blakeinate (u/blakeinate)

blakeinate commented on Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021) github.com/extesy/hoverzo... · Posted by u/hk__2

cal85 · 2 years ago

FWIW, and since a few of you probably use it… I own the JSON Formatter extension [0], which I created and open-sourced 12 years ago and have maintained [1] ever since, with 2 million users today. And I solemnly swear that I will never add any code that sends any data anywhere, nor let it fall into the hands of anyone else who would.

I’ve been emailed several tempting cash offers from shady people who presumably want to steal everyone’s data or worse. I sometimes wish I had never put my name on it so I could just take the money without harming my reputation, but I did, so I’m stuck with being honourable. On the plus side I will always be able to say that I never sold out.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/json-formatter/bcj...

[1] low effort tbh

blakeinate · 2 years ago

As someone who uses your extension daily, I truly appreciate your strong will. It seems every day strong ethics become harder to maintain in our field.

blakeinate commented on My First 80 Days of VR for Exercise nathanlippi.com/blog/digi... · Posted by u/frant1c

sanj · 4 years ago

I’ve been enjoying supernatural for the last few months.

When I focus on form, I’m just a little sore from pushing myself past my comfort zone.

Most importantly, it gets me out of bed because I look forward to the 20min of zen and focus I get while listening to great music.

blakeinate · 4 years ago

If you enjoy supernatural, I highly recommend PowerBeatsVR. It's not nearly as polished as supernatural, but the workout configuration options are very effective, plus no subscription fees.

blakeinate commented on Google Search Is Dying dkb.io/post/google-search... · Posted by u/dbrereton

jedwhite · 4 years ago

There's a reason why it seems shocking that Google has been able to balance the ads well enough that people still use it. They haven't! Google has orchestrated a monopoly over search engine distribution that allows them to get away with search results that are dominated by ads and spam, without losing most consumers.

Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore. Google has a distribution monopoly through Android, its deal with Apple on iOS and MacOS, and on desktop through Chrome.

I'm working on a search engine startup. It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level. And despite being technically possible on desktop with Chrome, it is for all practical purposes beyond what any typical consumer can easily do.

Their monopoly over distribution - not search result quality - is what keeps consumers searching Google and clicking ads.

blakeinate · 4 years ago

Just tried andisearch and am extremely impressed. It has so far handled all queries I have thrown at it better than brave search and DDG. Will continue to experiment, best of luck and awesome work!

blakeinate commented on Study Confirms Climate Models Are Getting Future Warming Projections Right climate.nasa.gov/news/294... · Posted by u/mooreds

native_samples · 4 years ago

Unfortunately, ever since I discovered that the temperature record is itself the output of modelling, I can no longer have much confidence in climatologists asserting that they can or have successfully predicted temperatures. That's a neat trick if you're managing to predict actual observations or actual historical data. If what you're predicting is data that will soon have a new version issued to bring it in line with the predictions, that's much less impressive. Editing your data is meant to be taboo in science because once you open that Pandora's box it can rapidly lead to nonsensical outcomes, regardless of how well intentioned the 'fixes' might be. But climatology opened that box.

blakeinate · 4 years ago

Do you have any sources for this? Sounds like an interesting subject I am not familiar with.

blakeinate commented on The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes (2018) jdlm.info/articles/2018/0... · Posted by u/duck

terabytest · 4 years ago

I’m the original creator of 2048. I’m always so humbled when I see that it’s still something people talk about, especially (as is the case with this article) in such an advanced way as to completely go over my head!

blakeinate · 4 years ago

2048 truly is the epitome of mobile games for me. Simple, translates well to a touch screen and most importantly no ads or micro transactions. My one gripe is I can't compete with my wife's high score.

blakeinate commented on Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to? · Posted by u/ByteWelder

svavs · 4 years ago

I haven't used Android as a daily phone since the EVO (I know, its been a while). One issue I had with Android and custom firmware was the time involved. Being on a computer all day, and often times at night, having to deal with tech support issues on my device is a hard stop (for me, personally, plenty of people love it).

That's the nice part of Apple's ecosystem - its pretty simple and requires minimum intervention.

blakeinate · 4 years ago

As someone who had an Evo with custom FW back in the day, I can attest the process is much simpler in recent years. If you do your research and ensure the device you are purchasing has official lineage support, the entire setup procsss takes less than an hour. Lineage includes built in update support as well, although to upgrade between major versions you still need to use a computer if I remember correctly.

I purchased my first iPhone since the 3G this year, and it is currently for sale on swappa. I am willing to compromise on a slightly less polished UI and subpar camera to get the UX of android back; at least for me, iOS was lacking many features I could consider essential.

blakeinate commented on Apple's plan to “think different” about encryption opens a backdoor to your life eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08... · Posted by u/bbatsell

triska · 4 years ago

I remember an Apple conference where Tim Cook personally assured us that Apple is fully committed to privacy, that everything is so secure because the iPhone is so powerful that all necessary calculations can happen on the device itself, and that we are "not the product". I think the Apple CEO said some of this in the specific context of speech processing, yet it seemed a specific case of a general principle upheld by Apple.

I bought an iPhone because the CEO seemed to be sincere in his commitment to privacy.

What Apple has announced here seems to be a complete reversal from what I understood the CEO saying at the conference only a few years ago.

blakeinate · 4 years ago

This year I purchased my first iPhone since the 3G, after today I am starting to regret that decision. At this point, I can only hope Linux on mobile picks up steam.

blakeinate commented on Moving away from Google services, 8 years in maximevaillancourt.com/bl... · Posted by u/vaillancourtmax

storafrid · 4 years ago

Replacing Google Photos with hard drives? What. And replacing Google Drive with a client-based sync tool...? Maybe too high expectations but I was hoping for some level of similar functionality.

Would be interesting to get advice on how an actual user of the Google ecosystem can do this kind of move. There are a lot of applications to research, e.g. Photoprism for replacing Google Photos. A bit overwhelming to review the options and make feature/setup comparisons, considering how many products I use on a daily basis. But it would be nice indeed, to own the data. If the overhead is manageable.

blakeinate · 4 years ago

My solution ended up being a mix of Backblaze B2 buckets, Nextcloud (linked to B2 using S3 Nextcloud features) and FileBrowser Pro on IOS (which is much faster than Nextcloud for photo upload, links directly to Backblaze). Costs me less than 10 cents a month at this point.