gdmka

And the free version is really, really good too, and then a premium version is $20/year which is very reasonably priced.

I've been paying a flat $10 since 2022. Today, I got an email saying my renewal price goes up to $20 plus tax, which totals $25. The loyal member 25% discount just eliminates the tax for me.

Given that all I've used it for is password and login storage and TOTP all these years, I don't find a 200% price increase to be reasonable. I've cancelled the premium, I can run my TOTP somewhere else.

The main problem with why mobile apps aren't very convenient is that even on Octal, in heated debates on HN it becomes extremely difficult to read nested comment threads. Personally, I lack focus when a parent comment generates a comment tree with deep nesting on the web, let alone on mobile clients.

What's really missing is a userscript like on imageboards where under each comment there's a link showing who replied to it, with auto expansion preview of in depth reply hierarchy. But honestly, it's not that hard to do now. Just give the task to Codex or Claude Code.

For those seeking ways to track replies to their messages, HNRSS[0] exists.

I don't even visit HN, I just pull the filtered RSS feed, and engage where I feel I'm interested or can provide value.

[0] https://hnrss.github.io/#reply-feeds

For macOS, there is native SwiftUI Voxa[0]. By the looks of it, it has been unmaintained since the last time I tried it.

Honestly, after the story with Reddit and Apollo, building a third party client is a risk. TOS can change any moment, and if it is not the TOS, the API access can get metered or monetized.

[0] https://github.com/voxa-org/Voxa

Lots of valid points in the article.

What I like about Brave Search is the quality of its AI answers compared to rivals. For quick fact-checks, it's pretty decent when I only need to extract 1-2 sentences.

Best thing of Brave search was to adopt the bang[0] syntax. It really helps to quickly redirect to YouTube, DDG, IMDB and Google when needed.

Regarding Gmail, I've read so many Google account suspension horror stories out here, that I'm legitimately scared to loose access if I do anything out of the ordinary. So I shifted from Gmail as my primary email service.

I paid for Proton mail for about a year, but the most basic paid account is very limited for my needs. Ended up purchasing Migadu Micro and a domain. The ability to own a domain and an email service is very underrated.

Catch-all is an absolutely must have for any decent mail service, yet, impossible with dedicated mail services such as Gmail or Proton. And there’s no better way to combat spam and unsolicited emails than server-side bouncing.

[0] https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/4410152384781-Wh...

Yep, I've used the € sign for a reason, to make sure people won't get confused.

The article goes into considerable detail about the EU tech industry. My comment relates to that context.

I also want to note, that EPP isn't the correct term here. For US, EPP would mean Manufacturer Employee Purchase Programs for New Products with a discount. Like, if you work for HP, you can purchase a product it manufactures at a discount price for your personal use.

The EU practice that I was mentioning is called IT Asset Disposition through employer to employee disposal program[0]. I don't believe big companies in the US get involved in employer to employee ITAD for lots of reasons. But in EU, it's a thing, much to my surprise.

[0] https://www.mddp.pl/disposal-of-used-equipment-by-an-employe...

Throughout my career I’ve run into this approach a couple of times. All in all, it’s a fairly unusual practice—I was surprised myself.

I'd add that companies write off their equipment investment over a 3-5 year depreciation period. After that, when the laptops reach EOL, employees can often buy them through the company's EPP (employee purchase program) usually for just the fair market value, which might be a couple hundred € or sometimes even less.

So, eventually they recoup the equipment costs, wouldn't get surprised if they even make a profit out of it sometimes.

First thing they do, they write off VAT (20-23% of laptop price). Then at the EOL, they just set the EPP price to the higher market value. And return the cost.

Wonderful!

I also run a Hugo blog, running on a very old version. I'll be honest, I'm tired of editing it in VS Code with the Markdown Rendering on the side.

I was looking for something new, completely separate. Really hoping this project will work for my needs too. Thank you so much!

>Microsoft did brain teasers like "How many ping pong balls fit on a bus?" questions. Then Google copied that to start. Google later realized that performance on these questions didn't predict performance on the job and developed a more data-driven approach that you see today (leetcode style) that other companies copy today.

