A warning about Philips electric toothbrushes: you cannot turn off Bluetooth on them, even if you are not using the smart features.
Also be careful with all Philips air purifiers that support Wi-Fi, because the remote control feature cannot be disabled. They create a Wi-Fi hotspot that you need to connect to with a smartphone to finish setting up the device, but if you don't use these features, the air purifier will create a permanent Wi-Fi hotspot, waiting to be exploited.
The exact same thing happened to me! Randomly one day a new toothbrush entity appeared in HA, even though I’m still using a “dumb” electric toothbrush.
I finally got rid of one of my fitness watches that had dreadful battery life and I couldn't figure out why. After a few months of this, I finally realized the same thing, you can't turn off the bluetooth on it. The app on your phone and the watch are constantly searching for each other to always sync and the alternative is to unpair the watch, use it, re-pair, sync and go which became a total headache, but did in fact give me better battery life.
The weird thing is I complained to the company's CSR people online and they had no idea why the battery was so bad and just told me to try and factory hard reset the phone as there must be something I changed in the settings.
I switched over to Polar and now the watch I have lasts 5 days on a single charge - quit the change from about a day or less.
> I switched over to Polar and now the watch I have lasts 5 days on a single charge - quit the change from about a day or less.
I uncovered a cheap digital watch in the cupboard the other day. It hasn't been in use since it's strap broke at least four years ago. It is still keeping time. Poorly, granted. It is off by half an hour, Then again, it is the type of watch that needs updating twice or thrice a year to account for DST and leap years.
I realize that modern watches are much more than timepieces, but the difference is battery life is astounding.
My Garmin stays connected to my Samsung smartphone via Bluetooth constantly and will last about 6-8 days on a single charge. I can't imagine charging my watch every night.
I've been using Garmin GPS watches for more than a decade, they get two weeks on a single charge (double or triple that if you don't use 24/7 heart rate, or GPS, or Bluetooth/Wifi, but even on long trips I don't need months without a charge). And they have Bluetooth that syncs with my phone for weather data and optionally shows notifications, but it doesn't need a phone connection to be a great watch.
Sure, my top-end Fenix 6 Pro cost $750 new in 2019, and very little of that is hardware BOM (there's a lot of price segmentation), but it's still just as good as it was then. It's honestly extremely refreshing to deal with a company and an app that tries to build and sell good hardware rather than tricking you into a subscription.
Since we're on the subject, also be careful of Philips CPAP machines, they will slowly spray disintegrating cancer-causing foam into your lungs as you sleep.
Great company though, it's not like they had the choice to not buy out one of the best CPAP manufacturers and then skimp out on materials until they hit the cancer recall margin of diminishing returns (and then hide it for as long as possible).
Anyone in Wi-Fi range can exploit the device. The sensors of the air purifier can be used for spying, and the device could also serve as a hopping point for exploiting other devices in your home.
> The sensors of the air purifier can be used for spying
To be able to... know if your target's house has a lot of pollutants? Is particularly warm? There is practically no useful information that can't be gleamed by just looking through their windows, blinds and all.
> and the device could also be used as a hopping point for exploiting other devices in your home.
It's not connected to your home network, that's the whole reason for the hotspot existing. How, exactly, could it be used as a hopping off point, except to other devices with hotspots that... can just be exploited in the first place.
You're lacking in imagination, and maybe the conceptual idea of "sensor fusion". Multiple seemingly innocuous data streams in isolation can be combined to create sensors you wouldn't have imagined
At a guess; if able to monitor over a period of time (e.g. pick up data from a parked car), a potential burglar can see when there is activity and figure what times of the day house occupants are normally at home.
More subtle; the burglar could just park up and go off for a few hours and gather the data they need - no need for a suspicious camera pointing out of the car to monitor patterns.
If the burglar only takes a 30 second look before breaking in, residents could be home but away from a window, with this the burglar can more confidently know when is a good time to break in, without exposing themselves to the same risk that looking around the house brings.
> There is practically no useful information that can't be gleamed by just looking through their windows, blinds and all.
I have plenty of imagination. I also am practical and realize how illogical the argument of “sensor fusion” is to do something you can just use your eyes for.
