HN user
It also closes when you click/tap outside the dialog, unlike most other Windows dialogs. I actually can't think of another Windows dialog with the same level of functionality that behaves this way.
I'm pretty sure it was introduced in Windows 8 along with swipe gestures from the sides of the screen (like the "charms bar") with the tablet use case in mind and with little consideration given to the mouse experience.
In the 70s the ads were a one-way broadcast. Now the ads watch you back.
Far beyond the time wasted, they're an invasion of privacy.
My interpretation of "break web pages" was serving XHTML with MIME type application/xhtml+xml, in which case browsers don't render anything when the XHTML isn't well-formed, which is really just a strict / validate-my-syntax mode you can opt into.
In either case, I agree!
I think you're confusing XHTML and semantic web on the "break web pages" part.
At the point in time when I disabled notifications for the app, it did not. I tried that. Even after navigating dark patterns, digging into the menus, and turning those options off, I still received promotion notifications.
Perhaps they've fixed it since? I don't know because they've already burned my trust and they've done nothing to earn it back. Publicly acknowledging and apologizing for this would have been a way to start getting off my list of bad actors.
Even if they've made it possible to successfully turn those off deep in the menus now, whatever dreamed-up definition of "opted in" it's operating under is a tortured legalistic one that undermines the actual meaning and spirit of opting in.
Push button light switches that had two circular buttons with this behavior also used to be extremely common.
Uber violates this. At least as of a few years ago, there was no way to get notifications about driver arrival without also getting special offer and Uber Eats spam notifications periodically. Not only was there no opt-in consent, there was no way to turn them off without disabling the status updates.
It's particularly bad when apps with legitimate time-sensitive functionality do this.
I denied the app the ability to send any notifications on principle, and now it's very annoying to have to check the app to see the driver status. It makes things worse for both me and them and I use it less as a result.
For many, and hopefully increasingly more and more of us, time and attention can be more valuable than money.
Manipulating our behavior to develop familiarity with a product by seeding the habit of using it as an ad-clicking serf and nurturing that habit by drawing it out across a series of days as the means of acquiring security for our tools and information is a coercive and corrosive exchange.
It's designed to seem like such a small thing that it's benign, as if attention is worth infinitely less than money. By changing us, forming new and often bad habits, and extracting ongoing attention interest payments without us noticing, the cost can end up being far greater.
Missing vertical taskbar is probably the most egregious omission, but it's not so much they took it away as it is they created versions of a number of Windows Explorer components in a higher-level technology without implementing half the features and shipping it with 50x the number of bugs. I at least weekly (and often daily) run into issues with taskbar icons overlapping one another, menus not coming up when clicked, the tray icons breaking, etc.
Same story with navigating the file system--the new implementation has a multitude of issues, including getting into a state where clicking files to select them only works below a certain invisible horizontal line in the window, windows not refreshing when files have been added/removed, trying to rename a file you just copied being an exercise in frustration with the view refreshing and exiting the rename state 5 - 10 seconds after the copy, the address bar breaking in about a dozen different ways... it's really frustrating software that's a full few tiers down from the quality standard set by Windows 10 and previous versions.
It's gotten slightly better since the initial Windows 11 release, but it still feels like pre-release quality software. I was hoping they'd get it up to release quality and add the important features back by the sunset of Windows 10, but it looks like Microsoft really doesn't care about the quality of the experience of using their UI.
If it were only missing the vertical taskbar as a design decision that would be one thing, but instead it's the very obvious tip of an iceberg of lack of user focus, care, quality, resourcing, and skill. They don't add it back because they know in their current state they're not going to do it well, and the money's in dreaming up new ways of force-feeding trash "news" and promotions anyway, not in helping you get things done and providing a well-functioning tool and bicycle for the mind. What if someone put the taskbar on the left side of the screen, it interfered with them seeing the clickbait brainrot of the widgets "feature", and Microsoft didn't get its average $.0003 for each interaction?
iPhone Pro can transfer at up to 20 Gbps
Citation/proof strongly needed on 20 Gbps
Fully denying internet access for an app is actually in iOS and has been there for many years.
