Hmm. IME VB6 is actually a particular pain point, because MDAC (a hodgepodge of Microsoft database-access thingies) does not install even on Windows 10, and a line-of-business VB6 app is very likely to need that. And of course you can’t run apps from the 1980s on Windows 11 natively, because it can no longer run 16-bit apps, whether DOS or Windows ones. (All 32-bit Windows apps are definitionally not from the 1980s, seeing as the Tom Miller’s sailboat trip that gave us Win32 only happened in 1990. And it’s not the absence of V86 mode that’s the problem—Windows NT for Alpha could run DOS apps, using a fatter NTVDM with an included emulator. It’s purely Microsoft’s lack of desire to continue supporting that use case.)
As I’ve already said in my initial comment, this is not the whole story. (I acknowledge it is the official story, but I want to say the official story, at best, creatively omits some of the facts.)
NTVDM as it existed Windows NT (3.1 through 10) for i386 leveraged V86 mode. NTVDM on Windows NT (e.g. 4.0) for MIPS, PowerPC, and Alpha, on the other hand, already had[1] a 16-bit x86 emulator, which was merely ifdefed out of the i386 version (making the latter much leaner).
Is it fair of Microsoft to not care to resurrect that nearly decade-old code (as of Windows XP x64 when it first became relevant)? Yes. Is it also fair to say that they would not, in fact, need to write a complete emulator from scratch to preserve their commitment to backwards compatibility, because they had already done that? Also yes.
Yeah, I was surprised by the lack of search results when I was double-checking my post too, but apparently I wasn’t surprised enough, because I was wrong. I mixed up two pieces of Showstopper!: chapter 5 mentions the Win32 spec being initially written in two weeks by Lucovsky and Wood
> Lucovsky was more fastidious than Wood, but otherwise they had much in common: tremendous concentration, the ability to produce a lot of code fast, a distaste for excessive documentation and self-confidence bordering on megalomania. Within two weeks, they wrote an eighty-page paper describing proposed NT versions of hundreds of Windows APIs.
and chapter 6 mentions the NTFS spec being initially written in two weeks by Miller and one other person on Miller’s sailboat.
> Maritz decided that Miller could write a spec for NTFS, but he reserved the right to kill the file system before the actual coding of it began.
> Miller gathered some pens and pads, two weeks’ worth of provisions and prepared for a lengthy trip on his twenty-eight-foot sailboat. Miller felt that spec writing benefited from solitude, and the ocean offered plenty of it. [...] Rather than sail alone, Miller arranged with Perazzoli, who officially took care of the file team, to fly in a programmer Miller knew well. He lived in Switzerland.
> In August, Miller and his sidekick set sail for two weeks. The routine was easy: Work in the morning, talking and scratching out notes on a pad, then sail somewhere, then talk and scratch out more notes, then anchor by evening and relax.
(I’m still relatively confident that the Win32 spec was written in 1990; at the very least, Showstopper! mentions it being shown to a group of app writers on December 17 of that year.)
I've always believed that people who smoked weed moderately seemed to be 'quicker' witted in older age(65-75). The positive effects can be negated by being fat/unhealthy/sedentary.
LSD, extacy types are more subjective. If you abuse them they fry your brain but in moderation they also seem to open new 'pathways' of thought.
Legit article, I understand 2/3 of the financials I read stating medium crude supply has been at critical levels for a decade, suppliers are letting their reserves run dry, prices are going to go bananas soon.
My armchair click to robinhood bet conclusion is Calls on petroleum, Puts on cruise liners.
Neat, I remove all POST strings as a habit; I probably mistakenly assume most intermediate skill users would also. Using a webpage to do so would be helpful for more complicated links where the url POST data includes the content ID in one of the strings
I would imagine what you have would be far more useful to HN folks if you add some type of attribution system - meaning parse the URL, identity the tracking strings, and then tell the user what each string one does.
Then let the use check a radio box to re-appeand the desired tracking string to the url(. Maybe add the option to edit the string?
You’re right that for many HN folks the interesting part is not just “make the URL shorter”, but understanding what is being removed and being able to keep / edit specific bits. Right now SafeShare is deliberately “dumb & small”: it only sees the URL string in the address bar and strips parameters that match a simple list/heuristic (UTM, gclid, fbclid, some obvious redirect params etc.). It doesn’t look at the request method – so it’s really working on query strings, not HTTP POST bodies.
