Saturday, 30 April 2022

New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Is the EULA on my new $30k RED cinema camera legal?

New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Is the EULA on my new $30k RED cinema camera legal?

Ask HN: Is the EULA on my new $30k RED cinema camera legal?
84 by red_throwaway | 94 comments on Hacker News.
TLDR: I bought a $30K professional cinema camera that doesn't work unless I sign away my rights to privacy and possibly the video content I make with it ( at least it seems ) Over the past few years my photography business has seen a surge in demand for ultra high quality video production work. In an effort to meet this demand, I picked up one of RED Digital Cinema's newest pro camera bodies, the RED V-RAPTOR. Considering this camera is used by professional filmmakers to create films destined for cinemas, it's not surprising that it came with a $30k price tag. After unboxing and assembling it, I power the camera on and the first thing I see is a wall of legal text on the embedded LCD. Turns out it's a "Software License Agreement" that I'm required to consent to using the on-camera menu buttons before any of the camera's functionality becomes available. I can give consent or power the camera off. The full text can be found on the manufacturer's website at https://ift.tt/9ciyuMO . Here are a few highlights > 4. CONSENT TO USE OF DATA. You agree that RED and its affiliates may collect, maintain, process, transmit, and use technical, diagnostic, usage and related information, including but not limited to information about your RED Camera, Camera Module, computer, system and application software, usage, content, and peripherals. RED may use the information to provide and improve RED’s products and services, including providing the information to RED’s licensors. RED may also provide the information to third party advertisers for the purpose of providing advertising statistics without identifying you personally ... > 5. UPDATES. RED and its licensors have no obligation to provide updates, bug fixes or error correction. If RED provides updates, such updates may be automatic and may delete or change the nature or features of the Software, including functions you may rely upon and you may lose data. You consent to updates by RED ... I snapped a few photos of the camera and the on-screen license agreement for those interested https://ibb.co/ZzBMPWm https://ibb.co/wy5Qjq7 I'm annoyed that I must consent to accepting all software updates which they admit could result in the loss of my data but the part that really has me stuck is section 4. I'm interpreting it to mean that RED and whoever they see fit may access not only data on and about my personal computer but also the actual video content that I create with my camera. Furthermore, they are permitted to share all that with advertisers. It seems like I must be misunderstanding this because I can't imagine professional videographers being willing to consent to such blatant violations of their own customer's expectations of privacy and discretion. Many of the jobs I get are product shoots for prototypes and things yet to be released. Some of them even require an NDA from me. There's no way my clients would work with me if they knew that my camera might be capturing frames from their commissioned videos and transmitting them behind the scenes to advertisers. This camera has been assembled but collecting dust for over a week now. I'm on the verge of returning it and eating the 2k I spent on compatible peripherals. I would love some input from anyone who can offer clarity. My questions are as follows: 1. Is my assessment of the implications of this license agreement correct or am I misunderstanding the legalese? 2. Is this type of EULA, where the most basic functionality of a hardware device is held hostage pending the user consents to some arbitrary agreement legal in the USA and/or Europe? Is there actually a legal precedent allowing for it? 3. For film pros, do the top of the line Arris and Panavisions take these same liberties?

Friday, 29 April 2022

New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
24 by atomiomi | 15 comments on Hacker News.
One of the problems I faced when I had my first users on [just-diary.com](http://just-diary.com) is that I didn’t have any way to talk to them. Like getting feedback on using the product, asking them questions about what they want from it, and sharing some tips on how to use some features. Does anyone have the same problem? If yes, how did you solve it?

Thursday, 28 April 2022

New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (April '22 edition)?

New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (April '22 edition)?

Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (April '22 edition)?
31 by ihodes | 6 comments on Hacker News.
There have been threads like this before (last one in 1.5 months ago: https://ift.tt/YxOTrbK), but I'm not really sure what to do. I've emailed Maciej on 4/13/21, 12/11/21, and 4 times in the past month (a more urgent issue) with no response. Full-text search is regularly broken, archiving doesn't work sometimes, and most recently my >5yr archiving account was disabled on 4/1 with no warning or ability to re-up, so as far as I know I've lost archived bookmarks from up to a decade ago (don't remember when I turned on the service). It doesn't look like When I tried to re-up my archiving account, I selected 10 years, but was charged for 1 year (without the 10 yr discount, of course) instead. I really have enjoyed using Pinboard, and have been since at least 2011 (when the entry was created in 1pw), but this is a bummer and I'm not sure what to do. I really respect Maciej and wish him the best, and would love to keep using Pinboard.

