Hacker News Reader

samplingon Why "Learn to Code" Failed [PolyMatter] [video]

Referenced in video: The rise—and fall—of the software developer https://www.adpresearch.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-softwar... (ADP Research)

samplingon Txtai: Open-source vector search and RAG for minimalists

Has anyone had experience with qdrant (https://qdrant.tech/) as a vector store data and can speak to how txtai compares?

samplingon Bash-Oneliners: A collection of terminal tricks for Linux

Previous discussion (2022) with 108 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31250275

samplingon Show HN: See library availabilities for your Goodreads want-to-read list

What are some ways to find libraries that issue cards to non-residents?

samplingon Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

This is quite profound, is this quoted from anywhere or are these your own words?

samplingon Thunderbird Is Thriving: Our 2022 Financial Report

> We began 2022 with 15 core staff, and now employ a team of 24 in these roles:

    Product and Business Development Manager
    Director of Operations
    Product Design Manager
    Engineering Manager
    Staff Engineers (3)
    Sr SW Engineers (2)
    Sr Security Engineer
    SW Engineer, Add-Ons Ecosystem
    Sr UI/UX Developer
    UI/UX Developers (2)
    Android Project Lead
    Android Developer (1)
    Build & Release Engineers (2)
    Full Stack Developer
    Front End Developer
    Community Manager
    Marketing Manager
    Bug Triager
    Support Engineer

I've never seen "Bug Triager" listed as an advertised role. Isn't this a subset of what a product owner/manager typically does?

samplingon Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

Source: https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/cost-of-car-ownership...

samplingon Ask HN: Software testing usually sucks. Did you ever see it work at scale?

I've seen software testing work at scale when there's a company-wide mindset to quality, as opposed to 'quality is the job of one person/department':

- Shift left testing: quality can be implemented at all stages of the development process, from requirements gathering to deployment. Issues are easier and cheaper to fix the earlier they are discovered, and it does not necessarily take a software tester to discover these, although testers can advocate for a mindset of quality - Quality as a shared mindset/goal, not just one team's job: every team member seeks to quality control their bit of work, this inevitably involves developers doing a basic level of sanity testing on their code. When done right this should reduce the long feedback loop to discovering issues when a team completes a piece of work, hands it over to QA, then context switches over to another piece of work.

samplingon Bitwarden Acquires Passwordless.dev

I have a very similar self-hosted Vaultwarden set up, for the same reasons.

My other concern, which may be unfounded is that Vaultwarden [1], which is an unofficial Rust rewrite, may also be developed to different, or lesser security standards than the official client. However I don't have any real reasons to suspect this.

[1] https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden

samplingon New Sony Walkman music player

With regards to playlisting my digital music collection in novel and interesting ways, I've found Plexamp's "Guest DJ" feature [1] to be second to none.

It's not the cheapest piece of software. However when viewed in comparison to the cost of a standalone mp3-player, I think Plex's $119.99 Lifetime Pass is justifiable.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/plexamp/status/158570440123829863...

samplingon LineageOS 20

Can anyone confirm if the Aperture camera app is still fully functional when LineageOS is installed without GApps?

samplingon Ask HN: How do you discover new music?

Bandcamp. The "x items in common" subheading on other profiles has been a very strong indicator of other people with music taste I may also vibe with. As a plus, they seem to be one of the more fair companies with artist distribution payments and their "Bandcamp Fridays", so buying music has a bit more of a feel good factor.

samplingon Singapore will decriminalize sex between men, prime minister says

You would be naive to believe that gay sex has not been happening just because it's illegal.

samplingon About communication safety in Messages

I'm struggling to understand what exactly is "bad" about homosexuality? Why does a consenting same sex relationship between two adults need "scrubbing" from Disney?

samplingon Man spent $150 eating every meal at Six Flags since 2014 to pay off student debt

Exactly. It's a rather short sighted financial strategy.

samplingon The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run

Podcast “Twenty Thousand Hertz” did some good coverage on this radio station, also known as The Buzzer

https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/twenty-thousand-hertz/id1...

samplingon Ask HN: What are your non-tech hobbies?

    Reading
    Plants
    Cars and motorsport
    Photography
    Cycling
    Running
    Swimming
    Music production

samplingon uBlock Origin review

Was worried about running all my web history through this extension for privacy reasons, has anyone gone through the source code to verify uBlock Origin’s privacy policy?

samplingon System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

Which component of your laptop broke and which Librem model did you order?

samplingon Ask HN: Do you use a Linux-first laptop? (System76, Librem, Dell XPS Dev Ed)

Amazing! Didn’t think I’d ever see the day where Linux ran on a T2 chip MacBook

samplingon Only good characters use iPhones in movies

You can use a Twitter front end alternative, eg. nitter.net/lordbeef

There are also web browser extensions that will redirect URLs to more privacy-friendly alternatives such as https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/privacy-redir...

samplingon Japan is holding back as the world rushes toward electric cars

Toyota have their head in the sand. Their roundtable in Dec 2020 shows them cherry-picking facts, stating that though they have a lower rate of electrification than Norway, they have a higher volume of EVs on the road in Japan. However this fails to take into account the per capita stat, with a population of 126m versus 5.4m, Toyota is once again manipulating the stats

source: https://toyotatimes.jp/en/insidetoyota/111.html

samplingon Policy groups ask Apple to drop plans to inspect messages, scan for abuse images

Apple's "CSAM detection" feature is a two-part on-device/server as I understand it:

1: Run on-device code to perform perceptual hash comparison of each photo against an on-device encrypted database of known CSAM hashes.

2: On iCloud Photos servers, send out the relevant notifications when a user’s iCloud Photos account exceeds a threshold of positive matches.

So as a high level testing strategy, I would want to:

- Verify on-device lookup of CSAM hashes. This could be tested by provisioning a test device with an on-device database containing CSAM hashes of images that aren't illegal. As a bystander, I think I'd be fairly confident with this approach because I'm guessing the on-device database that Apple ships could conceivably be changed over time to expand the definition of the images it will flag as CSAM.

- Do some exploratory testing to discover the threshold of how much image manipulation can be done on a flagged image before the perceptual hash comparison fails to return a match.

- Verify that the notification system notifies the correct parties once a user account exceeds the defined threshold of positive CSAM matches.

- Ensure the flagged account can still be investigated if user deletes the offending material from iCloud, or their account by the time a real person gets around to investigating.

- Ensure that the logging is informative and adequate (contains device name, timestamp, etc.).

- Test behaviour on same iCloud account logged in to multiple devices.

- Figure out any additional business logic - are positive matches a permanent count on the account or are they reset after a certain amount of time?

source: https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Security_Threat_Model...

samplingon Otter Browser

I'm all for unmonopolising the web browser but Otter seems to have major stability issues. I'm on macOS 10.15.7. Doing a DDG search consistently crashes Otter. Would liked to have given it a go but I'll stick with Firefox.

samplingon Solar and wind can meet world energy demand 100 times over

The next problem to solve is how to continue servicing demand for electricity when the sun goes down (an everyday occurrence) and when the wind stops blowing for extended periods of time. Demand for problem is constant, however the electricity generated from solar and wind is not always so.

samplingon Firefox for iOS 32

Mozilla VPN is now available on Mac![1] As of December last year I believe [2]

[1] https://vpn.mozilla.org/ [2] https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-vpn-mac-linux-201939740.htm...

samplingon LibrePhotos: A Self-Hosted Google Photos Alternative

Which Synology NAS model did you go with, and how are you finding the performance? Thanks