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That certainly doesn't come off well for SparkFun.

+1 for a Windows 7 clone. I have not seen a theme that comes close to copying Win7.

I can't access virtualbox.org any more, they now show an error page saying "Payment Required", with status code 402.

Interestingly, if I change my user agent to "curl/7.70.0", I can browse virtualbox.org again.

They seem to be unhappy with my user agent specifically:

  curl -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/109.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" https://www.virtualbox.org 
  
  <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
  <html><head>
  <title>402 Payment Required</title>
  </head><body>
  <h1>Payment Required</h1>


I just downloaded VirtualBox-7.2.4-170995-OSX.dmg and Oracle_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-7.2.4.vbox-extpack with no problem.


If you wouldn't mind, I would be curious - if you run the above curl command, do you get the same error?

It could be a combination of IP + user agent (+ something else) that's causing me trouble.


I get this with your curl command:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <html><head> <title>402 Payment Required</title> </head><body> <h1>Payment Required</h1> <p>The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.</p> <p>Please contact the server administrator at www@virtualbox.org to inform them of the time this error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error.</p> <p>More information about this error may be available in the server error log.</p> </body></html>


Thanks for that! So it's most likely user agent then. Wonder why they don't like it.


Not sure why, but the text doesn't appear in Chrome 109: https://imgur.com/a/QyIdfax

If I disable "font-family: Atkinson" it comes back, so guessing it's font related. I do see the two .woff files load in the Network tab. Interestingly, when I preview either font file, I see the sample of the font (AaBbCc etc.) in a flash for just milliseconds, and then it disappears and I see nothing.


  // Vidrun, born of the sea-wind through the spruce
  // Vidrun, green-tinged offshoot of my bough, joy and burden of my life
  // Vidrun, fierce and clever, may our clan’s wisdom be yours:
  //
  //     Never read Hacker News
  // - Aphyr, "Hexing the technical interview"
  if (document.referrer.startsWith("https://news.ycombinator.com")) {
      document.location = "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Human_fart.wav"
  }
> https://www.boringcactus.com/assets/site.js


> Those <Pause [0A]> tokens cause the came to pause for a few moments before ...

Should be "cause the game to pause" :)


In the same way, Apple is equally difficult about forcing the use of Apple Maps.

If you receive an address in an iMessage, clicking/long-holding will always open in Apple Maps. There is no way to share to Google Maps (it doesn't appear in the list), and the default setting to use Google Maps doesn't affect iMessage.

You have to copy the address, switch to Google Maps, paste it in, and search. I would much prefer clicking the address to open in the app of my choice.


That's not what I observe, it opens in the "default app" for "navigation". I've just tried this on my iPhone, running iOS 18.5.

If I click on an address received via iMessage, it will open the "default app for navigation". If I long press it, the context menu will say "get directions" which opens the "default app", open in "google maps" if it's set as the default app. There's no option to open it in Apple Maps. If the "default app for navigation" is Apple Maps, everything I said above changes to Apple Maps.

If I click "share", Google Maps doesn't show up in the list, but neither does Apple Maps.


> default app" for "navigation". > iOS 18.5.

Where is that setting?

Settings | Apps | Default Apps has no option for Navigation (iPhone SE 18.5, in New Zealand). Maybe EU thing?


https://support.apple.com/en-us/121430

* Navigation (in some countries and regions1) –– choose another app instead of the Apple Maps app to use when opening links for a location

I don't have this option in the US.


Possibly an EU thing then, I’m in France.

However, when I use Google Maps, I do have the behavior described elsewhere in this thread: it constantly bugs me to open the links in chrome (which I’ve never had installed) even though I always click “use default browser”. Googling something in safari also regularly prompts me to install chrome.


The sharing is because Google doesn’t register a share provider.

I can share just fine from messages to other apps like Tesla or other mapping software like ABRP. I don’t see a Google Maps share provider anywhere on my device though


Look, it's Apple, Google and Microsoft being at their peak of customer hostility. Each of them constantly push their own browser in their own products.


I don’t want it to open google maps or ask me to open google maps. Stop trying to make things worse for everyone.

Google maps and google.com shouldn’t prompt either. No prompts.


[flagged]


It's worse than that. Apple will let users set a default maps app... only in the EU https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/14/dma-compliance-default-ma...

The pettiness is off the charts


It's not pettiness, its just business. They want the lock in, they want the ad views they want the user data. Don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower.


Thus far Apple Maps doesn't have ads. There are rumors they may ad them (pun intended), but I don't think their motivations for steering people towards Apple Maps are primarily monetary.


I think they are. Maybe not directly as you point out but there are lots of indirect reasons that don't seem that far fetched.

1. Using Apple Maps makes the switching cost to other devices (that don't have Apple Maps) higher.

2. Having more users makes any future monetization more valuable. I understand that there doesn't yet appear to be any direct monetization but I very much expect to see it at some point.

3. Removing traffic from competitors hurts them making their product relatively better the the competitors.


Agreed, I guess I should have said it's not directly about making money from Maps, it's all indirect business reasons.

Same thing with Apple operating iMessage for free without ads... they don't care about monetizing iMessage but it's also not about altruism.


Also having that sweet sweet user data, and simultaneously depriving your competitor of it


Yeah. That particular one is definitely a case of “not today Satan”.

I do wish there was a non-privacy invading maps app outside of Apple though.


Check out Organic Maps - https://organicmaps.app/ - it runs on OpenStreetMaps, is privacy focused (no data collection, no ads, no tracking), is open source, runs offline, is multi-platform and even supports old ios versions (which none of the other popular Maps app do).

(Old HN discussion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347447 )


The CoMaps fork might be a better choice:

https://www.comaps.app/


Thanks. Will check it out... as far as I know, no one's died being lost in the Australian desert with it, so it's got that going for it.


On the https://www.codacy.com/get-ide-extension page, clicking the logo in the top-left corner of your webpage goes to https://www.codacy.com/home?hsLang=en which is 404. The logo link on other pages is working.


Thanks. We’look into it right now. EDIT: should be fixed. Thanks


I did exactly this when I built my shed (with the same justification) - running fiber in the same conduit as the power to the shed.

But, I found out during inspection that the Canadian Electrical Code prohibits this, unless the fiber is functionally related to the power lines it is running with (section 56-200).

The explanation I received for the rule, was that someone like a telco installer could try and follow the fiber line, and find themselves in a dangerous situation (inside an electrical panel they aren't trained to handle).

I was able to get an exception since I am the only one who will ever open the cabinets/work on this fiber, since it was not the main internet feed to the house, but just to an outbuilding.


Guess this is a few weeks old, and I missed the news.

What a shame - this was the only place in recent memory where I could talk directly with "level 2+" tech support for my ISP.


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