Hacker News: arthurfm

New comment by arthurfm in "Scammers are abusing an internal Microsoft account to send spam links"

arthurfm — Sun, 24 May 2026 11:27:38 +0000

In the UK, banks like Starling, Monzo and Revolut (and building societies such as Nationwide) have added a call status feature in their apps [0][1][2] that tells you if they are actually the ones calling.

[0] https://www.starlingbank.com/news/starling-bank-launches-in-...

[1] https://monzo.com/help/monzo-fraud-category/monzo-call-statu...

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/articles/c1mj02vr0emo

New comment by arthurfm in "Using FireWire on a Raspberry Pi"

arthurfm — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:52:06 +0000

DVIO [0] and WinDV [1] would be the closest equivalents to dvgrab on Windows. Both are super easy to use (especially the former).

For HD DV tapes there's also HDVSplit [2].

[0] https://www.videohelp.com/software/DVIO

[1] https://www.videohelp.com/software/WinDV

[2] https://www.videohelp.com/software/HDVSplit

New comment by arthurfm in "Judge to Texas: You Can't Age-Gate the Internet Without Evidence"

arthurfm — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 10:33:00 +0000

In the UK all delivery apps [0][1][2] will prompt the driver/rider to ask for ID when the customer purchases age-restricted items like alcohol or cigarettes.

I am not sure why the apps don't get the customer to upload a photo of their ID once rather than get the delivery person to request it for every restricted order?

It wastes so much time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYEC_ooaC5A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILzfEaSiYf4

[0] https://riders.deliveroo.co.uk/en/delivering-alcohol

[1] https://help.uber.com/en-GB/ubereats/restaurants/article/how...

[2] https://courier-help.just-eat.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/103290...

New comment by arthurfm in "Nook Browser"

arthurfm — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 08:54:04 +0000

According to their FAQ, Nook is WebKit-based.

New comment by arthurfm in "BYD launches $15,000 EV"

arthurfm — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 04:55:01 +0000

There was a car dealer in the UK that had a buy one, get one free offer on the Dodge Avenger SXT in 2008. [0] Apparently there are only 107 left of that particular model on UK roads, with a further 36 cars classed as 'SORN' [1][2]. I reckon the latter are being used for parts.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/08/automotive-...

[1] https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/dodge_avenger_sxt

[2] https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/dodge_avenger_sxt_a

New comment by arthurfm in "Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector"

arthurfm — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 23:10:38 +0000

One of the easiest ways to do this is to use a HDMI display emulator [0]. Set the resolution to 1920x1080, move the content or presentation you want to share to the 'ghost' monitor and then share the entire second screen in your meeting app [1].

[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=display+emulator

[1] https://youtu.be/RA-XXvFHgEs

New comment by arthurfm in "French tax officials use AI to spot 20k undeclared pools (2022)"

arthurfm — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 11:58:02 +0000

Could the pool owners simply stick a hot and cold tap at one end and claim it is a large bath and not a swimming pool to avoid paying the tax? :)

New comment by arthurfm in "Vinyl Chloride and the Ohio Train Derailment"

arthurfm — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 00:49:11 +0000

Wendover Productions posted an interesting train-related video recently.

https://youtu.be/qQTjLWIHN74?t=466

It would appear that the issues with Amtrak can be traced back to freight rail as well. See 07:46 onwards for more details.

New comment by arthurfm in "LG 28-inch 16:18 DualUp Monitor"

arthurfm — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 19:56:14 +0000

Huawei's MateView 28.2" monitor too. It has a 3840 x 2560 resolution (which is slightly more than the 2560 x 2880 resolution of the LG DualUp), although sadly is not VESA mountable.

New comment by arthurfm in "7-zip 22.00 – APFS, Posix TAR, high precision timestamps"

arthurfm — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 05:24:06 +0000

Linux Foundation unveils Sigstore — a Let's Encrypt for code signing [1] [2]

> The Linux Foundation, Red Hat, Google, and Purdue have unveiled the free 'sigstore' service that lets developers code-sign and verify open source software to prevent supply-chain attacks.

> As demonstrated by the recent dependency confusion attacks and malicious typo-squatted NPM packages, the open-source ecosystem is commonly targeted for supply-chain attacks.