I like your idea of an attribution / explanation layer, e.g.:
• parse the URL and list detected tracking params,
• show a short label for each (utm_source → source, campaign attribution, etc.),
• let the user tick which ones to keep/remove, maybe even edit values,
• then regenerate the final URL.
That would probably live as an “advanced” or “details” view so that the default flow stays as simple as: paste → clean → copy/open.
I’ll experiment with a prototype of that – even just a “show what was removed and why” panel would already be a useful first step. Thanks again for pushing me in that direction.
The problem is that instead of using widely documented and implemented web languages that are built into the browser and can run natively without a translator, unskilled web devs opt to use random web modules provided by adware vendors to simplify the implementation of complex animations, fonts, and UI/UX and "vibe" coding functions. This modules are not often built for memory management and garbage collection (the opposite actually)
But I mean, you're part of the problem by heavily utilizing the same LLMs responsible for suggesting the use of ridiculously heavy modules ran at every page load and bloated front ends instead of fostering skilled programmers who write things from scratch, improve them over time, optimize them because they actually care about resource management, etc...
Reading this just makes me think of yesterday's post - vibe code in turbo mode, Gemini Antigravty wipes the entire storage drive partition because it missed a quotation in function code it wrote and ran without checking.
it used to be you needed to be an idiotic noob to do that to your company but now you can automate it and do it at scale, idiotic noobs are expensive and it costs a lot to hire enough to wreck everything but vibe coding is cheap and inexpensive to bring awesome self-destructive power!
Remove the antennas. Do not give in to the mirage of convenience.
Use a stand alone generic GPS. Vehicle GPS devices are anti privacy for so many reasons.
Listen to stored music from an SD card if terrestrial radio (NO SATELLITE). Did you know almost ALL late model cars can play a <128gb FAT32 USB drive with non- vbr mp3s? 64gb filled with 168kb mp3 audio would take roughly 3 years at 4 hours a day to listen to.
TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Your phone does more than track you - the Bluetooth and wifi beacon scanners are always running. When you come across another person, most phones track the intersection of your beacon with theirs making a new data point that compromises both individuals privacy. Now consider sitting at a stoplight; you and and the 10 phones around you have now correlated the time and position you were sitting there. The person jogging by with no phone(but a set of Bluetooth headphones) is also tracked by their Bluetooth signature. Terrifying.
Disable autonomous driving hardware by unplugging the cables from the interior cameras. If your car needs to see and feel you in order to do it's job, it's co-dependent; break up with it.
Ignore your car's complaints and error messages. Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical?
> Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical?
Your car will happily display an orange light while a bad fuel mixture is poisoning your catalytic converter to the point where it needs replacing to meet any kind of emissions test. Same with other signs of engine stress.
Don't ignore dash lights unless you know what they mean or you're willing to pay the cost of disposing of your car.
Of course many places won't even allow you to disconnect all the antennae as a non-functional TPMS makes your car unroadworthy in various jurisdictions. You could quickly reconnect everything and clear the error codes before testing, but I'm not sure if the hassle is even worth the illusion that of being untraceable.
>TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Your phone does more than track you - the Bluetooth and wifi beacon scanners are always running. When you come across another person, most phones track the intersection of your beacon with theirs making a new data point that compromises both individuals privacy. Now consider sitting at a stoplight; you and and the 10 phones around you have now correlated the time and position you were sitting there. The person jogging by with no phone(but a set of Bluetooth headphones) is also tracked by their Bluetooth signature. Terrifying.
All phones nowadays have bluetooth/wifi mac address randomization, so it's basically useless for tracking, not to mention google/apple conscripting every phone into a wardriving network will kill battery life. Moreover all this effort in avoiding being tracked doesn't really mean much when all cars have a very visible and unique identifier that's mandated by law (ie. license plate).
> Moreover all this effort in avoiding being tracked doesn't really mean much when all cars have a very visible and unique identifier that's mandated by law (ie. license plate).
I agree with the first half, but not this. The difference between people seeing your license plate and your car/phone/etc systematically recording and storing your exact position is the same as the difference between someone on the street seeing my face vs. a facial recognition camera identifying me and storing that data point forever. People don't memorize or care about your plates. The police could take note of them or even put it on some record, but the number of cops is so low (and the number of cops that would care about my license plates is even lower) that whatever scraps of data are recorded would probably be pretty useless - and besides, that data isn't sold off to private entities, at least where I am.
But in exchange for being tracked we've been saved from the scourge of occasionally checking our tire pressure. Why, I'd give up almost anything just to be slightly more comfortable.
