Hacker News: smokeypanda

New comment by smokeypanda in "The Liberty Phone"

smokeypanda — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 23:02:56 +0000

I'm sure economies of scale would bring down the price somewhat if the majority of the industry's manufacturing was done in developed countries.

New comment by smokeypanda in "Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser"

smokeypanda — Sat, 20 May 2023 03:39:48 +0000

Lightweight web browsers don't have as large of an attack surface, particularly if they eschew JS, cookies, etc or you disable them. Nyxt is alpha software, so YMMV until it's more feature complete, and independently audited to correctly implement WebKit and WebExtensions. Run Tor Browser without JS in a VM for security+privacy.

New comment by smokeypanda in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar (1999)"

smokeypanda — Mon, 15 May 2023 00:41:07 +0000

ESR is on record stating that the original focus of 'cathederal' was on GCC and Emacs, the terminology was applicable to proprietary software and top-down corporate cultures.

New comment by smokeypanda in "Judge decides against Internet Archive"

smokeypanda — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 07:25:47 +0000

Your first reading was correct. The ambiguity is whether the comment was referring 'we'(author is part of referenced group), or 'them'(author is describing disgruntled group), possessing the viewpoint that the overturning was bad.

New comment by smokeypanda in "Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)"

smokeypanda — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 21:22:21 +0000

That's a rather presumptive over-simplification of what effect software cracking had and has on employed programmers' livelihoods. It's not a direct 1 to 1 relationship between a cracked installation and lost sale, nor does piracy prevention guarantee market relevance. I don't condone consuming pirated software when OSS alternatives exist, but that's not out of sympathy to tech megacorps.

http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

New comment by smokeypanda in "Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?"

smokeypanda — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 02:38:34 +0000

Do any sources state that Valve transitioned to a traditional hierarchy? There's been reports of cliques and internal opaqueness going back a decade, but the only concrete difference I've heard versus pre-2012 is a shift towards microtransactions and hardware design.

New comment by smokeypanda in "Play Counter Strike 1.6, with full multiplayer, in the browser"

smokeypanda — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 07:02:05 +0000

There's also the iw4x project that brings community servers and patches to the 2009 Modern Warfare 2. The game mechanics, asinine matchmaking algorithm, map design, and monetization model of 2019+ Call of Dutys don't spark joy for those who grew up on 90's/00's PC multiplayer games.

New comment by smokeypanda in "What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?"

smokeypanda — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 20:47:57 +0000

Libertarianism and Austrian economics has a perception of outright rejecting empiricism and other rational thought, so I'd like to add a clarification. Libertarian theory doesn't deny naturally occurring downturns in economies, but that the severity and length of them are lessened without state mismanagement. Potentially, to the point that nation-spanning busts would be a thing of the past.

New comment by smokeypanda in "How Bungie identified a mass sender of fake DMCA notices"

smokeypanda — Sat, 25 Jun 2022 05:18:00 +0000

I don't have an expert understanding of how cookies or VPNs function, but these are the two categories of causes that I came up with. Both seem more likely than Google having timing data from a third-party service.

Within the first category, possibilities include that the phone logged into your Google account while using the VPN, that there was a Google tracking cookie on your phone and that phone wasn't always connected to the VPN so it related 2 ip addresses, and that your other device on same network shared a VPN session with your phone.

The 2nd category I'm including for posterity even if it's unlikely based off your stated usage of FOSS on your phone. That your phone isn't a degoogled OS or other device with Google integration. Smart devices with microphones aren't supposed to collect voice data when not explicitly activated, but it is a potentiality.