I'm curious how did they realize that ping pong bus questions didn't predict performance. Was that just based on negative candidate feedback or they pulled the spreadsheets to realize they are below the hiring quotas.

Well... if you assume safety is basic human right as well then this is relevant[0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Saint_Kitts_and_Nev...

My point is he's accustomed to cutting corners.

>Fighting an obviously lost right against SKN and jeopardizing your whole life sounds even more stupid than fighting windmills.

He could've applied for maltese or cypriot passport.

I don't feel like he's living in an exile.

For starters, the citizenship that was acquired for $ 250k something is from Saint Kitts and Nevis, known for it's abuse of human rights. To me it's a classical double standard behavior.

He's vocal on not being able to conduct business in Russia as he pleases and it's a clear violation in his purview. Never heard him being involved with fighting inequity of the new home country.

Second of all, Saudi Arabia, the unofficial Telegram HQ, is tax exempt for hi-tech, but don't quote me on it.

You guys aren't seeing the bigger picture.

TG LLC got 1.7 bil USD with two rounds of investment. US based investors are returned 72% of original fund. Those 28% are 500 mil USD.

It's rumored that TG CEO got 300 mil selling his share of VK, so in the end he returned all personal investment on TG development. Who's behind all those funds, private investors etc. How many of those are under US sanctions really?

And now, upon failing to submit the reasonable paperwork even thought they had quite expensive and experienced lawyers, Pavel suddenly calls for unban in Russia. Like a week later a legislation appears and almost immediately after that the deal is done.

Reconciliation happened unbelievably quick. Or his words have so much power now?

Just think Crypto AG serving the purposes of BND and CIA when you talk about Telegram.

Thank you!

This is exactly one of the reasoning pillars i'm using in arguments about the "innocuous" nature of telemetry and tracking.

Any new product that collects telemetry/does tracking requires storage that is bought and connected to a power source with high availability given it performs I/O all the time.

> Since when does the telemetry even send out any contents of any files?

To me it's not evident otherwise until i'm capable of observing bare data itself. Not obfuscated, not in some proprietary format to secure it in-transport but the raw stuff. MS states there's no reliable way to let people see the data being collected (even under GDPR) as there's no sing-in experience provided.[0]

While a part of the statement is true, most of privacy conscious VSC users aware that every installation of the product has a unique `machineId` property. Can be located at Output -> Log (Shared).

The [0] provides some elaboration:

"We do send information that helps us approximate a single user for diagnostic purposes (this is based on a hash of the network adapter NIC) but this is not guaranteed to be unique. For example, virtual machines (VMs) often rotate NIC IDs or allocate from a pool. This technique is sufficient to help us when working through problems, but it is not reliable enough for us to 'provide your data'."

So, given the premise the user can be identified by a NIC plus a machineId (which looks to be an UUID) — it's easy to get access to collected data. As soon as ability to verify no really critical data is collected, i'll switch back from VSCodium.

[0]https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/telemetry

>I have zero personal information in the IDE and all the code I work on is already in the public domain with an open source license, so why should I care?

Off the top of my head: API tokens and other credentials that live right in the file while you develop and debug.

Those are quite sensitive. To put more wight on the issue[0]

[0] https://medium.com/@stestagg/stealing-secrets-from-developer...

>You are defending why phone numbers are useful, but are completely choosing to ignore the point I am making about the tradeoff of who you trust.

You're swiftly jumping to conclusions on a comment that only describes a point of view. Not my own perception of how the trust model should be established and the capabilities current messaging services provide.

>... but, being able to join some large group chat with a ton of strangers to talk about some open source project or whatever you are doing without any of those people now knowing your phone number--an identifier which is tied to a large number of "real world" concerns and is ridiculously difficult to change--is actually extremely valuable.

As someone who suffered harassment by getting the p/n exposed at Whatsapp and being followed by the same person almost everywhere where's it serves as an id (Signal, Telegram) i wholly share your concerns. But it's a privacy matter that almost none of the current messaging platforms really offers bundled with solid UX and data transparency.