Yeah that's terrible advice. Learning to ignore safety warnings is an amazing way to wind up stranded or with a destroyed car because you decided to ignore a warning light
Check your tire pressures when you get gas, along with your oil and other fluid levels. Eyeball the tires every time you get in the car. These habits are not hard to develop and they will work even when the sensors malfunction (which is not infrequently).
All that these sensor-based systems do is train you to be an inattentive car owner.
All these low profile tires do make it a lot harder to eyeball your tires to an acceptable level and tell if they are low. But low profile tires are just in general kind of crappy already.
I do have a walk around the car before I set forth, but stuff happens.
Some drives are very long -- hours and hours between stops. I've had tires that aired themselves down during a drive. TPMS can alert me to that issue before I get an opportunity to have another walk-around, so I can stop and address it before it becomes a safety concern.
It's fine if someone want to live in a world without monitoring systems; anyone is free to drive an old car with points ignition and a carb if they want (or mechanical diesel! with an air starter, even! no electricity needed at all!).
And sure, there's a certain joy to driving something of relative mechanical simplicity.
But I like modern cars. And I like things like temperature gauges, closed-loop electronic fuel injection, oil pressure indicators, ABS, traction control, backup cameras, and [I dare say] tire pressure monitoring. I like cruise control. I like headlights that turn themselves on when necessary, and off again when they're unnecessary.
And as one might correctly surmise: It doesn't have to be that way: There's other ways to live. A person can also choose to walk, ride a bike, use a horse, commit to a lifestyle that is centered around public transportation, or whatever. The world is full of options.
I've chosen my path, and you can also choose yours.
(And no, that doesn't make me inattentive. My path involves both a belt and suspenders.)
Information is good but the number of "slow leak on a long drive" failures made less inconvenient by TPMS almost certainly pales in comparison to the inconvenience of maintaining the system for the average consumer.
Acting like all this is a safety concern is just textbook internet comment section lying through ones teeth type behavior. Yes, anything can be a safety concern at the limit but even tire failures on the road to not typically elevate to that level. The following framing of "well just drive an old car if you don't like it" is more of the same sort of dishonesty with a veneer of plausible deniability on top. There's no reason these systems need to be built in a way that they can't be disabled and leak PII. There's no reason just about all the systems you're trying to frame as a "bundle" have to be bundled in the first place.
Low tire pressures are a safety problem. Low tire pressure increases the likelihood of catastrophic tire failure. People can (and do!) die from catastrophic tire failures (and from complications of them, like being run over while changing a tire on the side of the road).
I'm not acting. This is not a performative display.
But yes: While I'm happier in a world with TPMS, I'd be even happier yet in a world where it was a quick and simple job to disable it in a reversible way. (Perhaps in some manner similar to the incantations used to disable the passenger seatbelt chime in many cars.)
Nonsense. People are still driving cars without TPMS, they can feel the difference while driving and do tire pressure checkups regular intervals depending on run. No issue.
Of course. A skilled driver knows their car very well, and can note by feel that the car is pulling somewhat to one side and correctly identify that this is due to low tire pressure instead of an external effect like road condition or wind, and then decide whether to address it or keep going.
A skilled driver can notice all kinds of other stuff using their senses, too.
For instance: When there's a plume of coolant coming out of the hood in front of them, they can deduce from observation that the engine temperature may be very high. They can also identify low oil pressure by observing the clacks and bangs of an engine that is starved for oil and tearing itself apart, or even by the silence of an engine that has ceased.
Or: Information. A light can illuminate on the dashboard the before these conditions are pronounced enough to feel, and the driver may then elect to use this abundance of information to take action before it snowballs into something that may become expensive or dangerous.
Throughout my entire life, I don't know if I have ever seen anyone measuring their tire pressure or checking their oil at a gas station. Visually assessing tires can be quite misleading as well - my TPMS indicator was just on, visually it looked like one tire (its pressure was fine), and the tire that was 10psi low looked normal.
Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope, and often a poor cope at that. The problem isn't the dash warning lights of the past several decades, it's the built in corporate surveillance hardware of the past single decade (and the corresponding violation of user trust in favor of corporate control).
I don't see it often either, but my government has been very active trying to get people to do bi-monthly tire pressure checks at the very least.
I don't think most people know how to do it, to be honest. Partially because people seem to think reading two pages in a manual is some kind of sisyphean task that no mortal should ever be cursed with.
