- Gratuitous, unnecessary cookies (and accompanying cookie consent dialog)
- cloudflare insights built into the pages
- non-zero counter in ublock origin
That's before we even get to the page source which contains, among other things:
"text\":\"First, ensure you're using a modern browser. If problems persist, try refreshing the page or clearing your browser cache. Some older devices may have limited font support.\"}}
"Clean" web pages don't need hints like this - they work without clearing browser cache or worrying about "older devices".
I haven't seen this on HN in a while so it is worth reposting:
Not super against cookie tracking or consent especially for a free platform, but these extreme color contrasts don't even seem to have any obvious correlations. Is it done just for looks? That's a crazy decision for a font information site
exedev@scarlet-canyon:~$ rsync --version
rsync version 3.2.7 protocol version 31
Copyright (C) 1996-2022 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Our base image is most of an Ubuntu server. We trim out, for example, systemd features that are designed for working with system hardware, and then add a lot of standard software, as our block device cloning is a lot faster and more efficient than apt. So you will find vim, git, go, curl, sqlite3, etc all installed. If you think something obvious is missing please let us know!
Would love it if Tailscale came pre-installed! Or even better: some simple way to make it so every VM I start up is automatically/easily part of my Tailnet.
p.s. thanks for making Tailscale. And I'm loving exe.dev so far!
[exe.dev cofounder here] That's a good idea! I will add it to a list I have for exeuntu. Automatic login would be really nice, let me see if I can figure out how to do that. Thanks for trying exe.dev!
"... wrongful death lawsuits are typically the only way to hold these companies accountable. Yet, there are very few people who have not agreed Abbott's toxic terms of their proprietary companion application ..."
I (a non-diabetic interested in athletic performance) use an Abbott CGM sporadically and I have absolutely not agreed to any terms of service nor any other agreement of any kind - legal or otherwise.
I bought a purpose-specific, old model iphone from "Back Market" with no SIM card, very briefly allowed it wifi access long enough to download the "Lingo" app, then set the phone to airplane mode. Dedicated, throwaway email and AppleID.
It has never left airplane mode and it works perfectly. Pairing subsequent sensors does not require taking it out of airplane mode.
Further, I have no legal relationship nor have I made any agreement of any kind with Abbott.
I highly recommend that any user of these devices do the same.
> I bought a purpose-specific, old model iphone from "Back Market" with no SIM card, very briefly allowed it wifi access long enough to download the "Lingo" app, then set the phone to airplane mode. Dedicated, throwaway email and AppleID.
None of this actually matters if you went through the steps to use the app. The app is designed such that you agree to the terms before you can use it.
You can use all the throwaway emails, devices, VPNs, and other tricks in the world, but unless you can reliably demonstrate to a court that you were utilizing the app in a way that didn’t involve accepting any terms of service then they could simply demonstrate that it’s part of their app flow.
Even using tricks to utilize the device outside of the app wouldn’t help, because they could simply demonstrate that you weren’t using it as designed or intended.
I think my initial comment has been misunderstood.
I can't speak to, nor do I have any interest in, legally pursuing this random vendor.
The op implied, correctly I assume, that the Abbott terms are "toxic".
I am simply restating, as I very commonly do, that this vendor is not a government agency. They are not the IRS. They are not law enforcement. They are an adversarial party until proven otherwise and you owe them nothing.
In most cases you can’t use the device without agreeing to the terms of service right?
For example a service I use a lot recently changed their terms of service - there was no way to keep using the service without agreeing.
Might be different for devices or services that don’t need internet to function; but even for those you have some “activation” step nowadays that forces you to agree before “unlocking”
Just imagine how different the world would be if this wasn't allowed and any time a ToS was pushed out like this the user had the option to offer a counter ToS and the company must have a human look it over and agree/disagree within a set period of time.
Then there is something wrong with our legal system if only one portion of the population seems to be able to avail themselves of contracts. Seems like a failure of the entire legal apparatus. No more ToS.
> Who agreed to that ToS ? Abby McAbbott ? With no phone number ? A throwaway email address ?
I don’t think this matters in the way you think it does. If they can demonstrate that you have to click through the ToS to use the device and app, then the burden would be on you to show that you did not accept the ToS to use the device. But therein lies the catch: If you found a way to circumvent their setup process, you wouldn’t be using the device as designed or intended.
