aloer

I really like them

Do you expect your opinion to change as your daughter grows up and makes her own experiences with being filmed all the time?

I feel reminded of those always on AI cameras from a few years ago (google?) that were advertised to young parents because that’s like the one singular moment where it’s pretty uncontroversial to do this.

Kids are cute and full of energy, hands full, don’t want to miss a moment.

But smart glasses have real implications for our society around bullying, harassment, stalking etc.

All things that older children and young adults are affected by the most

If I were in high school again I would not want smart glasses to be normal

FYI you might be using an older version of crosspoint. It now has a software fix for the fading issue built in

https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader/issue...

iirc in the past it was about memory and that larger storage needs more memory for caching.

So this made at least some sense.

I guess yields might be good enough that they can afford to bin with another core in there as well.

Memory is probably still the main reason for binning in the first place.

OTOH HN is all about the comments. And without reading you don’t know which ones are good.

I often spend way more time on those.

Each one 3-5 lines. Hundreds of comments in a near endless list.

I don’t think HN is that different compared to other social media

I recently tried to put my phone into black & white mode via iPhone accessibility shortcut (triple click on power button)

This did not seem to work for me. I would forget about it and after a while just left it on color.

Now I use a shortcut on the action button. By default my iPhone is black and white, pressing the action button gives me color for two minutes.

The crucial step is that after this time it is automatically switching back to black and white. Even when the phone is locked.

This now seems to actually help. And as a side effect I also enjoy looking at a few things in black and white. A new experience.

All these great ideas for how to prevent you from doing something, they all need to allow me to bypass it when I want to, but they also need to automatically switch back to the “locked” mode.

This needs to be seamless so that the “yes I am sure I want to read this” bypass does not become a new, meaningless habit.

What is also interesting is that apparently, for me, a hard lock-out, a hard disable, is not good enough. Instead, reducing the joy (black & white filter) seems to work much better and does not motivate me to work around the restriction.

I doubt I would be happy with a dumb phone either. So this is a good middle ground.

One other thing I’ve always hoped to see is a kind of scheduled check in with me, where I am asked / reminded to get out of my Netflix / Reddit / YouTube tunnel vision.

Hardware and software to do that is tricky. iOS locked down too much.

But there are today quite capable and cheap Esp32 based smart watches (~$25) and I am trying to figure out how to integrate one of these into my life purely for tunnelvision-interrupting “are you really sure you want to do this right now?” notifications.

I feel privileged to have had a childhood before smartphones. At least I can remember how we used to be.

All of these measures are not because of how it is today but because I am afraid of where we will be a few years from now. Endlessly engaging generated AI content.

Better try to build some boundaries while I still can.

There is a lot of overlap between this and "modern" nixie tube clocks such as this one:

https://www.amazon.com/LONYIABBI-Electronic-Simulation-Power...

I'd speculate those came first (kinda popular with streamers and such, I think) and they basically just added a usb port. In the product video you can even see that they arrive as individual sticks to be plugged in.

It is probably easier and cheaper to have 6x separate display & microcontroller and update each one independently

The blog author is also the creator of Anubis

There is a lot of discussion in the comments about using VMs for dev work. I too try to at least use containers whenever I can but it's sometimes not very practical. Better than nothing.

99% of the threat model is software trying to extract data. Either for myself (e.g. blackmail) or to learn about me and attack others (impersonation for scams, fraud, blackmail against others) or to access systems I have access to (tokens, API keys, online banking)

Currently I am playing around with local LLMs on a Mac. The whole field is moving so fast that it is impossible not to rely on recent releases to quickly try new features. Unfortunately there is no way to access the Mac GPU in VMs.

So right now to have at least a tiny bit of separation I have the local LLM tools set up on a separate local Mac user that I can then ssh into and use to expose a web server usable from my main (dev) account.

This of course is far from perfect but at least a little better than before. I fully expect supply chain attacks on AI tooling and perhaps even malicious LLM models to happen at some point. That target is too juicy.

Setting this up I was a bit irritated by some of the defaults of macos for multi user setups.