But it's only available in China.
https://tinyapps.org/blog/202209100700_ios_disable_wifi_per_...
Similarly to making so many of the playlists "made for you", they've completely ruined the "radio" feature. You used to be able to select the radio option on a song, artist, or playlist and get a playlist of songs that seemed to be a good mix of musically similar and being liked by people who liked the selected starting point.
Starting at some point around 2 years ago (it seems they A-B tested this for a while because it went back and forth), the radio option became so highly customized to your user account that most songs it plays will be ones you've heard a billion times, even songs that aren't remotely similar in any way other than that you like them.
And the playlist radio option, which was the most powerful one for discovery, has been completely removed.
I used the radio option for years to discover new music, and I really loved it. Now I feel a twinge of sadness mixed with rage when my memories of the good days get me to open Spotify and I remember what it's become.
Blog post on wordpress.org concerning this: https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/secure-custom-fields/
Not in the BitLocker configurations I've seen over the last few days. The file is deletable as a local administrator in safe mode without the BitLocker recovery key in at least some configurations.
The BitLocker configurations I've seen over the last few days don't require the recovery key to enter safe mode.
The "store 2 bits of information" approach Apple was moving exploring would solve at least a lot of that case. You could effectively store 3 pieces of information: 00 = default state, 01 = used free trial, 10 = banned, 11 = something else the developer wants to store about the iOS profile. You don't need to be able to uniquely identify it to ban it.
It's not specific to iCloud Keychain--it applies to on-device Keychain on iOS devices, too, even if you don't use iCloud. Any developer can store data there with no way for the user to know or see what it's saving, and it's shared among all apps from the same developer. Keychain is quite a misnomer here--it's really "store any (short) data you want on a user's device without them ever being able to see or remove it". It transfers when you restore backups on new devices, too, even if you haven't had the developer's apps installed in the last decade.
This is an issue because if you ever use an app by a company, uninstall all their apps, and then install one of the developer's apps years later, they can tell it's the same iOS profile (even restored on a different device), profile what you do across those apps/installs/decades, and associate any accounts you log in with. Essentially they can put a permanent cookie that you can't even see on your iOS profile that's shared between their apps. If you use iCloud Keychain, they can probably profile you across all your devices regardless of whether you reset one.
Apple has said this isn't intended functionality and they were going to address the issue many years ago in iOS 10.3 by removing Keychain data when the last app from a developer was uninstalled [1], but they got cold feet. If I recall correctly, the reason was that some app developers were relying on this unintended functionality to ensure free trials couldn't be used more than once. Apple was going to introduce a service that could store only 2 bits of data to enable that use case and then revisit Keychain deletion when the last app from a developer is uninstalled, but it appears they haven't.
It would be great if they'd finally fix this.
iOS actually does have a separate "internet access" permission for apps, but it's only available for devices sold in China.
Canada models have a SIM slot, but they don't support 5G mmWave bands.
If you don't care about mmWave 5G... and there are other bands missing as well.
Can QR codes for eSIMs be sold like traditional SIMs? I haven't actually gone through the eSIM registration process, but I assumed this should be possible.
This prevents my day 1 purchase as well. My US carrier (Verizon Prepaid) doesn't support eSIM yet, and I don't want a postpaid plan. I see absolutely no reason removing the SIM slot at this time is in customers' interests.
Getting a model from Canada is an option, but those don't support mmWave 5G, and I'm often in areas where I'd actually use it.
Right before checking HN, I'd spent a few hours thinking about how to approach this very problem!
Where are you fetching or how are you determining the track IDs for each service? Is it a simple metadata search through each API, are you using some of the reference data from Musicbrainz, or is there another good source of these relationships available?
The Echo Nest used to have a great open-access API for cross-referencing track IDs called Rosetta Stone. Unfortunately, Spotify discontinued it a few years after acquiring The Echo Nest.
