Luckily, Automattic make their ToS available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license, which might be a good fit for your site.

https://en.wordpress.com/tos/

rsto··on Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores
Jaron Lanier writes about this in his book "Who Owns the Future" [1]

Disclaimer: I haven't read it yet, so can't say if it meets your "thought out considerations" criteria.

[1] https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25424120M/Who_Owns_the_Futur...

rsto··on Ask HN: How many are 30+ years and still active programmers?
I'm 38, work as a contractor and my long-term client pays 100% of my time to work on their open-source tech stack. All my contributions are public on Github, starting from early prototyping.

When I work on personal projects, I contribute to open-source when I find something to fix in the libraries I am using. But that's just a side effect, not a decision to do extra open-source work in my free time.

rsto··on Ask HN: What keyboard do you use to code?
I use a KUL ES-87 Tenkeyless Mechanical Keyboard: http://www.keyeduplabs.com/es-87.html

It's quieter than a keyboard with Cherry MX Blue keys and the tenkeyless form factor doesn't require my right mouse hand to travel unnecessarily.

Edit: I see that it comes with a choice of Cherry keys. I use Cherry MX Brown.

rsto··on Ask HN: Best hands on kernel books?
I found "Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition" by Rubini et al an excellent intro to Kernel development:

https://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/

Probably a lot has changed in the Linux kernel since then, so YMMV.

rsto··on Anti-Tracking Browser Cliqz Acquires Ghostery [German]
OP here: According to German newspaper Zeit, privacy-enhanced browser Cliqz [1] just acquired Ghostery for an undisclosed amount. With the deal, Cliqz wants to enhance its browser's anti-tracking capabilities. It also aims to enlarge its footprint of ~150.000 users and tap into Ghostery's 50m user count. The Ghostery team spinned of its business segment into Evidon, which is not part of the deal.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated to Ghostery or Cliqz (didn't know about the latter until just now).

[1] https://cliqz.com/us/

EDIT: Added link to Cliqz-US URL

rsto··on Ask HN: How do you draft the usage terms and conditions for a side project?
Automattic publishes their WordPress.com Terms of Service under a Creative Commons Sharealike license, meaning you can copy, redistribute and build upon the material for any (including commercial) purpose.

Might be a good start for a Saas: https://en.wordpress.com/tos/

rsto··on Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?
I can relate to that and there is also a reason why I left the industry.

In my case, I started freelancing again as developer (which raised a few eyebrows at my first clients, but that went away quickly) and contracted a couple of years at a telecommunications provider implementing provisioning services. I was at the start of my thirties then, so probably your current age.

I now work completely outside the big corporations and I wouldn't want to go back. Good luck!

rsto··on Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?
Given your skills and industry focus you might have good chances to land a consulting job at one of the big IT consulting shops in telecommunications.

I have worked as a business consultant at Accenture for six years in its telecommunications practice. Assuming your resume highlights both your technical and sales skills, you surely would have made it to an onsite interview for our team. With 12 years industry experience and team lead experience you could at least push for Manager level (the lowest executive level) or higher. For a technical role you should apply at Technology Services, not Consulting. Either way, that you have deep experience with specific vendor products also is a credential that you should highlight.

I am not at Accenture anymore and have no stakes in recruiting. My post most probably also applies to the other big shops in the industry: IBM, CapGemini, probably Siemens depending on your location.

If you need a personal contact in Austria/Germany I might be able to help (just updated my profile with my contacts).

rsto··on Ask HN: Do you carry a backpack? Which one?
I bought mine less than a year ago. The main compartment is still curved, I can imagine the 24l version to be too small. Any laptop larger than 12" might get an issue also in the 26l version.

I have a similar experience with water bottles: a typical 1 litre aluminium bottle (e.g. Sigg) hardly fits in the side pocket, so it's always a struggle to squeeze it. Once it's in the pocket, though, the risk of falling out is nil :)

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