"If they can demonstrate that you have to click through the ToS to use the device and app ..."
There's nothing to demonstrate. We will have no interactions.
The op implied (probably correctly) that their ToS is toxic. I am pointing out that there is no reason for you to enter into that ToS.
Are you suggesting that I, an anonymous piggyback user of their service, would blow up my anonymity (and all of the protections and peace of mind that it affords) by attempting to reestablish some form of legal contact ?
No. It's easy come, easy go and that's just fine with me.
> There's nothing to demonstrate. We will have no interactions.
Ok? Then it doesn’t matter if you accept or not.
The ToS doesn’t come into play unless there’s legal action. If you’re never going to enter into legal action with the company then it doesn’t matter if you accept the ToS or not.
> If you found a way to circumvent their setup process, you wouldn’t be using the device as designed or intended.
Liability in civil court is not as simple as you posit. Severability and judge discretion are but 2 ways that immediately can invalidate this line of argument. The cause of actual damages are almost always scrutinized, meaning the company would have to prove that the legal agreement could somehow have prevented the damage. Courtrooms are often mischaracterized as following robotic rules and precedence to ill-effect, as if there aren't people in the courtroom using good judgement. This is largely because those cases are the ones most publicized, not because it's the norm.
That’s orthogonal to the comment I’m responding to. The parent commenter was claiming that because they left a device in airplane mode when they accepted the ToS, it doesn’t count. Like it’s a loophole that allows one to accept it but not have it count.
The actual terms of the ToS will always be evaluated in court. You can’t, however, go into court and argue that the ToS doesn’t apply because you put a fake name into the app and left it in airplane mode.
You also wouldn’t get anywhere if you bought their device but used it with your own reverse engineered app or something, as the app is considered part of the product.
Doesn't really work that way. If you want to sue Abbot, then you have to reveal yourself. At which point, it will be clear that you were in fact using the product and did in fact agree to the ToS. If you never sue Abbot, then sure. But then it doesn't matter.
Part of the benefit of CGM’s is you can automatically load your readings to your doctor. I have a T1 child, so when I call with a problem I can get quick answers.
Related, Abbot previously had problems with their freestyle lite test strips. There were lawsuits, fines and most insurance dropped them from their covered diabetic suppliers.
> I highly recommend that any user of these devices do the same.
No thank you. I have to wear these devices 24/7 to keep me alive, and it was a huge quality of life improvement when I was able to control them all from my phone. I see literally no benefit to doing what you suggest.
HN School of Law: you can win big legal cases that don't exist on nerd technicalities that don't work in courtrooms that aren't real. Also you can pass their version of the Bar for $99 and your e-mail address.
LOL that's crazy, but I would also recommend that any user of these devices who don't have an actual medical issue that requires the device to work, for whatever value of "work" it is capable of ... maybe consider doing that. Just like I put my modern TV in VLAN purgatory.
But if you actually have any form of diabetes... definitely do not do that. Unless you are also rocking some other brand. ¯\\_(ಠ_ಠ)_/¯
This is such a bizarre gotcha in a world of rapidly decreasing technical and civil rights. I'm still waiting for someone here to pop out of the gallery during one of these trials going "well, akshually...", and turning everything around. Doesn't seem to be moving the needle, as it were.
I believe there are a few all-metal laptops competing in the marketplace but was unaware they were actually better than the apple laptops ... what all aluminum laptops are better and how are they better ?
I just turn off trackpads, I'm not interested in that kind of input device, and any space dedicated to one is wasted to me. I use nibs exclusively (which essentially restricts me to Thinkpads).
My arms rest on the body, the last thing I want is for it to be a material that leeches heat out of my body or that is likely to react with my hands' sweat and oils.
Strawman. Because Apple designed it well. Metal’s not an issue. My legacy 2013 MacBook Air still looks and feels and opens like new.
I was looking at Thinkpad Auras today. There are unaligned jutting design edges all over the thing. From a design perspective, I’ll take the smooth oblong squashed egg.
Every PC laptop I’ve touched feels terrible to hold and carry. And they run Windows, and Linux only okay. Apple
MacBooks are a long mile better than everything else and so I don’t care about upgraded memory — buy enough ram at purchase time and you don’t have to think about it again.