Nobody is going to go out of their way to do this when KISS methods already exist and y’all don’t seem to understand practicality if you don’t see that.
The issue is what happens to these toothbrushes in a couple of years when their vulnerabilities will be discovered. Their inevitable exploitation could be prevented by simply allowing to turn off bluetooth. Or even better, only enable bluetooth if the user wants to set up and use these smart features, at least in that case the vulnerable firmware can be updated using the smartphone app.
"Shipped dumb by default" is enticing as a legal requirement.
Have a colorful switch to enable it, whatever.
But poor security posture out of the box, for a questionably-supported, poorly-developed, long-lived physical device seems important enough to mandate slight one-time inconvenience.
In the future, this bullshit is going to be looked back at like default passwords on ISP WAPs.
LightDims solved the problem of bright and blinking status LEDs in our home, they sell sticker sheets in various colors that dim or completely block the light: https://www.lightdims.com/store.htm
Or just use some mostly-opaque tape, such as masking tape or brown cellulose tape (which is what I remember using on one obnoxious external hard drive many years ago) and add more layers to dim it.
Or use a black permanent marker.
A great many households will already have one or the other of these already.
But I presume that none of these would particularly serve the purpose of the article, allowing infrared signals to pass through. Can’t say I’ve encountered the combination of a bright LED and infrared receiver, myself.
Seconded. I learned about these here a few years ago and have gone through two packages of them. The ability to dim for things you still want to kind of see is very nice, and as another person noted, the pre-cut shapes are more attractive. For example, I use them on the air filter level indicator where I still want to be able to see what it set to but don't want it lighting up the room much at night.
Through a series of unfortunate events I ended up briefly owning seven brand new Beoplay Portal PC/PS headphones in the summer of 2022, and keeping the last one that was purchased in exasperation.
The products were all bought from three different authorized dealers across the EU, and despite the serial numbers and manufacturing dates being spread out, mostly all of the headphones had manufacturing deffects:
- The clamping force of the headbands had considerable variation, some of the headphones were very comfortable, one fell off from your head if you looked down, while two of them caused headaches after wearing them for 20 minutes
- The firmness of the foam inside the earpads and of the lambskin also had variations
- Some of the products made a popping sound if you slightly pressed the cushion on the headband
- The painted white L and R letters inside the earcups had various brown spots
- Three headphones made a squeaking sound when you adjusted the length of the arms, one of them was also squeaking during normal use
- The material of the storage bag was half as thick if the product had a later serial number
- One of the products had a broken BLE module and would not connect
I got some casual use out of the headphones I have kept for about 6 months, and despite treating the product like jewelry, the headband cushion material has started separating from a hidden seam. The product was quickly replaced by Bang & Olufsen.
An app is required to adjust the EQ and access other features that are advertised on the sales page, but the app forces you to sign up for a B&O account and share personal information such as your name and email address, then register the product. You couldn't find any information about the requirement for account setup and product registration anywhere, not on the sales page, and not in the user manual. I believe this is at least a GDPR violation.
The headphones sometimes forget the customized settings, and after a couple of months of use, the app now has a hard time connecting to the paired device.
The headphones all sounded great, but from what I've read and experienced, Bang & Olufsen seems to hide shoddy manufacturing tolerances behind bespokeness, even for their most expensive products, and I doubt this is the user experience the rich are craving.
> Oh, no. I liked those tools, but I don't let them update since they started having "premium versions".
Expecting project maintainers to solely fund the development of open source projects used by millions of people is the leopard that keeps eating our faces.
I wonder how much universal basic income, or at least a stronger economy, could spur FOSS development. I feel like the 2008 crisis and the rise of the precariat put a permanent dent in the phenomenon of non-professional devs maintaining free-software projects as a hobby.
A universal basic income, that is an income which is _universal_ and _fixed_ in its amount, will only create inflation: everyone gets equal additional money, everyone gets additional purchasing power, everyone creates more demand, prices go up.
A stronger economy is always better, but politicians usually manage to screw that one up, also.