It's pretty crazy how little people care. Even if you don't care about the safety aspect, keeping your tires inflated well saves you a ton on fuel and tire replacements.
Checking oil at once universal full-service gas stations used to be extremely common. Think it pretty much went away in late-70s petroleum shortage in the US. With modern cars, it just doesn't make a lot of sense given any semblance of scheduled maintenance adherence.
I (again) have a low pressure warning on one tire (getting colder in the Northern Hemisphere). It looks fine but I'll get my compressor out tomorrow and make the computer happy. A lot of modern tires can look pretty good even if, as you say, they can be quite a bit below recommended limits.
maybe an age thing? When I was in high school I worked at a gas station where we would pump the gas for customers at the "full service" lane and also check their oil. The game was to upsell people an oil change. Point is, everyone saw people getting their oil checked every time they filled the tank.
My point was that this is not any sort of widespread normalized behavior in the US in the past few decades. I was responding to a comment preaching as if this was routine behavior, and that people not doing it are simply being "inattentive".
I do get that it used to be a thing in the past. But that was also when oil was rated for 3k miles (I think? maybe it was even lower) and engines would routinely burn oil (ie consume it without leaving a drip spot on the ground). Whereas in the modern day, 15k synthetic exists.
FWIW, I probably do more of my own maintenance than the median HNer. I'll admit I can let intervals slip more than I'd like and I'm working on that, but this idea that everyone is checking fluid levels all the time just seems wildly off base.
>Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope, and often a poor cope at that.
A lot of modern automation is not really automation. A washing machine is automation: it takes a task which would have wasted hours of your day and reduces it down to a few minutes. A lot of modern "automation" doesn't save you any actual time time, but just saves you from being attentive:
- Checking your tire pressure doesn't take much time, but TPMS is a privacy problem and an added maintenance cost that you cannot opt out of.
- A power rear lift gate actually takes _more_ time than just shutting it with your hands.
- Power windows don't go down any more quickly than power windows. The only only benefit here is that you can open all 4 windows simultaneously. However this is a luxury, not something which saves you time. You never _need_ all 4 windows down. So maybe people like it, but it's not like the washing machine that actually saves you labor.
- etc ....
People think that needed to do or attend to anything is wasting time, but often modern automation saves no time whatsoever, and has other downsides. (privacy, maintenance cost, vehicle weight, etc.)
As someone who grew up in the pre-power-window 1970s and 80s, they absolutely do save time. You have to remember that manual crank windows went along with a lack of air conditioning. Being able to quickly roll down the windows (especially all four at once) in a hot car mattered.
My 2003 s-10 has AC and crank windows, my 2007 Ranger did too. Power windows sure are nice when you want to talk to someone out the passenger side and you don't have a passenger though. Or if you want a breeze regardless of AC.
> Power windows sure are nice when you want to talk to someone out the passenger side
Presumably the fundamentalists think you just need to yell louder. With neo-luddite opposition like this, its no wonder the surveillance society is winning.
It takes real time to get out a pressure gauge and check the pressure on each wheel, no? Furthermore, attention itself is a limited resource.
For example, power windows were always handy when getting on/off the highway and coming up to a toll booth where I'd have to give/take a ticket. It's much easier to hold a button (or even have a latching button) while spending my attention on actually driving.
I have one car with TPMS that's entirely done through the ABS controller measuring the relative diameters of the wheels. That's not a privacy or cost problem. Furthermore the privacy problem where wireless TPMS sensors are interrogatable is better framed as a security vulnerability in their design, rather than something intrinsic.
Weight is a red herring as I'd guess the fuel savings from having properly inflated tires outweighs the fuel spent on the extra mass.
I hardly doubt a low tire will mean a death sentence, usually you can tell when a tire is too low way before it is a problem, same as many things in the car, just pay attention to it and you’ll know when something is “off”.
Frankly? I do. Remove alcohol and drugs from the equation, and driving is an absurdly safe activity. Those intrusive features have very little to do with safety.
No it does not. There’s a wheel speed monitor sensor (that works via a magnet and little ridges… and is a pain to replace). That’s what the DTC (and probably ABS) uses
Yeah that’s great if you’re a CIA intelligence officer but what normal person can do this and still function in the modern world? Do the people who say this stuff leave their homes regularly?
And what’s the benefit of it all? Fewer targeted ads?
I sympathise. However, being able to start de-icing my car while still in bed at 5:30 on a January morning is a powerful feature. And I'm the kind of person who wraps his tin foil hat no less than 10 layers thick.
