News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

5h

I was a bit surprised by this, given the relative ease of making it more secure.

I've reached out to confirm with them and "recording URLs are long and difficult to guess, so the contents of the recordings should be reasonably private" really is their position.

Re:Accounts are now required to access old.reddit on Thursday August 20, 2026 @07:02AM (#49372989)
I just went to post the same and got redirected here :)

I'm actually relieved, signed up aug 16 2007, it's a shadow of what it was, bye reddit!

Re:GPT-5 is behind schedule on Monday December 23, 2024 @12:13PM (#42495908)
Strange take ... I seem to remember websites having a lot of point before google.
> I took the speakers into my local forest, cranked both to 11, slapped on some dark berghain techno

What a horrible thing to do, hopefully there was nobody else in range to have their time in the forest ruined.

Re:Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense on Thursday April 28, 2022 @07:35AM (#31191276)
Short comment to say I appreciate the thoughtful response here, and that implications of public vs private blockchains in real world contexts is something I've not given enough thought to - thanks for the homework :)
Re:Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense on Thursday April 28, 2022 @07:29AM (#31191232)
I don't hate blockchain - the technology - it's really interesting.

Something I dislike though is that so many conversations that enquire roughly 'why not use a more traditional technology' end up with rant about not trusting governments - that is 'cringe'.

Re:Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:01AM (#31190675)
Good attempt at a deflection, I won't casually solve the very thing that is a great example of blockchain being a solution looking for a problem.

But, given the 'real world' context I tried to stress, do you think blockchain is a good solution to the variations of that problem in real world contexts?

Re:Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense on Thursday April 28, 2022 @05:52AM (#31190607)
You've set yourself up for a question: Please give an example, with a deeper-lever perspective, of a real-world use-case for (non-crypto) blockchain that isn't better solved with non-blockchain technology.

Edit to answer this question:

> What about this is intrinsically "dangerous nonsense"?

The article isn't about the tech itself, it's about the interfaces of the tech and the real world. The problems there are shameless shilling, deception & efficiency problems.

Re:Experiments on a $50 DIY air purifier (2020) on Thursday September 02, 2021 @02:10PM (#28395373)
What air quality sensor are you using?
Re:Adobe: The Psychology of User Offboarding on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @08:38AM (#28300861)
I really enjoyed the presentation, for the first dozen slides ... but wow did reading one short sentence at a time get tired after that.
Re:OVH CEO Octave Klaba speaking about the incident [video] on Thursday March 11, 2021 @03:14PM (#26428480)
[video - poor audio] maybe

edit: That comment was snide, my heart goes out to the OVH team, the message within the video was good, forthright & honest. I hope it will be well received by their customers - just a shame it's a bit difficult to listen to!

Re:UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer on Wednesday March 10, 2021 @04:10AM (#26409337)
I suspect the multitude of little plastic catches, clips, switches, levers etc that everything contains now are the major source of appliances being junked.
Re:Rome in 3D on Sunday January 31, 2021 @05:49PM (#25983390)
That was a hypothetical problem, as per that link
Average speed camera zones are the only speed control device that works (for many via congestion rather than willful compliance I suspect), unfortunately it also encourages tailgating, aggressive and distracted driving (often in reduced width lanes) - I wish there was more of a focus on that.
Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to HN for non-Hacker News? on Saturday December 05, 2020 @07:03PM (#25319636)
They absolutely are, but I think that link demonstrates the difference I was poorly describing quite well actually, the front page was diverse then too - by design - but how many of those links are sharing things at someones expense in the r/trashy sense? Not to put the content of that link on some sort of pedistal, but how many of those links would make it to the frontpage today?

It's a differnet site today than then, but if it were current that type of content is still broadly more interesting to me than the present frontpage. Having a read of some of the comment threads too it's really quite different to today, Sure there were in-jokes but it was more than same tired memes getting voted to the top time after time.

Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to HN for non-Hacker News? on Saturday December 05, 2020 @06:38PM (#25319489)
The barrier to entry for brigading & group think is lower on reddit than discrete forums, I think that's part of the problem & I've no idea what the solution is. Different moderation methods have been tried all over (+5 insightful etc) but they have barely succeeded in isolation & I doubt they'd fare any better vs Reddits firehose.
Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to HN for non-Hacker News? on Saturday December 05, 2020 @06:34PM (#25319467)
Yes, i lurked for a while but signed up in 2007
Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to HN for non-Hacker News? on Saturday December 05, 2020 @05:47PM (#25319163)
Reddit before user-moderated subreddits was far more pleasant, not that they're exactly at fault but they widened the audience just like eternal september & signal:noise, or signal:bullshit, ratios never recovered. There are still 'good' subreddits but above a surprisingly tiny community size they degrade rapidly & irreversably. What shocks me the most is if you log out well over 1/2 the front page content is at schadenfreude, it's awful.
'No Intrusive interstitials' - I hope this factor carries increasing weight, many websites are pretty horrible experiences on first visit nowdays.
I'll have a read, thanks.

I've been trying to lower my HR when steady-state jogging also & variability came up a lot in my light reading on techniques for doing that also, but the articles did tend to feel a lot more at the quackery end of the scale

The ones I remember most were for stammering/stuttering. It was a mix of breathing from the bottom of your chest, strong posture with shoulders up & a little back, not forcing your ribs up, but feeling them move out horizontally.

The biggest part for becoming a confident public speaker was the psychological side (aside from all the usual stuff about slowing down mentally). Becoming conscious of breathing for just a few seconds before starting works wonders, as does carefully timing awkward to produce sounds/syllables on different parts of the breathing downstroke.

I've been doing this for 30yrs (i wrote 20 initially ... forgot i'm old :) now, slow breathing is the norm at the desk & before speaking to an audience/hosting meetings etc I still have to follow the same steps every time otherwise I start tripping over my tongue.

I spent 36hrs in hospital after an asthma attack last year (3 days in a super dusty environment), it was noticed then but not to the full extent - I think after normalising the asthma symptoms with a bunch of salbutomol nebulizers (iirc) I was ~55. I'll ask when I next go to the doctors :)
As a life long asthmatic who had a serious stutter as a child I've been practicing controlled breathing for as long as I can remember.

Recently I've taken an interest in fitness (again) and, via a garmin watch, I've learnt my resting heart-rate is ~42 most nights, some nights dipping to 39. I'm by no means exceptionally fit, but have to think the slow breathing techniques are the cause.

Re:Tell HN: Rackspace apparently lost some storage volumes on Saturday October 17, 2020 @03:30PM (#24812492)
This is a shame, I had many years of fantastic experiences with them (running 100's of machines) up till about 2010 when I left a role & have been using AWS since.
Imagine doing that on a busy public highway for a wired.com article ...

'we did it in a safe way'

They had no control over the cars behind, anything could have happened.

Their attack could have been demonstrated on a parking lot or private road.

Their information did need urgently sharing, and while I understand the common need for a bit for drama, this was utterly unsafe & for the good of everyone I hope they've pulled their heads out of their asses since making that video!

Re:Microsoft Teams as a Platform on Monday September 21, 2020 @06:28AM (#24541746)
It seemed to struggle after a video call for me. I tried to persevere & took to restarting the native app after every call for a bit, however on Linux you can't screen-share a single application (only an entire desktop).

Due to this, and as the notification system is designed by a sadist, I switched to using it in a browser, which unfortunately means you can only see one person at a time on calls for some reason.

It is now not uncommon for me to join calls twice at once from browser/app each, and juggle audio/speaker/camera settings for a bit to do demo's, then killing the native app.

I can at least get native notifications & not convert my PC to a space heater this way, but it's still pure bullshit.

I had a brief hope when I found some reference to native notifications in a config file, but that was a dead end.

Re:Microsoft Teams as a Platform on Monday September 21, 2020 @06:11AM (#24541636)
I've dug out an old android phone to sit on my desk in a dock purely to serve as a 'Teams Notification Device' (patent pending) as the way they have implemented notifications is the most godawful dumpster fire i've seen in a long time.
Re:Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME on Wednesday September 16, 2020 @07:41AM (#24491635)
I've lived in Awesome WM for years, this looks pretty good to me!
That's part of it, but doesn't give any useful data beyond 'archived' to make use of when considering your dependencies.

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