What am i trying to convey by how i comprehend Moxie's rhetoric is that Signal tries to be a Whatsapp alternative (given the latter really can access messages in a group conversation when a participant reports contact) by not harvesting the user data (cheers Telegram) and providing little bit more control over the conversation on both ends (self destructing messages). Signal has bigger focus on security right now however the use case is to be accessible to a wider audience. From that point of view Signal really stands out. And it helps me personally to, sort of, separate communication spaces.

>Honestly, even if you aren't quite in those sets, the trade off still isn't an obvious win for Signal. As an example, let's say you are in a group of people talking about a protest.

Look, if you propose Signal needs to accommodate guerillas, rioters and protesters organize and act with impunity it's a privacy issue and Signal isn't serving this purpose.

According to Google Play it’s out[0]

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri...

Correct.

The extended emoji reactions were rolled out couple of days ago.

There were mentions of multi-device coming later on Twitter. While it's not the desired backup feature but a mean to duplicate data at least and backup with Android.

Moxie addressed the phone number issue[0].

To save time he mentions that owning a SIM card or a smartphone with a Contacts application that holds phone numbers is a portable social network by design.

Pushing his idea further it's much easier for anyone to learn the penetration of Signal by checking against existing phone numbers. I can't imagine someone with a 200+ phone numbers querying service to validate a phone number is registered with Signal.

And while nicknames sound perfect in theory they lack one specific thing — validation of authenticity of a speaker. By this i mean an impersonator can claim the username and pose as someone else. Given a lot of people use transparent nicknames on the internet, it can pose a threat. So even when the nicknames roll out as a feature of Signal, it's good to facilitate somehow that a party i'm in contact with is someone genuine. Checking against phone numbers can mitigate the risk of fraud.

[0] https://youtu.be/Nj3YFprqAr8

They will very likely not care about authorities to see our messages as they have nothing to hide from that perspective.

`Nothing to hide` isn't the point of my message but the willingness of Telegram to collaborate with 3rd parties be that for a good or bad cause is what concerned me. I already own a tool to get unsolicited messages — email.

Telegram isn't really a subject to compare to Signal.

I own a cellphone number for an Eastern European provider and had been using Telegram solely for news reader purposes. None of the people i communicate knows the number. Much to my surprise i learned that Telegram cooperates with local authorities, i would never found it out if not for COVID-19. The messages i got were addressing the precautions and regulations during the pandemic. While i appreciate the effort, i feel like it's a clear overreach on Telegram's part.

How do i know it was Telegram rather than the authorities themselves? The sender information clearly stated the sender was Telegram (same as a chatbox created to inform on What's new), i've got a push notification even though push notifications were app level turned off.

Can't imagine Signal compromising the trust of it's userbase by sending any sort of material that comes from the healthcare department of whatever country my phone number would be from.

Actually iOS can transfer message history to a new iPhone https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...

Not having a backup is seen as a disadvantage by many but i literally feel it's for the best. There's plenty of scenarios when parties benefit from it.

I love Signal. I've convinced a multitude of people to switch and some use it day to day currently, but mostly to talk to me. So i feel my contacts do it out of respect and `compatibility` of communication.

What baffles me is the the incompatible feature matrix.

First of all, for some reason iOS users get the updates faster than the Android. I was exploring emoji reactions yesterday while my Android contact admitted the feature was not yet available for his device. I had to double check with Play Store to confirm.

I've found peace with the sync issues for the desktop client though, it got much more stable compare to 8 months ago. What still feels like a massive UX problem is inability to forward messages on the desktop. Given, i have lots of people coming from different places that do not know each other but share same interests it's just painstaking to copy/paste the same URL five time in a row.

And at the same time, there's no support for the Android tablets as secondary devices.

For a person deep in Apple ecosystem it felt weird to learn that Android users don't share the same experiences i do. That makes the sales pitch to try Signal way less appealing for the Android folk.