But I don't think all of that is a major issue here. Microsoft and IBM are taking open-source projects and closing them up. Google is offering FLOSS projects to get users, then poisoning the well. I don't know what's happened to Mozilla, but it's destroying itself.
Lots of individuals are still writing FLOSS projects, but hobbies get picked up and dropped often -- for something to last, you usually need an organization (even if it's just 3 people) and it can easily become a _job_, even if it's a non-paying job. Even if their finances are fine and they still have spare time, most folks don't want a second job with a second source of deadlines and stress etc. And if a for-profit giant sees their project and offers them a LOT of money to stop working on it, most folks will say yes -- even if they were making decent money already.
> A universal basic income, that is an income which is _universal_ and _fixed_ in its amount, will only create inflation: everyone gets equal additional money, everyone gets additional purchasing power, everyone creates more demand, prices go up.
Not really, it will also redistribute wealth.
Let's say I have $1000 and you have $100. If we get additional $100 each, your purchasing power would now be 2/11 of mine instead of 1/10, even with prices adjusted for inflation.
I'm not advocating for UBI though – stronger economy is the more sustainable solution here.
And then you as a business owner charge $10 more for the items you sell at your store in order to offdet the fact that the government is forcefully taking momey from you to distribute it.
Do you really see it going another way? Taking money from people through force just distributes it back to the people that get the handouts.. eg. Inflation.
Somehow this leopard only exists on systems like Android and Google Play Store or web browser extension stores, but notably not in places like F-Droid or the repos of any common GNU/Linux distribution.
"Leopard eats face" is a dumb reddit thought-terminating cliche. I invite you to actually think about the problem and ask yourself why developers of FOSS tools selling out happens in some domains but not others, and effects some users without warning but not others.
Some of the largest projects on F-Droid are all funded either by having a paid version on Google Play, accepting donations, or a company funding their development by hiring the maintainers. Most of the software you can install from a distro repository are also developed in large part by people that are compensated in some form, if the project requires continued development.
Money always ends up in the equation when you have to invest years of your life maintaining and supporting a project. And that's perfectly fine and healthy, because it means you can find a path that does not result in either side being exploited.
As for your last point, I was not responding to developers selling out their users, which is unfortunate, but to the expectation to not have a premium/paid version of a software project distributed. I think the developer even shared the pro version for free on F-Droid (OsmAnd does the same), yet the existence of a paid version was regarded as something negative by the user above.
If you're uncomfortable with the taught of you or at least someone else funding the development of the software you use, you're only setting yourself up to be exploited.
You're missing a big part of the equation: the leopard exists in places where developers can push updates directly to users with minimal if any oversight from commercially independent reviewers. Debian and F-Droid build packages from source given to them by the developers, they don't trust developer builds. Therefore even though these Simple apps have sold to a malware company, that company won't be able to push updates to users. On platforms where this leopard is common, there may be some lip service paid to review but it's almost always completely automated or performed by low-skill contract labor who have no personal commitment to the process.
Another aspect of leopard territory is API churn. On Android and to a lesser extent browser extensions, regular rebuilds are necessary to keep the application up to date. This sometimes necessitates reworking parts of the application, not just rebuilding it. This recurring chore places a constant burden on developers, they can't "finish" an application then forget about it and move on with their lives; doing so would see their work vanish. On the other hand, on GNU/Linux desktops it's perfectly feasible to "finish" an application and leave it unmaintained for 15 years, people will still be able to use it. And on Android with F-Droid, most of the burden of rebuilding applications to keep them running is taken on by F-Droid volunteers, reducing the burnout pressure on application developers.
The conclusion is simple: Strict separation of the developer and packager/distributor roles keeps the leopard away.
> On the other hand, on GNU/Linux desktops it's perfectly feasible to "finish" an application and leave it unmaintained for 15 years, people will still be able to use it.
Oh no, only if it buildable from source. Binary compitability in Desktop Linux is non-existant, even Linus Tovarldis has ranted about this in the past. Even source is not immune to rot, if no maintainer steps up, nobody will package it, and god forbid the application uses something like QT4, while the distro decides to drop QT4 altogether...