Wednesday, 27 April 2022

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Sqwok – A social chat alternative to Twitter and Reddit

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Sqwok – A social chat alternative to Twitter and Reddit

Show HN: Sqwok – A social chat alternative to Twitter and Reddit
62 by holler | 31 comments on Hacker News.
I previously did a Show HN late Dec 2020: https://ift.tt/tDFujce That was a great experience and in the past year I continued to develop the site to bring it to a level of stability and maturity that I felt necessary for it to have a chance to succeed. Sqwok is all about answering the question: Can we have better open conversations on the internet? I wasn’t satisfied with the existing means of discussing topics such as culture, history, politics, and technology through threaded comments, and was simultaneously impressed with Slack bringing the IRC experience to the browser for a more general but enterprise focused audience. I wondered why not create an open Slack-like chat app for general discussion? Not gamers or enterprise but rather for people to have open, kitchen-table discussion on the matters of the day (or just for fun!). I set out to build this because I wanted to use it myself and felt that existing chat apps weren't designed for open public discourse in the way Reddit/Twitter are but for threaded comments & mostly unidirectional communication. This past year I’ve been very grateful to have a group of people continuously show up, offer support of the site and the idea, encouraging me to continue. Without those people I would have probably gave up! But alas I want to see this through and I believe now is the moment to make it happen. Since the last Show HN I’ve added: - markdown support in chat messages, post text, and user bio in profile (soon coming to full text post). - User profiles including bio, location, photo avatar, and chronological post listings. - New “who’s online” list that shows the top 10 ppl online and helps steer people to active conversations. - @mentions now work in posts, user bios, as well as chat messages. - Email notifications to be alerted when someone @mentions you. - Settings pages with ability to change password, delete account, and manage notification settings. - Upgraded image handling to support higher res photos with upcoming features allowing enhanced viewing. - Major refactor of the chat handling to stabilize it and fix many bugs with presence, locations, etc. - Many improvements to the codebase, frontend, backend, UI, tests, etc - Updated mobile web UI that drops you straight into the chat in a single view. - Ability to toggle full width chat view on desktop. - Live message counts displayed on the post list items that are updated in realtime. - Updated location handling for realtime location display. - Backend stability & aggregate analytics. Through Sqwok and particularly through the last Show HN I've met & got to know numerous people living across the entire Earth from Laos to Europe to Africa, all through a silly piece of software that for some reason seemed like the thing to work on. Truth be told there is much, much more I want to do with this. I believe now is the perfect time with the state of existing social networks and I’m hoping to find more people to support the site and help drive it to the next level. Let me know if you have any questions, Thanks!

Tuesday, 26 April 2022

New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What happened to Twitter poison pill?

New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What happened to Twitter poison pill?

Ask HN: What happened to Twitter poison pill?
32 by rukshn | 25 comments on Hacker News.
Last week it was said that Twitter's directors will take a poison pill instead of selling Twitter to Elon Musk. What caused the board to change the direction 180 and now closing the deal with Musk? Can anyone shed a light on that, I didn't see anyone talking about this.

Monday, 25 April 2022

New top story on Hacker News: Tell HN: Have just discovered that I can use any key as Ctrl on my keyboard\

New top story on Hacker News: Tell HN: Have just discovered that I can use any key as Ctrl on my keyboard\

Tell HN: Have just discovered that I can use any key as Ctrl on my keyboard\
14 by pfortuny | 21 comments on Hacker News.
Sorry if this is silly but today I have discovered that my (pricey, I know) Ergodox-ez keyboard (but I assume any other "programmable" keyboard should work likewise) allows for any key to be programmed either for "press" or "hold". And after more than a year using an uncomfortable configuration for my wrist (I use emacs a LOT), I have set 'j' to behave as CTRL when hold. And then my mind has blown up. No more weird thumb positions, or elongated pinkies. I had done this with one of the large thumb keys for space when pressed, Meta when hold, but I had never imagined using 'j' (or, say 'f') for that.

Sunday, 24 April 2022

Saturday, 23 April 2022

Friday, 22 April 2022

Thursday, 21 April 2022

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: DTL: a language and JavaScript lib to transform and manipulate data

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: DTL: a language and JavaScript lib to transform and manipulate data

Show HN: DTL: a language and JavaScript lib to transform and manipulate data
16 by jk0ne | 1 comments on Hacker News.
DTL is a project that began it's life as part of a another piece of software for a startup I founded a few years ago. For that project I needed a way to describe how to rewrite data in a portable way. I needed to be able to create the rules on the fly and store them in a database, I needed them to be able to describe transformations I hadn't thought about, but also needed them to be safe and predictable. Though the startup didn't survive, the language I made was so useful to me I felt I had to extract it and make it usable to everyone. DTL is the result. Though the npm module is relatively new, the language itself has been in use in production systems for years. Over the past couple of years I have been working to make it more accessible and useful to newcomers. Though it's really powerful, I tried to make it easy to use and simple to understand so that you can get up to speed quickly and use only as much as you need. To summarize: DTL is a javascript module and related CLI tools that are really handy for transforming data from one format to another. It's made to allow you to specify your transformations as data (JSON by default) which means they are easily shared from frontend to backend and vice versa, as well as making them easily stored in databases, etc. It can be used as part of your project to transform data between APIs, between the frontend and your database, etc. and can do simple mappings as well as complex calculations. It can also be used for validation and is really handy for extracting useful information from large / complex datasets (there are some great examples of this you can try on the website). The CLI tool (dtl) is like jq on sterooids, allowing you to slice, dice and remap csv, yaml, json or even plaintext data doing anything you can describe in a DTL transform. If you ever wished you could `grep` in complex data structures, today is your lucky day. :) I'd love any feedback you have and if you think of anything it doesn't have that it should, I'd love to hear that too.

Wednesday, 20 April 2022

Tuesday, 19 April 2022

Monday, 18 April 2022

Sunday, 17 April 2022