News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

imarkphillips

Re:Everyone Has Email. Nobody Uses It Right on Sunday November 01, 2026 @09:37AM (#50326134)
Haha. Nice strong history lesson but sadly out of date. (Say someone using email for 40+ years).

Email is dead. Its been taken over by spammers and AI slop.

We're walking back into a world of walled gardens. Contact is not via IM or email but only via trusted, secured networks.

My old PCs now run AI Agents telling all the crap emailers to use the contact form on our site. Life is too short for crap emails.

Looks great. How long until it does P2P via Bluetooth?

Like Bump did before it was shut down by Google.

Re:Anthropic, Please Make a New Slack on Friday March 06, 2026 @05:36PM (#47282050)
Try Pumble. We switched years ago.
Re:Acme Weather on Saturday February 21, 2026 @05:04AM (#47099234)
How about reporting on yesterday's weather? Its hard to plan a walk in the forest today if I dont know how much it rained yesterday.
Can't wait to test the quality. Looks really practical fir digital nomads.
Re:Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @11:40PM (#45285060)
We switched to Pumble years ago for price, longer data retention & more consistency.
What a great story teller! Well done Alex.
Re:Solving `UK Passport Application` with Haskell on Saturday June 28, 2025 @11:52PM (#44410231)
Classic!
Starting a business selling software is actually a big job. Even giving code away with OpenSource licensing brings liability risks.

You'll need to find a business model that pays enough to keep your product going.

Maybe you need a suite of micro tools, sold as a single package, that can earn enough to pay for the business costs.

Re:Live Map of the London Underground on Friday April 11, 2025 @04:22AM (#43651562)
Very cool. Especially as it a real map not a 'network diagram' who is so confusing.
Peter, I'm curious as to the easiest way for Australian founders to get a long stay visa and work permit for the US while working for their own (Delaware) company?
You're right. Most accountants make their money from local businesses. And global accounting firms charge the earth. It's easier to separate You're bookkeeping from your (expensive) accountants who are better set for strategic advice.
What a big question. With so many new sales taxes hitting rhe world its now a nightmare for us global companies, especially in the digital services and the travel industry.

We employ our own bookkeepers (in Africa) who operate a range of accounting systems for each company in the group (5 countries).

As CEO I tend to do the teaching and review but the team does the lodgement. (I am an Australian Chartered Accountant and former tax agent so get the rules fairly easily).

Most lodgements are online. The US is the exception. We also find there are free services for lodging electronically.

A lot of the accounting systems are way overpriced so we don't use many of their up market solutions.

We have built our own invoicing and Billing system this week with AI so expect we'll create more of our own apps over the coming year.

My bookkeeping team has some spare capacity so let me know if we can maybe help you out.

Re:Show HN: We're Building a Desktop App for Browser Agents on Sunday February 02, 2025 @04:48AM (#42907550)
I'm so impressed with the concept of this agent but sorry, I can't have you accessing all my corporate data and systems because I access them via browser.

Perhaps you could create both a Public and Corporate version of the extension, like Copilot does. The Corporate version could have access to all browser data but not share it beyond the bounds of the company.

Re:Siri mixes up baby kangaroo with Friends sitcom actor on Sunday December 29, 2024 @08:49AM (#42539921)
Huh?

Why is there a mix up? Any Aussie knows a baby kangaroo is called a joey.

Are you sure the sitcom didn't name the role after a baby kangaroo?

Re:Creem: The payment platform that calls BS on hidden fees on Thursday December 26, 2024 @09:34AM (#42515391)
What do you mean? Their marketing pages offer 0% rates for card acceptance
This is quite useful. Apartment renters can now create their own ical feeds for booking platforms.
You know in Europe the card merchants are limited to about 1.3%. And the US could regulate this as well. In Australia you can add the card commission on top of the purchase easily. (Much easier than Stripe for instance).

To save payment fees there are probably easier sections of the payment process to focus on. For instance why do so many merchant banks insist on mandatory FX into 1 currency. This limitation means if I use Stripe I end up paying 9% commissions.