Ideally this shouldn't involve the internet, because the car is in wifi range, but what can I do about it?
You could probably get a 3rd party remote starter, however that is going to certainly cost you extra and probably won't be as simple as old school remote starters.
People are suggesting all over these threads what we can do about it, but we (as a population) aren't. When my 2009 car dies, I'm going to deliberately NOT buy a new trackingmobile, and try to find another 2009 car to keep running. Yea, that means I occasionally need to take 30 seconds to scrape ice off the windshield. Big deal.
The number of cars from 2003 is already dwindling and it's only going to keep going down. It's certainly much easier to find cars from the late 00s-early 10s right now if your only priority is not being tracked or bound to a web of different digital services and subscriptions.
>Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical?
That's not even remotely true for most cars. One of the most critical alarms you can get in a car is a flashing check engine light, which are usually orange.
I’ve driven a lot of different cars around the world and nearly all check engine lights are orange. Almost all the Google image search results are orange. To be sure I checked the most popular ICE car models worldwide: Toyota Corolla, Toyota Rav4, Ford F-series, Honda CR-V, Chevrolet Silverado. All of those use orange. In fact, the only red CEL that I’ve ever seen is on Minis and BMWs - not the actual physical indicator (which is orange!) but the mini-LED screen warnings.
Actually I wonder if cars will just adopt "oh-you-need-anti-theft" like phones do. To prevent auto theft, all cars will be tracked and all parts must match serial numbers.
> To prevent auto theft, all cars will be tracked and all parts must match serial numbers.
Well, I suppose that's one way to end third party repairs. Just refuse to turn on if the chip in the new part doesn't match up with a code in the ECU. Like printer ink, but for every major component.
'Error, cannot start engine: Authorised mirror not found. Please visit BMW for an authentic replacement. Driving with non-authentic mirrors may harm user safety.'
What's wrong with GPS in vehicles? If it's not connected to the internet, there is no issue.
What's wrong with playing music from the phone on Bluetooth or Aux? Did you also know you can ride a horse instead of a car?
Bluetooth and WiFi isn't running if you turned them off. Bluetooth also isn't really used for tracking unless someone is looking for you or you're part of some service like AirTags.
> Ignore your car's complaints and error messages. Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical?
>It's connected to the Internet. Every car has a SIM card now.
Maybe every new car, but the average car is 13 years old, and the OP made no clarification on whether his advice was for only new cars, or for a 2015 econobox as well.
My car is older than that and came with an embedded SIM card. Quite a few navigation consoles had "live traffic updates" (often in trial format, but sometimes "lifetime") that basically consisted of 2G clients occasionally updating traffic data along planned routes. Not quite bottom of the line at the time, but also not uncommon at that point either. It's probably slightly worse than the dedicated satnav screens people were buying back when the car was new, although neither compares to what a smartphone will expose passively from just being inside of a moving car.
There's other ways to get local traffic data, too. For instance: Traffic Message Channel, which can be broadcast with RDS on an FM station, exists.
As long as stations persist that transmit the data (it's sent over RDS), then it will continue to work. There's no subscription involved (or at least, there isn't for my car -- it works where it works, and there's no mechanism by which to pay for using it).
On the one hand, they won't be able to communicate with the home base anymore. On the other hand, they'll light up the map like a Christmas tree if someone ever turns on a stingray in their vicinity.
Most people don't know, and will never know whether their car is connected to the internet, so it's better to assume it is unless you have specific information. The app or phone you connect to the car could also be a major exfil point of this data.
Giving car companies your money (and then modifying your car) is still rewarding car companies for their bad behavior. We really need to stop buying new cars and somehow make it clear that telematics are the reason, but it's never going to happen. Not enough people care, and of those who care, not enough of them care enough to stop buying these cars.
But what's the point if you're just going to use Android Auto or Apple's car-thing instead? You're just letting some other company invade your privacy.
Consent and convenience. When I use google maps, I am trading my privacy for accurate directions and traffic times. When I buy a car that sells my location, and I get nothing in return, I feel like the deal is inequitable.
OsmAnd works fine in Android Auto with WiFi and mobile data turned off. Sygic does too. I believe TomTom also sells navigation apps that will work fine under these conditions.
I use Android Auto mostly because I don't trust manufacturers of car components to maintain their software and to put more than bargain bin SoCs in their infotainment consoles. There's no need for your Android phone to have a connection to the outside world if all you're using it for is locally installed apps.