I assume your time also has value. Open source software does not have to be shared free of charge, especially not when you need to invest your time and money to package and distribute the software and offer support for the project. The kind of puritan definition of open source that you're alluding to is only playing into the hands of the megacorps that are exploiting their users.
People deserve to be compensated for their work, especially when their work finds an active audience, even if they maintain an open source project.
So again, how many man-hours does it take, monthly, to maintain those apps? Note that I’m a programmer myself and so I’m not asking about the usual enterprise-level fake numbers.
Also, while open source definitely needs some funding, it can become badly harmed by too much of it, when code becomes developed purely for money and not for the usual ESR’s open source incentives.
Maybe it's not your intention, but from your comments it comes across like you're putting very little value on other people's work. It was probably a substantial effort that took years to bring these projects to the usability and popularity that they achieved. Again, i'm not sure why did the user above find it problematic to have a paid version of the app on Google Play, and the same version with the same features distributed for free on F-Droid.
Oh, I'm sure writing those apps was an effort. But I was asking about something quite different - the cost of maintaining them. You do need time or money or people to keep an Open Source project alive; but you don't need to pay the authors for the work they've done previously.
As for the problem with a paid version - it's because when it happens, shortly afterwards the free version starts to rot. Monetisation might be good for the owner, but it's almost always terrible to user experience.
From a quick look on GitHub the projects were not just an initial effort with little time invested in after release, but were actively developed for years. This year alone there are several releases which contain new features.
If I'm not mistaken, they were publishing the exact same version on both app stores, and the apps could be purchased or some of the features were put behind in-app purchases on Google Play. This is a reasonable funding model that has allowed many open source apps to thrive, though in this developer's case maybe it did not meet their needs.
Simple Mobile makes apps like file managers and image galleries. Just how much work is required to maintain this besides keeping the file access API up to date? Not sure if that's even had any breaking changes on Android in the past several years.
I'm not familiar with these projects, so I'm not sure how much time it would take to just keep them afloat, but I've seen they are popular and beloved apps. Looking at the GitHub activity, they have been actively developed for years, and several releases a year also contain new features. This was more than likely a full-time job for the developer.
It's regrettable that the funding model of these projects did not work out, and that the developer sold these apps without informing users about the change of ownership.
Though it feels like at this point we are bargaining for the amount of free work we are expected to get from this person, while sneering at the prospect of there being a paid version of the app published on Google Play as part of the original funding model that was in place long before the sale.
Web preservation projects usually submit their content to the Internet Archive, or at least make it accessible through the Memento protocol. It seems the blog you're looking for already has some archived pages.
It also feels awful to be called a beggar and a panhandler just because you're trying to find a balance and build a sustainable project by having a donation popup (that can be disabled) in your software.
This disgusting review was sitting at the top of the review page for Search by Image on the Chrome Web Store: https://i.imgur.com/P1QU176.png
This person has edited their review a couple of times in the past year which pushed it to the top, and also emailed me with a similar demeaning message. I've reported it to Google staff, and they thought that the review did not break their content policy, so they did not remove it.
So yeah, it hurts when you're offering so much of your free time for so little benefits, or none at all, and a couple of entitled jerks still manage to poison the well for everyone.
With each abusive message the thought of no longer offering up your time and the results of your work for free grows stronger and stronger. It's no surprise that people either quit, sell their open source projects, or stop offering it for free.
> It also feels awful to be called a beggar and a panhandler just because you're trying to find a balance and build a sustainable project by having a donation popup (that can be disabled) in your software.
Interrupting someone's browsing experience to ask for donations is both providing a poor user experience and is in poor taste. I think it's fine to solicit donations in the browserAction popup, the settings page or even the initial installation window, but doing so elsewhere would deservedly be criticized.
A donation popup is shown once a year, and only when you use the extension, it does not randomly interrupt your browsing experience. Te popup can even be disabled from the extension's options. It is similar to a donation prompt being shown when an app is opened, once a year.
That's what this person was complaining about, that they've seen a donation prompt once when they've initiated an image search with the extension.
There is no winning with some of these people, they want your time and the results of your work, they want it for free, and they want it to be neatly packaged and presented exactly the way that is most convenient for them. If you deviate even a little bit from their unreasonable expectations, you'll be promptly attacked.