While I understand why the streaming platforms might think it's in their interests to make cross-service track relationships difficult to determine, I'm disappointed that Spotify shut down a useful service that really helped music lovers. From some brief searching earlier today, it looks like no one has taken up the mantle yet.
Now what's the matter buddy, ain't you heard of my school? It's #1 in the state!
People have been true to their schools since at least 1963.
Most sites aren't web apps--they're content-based, with text, pictures, and links. Progressive enhancement makes the most sense for the majority of content on the web.
Web applications are certainly useful in some contexts, and progressive enhancement may not be the best approach if your application requires a lot of extended interaction. But building a web app to display primarily text- and picture-based articles and documents is misguided, and it does web users a disservice.
Ultimately this is moot as you can't get around your font & rendering fingerprints that can be extracted from a hidden canvas element, but hey. Still better than serving it up in a platter.
This has some work to be done still, but it's a start in regard to blocking hidden canvas elements: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/canvasblocker
Hi, and thanks for your reply!
I certainly agree with you that some people are not going to keep a small inventory of common drugs, others can't be bothered to take more than one pill, and a few cannot successfully manage that sort of combination.
On the other hand, though, I think there are a lot of people who would like to learn more in order to make the best choice about what drugs they take, and the branded combination solutions really end up muddying their conceptions of these medicines. I know a number of people who just buy whatever they've decided is their favorite variety of DayQuil when they're feeling sick during the day (you're quoted relating similar experience in the article), and I know a number more who don't realize there are major differences between traditional Alka Seltzer and the proliferation of their cold products. The brands and the proliferation undermine people's ability to concentrate on the drugs they're taking, and they mentally give up on figuring the situation out and determining the best medical choice (especially if they also consider the cost and branded/generic elements of the equation).
The identification with brands rather than the actual drugs is likely the largest problem, especially now that each long-existing drug manufacturer sells combinations of the various drugs under their own name. I wouldn't mind seeing these companies have to devote the top 1/3 of the front of their boxes to a large, unadorned list of the product's active ingredients.
I think people who would like to be more informed consumers, but who struggle because of the current setup, are underaccounted for. I think there are many people who would love an inexpensive pack of 50 of each of these generic drugs to keep a small inventory at home, and who would be perfectly capable of managing it.
While it may be easy for a doctor who is familiar with these medicines to erroneously assume that they are very familiar to others, I think it is also easy for a doctor to not give patients enough credit in being engaged with their health treatment and being willing to spend a small amount of time and effort becoming familiar with a few extremely common drugs.
How often are people, on average, mildly sick in their adult lives? About once per year? How often do they care for others who are sick? These drugs are incredibly common, they are relatively simple, and people are likely to have a lot of contact with them over a lifetime. I think greater familiarity with them would be very useful in the average life, and I think an education effort would provide a lot of health value, even so little as starting with a simple reference in the store.
I am not a medical doctor or a pharmacist, and my list above is from memory (except for spelling). Perhaps I have engaged in the care of illness slightly more than average, but it didn't take a medical text to learn this stuff. It just took some concern over what I was giving myself/others and whether it was appropriate for me/them, and then a small bit of reading. This is an issue I care about because it seems to me the ill are victims in a corporate marketing game where the outcome is often someone sick ending up with an inappropriate product.
Another part of what bothers me about the combination setup is that many people are getting acetaminophen when they don't need it, or even when it could be bad for them. For instance, when I enter "stuffy nose" and "trouble sleeping" into the site, I get products with diphenhydramine, phenylephrine, and... acetaminophen, even though it's not needed for the symptoms. When it is needed for the symptoms, I bet a lot of people take extra tylenol when they have a headache, anyway. Many would be better off with ibuprofin, but in many combinations it's not an option.
