Hacker News: benjaminoakes

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs"

benjaminoakes — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:13:13 +0000

I know you're right about Asia and Latin America, but should any one platform or person have that much power?

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Cal.com is going closed source"

benjaminoakes — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 14:43:16 +0000

I suspect that AI is a convenient excuse to go closed source. They have probably wanted to do that for years after leaning more commercial.

New comment by benjaminoakes in "DIY Soft Drinks"

benjaminoakes — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:29:39 +0000

I love this idea. However, I found the article difficult to read because the images are far too large in terms of file size.

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Caveman: Why use many token when few token do trick"

benjaminoakes — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 04:42:37 +0000

I was already part caveman in my messages to the LLM.

Now I full caveman.

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Our commitment to Windows quality"

benjaminoakes — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 02:11:03 +0000

I thought they delayed Leopard, not Snow Leopard...

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file"

benjaminoakes — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 19:12:26 +0000

Don't many financial transactions in US dollars get stored as integers anyway? The number of pennies, in other words.

Then just convert to dollars with a decimal place when needing to display, etc.

I recall this being pretty normal regardless of what database you use.

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move"

benjaminoakes — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 04:04:42 +0000

I'm happy to see this comment. Best of luck!

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move"

benjaminoakes — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 15:19:31 +0000

No problem. Honestly, I have this on my mind a lot these days. It feels like I'm being forced out of an apartment and I'm wondering where I'm going to put all my stuff. First I left the iPhone for what I thought was greener pastures on Android and now I'm finding that there's not a lot of great options that don't give Google or Apple complete control. What little trust I still had in Google has basically disappeared. We need open phones and I'm more willing than ever to buy one. And if that doesn't work with how carriers operate, I guess a dumber phone or a cheap smartphone just to do phone calls and data is what I'll do.

Anyway, for navigation, try out Organic Maps. It's not as good as Google Maps in some ways, but in other ways it's better. I'm honestly very impressed with it as an open source project. I think you have to use a Google signed version of it to run it on Android Auto though, but honestly, maybe it's better just to have a phone holder instead of the finicky Android Auto experience that at least I go through.

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move"

benjaminoakes — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 13:18:53 +0000

LineageOS? /e/OS? ArrowOS? Android has so much momentum that seems like it would be difficult to avoid a fork. I know Waydroid exists, but I'm not sure that's good enough. Ubuntu Touch sounds really cool too, but I've put effort into it with a used Google Pixel 3A and it's not an easy, cheap thing to try out right now. And it's still dependent on binary blobs for drivers, as far as I know. Not a great situation.

Regarding banking apps and things like that, I don't run into to any issues except for not being able to scan checks for deposit on the mobile website. And also I have to have physical credit cards. If you can't do what you need, consider changing to a local credit union which has your interests in mind far more than a for-profit bank.

I've never run into a need for apps for a government purpose, but perhaps I will someday.

I'm sure my situation where I live may be different than your situation where you live.

I don't use an open source fork of Android daily and from what I can tell the best option that exists today.

The only hardware that I know will continue to be open enough for this to be viable in the future is Fairphone. I hope there are others. I would definitely would NOT trust Google Pixel to remain open for the foreseeable future.

Personally, I'm trying to get out of the habit of using my phone anyway, so I might as well have laptop or desktop hardware that can fulfill my needs.

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Let me pay for Firefox"

benjaminoakes — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 16:36:08 +0000

Hard agree. I pay for monthly hosting like FreshRSS, Wallabag, etc and support the devs who make those projects. Privacy and developer support. And it's not that much.

Definitely interested in making Firefox, Thunderbird, etc sustainable too.

New comment by benjaminoakes in "I used o3 to profile myself from my saved Pocket links"

benjaminoakes — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 14:18:16 +0000

Something I've been working on: https://getoffpocket.com

I hope it can help you

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot"

benjaminoakes — Fri, 23 May 2025 19:43:26 +0000

Perhaps cheaper? https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag/wiki/wallabag-ecosystem...

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot"

benjaminoakes — Fri, 23 May 2025 19:42:33 +0000

Pocket has 85 public repositotories. If it's possible to host the entire thing, I bet it isn't simple. https://github.com/Pocket/

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot"

benjaminoakes — Fri, 23 May 2025 19:40:18 +0000

Related bit from my other comment:

> If you don't want to bother with self-hosting, there are some hosted options available: https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag/wiki/wallabag-ecosystem...

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot"

benjaminoakes — Fri, 23 May 2025 19:36:52 +0000

Related bit from my other comment:

> If you don't want to bother with self-hosting, there are some hosted options available: https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag/wiki/wallabag-ecosystem...

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot"

benjaminoakes — Fri, 23 May 2025 19:36:03 +0000

Related bit from my other comment:

> If you don't want to bother with self-hosting, there are some hosted options available: https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag/wiki/wallabag-ecosystem...

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot"

benjaminoakes — Fri, 23 May 2025 19:34:34 +0000

I'm glad people are mentioning Wallabag. It's open source and self-hostable, so it's not as likely to disappear on you. If you don't want to bother with self-hosting, there are some hosted options available: https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag/wiki/wallabag-ecosystem...

I've run Wallabag before but stopped around the time my son was born so I'd have more time to take care of him. And... I switched to Pocket. Oh well! I guess I'll switch back now, probably for good.

New comment by benjaminoakes in "The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available"

benjaminoakes — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 15:31:22 +0000

Given the lawsuits against Google from Sonos in the last 5 years, it doesn't seem to be low hanging fruit. Might not exist yet.

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Ask HN: Does anyone use sound effects in their dev environment?"

benjaminoakes — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 17:35:01 +0000

Related: Juice is the non-essential visual, audio and haptic effects that enhance the player's experience.

https://garden.bradwoods.io/notes/design/juice

New comment by benjaminoakes in "Vim users are encouraged to make a donation to ICCF"

benjaminoakes — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 20:46:50 +0000

Very happy to see so many people donating. Please share this post with others and encourage them to donate as well.