Once your projects grow past a certain size, threats of physical violence also become a regular occurrence, here's a milder email I have received last year: https://i.imgur.com/LKJQq1p.png
This kind of harassment is happening every 1-2 weeks on different channels, we keep these private messages because everything has to be documented in case law enforcement needs to be involved.
Not defending the trolls, but this kind of abuse is part and parcel of merely being online and putting anything out there. I've received hate mail and even one death threat from just commenting on HN. Lots of unhinged (but ultimately cowardly) people out there who feel empowered by distance and anonymity. I don't know a single female internet user who hasn't been on the receiving end of absolutely vile anger and hate at least once. Thick skin is a must.
> There is no winning with some of these people, they want your time and the results of your work, they want it for free, and they want it to be neatly packaged and presented exactly the way that is most convenient for them. If you deviate even a little bit from their unreasonable expectations, you'll be promptly attacked.
You're making a pretty big leap from "users prefer these things" to "users expect these things".
Are you going to pretend you don't want things to be free, neatly packaged, and convenient? Who wouldn't want this?
And the idea that a four star review which starts with "A good extension." is an "attack" is absurd. Given it appears you expect your users not to express any preferences that aren't exactly what you've implemented, perhaps it's you who has unreasonable expectations?
> Once your projects grow past a certain size, threats of physical violence also become a regular occurrence, here's a milder email I have received last year: https://i.imgur.com/LKJQq1p.png
> doing so elsewhere would deservedly be criticized.
I suggest that these people express their criticism by not using the software in question. I doubt the typical purveyor of free-as-in-* software who's stuck between a rock and a hard place re: monetization particularly cares what somebody who doesn't understand the personal specifics of their dilemma thinks about their chosen solution to it.
> I suggest that these people express their criticism by not using the software in question.
Do you also suggest that when an application is ad-ridden or potentially malware-ridden to also just not use the app? Naturally that's an option, but the review is to warn other users of their experience.
I don't think death threats or calling people slurs is appropriate, but the review being complained about it is pretty mundane.
> Do you also suggest that when an application is ad-ridden or potentially malware-ridden to also just not use the app? Naturally that's an option, but the review is to warn other users of their experience.
Is a restaurant owner pissed off about a one star review by somebody who didn't like the decor in the bathroom implicitly suggesting that people who receive food poisoning at a restaurant have no right to communicate that experience to other potential customers? Is a homeowner who puts out ant traps in her kitchen tacitly endorsing genocide?
I think there is such a vast gulf between displaying a mildly annoying message asking for donations and tricking someone into installing malware on their computer that anybody with a moderately intact sense of proportionality should have no trouble seeing it. So, no, I don't suggest that.
I think there's even greater utility in telling people about minor things that might annoy them, because those minor things aren't going to get a developer's application pulled from the app store, but have a meaningful impact on the user's experience.
You really think it's more important for me to air my grievances about a free software's occasional donation nag messages than to tell other potential users it's a front for malware? That's honestly really strange, and I categorically disagree.
It's greater utility in the sense that there's other mechanisms in place to report malware that are more effective at getting that changed than just the review section.
Reviews are much more useful for applications that stick around on the app store, or chrome web store, or whatever else, because well, they're still there.
I disagree. In my experience, user/customer reviews have been vastly more useful to me for learning about serious safety or quality issues with a product or service than they have been for any purpose (unspecified because I really can't think of any) predicated on learning about specific users' weird gripes. I can practically smell the unreasonableness dripping off that review somebody linked above, and I would ignore it if I spotted it in a list of reviews—but unfortunately I can't ignore it out of the aggregate rating.
Anyway, this isn't going anywhere productive, so I'm out.
> I suggest that these people express their criticism by not using the software in question.
As with most "love it or leave it" arguments, this is a transparent attempt to silence critics without actually bothering to engage with criticism, even if it's constructive.
Anything you put in front of a significant number of people will be criticized, and rightly so, because it's not perfect. Admitting things aren't perfect is the first step to making things better.
This argument is particularly disigenuous in the context of a discussion about YouTube, because YouTube is effectively a monopoly in a number of ways--it's effectively an argument that once a product reaches monopoly status, it can do whatever it wants and nobody can criticize.
