Readit Newsavra commented on It's hard to justify Tahoe icons tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icon... · Posted by u/lylejantzi3rd
The snowflakes are a clever engagement hack. They doubled the amount of comments here. I find it funny for the moment, but I hope this will not become the norm for hn posts.
In the UK we have the 111 NHS non-emergency telephone service - they don’t give medical
advice but triage you based on your symptoms. Either a doctor will call you back, they will tell you to go the non-urgent care centre or A&E (ER) immediately.
In the EU we have 116117 which is not (yet?) implemented in all countries. It's part of the "harmonised service of social value" which uses 116 as a prefix and has also other helpline numbers like hotlines for missing children or emotional support.
> All without a co-pay
The author of the blog post also mentioned they tried to avoid paying for an unnecessary visit to the doctor. I think the issue is somewhere else. As a European, personally I would go to the doctor and while sitting in the waiting room I would ask an LLM out of curiosity.
My elderly father unknowingly installed an application on Android after seeing a deceptive ad. An advertising message disguised as an operating system pop-up convinced him that his Android phone's storage was almost full. When he tapped the pop-up, and followed instructions he installed a fake cleaner app from the Play Store. While the app caused no actual harm, it displayed notifications every other day urging him to clean his phone using the same app. When he opened it, the app — which did nothing except display a fake graph simulating almost full storage — pressured him to purchase the PRO version to perform a deeper cleanup.
In reality, the phone had 24 GB of free space out of 64 GB total. I simply uninstalled the fake cleaner and the annoying notifications disappeared.
How such an app could reach the Play Store is beyond me. I can only imagine how many people that app must have deceived and how much money its creators likely made. I'm fairly certain the advertisement targets older people specifically—those most likely to be tricked.
For better or worse, I'm pretty sure that such an app would never land into the Apple App Store.
from the Play Store
This is not about the Play Store. This is about the whole Android platform. It's about running what you want on your own machine.
avra commented on EU age verification app not planning desktop support github.com/eu-digital-ide... · Posted by u/sschueller
But this will at least create a healthy pressure for competing options for users on desktops, likely based on novel secure protocols.
Most of the times the user prioritizes more convenient options over privacy. "Pressure for competing options" will mean that options compete for the most convenient way, not most secure or most private.
avra commented on Librarian's Letter to Google Security docs.google.com/document/... · Posted by u/2352500
> This elderly woman, looked to be in her 70s, might lose the roof over her head, due to being unable to log into her Google account, because she lost her old phone and with it, her phone number.
I think the real issue is outside of Google's reach. You shouldn't have to lose the roof over your head just because you don't have access to your emails. Sure, it sucks that Google doesn't care if these people lose their access to Gmail. But I don't see how Google has a greater responsibility than the state/government in this.
The only use case where AirBNB sort of makes sense is for poor young solo travelers (like backpackers) as an alternative to hostels. I can't understand why anyone would even consider it for a business trip or family vacation. What are those travelers thinking? Like I seriously don't understand why anyone would take that kind of risk instead of making a reservation with a real hotel. Caveat emptor.
If you think about it, that's more or less the original idea. Affordable accommodation for young solo travelers. People that do not have the time and energy to face the inconveniences of Airbnb's are better off in a hotel after all. When I book an airbnb I do not expect to get hotel like service.
Edit: maybe drop the "solo", it's probably not worth it if you don't travel in a group.
avra commented on Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default blog.chromium.org/2021/03... · Posted by u/feross
> It's worrying how they are improving the case for "70%" scenarios, while crippling it for the other 30%, without recourse. It's not even funny any more.
I constantly have issues with this address bar hiding the scheme and even the www.
One issue is when I quickly want to select some parameters or delete parts of the url in order to "up" one level.
What drives me absolutely insane is their inconsitent autocomplete functionality. Sometimes I end up at googling "examp" instead of navigating www.example.com, which was a page I already had visited and therefore showed up as the domain which was autocompleted inside the address bar. Sometimes pressing enter autofills the address, sometimes it googles the halfway typed domain. If I tab the halfway typed domain, it always completes it and an enter will navigate to it.
There is some strange difference in entering a domain and performing a search, something feels off. I can't exactly tell what it is, but sometimes I end up with submissions which I did not intend.
Also something with pressing the down-key in order to select the topmost entry, the one which gets selected with tab, it just gets skipped when I use the down-key.
Another thing is if I want to query "Raspberry Pi disable wifi" or something which begins with "Raspberry Pi", that I then get suggested the URL raspberry.org, a domain which I have often visited, and am forced to type through the entire word Raspberry in order for the URL-functionality to get aborted and have it switch over to googling mode. Maybe there is a keyboard shortcut or something which would help me out, but it simply isn't intuitive.
In Chrome you can right click the address bar and select "Always show full URLs".
I prefer how Firefox highlights the most important part and still shows the full URL.
Solution: I got my Starlink. 3x speed. No crappy service. Weather independent. And surprinsingly cheaper ( 40 euros vs 45 ) .
[ as much as I do not like Musk & co, this is a real useful thing he build for the mankind - internet everywere from sattelite ]