- All mac software is usually installed to the global /Applications folder. Homebrew needs a workaround to work across multiple users

- By default all files of a local mac user can be read by all other non admin local mac users. Only Apple-created folders like Documents, Desktop etc. are locked down

If you want to store files outside of those Apple-created folders, perhaps because you sync Documents with icloud and want to store project repos and larger files, perhaps because you have ssh and github configs, dotfiles etc. in your home dir, then they are all by default readable by other non admin users.

This is not to say that this is a huge issue that can't be fixed (just need to remove default permissions for group 'staff' yourself) but it is interesting that this is the default.

The concept of multiple local users seems to be completely ignored by users and by Apple, and has been mostly unchanged for decades. There are tiny improvements such as Apples permissions dialog when an application accesses Desktop, Documents or Downloads for the first time. But this seems pretty useless all things considered.

Why is it not more common to have stronger local separation? I don't need and don't want total iOS-level sandboxing (and lack of file system) but why isn't there a little more progress on the computer side of things?

I agree that VM-level isolation with good usability and little performance loss would be a great thing. But this is aiming for perfection in a world pressured by more and more supply chain attacks as well as more automated (read: AI controlled) computer use.

As an 80% "OS-native" solution it would be great if I could easily use local users for different project files _and_ stream GUIs across users (to work seamlessly from one main account). Then we could probably avoid the majority of security risks in every day computer use for developers and other "computer workers" alike.

--

I skipped over that last part but this is the real blocker. It should be possible by now to easily stream a "remote" (local, different user) application UI into my current users window management with full support for my many screens, resolutions, copy/paste and shortcuts. All while having zero quality loss or performance overhead if done locally.

I don't want remote desktop, I want remote application UI. This is not a new idea (X11 forwarding)

Here's a fun thought:

AI workflows and agents have surprised us all. We see them clicking and typing and changing files on our machines. If the OS-makers don't come up with appropriate mechanisms then we will somehow end up recreating a new form of OS. It is already starting with AI-focussed browsers or ChatGPT as an entry point to delegate "browse the web for me". It will be web based with compute happening on VMs in the background, probably billed like a SaaS and disappoint all of us wanting to preserve the ideal of personal computers. Eventually it will make desktop OS's irrelevant and we all end up working with a form of chromebook

Unfortunately airlines often have more strict rules. Lufthansa says 20 max for example

https://www.lufthansa.com/us/en/prepare-for-your-trip/baggag...

Although 20 loose batteries is still plenty. The real challenge is the 15 devices per person limit

Do AirPods count as 3 devices because charging case + 2 ear pieces?

As a private person, international transport of devices with batteries is a pain.

There is so much value in blue links turning purple and showing the same content on repeat visits.

This kind of permanence is a huge loss

I don’t think so. Bombs are usually found during construction so leaving them in place would not work if they block progress on a hole/tunnel etc

For reference the state of NRW (Germany) alone found 2811 bombs in 2018 so it’s much more common than you’d think.

Laws seem to differ by state but afaik new construction must include some kind of bomb assessment, often done via aerial photos to quickly filter out areas that were not bombed at all

I saw this video [0] from the creator of this project the other day. Here he shows how to connect a USB joystick with a playstation access controller [1] by mapping from USB to 3.5mm analog output.

I found this because I was looking for something else for the access controller. It's basically the other way around: I want to use the controller on a mac and need to remap it's outputs to something useful. I don't have a playstation and apparently you need one to remap the controller keys once before plugging it in to a PC, otherwise only 3 out of 8 buttons will send something that is recognized as USB HID

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtXdPWN6NBw [1] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/accessories/access-control...

(This was not in the US)

I would say the people are free to leave but the car stays until they pay and that this is part of how every parking business operates. Otherwise, why pay?

Every parking lot I’ve ever been to clearly states the price for a new ticket when you lose yours. Usually something like the maximum rate for an entire day but it depends. Long term parking at the airport for example might be higher than that

They felt mistreated over their own mistake of forgetting in which pocket they put the ticket. Nothing more

How much bullshit is there and how often are there consequences for this?

I don’t often read about anyone actually being fined for wrong, unnecessary or petty emergency calls

Local news the other day: a couple in their 60s forgot where they placed their parking ticket and called police which then came by and ordered the attendant to let them drive out for free. No consequences

Linked in there you have https://web.archive.org/web/19981206221926/http://www.msyste... which would be an amazing post on it’s own.