Adults learn to accept, integrate, and throttle their intake of criticism. If you haven't, you have some growing up to do.
> Yes, and it's people's prerogative to write reviews criticizing the software that is published, regardless of whether it's paid or not.
Do you think that review was respectful, now that you know that the donation prompt was not obtrusive nor randomly shown (see my other comments, it has been explained in detail)? Don't you feel that the way this person expressed themselves was rather demeaning, and perhaps somewhat unjust?
Not particularly, but I also wouldn't really describe it as particularly disgusting or demeaning, either. It could have been worded better, but I'm not going to read too deeply into what random people on the internet say about me personally.
I find anything that's trying to interrupt what I'm doing like popup advertisements, cookie modals, and other things of the sort irritating because it forces me out of my workflow and requires action to continue what I was doing. It doesn't really matter how frequent it is. When i'm actively installing extensions I expect there to be a popup that is giving me information about the application. Dark Reader has a donation button featured on their popup from their action. I don't find this to be invasive even though it's there literally any time I interact with the extension. I ended up paying for the extension on safari because I liked it so much.
That's just my opinion, though. There's a lot of things that I find distasteful that would make me uninstall an application that seemingly don't bother the majority of people, and ultimately, you have a right to make your application how you see fit, but I don't think there's anything wrong with criticizing it for what that user clearly views as distasteful.
I don't think that your opinion that the prompt was not obtrusive is objective truth. Whether a prompt is obtrusive or not is very much a matter of subjective opinion, and I tend to value user opinions on user experience over creator opinions on user experience.
The fact that the donation prompt was shown on startup doesn't undermine the reviewer's preference for not seeing a donation prompt at all. They're factually incorrect on a minor detail, but that doesn't change the larger point.
The rudest part of the review was them referring to the prompt as "panhandling", which is actually inaccurate, and if I were writing the review I would have used a milder, more accurate word there (maybe "soliciting"?). But in receiving any communication from anyone, it's unreasonable to expect people to communicate perfectly, and I try to understand people rather than criticize how they communicate their ideas. I certainly would not describe that as "disgusting" or "appalling".
And again, I'm not saying you should remove the donation prompt. In fact, if you made it show up every time until a user donated, I'd have no objections. Users wouldn't like this, but you're not obligated to fulfill users' every wish. Just as users aren't obligated to fawn over everything you do when it doesn't do what they want it to do.
Believe it or not, users can want things, and you can ignore what they want, and those are both okay!
No, I'm not implying that at all. The author of the software isn't the only one who might improve the software based on the criticism. A completely different person might decide to clone the software with suggested improvements, for example.
I flagged this comment because it contains a personal attack:
> Adults learn to accept, integrate, and throttle their intake of criticism. If you haven't, you have some growing up to do.
Normally I would respond to this kind of thing in a different way, but the (apparently) lone HN moderator has previously informed me that stooping to the level of such attacks is just as bad in HN's eyes as being the one to make them in the first place. Accordingly, I place my rhetorical fate in the hands of the mod[s], and I look forward to seeing your rule-breaking comment removed.
If you want to know what I have to say, feel free to start a new subthread replying to me with the rulebreaking content removed. I would be all too happy to respond to any substantive arguments you are able to present without resorting to personal attacks as a rhetorical crutch.
I disagree that constructive criticism is against the rules.
If you want to say something, say it, if you don't, don't--why would I care? I've said my opinion and posturing that you're better than the discussion doesn't persuade anyone that you're right. It hasn't been my experience that when people self-censor, they later reveal they had some brilliant counterargument that we were all missing out on.
I totally agree with this sentiment. Could I also bill the creator for my time invested in learning the software and adjusting my workflows for it, all the hours invested before the hidden anti-features showed the true intention of the software? Otherwise this whole argument could legitimize spyware. I could not reasonably decide to stop using the software before I was informed of the anti-features, regardless of how their invasiveness.
It's definitely a strange proposition, but you could try it yourself.
