Hacker News: MerlinDE

New comment by MerlinDE in "Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers"

MerlinDE — Sun, 24 May 2026 08:11:27 +0000

This move has nothing to do with usability or device capabilities or software support. The only reason for turning them off is to remove a hole in their DRM. These old devices allowed you to remove the copy protection from their books (hardly anyone else uses DRM these days anymore). Removing the old devices makes freeing your books from DRM just much harder.

New comment by MerlinDE in "Smartphones and being present"

MerlinDE — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 05:59:07 +0000

There are several useful apps available for iOS that work as Safari extensions handling that kind of stuff. Banish is very useful, as well as Hush. In addition Opener allows you to chose if links shall open the respective app or just stay in the browser.

New comment by MerlinDE in "Apple has announced its final version of macOS for Intel"

MerlinDE — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 07:41:19 +0000

I have tried it and must say it just doesn’t work well enough. Too high latency, video calls are impossible and you regularly run into arbitrary issues. I ended up buying a standalone monitor again.

New comment by MerlinDE in "Apple's bright idea for CSAM scanning could start persecution on a global basis"

MerlinDE — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 13:55:13 +0000

Anti child abuse measures are regularly utilized to push for measures you otherwise can‘t establish. Most of the time surveillance and censorship. Just look back 10+ years to Germany, where „Zensursula“ tried to establish DNS blocking for the media industry by arguing for child safety. The approach is always the same. Just this time, Apple has so many devices in the market, that if this succeeds we‘ll all be headed for surveillance disaster.

Given that fact that Snowden’s revelations didn’t generate ANY actions within the public, I doubt to see any actions this time.

New comment by MerlinDE in "Ask HN: What is your favorite ergonomic chair/desk"

MerlinDE — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 14:59:57 +0000

The chair is only one part (e.g. the formidable HermanMiller Cosm only works if you have a table at the perfect height for you). The table is also super important. I‘ve recently switched to an Eliot (https://eliotfurniture.com/) that you can electrically move up and down to enable working in standing and sitting positioning. That made a much bigger difference to me than just a new chair. Switching multiple times a day from sitting to standing and back is such an improvement. I wouldn’t want to go back to all day sitting!

New comment by MerlinDE in "iPhones are hard to use"

MerlinDE — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 10:54:59 +0000

Most of the points in this article are just wrong (e.g. font size asked for and configured during initial setup; WiFi alerts are not enabled by default).

Apart from that, I agree that iOS has too many hidden features and — first and foremost — too many interactions that you must know exist and you can’t find by just glancing at the screen (which is defined as mandatory in Apple‘s User Interface Guidelines).

So, yes, their products get worse. But, no, not like described in this article.

New comment by MerlinDE in "Patent troll asks judge to turn off FaceTime and iMessages"

MerlinDE — Sat, 28 May 2016 09:59:27 +0000

Why not just revolutionize patent laws? Make it only applicable if the patent is used for a real product available on the market. That would make patent trolling unattractive.

New comment by MerlinDE in "Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator"

MerlinDE — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:28:45 +0000

Would be great, if you could include whole articles in the RSS feed. Making it easier to read it offline, on the go.

Also a more flexible layout, better suiting devices with limited screen sizes (read mobile, aka iPod/Pad/Phone) would be great.