I think your project is a very helpful improvement over the status quo, and I'm glad you made it and that it's available! I'll certainly recommend it to my "DayQuil" friends, and someone looking for relief in the store is much more likely to find it with your site than by a first-time confrontation with the cacophony on the cold shelf. My suggestion would be not to discount that people might like--and be capable of--getting down to the basics of each medicine. It's really not hard, and I hold out hope that, contrary to Internet rumors, some people still have some patience and the ability to remember a few things!
It's very interesting that the project has some advanced notice about a threat.
My first guess would be that a nation has made some demands of the project that the project won't comply with, and that country has suggested they will seize the directory authority servers located inside it if the demands aren't met soon. [Edit: a new comment by arma on the original story, "To be sure to keep our source safe, we're not providing more details quite yet", makes this seem less likely.]
Or perhaps an insider has leaked some plans to the project.
Along another line of thought, if the US government wanted to further complicate online privacy, I imagine they'd choose a time like now, when headlines about the "cyber intrusions" of 2014 are at a peak. I wonder what other actors could have large enough power over their directory authority servers for the project to post this message.
Edit: Indeed, from a post below by paralelogram [0] and by checking https://atlas.torproject.org , it appears 4 of 9 are in the US. There are also two in Germany, one in the Netherlands (as well as another there that is only for bridge relays), one in Austria, and one in Sweden.
The information asymmetry and confusion factor are worst in that all these products have just a few ingredients, in my opinion. While the branded/generic price difference is an important issue, I think a larger one is that the huge volume of products takes attention away from the fact that there are only a few basic components, leading many to buy inappropriate products or products with too many components that can cause side effects that could easily be avoided.
People without some prior knowledge of the basic drugs must have a very difficult time walking into a store and choosing the product with the drugs they need without some of the ones they don't. I imagine many people are totally overwhelmed by the product selection and they just pick something, which they then turn to each time they're feeling sick. It's more difficult than normal to perform an assessment of products at the store when you're sick, and the store presentation only makes things more difficult. Even knowing something about these products and knowing exactly what I want, I sometimes find it time-consuming to locate the single-ingredient products among all the endless combinations, especially when they're out of stock.
Things would be so much simpler if stores posted some type of reference. I'm not an expert in the field, but it's such a pet peeve of mine that I've memorized the basics. Here's a start:
Fever/pain -> Relieve:
ibuprofin
acetaminophen [avoid if you have liver problems]
naproxen
aspirin
Nasal congestion -> Reduce:
pseudoephedrine [quite effective, but the pharmacy must be open; prepare to provide identification, sign, possibly be questioned / receive a dirty look, and have your purchase be entered into a federal database]
phenelyphrine [of questionable effectiveness]
Coughs -> Make more productive at clearing congestion:
guaifenesin
Coughs -> Suppress:
dextromethorphan
Trouble sleeping / allergic sensitivity -> Relieve:
doxylamine [slightly better for sleeping than allergies]
diphenhydramine [slightly better for allergies than sleeping]
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the combination products, but it really seems their general effect confuses rather than clarifies, which seems to me to be part of the reason for the design and proliferation.
The author of this piece seems to have similar feelings:
...I can't see myself using it, because I usually keep generic single-drug products around. A family, or a sickness-inclined person living alone, could very reasonably keep the five aforementioned individual generic medications in their medicine cabinet and address the symptoms as they arise. I think that's easier than messing with combination products, and usually cheaper. Especially if you consider that you're not taking medications you don't need.
I tried to convince Angelotti that's the way to go, but she was adamant that many or even most people really like to take one pill that addresses all of their symptoms. "I don't know if people will be likely to have their own inventory of generic over-the-counter medications in their homes," she said.
I think a simple list like this, preferably easily visible in the store, and some better organization in stores would do people a much greater service than the app the article discusses.
We legally mandate airbags, abs, esr, and a host of other safety features in cars ... you simply don't have the option to turn off ...
That's incorrect. New cars can't be sold without some of these safety features, but as far as I'm aware, there's no law preventing a buyer from dismantling them. I think that's an important difference--it's one thing to regulate what a large industry can sell, but a completely different thing to regulate someone's activities with their own property.