> To pull these attacks off, threat actors will create malicious open-source packages and upload them to public repositories using names similar to popular legitimate packages. If a developer mistakenly includes the malicious package in their own project, malicious code will automatically be executed when the project is built.

> To prevent these types of attacks, 'sigstore' will be a free-to-use non-profit software signing service that allows developers to sign open-source software and verify their authenticity.

> "You can think of it like Let’s Encrypt for Code Signing. Just like how Let’s Encrypt provides free certificates and automation tooling for HTTPS, sigstore provides free certificates and tooling to automate and verify signatures of source code."

[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/linux-foundat...

[2] https://www.sigstore.dev

New comment by arthurfm in "Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks"

arthurfm — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 04:07:17 +0000

> I have second-hand but reliable information about their security approach, and "laughable" doesn't begin to describe it.

Back in 2017 a security researcher found 40 zero-day vulnerabilities in Samsung's Tizen OS. [1][2]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/04/samsungs-tizen-is-ri...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/xy9p7n/samsung-tizen-operati...

New comment by arthurfm in "Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard"

arthurfm — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 02:21:29 +0000

> it was impossible to get the Series-X in the UK in the lead up to Christmas without paying scalpers

Not completely impossible. I managed to purchase an Xbox Series X directly from Amazon UK on 20th December. Amazon also had sufficient consoles in stock they were able to not run out for more than 12 hours [1].

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/23/22852161/xbox-series-x-a...

New comment by arthurfm in "Western Digital to Ship 20TB OptiNAND HDDs in November"

arthurfm — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 05:46:01 +0000

> how do you even "bin" something like this?

Number of bad sectors per drive?

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/4ingu0/how_man...

New comment by arthurfm in "Microsoft Edge Experimenting with a Super Duper Secure Mode"

arthurfm — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 07:30:29 +0000

In Edge Canary, Dev or Beta, go to:

    edge://flags/#edge-enable-super-duper-secure-mode

New comment by arthurfm in "What3Words sends legal threat to security researcher for sharing an alternative"

arthurfm — Mon, 03 May 2021 04:54:53 +0000

Using 'Free' could also be a nod to the fact that there are a lot of very similar sounding words in the What3Words system [1].

The What3Words word list is 40,000 words long. It is important that words in this list cannot be confused, otherwise they may be communicated incorrectly. For example band/banned, bare/bear, beat/beet are easily confused.

A quick inspection of their word list finds the following words that sound very, very similar to one another:

  equivalence   equivalents
  incidence     incidents
  incite        insight
  incompetence  incompetents
  independence  independents
  innocence     innocents
  instance      instants
  intense       intents
  lightening    lightning
  ordinance     ordnance

[1] https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-su...

New comment by arthurfm in "I guess I have to watch ads everywhere on my $1,500 LG TV now"

arthurfm — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 02:50:45 +0000

> The "problem" with the LG OLEDs is that webOS is actually quite good

You might change your mind once you see what LG have done with webOS 6.0. [1]

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/11/22223767/lg-webos-6-tv-so...

> LG says "the new home screen provides faster access to the most frequently used apps and streamlines content discovery with the ability to receive recommendations based on the user’s preferences and viewing history". You can see a big "sponsored" slot in the top left there, so yes, you can expect some ads and paid placement recommendations on the home screen of your future LG TV.

New comment by arthurfm in "London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing"

arthurfm — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 04:42:20 +0000

For comparison, here's a video filmed on Christmas day.

https://youtu.be/3RlQFy9WaBE

New comment by arthurfm in "What’s the best non-smart TV sold today?"

arthurfm — Sun, 27 Dec 2020 04:10:44 +0000

Open Source Scan Converter [1] or Analogue Super Nt [2].

[1] https://videogameperfection.com/products/open-source-scan-co...

[2] https://www.analogue.co/super-nt

New comment by arthurfm in "Show HN: DevUtils.app – Developer Utilities for macOS"

arthurfm — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 02:59:10 +0000

DevUtils reminds me of CyberChef [1][2]. The latter supports ~300 operations, is also open source and works entirely offline, but lacks the 'smart detect' feature of DevUtils since it's web-based.

[1] https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef

[2] https://github.com/gchq/CyberChef

New comment by arthurfm in "Show HN: Headless Recorder"

arthurfm — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 19:50:03 +0000

SikuliX [1] perhaps? It's an image-based automation tool.

[1] https://github.com/RaiMan/SikuliX1