Memory upgrades aren’t priced super well, granted, but I could never buy HP Dell Lenovo ever again. They’re terrible. I’ve had all of them. Ironically the best device I’ve had from the other side was a Surface Laptop. But I don’t do Microsoft anymore. And I don’t want to carry squeaky squishy bendy plastic.
Most of all, I’m never getting on a customer support call with the outsourced vendors that do the support for those companies ever ever ever again. I’ll take a visit to an Apple store every day of the week.
FWIW, I have been using the companyname@mydomain.com auto-alias for many years now and I've never had it challenged nor rejected by a human or a machine.
We just aged out of this as our youngest child is now 11, but I can affirm that magnatiles are fantastic and fun - and that is coming from someone who lionizes legos and considers them the ne plus ultra of toys for children.
That being said ...
We got a lot of mileage - many good years of use from male and female children - out of "Snap Circuits":
A very, very cool building ecosystem with easy to build and understand recipes - we built a working FM radio, for instance. Not at all fussy or fragile.
My children are not particularly "STEMy" but they all enjoyed breaking out the "circuit kit".
I can confirm as someone that had these or a very similar kit as a kid that they were enjoyable and the knowledge proved useful when I started working with real circuits in high school and college.
Snap Circuits are just standard electronic components that combine with each other using standard snap buttons [1] from the textile industry. The real “genius” of them is that the grid spacing and the width/thickness of each component is well-balanced such that they are held together securely while being easy to separate using the lever action that a child naturally produces when grabbing something (ie don’t pull straight up). It should be easily replicable and I’d be surprised that there aren’t knockoffs in all the countries that they block from their website.
There's an interesting idea here that is tangentially related to "common carrier" regulations ...
Specifically:
If a flock (or similar) camera is deployed on public land/infra there should exist default permission for any alternate vendor to deploy a camera in the same location.
I wonder how that could be used and/or abused and, further, what the response from a company like flock would be ...
Not directly an answer to your question, but installed Shotspotter locations are generally "not shared with police" and installations are done in a way where the location is obfuscated away from the police/city through Shotspotter contractors. It's not actually true that the device locations aren't shared with the police, but shotspotter/police testimonies in shotspotter cases say so anyway.
Multiple cases have revealed that it seemed like police and Shotspotter worked hand-in-glove to tweak Shotspotter data and demographics to help shore up a case and make things appear more reliable than they were.
And multiple cases where, sufficiently pushed, DAs have dropped cases or dropped Shotspotter as evidence rather than have the narrative challenged too closely.
I didn't want to get into an argument over whether kids should be unattended at playgrounds or not - I don't know where the other poster is front and it seems to be based on age, density, region, etc. Where I grew up it would be weird to stay, in the city I am in it would be weird to leave them.
If you leave your kids unattended at a playground I don't see how the camera changes the risk factor in any meaningful way. Either a pedophile can expect there to be unattended children or not.
> Try to think like an evil person with no life and very specific and demonic aims if you’re still having trouble seeing why this would be an issue.
That person already has incredible power to stalk and ruin someone's life. Making Flock cameras public would change almost nothing for that person. It fascinates me how fast people jump to "imagine the worst person" when we talk about making data public.
We have the worst people, they're the ones who profit off of it being private, with no public accountability, who don't build secure systems. The theater of privacy is, IMO, worse than not having privacy.
“almost nothing” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
Stalking someone from your desk vs. IRL is a whole different ball game. Not sure why this needs explanation… anyways, the main difference is how easy it do things from your desk. For example, no one see you when you’re stalking someone from your desk. Think of the success of 4chan investigations vs. those in authority to actually do so. It’s empowering.
We live in a world of strangers, and unfortunately a % of those are the type to kill/rape other strangers. Why enable them?
Not sure who else would be empowered by making all public camera accessible at the click of a button, but I’m interested in who you think that population is.
Certainly we can agree most normal folks will not spend their time looking camera feeds of strangers?
I’m fascinated by people who stick to their theoretical principles (‘all data should be public’, etc.) no matter the real world implications, but we all have our own interests :).
US and USD need not be involved - EU does this on it's own without any pressure:
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/former-swiss-in...
"As a result Baud will not be allowed to travel within EU countries and his assets in the Euro zone will be frozen."
His assertions are not particularly extreme and, without question, fall into the realm of protected, free speech.
This is orthogonal to whether you or I agree with what he is saying. Finding his views "dangerous" is an admission of profound weakness.
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