I had no idea people were already doing smart home things 26 years ago!

macOS has built in shortcuts to switch through windows of the currently focused application. I have it reconfigured to alt+tab

This is not exactly what you are looking for but I personally like it more this way. So for example, I can switch between editor and browser via cmd tab but then I can cycle through browser windows via alt tab. These are two separate actions and it prevents me from having to cycle too much (compared to a solution that cycles through all windows of all applications)

Also helps to build temporal and spatial muscle memory. The first browser window is the main one, the next one was the one before that and so on

Anyone here who can answer this as well in the context of local work on a Mac? I manually use tmux when sshing into servers but usually that’s one session split in two and that’s it.

Locally I use iterm2 with a single hotkey window but multiple tabs with one per project and then up to 8 panes per tab. These stay open for many months until the inevitable restart for system updates. I feel like I have pretty good persistent terminals this way.

But would there be any benefit for me using tmux locally? I know that iterm2 has some kind of integration with it but I‘ve not tried that

I would like to archive every web page I ever visit. Something like this sounds very useful but it would need to be updated periodically.

I’m thinking a hybrid approach could make sense here. Historical data is thrown into a big archive dwarFS while new data of e.g. the current day is kept in a simple normal folder. Every now and then this would be merged together.

Skimming through the docs I can’t tell if it will be possible to recreate a new dwarFS by taking an existing one and adding just a few more files, or if I would need to create a completely new one which also means I need to temporarily have enough space for twice the archive size

Just the other day I was setting up Jellyfin and tailscale on an n100.

It worked fine locally but sharing via tailscale with a family member across the world somehow broke things. It took about a minute for the stream to start despite a fast enough upload speed. Might be ping related?

I will give this a try

Fun facts I remember from looking into this in university some 9 years ago:

It’s not only the sideways movement of plates that causes a shift.

WGS 84 and other reference systems work with an underlying ellipsoid reference model. This ellipsoid is chosen to approximate the earth surface but it’s a simple shape and as such can’t account well for things like mountains and other irregularities in the shape of the earth.

Not only does that mean that your position on a mountain is less accurate, it also means that it becomes less accurate over time due to mountains growing.

These of course are tiny numbers so compared to a few cm shift of the plates it is nothing.

Another fun fact is that the ellipsoid also grows more inaccurate over time due to the earth rotating around a fixed axis.

The rotational force slowly causes the earth to flatten at the top and bottom (where the poles are) and to widen in the middle.

This too I assume is negligible

Speaking of ellipsoid, today I think it is measured via satellite. But in the past things had to be done by hand and were more local in nature. There’s a lot of history here as well since mapping has always been a very important task for governments.

So today in a lot of places a lot of data is still based on systems other than wgs84. Either because it’s historical data (e.g. property boundaries before gps was invented), or because they use a more localized reference system including a more localized ellipsoid that better matches specific country or state needs.

Perhaps one day we will use a big world wide look up table instead of a mathematical representation of the earth shape.

What I did at university was to compare a Germany-wide lookup grid with the mathematical approach of a Germany-wide reference system.

This lookup grid was created by a state agency and was more accurate because it could include more localized reference systems. In technical terms think of this as a pre calculation where each state can choose its most accurate method and then the results are put together into a country wide lookup table.

Last fun fact: The result of this comparison showed that the difference of a German-wide reference system compared to this collection of state-wide reference systems is up to four meters.

Edit: removed word inaccuracy, added difference. It’s all relative. What it mostly shows is that when working with geo data you need to know what source and what target reference systems to use. Otherwise things break

There’s plenty of reasons why you would want to have a separate Apple ID for a company Mac that have nothing to do with overly restrictive permissions from IT.

The main one being a complete separation of calls, messages, calendar, notes and reminders. For my own sake more than for my employers sake.

And many employees with company phones already have that separation. iPhone and Mac is not that uncommon to provide for employees. But an iPad on top? I think that’s gonna be much harder to find

And edit: a Vision Pro on top…

It is interesting how many here are excited about this for productive computer work. It’s also what Apple advertises with.

But what is the account situation like?