Install Signal on your phone and start using it, in a couple of months you will be shown a donation popup a single time when you open the app. At this point uninstall the app and contact Signal's development team to send them an invoice for your invested time that has now been ruined when that donation prompt has interrupted your messaging experience.
Also call them beggars and panhandlers, after all that's perfectly reasonable, and even respectable.
For the record, I get that donate popup on Signal every couple weeks, and it's all the more annoying because I donated for several years until they recently removed SMS support.
Either we should accept software with hidden misfeatures without complaining, in which case the user must receive compensation for their time, or we should complain and inform others of the misfeature.
Uninstalling the software in silence is an invitation for more spyware and trojaned software.
Sure, and why stop there? You might also e.g. bill/sue the author of a free software you invested time into learning because they are no longer providing free updates, rendering the software obsolete and your time investment wasted.
> This disgusting review was sitting at the top of the review page for Search by Image on the Chrome Web Store: https://i.imgur.com/P1QU176.png
> This person has edited their review a couple of times in the past year which pushed it to the top, and also emailed me with a similar demeaning message. I've reported it to Google staff, and they thought that the review did not break their content policy, so they did not remove it.
So? What's the point you're making? Users aren't allowed to have preferences about software they get for free? User experience doesn't matter for free software? Who did you release this software for if not for users?
It's a 4 star review, ffs. Do you think every review that isn't glowing is disgusting? Why on earth would you expect Google staff to remove a review which merely expresses a preference?
It really feels like a significant portion of Hacker News just doesn't really grok the whole "doing nice things for other people" thing. If you only did this for money or glowing praise for how generous you are, you'd have been better off choosing one of those and pursuing it singlemindedly instead of trying for both money and being perceived as generous, and then being surprised when people notice you aren't doing either perfectly. And sure, you're not obligated to just do it out of the kindness of your heart, and you have every right to choose how nice you want to be. But if you aren't doing it for purely prosocial reasons, then maybe don't expect people to fawn over how purely prosocial you are.
You've lost the plot if you think that it is normal or acceptable to call the maintainers of an app or extension beggars and panhandlers if there is a donation prompt shown once a year when you open the app. Most people would in fact find it appalling and demeaning to treat people with such little respect. I think you should also take a second look at your own performance in this thread, and maybe ask a friend for an opinion about your comments, because that behavior is not normal either.
> Most people would in fact find it appalling and demeaning to treat people with such little respect.
You don't speak for most people, nor do I believe you know much about most people. If you've got access to any evidence I am not aware of, feel free to share, but until that point, I can only assume this is just your opinion, which you are trying to present as most people's opinion.
> I think you should also take a second look at your own performance in this thread, and maybe ask a friend for an opinion about your comments, because that behavior is not normal either.
Asked my girlfriend. Her statements: 1. "Why are you arguing with people on the internet?" (Answer: I was bored.) 2. "That guy [you] is overreacting."
You've already checked your opinions with the Google staff, and been told they don't agree with you. Why would you think one of my friends is going to agree with you more? How many outside opinions are you willing to ignore to maintain your delusion that your opinion is universally agreed upon? I'm pretty sure none of the people who are agreeing with you in this thread have actually read the mild, polite 4/5 star review you're describing as "disgusting".
In a larger sense, you've not engaged with anything that the review said or that I said. You're just calling opinions disgusting, appalling, demeaning, etc., without actually bothering to disprove the concrete claims being made.
I asked questions in my previous post, and they aren't just rhetorical. You might consider answering them:
"What's the point you're making? Users aren't allowed to have preferences about software they get for free? User experience doesn't matter for free software? Who did you release this software for if not for users?"
Unfortunately, after all my observations of humans over the course of decades, I feel like real empathy is actually pretty rare in humans. It might be common in fictitious characters, but not in real people.
empathy to random humans is rare, empathy to those in your immediate vicinity is not. I suspect the biggest asshole at your work probably has empathy for their family.
The fundamental issue at play here is trying to manipulate language by using the word disgusting to evoke a stronger reaction than is warranted.
At some point you're going to need a stronger word than disgusting because you've watered it down so much. Where do you go?