Re:Show HN: I made a credit system API on Wednesday August 07, 2024 @01:51AM (#41178582)
Do you have some use cases that can show different ways of using the service?
Re:Changes to Stripe Billing on Thursday July 11, 2024 @03:15AM (#40934359)
AirWallex
Re:Changes to Stripe Billing on Thursday July 11, 2024 @03:11AM (#40934340)
We swapped to AirWallex but note card acceptance is limited to companies that are controlled by directors with the same residence.

Eg US LLCs not owned by US residents can't get card acceptance.

Does anyone seriously use Microsoft OneDrive for backup?

It's 300,000 file limit means pretty much no developer would risk it considering the thousands of files in a typical app.

Believe me when OneDrive lost a heap of my files this year I was not impressed to learn of this serious limitation. To be fair GoogleDrive and DropBox also have similar limitations.

Azure Storage on the other hand doesn't have the limitation, is much cheaper and much faster. It's UI sux though.

I'm still searching for a reasonable cloud backup solution. Until then cheap external drives are the answer.

Re:Stop Using Your Face or Thumb to Unlock Your Phone on Saturday April 27, 2024 @03:55PM (#40182924)
There's a Secure Folder on Samsung phones. It requires a pin code to access & you can store a lot of apps in there, but it pretty weak.

Since reading these police access reports from the US I tried using the Secure Folder.

As a digital nomad for past 9 years I visit 10-20 countries a year, so lots of border crossings.

Secure Folder sadly doesn't allow you to hide all your disclosing apps inside.

Certain apps like browsers still need to be run inside your main section, and therefore accessible from a fingerprint login.

And a phone without finger or face login is too cumbersome for digital entrepreneurs in this day & age.

So the idea of shutting off the phone as you cross borders seems to be the best approach for us nomads.

I note the court case wasn't about a border crossing so I'm still looking for practical solutions.

Not being American I, like many, am almost paranoid visiting the US with all its foibles.

Re:The New Reality of Digital Nomads on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @03:12AM (#40129366)
Surprisingly the researchers missed major features of the digital nomad appeal.

1. A strong desire to get more out of life. 2. The fact that marketing to this niche is psychographical not demographical.

Not new concepts in the travel, or other industries, but as the numbers of people associating with digital nomadism grows, the niche can open up larger markets.

My own 4 year old startup, Nomad Stays, was created to solve some of the lifestyle sourcing issues that living 9 years as a digital nomad, and visiting over 100 countries had shown me was hard.

Dropbox & OneDrive both have file number limitations. After loading files & days of failed syncing I've moved away from each.

Google Drive also had syncing issues on their Windows app & stores images in a reduced way.

Haven't used iCloud for years as need auto syncing from Win PCs as well.

Will be trying some of gge suggestions listed below too now. Thanks for the topic.

Re:I'm Too Old on Monday April 01, 2024 @02:57PM (#39897742)
Wow. So opposite to.me.

I'm nearly 60, and have been in tech 37 years. I wake up even more enthused every day.

Re:Co-Founder Quitting โ€“ Rant on Friday January 26, 2024 @12:49PM (#39145436)
Don't you have you employees under non-compete contracts?

Didn't you use a vesting table for the shares?

As I wrote a year ago the range of new digital nomad visas are largely poor attempts at attracting more tourism dollars.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/digital-nomad-visa-dilemma-ma...

Most digital nomads still don't use them as other Commenters have outlined, they are cumbersome, expensive & don't address the taxation elements well.

Digital Nomad entrepreneurs can often work under standard 'tourist' visas in any case if they stick to the 'business' rules attached to those visas in any case.

While Permanent Establishment rules scare many employers off permitting much remote work for their employees.

With competition between countries to attract tourism the current version 1 DN visas will need to change to become attractors.

I'd suggest removing the 30/90 limit from tourism visas is an easy way to improve tourism economics.

Changing taxation policies will take longer but are also needed as the remote worker world grows so strongly & favour 'tax friendly' nations.

Re:Principality of Hutt River on Friday January 12, 2024 @02:16AM (#38965038)
Am so pleased to have visited the Principality and spent some time with Prince Leonard.

Now the land is sold I wonder what happens with their UN country status.

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