Hacker News: melff

New comment by melff in "Chrome extension manifest V2 phase-out postponed until 2024"

melff — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 16:26:28 +0000

Can't wait until MV2 is gone in Chrome, I'm curious how much this will diminish real-world effectiveness of ad blockers and if that'll bring browsers that maintain the features ad blockers like to use a bit more market share.

New comment by melff in "There's something off about LED bulbs"

melff — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 15:40:18 +0000

Well, I'd guess for most people it doesn't matter whether the LED-chips themselves, capacitors, or some other part of the circuitry fails. If cost-cut cheap LED bulbs with components driven to the max are the norm, consumers will obviously associate LED bulbs with the kind of problems that causes and not with what LED tech could be if it'd be given more budget to breathe.

New comment by melff in "Google refuses to reinstate account after man took medical images of son’s groin"

melff — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 23:43:55 +0000

yes it is, and I agree their home page is shit. I downloaded it trough F-Droid and didn't really background check it, maybe you wanna take a look at their repo: https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore

New comment by melff in "Google refuses to reinstate account after man took medical images of son’s groin"

melff — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 16:17:50 +0000

I think how error prone the system is shouldn't matter, even it it was absolutely perfect, this is an dystopian privacy invasion.

New comment by melff in "Google refuses to reinstate account after man took medical images of son’s groin"

melff — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 16:15:24 +0000

You can use "Aurora Store" to download apps without a google account, I use that on lineageOS

New comment by melff in "Google refuses to reinstate account after man took medical images of son’s groin"

melff — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 16:07:07 +0000

If you're concerned about your privacy I'd advise against just trying to disable uploading but still giving your photos to apps you don't trust, primarily because of possible future implementation of client-side scanning(they are making steps to mandate that for messengers in the EU atm, for example).

AFAIK android phones upload all sorts of data to google by default, my recommendation is to install a custom ROM (like lineageOS), that will rid you of a lot of these privacy violators without dealing with them individually. If you don't want to do that, avoid google services/apps entirely for anything that you don't trust them with. I'm not familiar with google photos(never used it for (now) obvious reasons), and I don't know what features you need, so I can't really give recommendations on that specifically.

New comment by melff in "Google refuses to reinstate account after man took medical images of son’s groin"

melff — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 15:37:46 +0000

This kind of stuff is one reason why it should be illegal for platforms to censor at will, it should be possible to sue them for censoring stuff they shouldn't be censoring just as it is for not censoring stuff they should be censoring. No matter how much they like to say they are fReEEeE pRiVAte eNTErpRiSes, they provide de-facto public spaces(public as in accessible to the broad public, not as in government-run) and should be treated as such. They shouldn't have the power to be legislative and judiciary of public communication.

New comment by melff in "Google refuses to reinstate account after man took medical images of son’s groin"

melff — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 15:15:05 +0000

Why? Why should be fight for legal recourse first before we tackle the real problem? (At least in this context, legal recourse for unwarranted service termination can also be useful for things unrelated to scanning of private data, but that's not the point) This sounds like the "step back" in the "two steps forward, one step backwards" ideom.

New comment by melff in "Germany: New government plans 'right to encryption'"

melff — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 23:40:23 +0000

good point

New comment by melff in "Ask HN: Apple revoked developer account for 2.5 years and counting"

melff — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 23:37:00 +0000

moving everything into the browser is a bad fix for broken software distribution.

New comment by melff in "Ask HN: Apple revoked developer account for 2.5 years and counting"

melff — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 23:22:54 +0000

Well what you encountered here is IMHO a problem of power, not a problem with your App, guidelines, your marketing, or whatever. The problem is that a third party has the power to stop your customers from using your software. Many people don't have a problem with that until they are negatively affected by it: It's fine to block [insert whatever kind of shitty software you don't like], it's for the users own good afterall.

You are under apples control on the iOS market. And, in my opinion, that's a bad thing. We should try to denormalize this kind of power.

To answer your question: I don't think you can do anything about that especially since your app(judging form the other comments here on HN) ended up on the wrong side of history.

This situation reminds me of a nice little poem by Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

New comment by melff in "Germany: New government plans 'right to encryption'"

melff — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 21:16:25 +0000

Yeah, that's pretty much a "Karteileiche" though, nobody takes that law seriously. This has less to do with germany being overly restrictive in that domain and more with incompetence: The law says something like "possessing hardware/software suitable for hacking is illegal" those who have written this law probably barely knew what software even is. They wanted to make sure they can get those evil "hackers" convicted but misunderstood the nature of what they are dealing with.

New comment by melff in "Germany: New government plans 'right to encryption'"

melff — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 20:52:48 +0000

The Google Translation is accurate in this case, it's just as vague in German as it is in English

New comment by melff in "Germany: New government plans 'right to encryption'"

melff — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 20:42:02 +0000

I agree that a lot of theses restrictions are serous restrictions to civil liberties, but they are not fascistic in nature and our attitude towards the government is quite different than the attitude of ppl from the USA towards their government. I see the power of social media platforms and political radicalization as greater problems than pressure or even mandates for vaccines. What bugs be though is that when people voiced concerns about "indirect vaccine mandates"(=pressuring people to get vaccinated by excluding them from social gatherings, etc) the political mainstream claimed that that won't happen and that that are just right-wing conspiracy theories. I think these kinds of lies smell far more like fascism than vaccine mandates themselves

New comment by melff in "Germany: New government plans 'right to encryption'"

melff — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 20:09:47 +0000

I think the main issues are polarization and the two party political landscape for you guys across the pond. Don't forget that the grass often seems greener on the other side, we here in germany also have a lot of polarization going on esp. in recent times. Also these coalition agreements are not reliable, politicians talk a lot if the day is long, we'll have to wait and see what actually comes of it.

New comment by melff in "Ask HN: Is discrimination to promote diversity okay?"

melff — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 22:28:52 +0000

To correct for under-/overrepresented groups you need to change your hiring decision based on the groups of the applicants. And preferring hiring based on these groups (sex, race, etc) is sexism and racism in my books.

New comment by melff in "Ask HN: Is discrimination to promote diversity okay?"

melff — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 22:11:01 +0000

> and [I] use my influence to help correct that as much as possible without sacrificing operational readiness.

So racism/sexism is okay as long as it doesn't hurt operational readiness? Or do you not consider this racism/sexism, if so how are hiring decisions based on race/sex not racist/sexist?

New comment by melff in "Ask HN: Is discrimination to promote diversity okay?"

melff — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 21:56:03 +0000

> certain radical ideologies do not acknowledge neutrality

So what? Why can't we acknowledge neutrality because some other people don't?

New comment by melff in "Ask HN: Is discrimination to promote diversity okay?"

melff — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 21:34:31 +0000

> You're part of the problem.

Not actively pushing back against something doesn't make one "part of the problem". It makes one a bystander, and no, bystanders are not part part of the problem they are neutrals. They could be more "helpful" for our cause if they where not, but they are not part of the problem, they are "untapped potential" if you will.

This kind of rhetoric bullies people into action and even tough I agree that we should push back in this case, this kind of bullying is not okay.

New comment by melff in "Let’s build a global power grid (2015)"

melff — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 21:07:57 +0000

hmm..., making critical infrastructure directly dependent on other (possibly hostile) nations sounds like a good idea. What could possibly go wrong?

Btw, didn't china had widespread outages due to market failures recently? If so calling china "the world leader in the development and deployment of grid technology" seems... let's say a bit off.