It sounds good, but a lot of people just aren't mentally equipped for that: some people are fighters, some just aren't. So instead of confronting the assholes and putting up the "wall of shame" like you suggest, they'll just give up and go find another hobby that doesn't result in receiving such vile messages.
The people we're talking about are providing a service for free, with no direct benefit to them. Why would they go into the line of fire for something like that?
It is our collective duty to make sure individuals providing a service to society are treated with respect. If we can't do that then we simply don't deserve their time and effort.
Why would someone who fears crossing photocell doors try it again and again... For years? To overcome the phobia, that's why.
Nah, people need to be brought out of the protecting bubble.
You give money to them, so they have a tangible evidence that their work means something. Not just stars and patting in the back. Time to stop the open source beggar movement.
Regularly having to deal with abusive comments takes a mental toll on you no matter how much of a tough guy you are. Why do you think we're entitled to them not only sacrificing their time, but also their mental heath? Donations on most open-source projects don't even come close to covering the costs of either.
Again, we are not entitled to their services and assholes can and will ruin nice things for all of us.
Not really. Tbh I like to gut these people. Most of those who belittle-berate others are weak people, they compensate for something. Once I give them some treatment, 99% percent backs off, because they don't like the barrage of insults/whatever.
I never said we are entitled for anything. I don't like that oss developers get paid nothing and have to - seemingly - beg for sponsorhip/money. But the open source model was ugly from the get go. You build something up, decide to abandon it, and people fork it, expropriate it, and the original dev is forgotten. They get nothing. The actual guy, who maintains it might get something in the future, but who created the foundation - since he left the project - gets nothing. Ridiculous.
The open source movement/idea is flawed and needs to be changed, that's all.
The constant nagging when you tell Google "no" shows how little respect they have for their users. Messages by Google, which is primarily an SMS app, is asking me every 1-2 weeks to enable RCS chats. The link for declining the request is small and easy to miss, while the AGREE button below it takes up 25% of the area of the popup.
Dear Google UX designers, the way you present your little "decline" links is illegal in the EU. I'm sure you've got these design directives from a product manager, but you can still say "no" to breaking the law.
I dislike how there's no complete open source RCS implementation, and after trying it out a few years ago, I now actively avoid it (I instead use QKSMS on Android)...
But I don't see the problem with the decline link and EU law?
AFAIK, most EU regulations are about tracking and consent in using your information...
In this case, you're already using a Google product (the Messages app), and Google is just (aggressively) nudging you to use extra features that they have shipped in their app. It doesn't follow that Google is definitely going to use more information to track you than it would've done before (though it could be possible, of course)
...of course, I fully agree that this doesn't embody their "respect the user" ethos, but frankly... If you worked on new features for your users, I think it's fair to nudge them to try to make sure that what you worked on will end up benefitting them (of course, a company behaves differently than an individual, and it's not guaranteed that the work done might actually have merit... But that's orthogonal to this discussion)
The design of such consent popups has been deemed illegal in the EU, Google was also previously fined [1] for a similar consent popup. The "REJECT" button needs to be just as accessible and needs to have about the same visual weight as the "ACCEPT" button, dark patterns like the ones you see in the RCS consent popup above are illegal.
> Dear Google UX designers, the way you present your little "decline" links is illegal in the EU. I'm sure you've got these design directives from a product manager, but you can still say "no" to breaking the law.
If there is one thing like about EU, is that it's the only one in the world standing for the user's rights keeping these companies with their antitrust pratices in check.
If it weren't for them @pple wouldn't have switched to USB-C
The classic reverse image search results from Google will not be around for much longer, I've been getting reports about my browser extension no longer working with Google Images in some regions.
Yandex Images also possibly going away or becoming heavily censored is also an issue for journalists and researchers, since it is the best performing publicly available reverse image search engine.
What, you don't like the reverse image product search? You want actual... images? Not thumbnails of stuff you can buy from rando websites? How anti-consumer of you!
Also be careful with all Philips air purifiers that support Wi-Fi, because the remote control feature cannot be disabled. They create a Wi-Fi hotspot that you need to connect to with a smartphone to finish setting up the device, but if you don't use these features, the air purifier will create a permanent Wi-Fi hotspot, waiting to be exploited.