Hacker News: DownrightNifty

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Molly (Signal fork) has not been updated since 3 months and is vulnerable"

DownrightNifty — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 18:13:32 +0000

To be fair, that sounds pretty bad?

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Molly (Signal fork) has not been updated since 3 months and is vulnerable"

DownrightNifty — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 16:53:12 +0000

Android 15+ has Private Space which is basically an additional work profile but managed by the system and not a third party app.

https://support.google.com/android/answer/15341885?hl=en

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Molly (Signal fork) has not been updated since 3 months and is vulnerable"

DownrightNifty — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 16:00:51 +0000

Under Signal's original leadership, there was definitely a hard stance against third party clients connecting to the network. I think they've been quiet on third party clients since Moxie left.

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Molly (Signal fork) has not been updated since 3 months and is vulnerable"

DownrightNifty — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 15:57:32 +0000

It's unlikely that their ToS would be enforceable in court. The fact that Apple never tried to sue Beeper speaks to this.

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Molly (Signal fork) has not been updated since 3 months and is vulnerable"

DownrightNifty — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 15:51:34 +0000

> Even if you change Signal's code to add a feature to export the DB, it apparently cannot see your DB, because iOS sandboxes that so that it is only visible to Signal builds signed with the Signal developers' keys.

This is not something exclusive to iOS; Android does the same thing.

New comment by DownrightNifty in "A Gallery of Installing from .dmg"

DownrightNifty — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:35:57 +0000

> they started forcing things to need to be in Applications

Since when?

Agree with your other points overall.

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Adding a feature to a closed-source app"

DownrightNifty — Wed, 06 May 2026 00:04:56 +0000

If you're gonna use Claude for writing in some capacity, this is definitely the way to do it. Thanks for not letting it write for you.

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Things Linux Can Do That Windows Still Can't"

DownrightNifty — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 21:42:54 +0000

> Many of those points reveal lack of knowledge about Windows administration capabilities.

Do those capabilities require a more expensive edition of Windows?

New comment by DownrightNifty in "GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple"

DownrightNifty — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:15:29 +0000

In what ways does LineageOS trail behind AOSP in terms of security? I looked at the comparison chart you linked elsewhere and the privacy/security sections only seem to list advantages over OEM Android (not AOSP), with the exception of secure boot [1], but AOSP (not OEM Android) doesn't have that out-of-the-box either. Unless you are comparing Lineage with OEM Android?

[1] https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

New comment by DownrightNifty in "The browser catches homograph attacks, the terminal doesn't"

DownrightNifty — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 17:12:57 +0000

They do provide installation commands for every platform that aren't vulnerable to homograph attacks due to GitHub not allowing Unicode characters in user/repo names :)

New comment by DownrightNifty in "The browser catches homograph attacks, the terminal doesn't"

DownrightNifty — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 16:10:33 +0000

But as the title of the post says, browsers already solved this problem.

https://www.xudongz.com/blog/2017/idn-phishing/

It does make running commands from an untrusted website a little safer, which is nice. I imagine it's not uncommon to copy installation scripts from random StackOverflow comments or blog posts, for example. But that's still not safe even with this tool. Homograph attacks aside, how can you tell if a URL you're pasting into your terminal is the official source for something? It's trivial to create fake GitHub accounts or organizations.

New comment by DownrightNifty in "The browser catches homograph attacks, the terminal doesn't"

DownrightNifty — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 15:21:18 +0000

A simpler solution: examine the URL displayed in the browser window before copying terminal commands from the page. E.g. "starts with github.com" -> "trusted GitHub UI indicates the repo is the official one for this project" -> "URL points to the official project README" -> "terminal commands are most likely not malicious, and if they are, there's a bigger problem here".

Of course, more secure installation methods should be preferred, but those are not always available. I am simply comparing the provided solution to homograph attacks with another solution to the same problem.

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Android’s desktop interface leaks"

DownrightNifty — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 04:59:08 +0000

The linked article seems to imply that this remains a good design choice even today:

> The use of this rule can be seen for example in MacOS, which always places the menu bar on the top left edge of the screen instead of the current program's windowframe.

I guess now that the browser is the one app you probably spend the most amount of time in, it might make a little less sense? Android's lack of a menu bar system makes it make very little sense there.

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone"

DownrightNifty — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 19:53:27 +0000

Wow, this is great. Would you mind if I reached out over email?

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Build iOS Apps on Linux and Windows"

DownrightNifty — Mon, 12 May 2025 21:17:48 +0000

True, it's far from ideal, and not entirely without Apple's approval. You need an Apple ID, to accept Apple's EULA (which probably forbids such activities), to accept the risk of your Apple ID being banned [1], to accept the risk of Apple breaking things (intentionally or not), and to continue asking Apple's server for new signatures every week into the foreseeable future.

Still better than nothing, for those already fully immersed in the Apple ecosystem, with no hope of escape? (I still use and recommend Android, but I have a spare iPad to play around with, so I enjoy seeing stuff like this come out.)

[1] They recommend using a secondary Apple ID, which eliminates most of the risk: https://swiftpackageindex.com/xtool-org/xtool/1.10.1/documen...

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Build iOS Apps on Linux and Windows"

DownrightNifty — Sun, 11 May 2025 22:34:15 +0000

Mega cool!

We should all be taking full advantage of the amazing capabilities of the pocket supercomputers we all carry around with us at all times (even if the companies who make them don't want us to or don't care about us). Anything less would be silly! Now Linux and Windows users (the majority of iPhone users) can do easily do so, and that's great.

To install your own personal homebrew apps without Apple's approval, use AltStore (Windows) or SideStore (Linux):

https://faq.altstore.io/altstore-classic/how-to-install-alts...

https://docs.sidestore.io/docs/installation/linux

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Lenovo May Be Avoiding 'Windows Tax' via Cheaper Laptops with Preinstalled Linux"

DownrightNifty — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 15:29:25 +0000

Most laptops run Linux, but few provide official support for it. The Gen 12 and 11 did, and you could get Linux pre-installed. But there's no "Linux" option on the Gen 13 store page.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Lenovo May Be Avoiding 'Windows Tax' via Cheaper Laptops with Preinstalled Linux"

DownrightNifty — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 01:05:27 +0000

The latest model X1 Carbon (Gen 13) doesn't appear to officially support Linux at this time, unfortunately.

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users"

DownrightNifty — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 03:31:10 +0000

Extra context I forgot to provide:

> RCS may require access to certain SIM card information, which only pre-installed apps can do

> because they don't want to implement RCS themselves.

Sounds like they can't implement RCS themselves even if they wanted to, not simply that Google doesn't provide an open source implementation? (Referring to app developers here, not custom ROM devs.)

New comment by DownrightNifty in "Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users"

DownrightNifty — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 01:09:31 +0000

> many developers are waiting for Google to add RCS to the same API that SMS/MMS already exposes because they don't want to implement RCS themselves.

Is that a planned feature? It's frustrating that third party messaging apps don't work with RCS. I hope we don't have to get the EU involved here...