For years I’ve been complaining that I can’t easily use my private iPad with my company Mac because they have separate Apple IDs. Things like sidecar for a quick virtual whiteboard are basically impossible.

AirPods have gotten better over the years where today I can freely switch between devices belonging to different Apple IDs with the same AirPods.

But is the Vision Pro like that as well? It would seem weird to exclude the not-so-small group of people working from home but with company MacBooks

What is the expectation here for the coming years, does it make sense to wait?

I assume this tech moves like most tech and it will only get cheaper like you say but also better. Are we still in the early adopter phase?

Is this the right place (/s) for me to complain about a regression in iOS 17.1 and 17.2 (beta) where typing too fast will randomly switch to other apps? [1]

It’s such a frustrating experience that I’ve noticed my communication has gone down noticeably in the past two weeks.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSBeta/comments/1774w2h/ios_171_db...

5v/5A seems weird. Can normal power supplies even deliver this? One of the big benefits of rpi has always been to reuse power adapters and isn’t that all PD standard today?

Higher wattage PD chargers and powerbanks that I have here all work with voltages of 9/12/15 at 3A and 20V at up to 5A

It looks like you are focussing on business secrets and, while important, at least for me my main concern would be personal secrets on personal hardware that I am also doing side projects on.

A business today can reduce the blast radius by quite a lot with separate laptops ("customer/project laptop"), sample data and restricted/time limited access to production data.

In an ideal world no npm dependency could affect my online banking, icloud photo library or private messengers.

I like that pixelated stuff.

Wonder if DALL-E itself counts as a forbidden living artist or if soon we will „generate x in the style of DALL-E 2“

I've recently mentioned* that I believe the serverless model to be a great fit for self hosting needs.

It enables a kind of bring your own account (BYOA?) installation process. Where self-hostable services would be entirely built based on managed services.

- Infrastructure as code. The installer takes in any <cloud_vendor> account and provisions + configures the required components

- High availability built in

- no need to support old or niche hardware

- On-demand costs structure. Many self-hosted services don't need to run 24/7

My biggest fear with raspberry pi or VPS is the security. But self-hosting does not mean my-server-hosting. Some amount of vendor lock-in is acceptable and using the same APIs and processes as enterprise users sounds like a win. At least compared to not self-hosting at all.

Of course many things are still missing:

- self-hosted tools that actually work like this

- connection between data center and home. To integrate with smart home/IoT and similar things

- a reliable billing model for less technical users. It has to be impossible to rack up huge cloud bills

For now I guess it's just not yet mature enough. But I would like to see the serverless mentality finding it's way into self-hosted software communities.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36986980

An example of what I mean: https://github.com/full-stack-serverless/conference-app-in-a...

I don't see any reason why that shouldn't also work for more typical self-hosted applications

I like the term local-first software and I think p2p collaboration (think: protocols other than HTTP, e.g. to prevent nation-wide censorship or decentralized / synchronized via local means during emergencies) and e2e encryption are amazing features. Possibly increased performance for local sync is a nice benefit as well.

That said, the article and most of the comments here somehow talk about or even compare to The Cloud and I don't think that is particularly relevant.

The cloud has nothing to do with companies owning all the community data (user relationships, crowdsourced information). Facebook, twitter, reddit etc. are not "the cloud"

The cloud has little to do with data privacy concerns. Self-hosting exists and it is not a problem of trust in infrastructure. Self-hosting on AWS should be considered safe for all but the most extreme cases (legally forbidden content?)

The cloud has little to do with proprietary data formats. It is absolutely possible to build a SaaS with proper import/export protocols. Financial incentives are misaligned, not technical.

An example is excalidraw (https://excalidraw.com/). AFAIK they don't use CRDTs but they are what I would consider local-first.

Here, local-first adds the features mentioned above. In addition to that it is self-hostable from a small local raspberry pi to a proper server in someone else's data center / "The Cloud".

I would propose more use of the cloud for something like this.

If self-hosting became easier then perhaps more people would care for open data (access & standardized formats). A managed, serverless and on-demand model seems perfect and could enable non-technical people to host their own collaborative whiteboards or photo galleries or chatroom for family & friends.

Hackeronie pasta merch. Heard it here first