Hacker News: soapdog

New comment by soapdog in "John Ternus to become Apple CEO"

soapdog — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 21:09:35 +0000

Can we add Photos to that list? Can we add it twice cause it is that bad.

New comment by soapdog in "Mozilla Thunderbolt"

soapdog — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:22:44 +0000

oh mozilla, why don't you just focus on Firefox. That is all we want.

New comment by soapdog in "YouTube now lets you set your Shorts feed limit to zero"

soapdog — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:03:50 +0000

apparently if you set to zero, it just disables the feature but I can't see that option here. I don't use shorts at all, I want the feature gone from my ui

New comment by soapdog in "YouTube now lets you set your Shorts feed limit to zero"

soapdog — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:12:01 +0000

the minimum I see here is 15 minutes... there's no zero option. Using YouTube app on iOS in the UK.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 02:07:46 +0000

you might not be aware, but UK law doesn't actually require Apple to do it. It is targetted at social networks. Even ofcom posted praising Apple for doing it even if they didn't need to. And yes, that law is stupid, but allowing only credit cards as a way to verify an account is also stupid.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 23:36:17 +0000

Shedding zero tears for an irrelevant comment by an edge lord.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:03:41 +0000

I don't like the App Store experience and sandboxing either. I just find it almost malicious that they added that dialog even for notarised applications. Notarised applications should show no dialog whatsoever, just like App Store ones. It is these little frictions that move users to App Store apps. How many users saw that, had doubts, and then decided to go back to the "safe" walled garden.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:21:18 +0000

that's the thing, it is not an option. The only option is credit card, that is what drove me nuts. If it had other options, it would still be bad, but I'd have a way to solve it even if made me angry. Now, the only way to solve this is literally to order a credit card from my bank and then use it. Which is bonkers.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:20:13 +0000

Everything after Snow Leopard has been downhill in my opinion :3 macOS still my favourite unix but it started feeling is no longer my unix anymore, I'm just a glorified tennant.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:59:53 +0000

I been considering Fairphone cause I want to support smaller vendors and also because it is repairable.

As for Linux distros. The MNT Pocket Reform comes with Debian and I plan to leave it at that even though Debian is not my favourite. I will use Niri and Noctalia with it. I plan to make use of whatever Debian package but if it is too old for my taste, I'll look for AppImages and Flatpaks as needed. I got a Surface Go 1 running exactly that setup but with Fedora and works really well for me.

Want to use KDE Connect to link whatever Android I get with the laptop.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:56:41 +0000

Random nobody here, I can write whatever I want on my own personal blog, you're not required to read it.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:54:46 +0000

author here, the post was mostly about desktop. I don't rely on my phone much but I need it to work as expected when needed.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:53:00 +0000

author here. Yeah, they make their laptops by hand in their lil shop in Berlin, low volumes makes things more expensive. I get it you can get a lot more performance per buck elsewhere, but I want to support a company that creates open hardware and open source software. Also it is the most repairable and upgraded laptop in the world atm.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:51:03 +0000

the law in the UK doesn't require any of that. It didn't even required Apple to do it. Ofcom is praising Apple for doing it even though it was not required. Social Networks need to do it.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:49:41 +0000

I'm the author, some of the tahoe issues can be seen in:

https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/

https://noheger.at/blog/2026/01/11/the-struggle-of-resizing-...

there are a lot more, but I don't have the links handy.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:39:15 +0000

Author here. Thanks for engaging is such gentle way, this is rare these days. Let me address some of your comments and maybe you'll understand my position a bit better even if you don't agree.

> 1.Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.

Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing.

> 3. (...) the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.

But not everyone has a credit card. Those are not something you're born with or required to have or even required to have them issued from the same country you're living in. That is not the least restrictive, that is a very large assumption. What I would have liked to have seen is them providing you with options: "do you want to use credit card verification? National ID? Passport? Credit check? Etc" and then it is up to each user to decide on their risk profile and what they are okay with.

As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.

New comment by soapdog in "Apple Just Lost Me"

soapdog — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:33:24 +0000

Author here, didn't realise this was posted on this site. AMA.

New comment by soapdog in "Docs directories are doomed"

soapdog — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 11:43:08 +0000

Well, maybe I want my docs folder to be useful for humans checking my code and don't care about LLMs at all..

New comment by soapdog in "MacBook Neo"

soapdog — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:22:13 +0000

it is quite forward thinking, but for Apple, they are thinking you will need to upgrade.

New comment by soapdog in "MacBook Neo"

soapdog — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:19:55 +0000

because all those prices are artificial, Apple is charging what they think they can get away with and also betting on making more money in the long run with subscriptions to iCloud and their other services.