Ask Dave Taylor
askdavetaylor.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Dave Taylor answers practical tech support questions about Apple devices, social media, search engines, and other consumer technology.
What HN saysHN links it for how-to answers, such as Safari's old RSS feed display and settings to open search results in new tabs.
17HN people shared it
12linked it in comments
5stories submitted
11story points
12 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1WHAT'S A USED COMPUTER REALLY WORTH?1 people · 4 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 2How much equity does a VC take when funding a startup?1 people · 3 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 3Auto follow on twitter1 people · 2 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 4Create a custom Apple iPhone icon for your site1 people · 1 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 5Can You Control If Amazon Rufus AI Trains on Your Queries?1 people · 1 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 6Clubhouse set up profile 3.png1 people · first shared 2021
- 7How to check facebook spam email messages folder1 people · first shared 2016
- 8Step through count numeric values bash shell script1 people · first shared 2013
- 9Textpayme welcome.png1 people · first shared 2008
- 10Export data facebook1 people · first shared 2019
- 11How do i subscribe to rss feeds with safari1 people · first shared 2025
- 12Safari rss view.jpg1 people · first shared 2017
- 13Mac finder places movies.png1 people · first shared 2011
- 14How do the costs of publishing a book break down1 people · first shared 2012
- 15How to have google bing search results open new tabs1 people · first shared 2021
What HN people wrote when they linked it
cosmic_cheese · 2025-11-05
> nor have I seen one.
Once upon a time, nice in-browser rendering of RSS/Atom feeds complete with search and sorting was a headliner feature of Safari.
https://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_i_subscribe_to_rss_feeds_with_saf…
leokennis · 2023-06-20
I remember when Safari used to show RSS feeds in the title bar and used to render them with a nice filtering UI:
https://www.askdavetaylor.com/3-blog-pics/safari-4-view-all-rss-articl…
Would love to get that back!
webwright · 2008-12-04
Which in turn, I'm sure wasn't inspired by this post here (June):
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/how-twitter-will-be-worth-a-billion…
Or maybe it came from one of the 1.2 million pages that has the phrase "twitter and payment" somewhere in it but no mention of twitpay:
http://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+payment+-twitpay
Or inspired by TextPayMe, which did the exact same thing with phone numbers instead of twitter usernames?
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/0-blog-pics/textpayme-welcome.png
tyingq · 2021-04-11
What a Clubhouse profile looks like: https://www.askdavetaylor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/clubhouse-set…
I don't see anything on the picture of the data sample that isn't on the profile, which appears to be visible to anyone with a Clubhouse account: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/fkWQSg-hl1V2-fwpS2VJy3CGR0zBx7YgZAlB…
The Clubhouse user ids also appear to be sequential, so this looks like a pretty low effort endeavor.
jsjohnst · 2021-02-24
> You just need to remember to open results in a new tab instead
Google[0] and DDG[1] both have user settings which allow you to open results in a new tab by default.
Sources are first results which appeared accurate:
[0] https://www.askdavetaylor.com/how-to-have-google-bing-search-results-o…
[1] https://ccm.net/faq/40410-duckduckgo-open-results-in-new-windows-tabs
buboard · 2019-10-23
they existed long before gdpr, e.g.:
https://www.askdavetaylor.com/export-data-facebook/
giobox · 2017-11-10
Safari in Mac OS X did a pretty nice job of rendering the feed for a basic feed reader back when it still had the big blue RSS link button in the URL bar, no raw XML to speak of:
https://www.askdavetaylor.com/0-blog-pics/safari-rss-view.jpg
I used to use this A LOT back in the day, often finding it preferable to many site's native UIs.
Inlinked · 2016-06-04
Perhaps a more nuanced reason is that you don't know it got lost in some spam filter. Out of sight, out of mind...
[1] https://consumerist.com/2012/01/04/how-facebooks-message-spam-filter-l…
[2] http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how-to-check-facebook-spam-email-messages…
[3] http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/entertainment/news/a42460/another-secret…
[4] http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-filtered-message-requests-inbox…
pluies · 2013-02-03
In OS X (well, Snow Leopard at least), YOU_ARE_DEAD throws an error because `seq` doesn't exist in OS X and brew doesn't have it. This script does the trick: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/step_through_count_numeric_values_bash_sh…
Tyrannosaurs · 2012-07-11
As I say, I think much of the issue here is that he's generalising based on tech books which have higher costs (they're bigger, cost more to print, store and ship), sell in smaller volumes and go out of date faster (leading to far higher numbers of returns).
Full breakdown here but the publisher is basically getting about 50% of the list price so your $30 is already down to $15 by the time it gets there:
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_the_costs_of_publishing_a_book_bre…
He's probably right that tech books are broken but I think it's important to distinguish between technical books and other books which don't share the same model.
Xuzz · 2011-09-25
That's not true; there is a very, very specific alert shown before Facebook accesses any phone numbers. I'm not making this up, it's just how it works. Facebook does not get anything "whether you like it or not". They get the information if you specifically allow it, and only if you try to enable the Sync feature.
Hell, here's a screenshot if you don't believe me: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/6-blog-pics/iphone-facebook-sync-profile-…
dchest · 2011-06-23
Here's an example of what I'm talking about (notice the border):
* Finder in 10.4: http://miki.samborsky.de/files/article/2008/LeoIcon/Tiger-Finder.png
* Finder in 10.5-10.6: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/3-blog-pics/mac-finder-places-movies.png
* Finder in 10.7: http://gavinsmith.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-Shot-2011-02-24…
And whitespace is one of those things that really helps to make ui usable and clean.
You missed "the right amount of" before "whitespace".