Hacker News Reader

Causality1on Help! Is This Arabic?

Also add "use the correct Arabic for your target audience". "Arabic" is not monolithic and using the wrong dialect can go over as well as using Scots on a web page intended for Jamaicans.

Causality1on I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it

I would call myself a 99-percenter. I still believe in the restriction of credible violent threats, fraud, and pornography featuring real children.

Causality1on 111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key (2021) [video]

Being able to just do anything you want was so incredible, though. For example, the Google Assistant DING is one of the most ear-splittingly obnoxious sounds I've ever heard and there's not a damn thing I can do about it besides stop using Google Assistant. When I had similar problems in the 90s I could just go find the audio file in question and quiet or replace it with whatever I wanted.

Causality1on A Lonely Universe

Either intelligent life is rare in the universe or there's something that happens to it that prevents it from what we envision as the future of our own species, i.e., colonizing and spreading among planets. Maybe 99.99% of species ruin their own climate before getting off-world. Maybe they all decide it's happier living as hunter-gatherers. Unless we're alone, there is some fate that's common to all intelligences and it isn't a Star Trek future. The universe is simply too old. If anything else like us existed and it was possible to exist like us for a long period they'd have filled every planet before we ever evolved.

Personally I think just the fact the universe hasn't been eaten by Von Neumann machines means we're alone.

Causality1on AirPods don't “just work”

Nobody seems to care, is the thing. Qualcomm is now deprecating APTX-LL in favor of APTX-Adaptive even though it's 50% laggier even under ideal circumstances.

Causality1on AirPods don't “just work”

No noise cancellation is better than bad noise cancellation. The ANC on every set of earbuds and headphones under $200 I've tried is just a blast of white noise that makes it feel like someone is ramming cotton balls into my ears with a jackhammer.

Causality1on AirPods don't “just work”

Not to mention zero latency. Trying to have multiple people in a car play music/podcasts is a nightmare over bluetooth when you used to be able to just pass an aux cable around.

Causality1on AirPods don't “just work”

if you instantly play the music you were listening to right before the call by clicking the play button on your keyboard, your music will play at a lower audio quality

I don't recall the names of the specific bluetooth profiles, but I wish Airpods and bluetooth headphones in general gave you more control over this. Sure, the older headset profile is noticeably lower quality but it's also virtually lag-free. I have a shitty old headset I use when gaming on my phone specifically because there's no noticeable latency.

Causality1on mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine boosters induce immunity against Omicron

My concern is for the other symptoms of covid that could compound. Taking your vaccinations and boosters will generally keep you out of the hospital, but what of the other consequences? Cardiomyopathy, damage to smell and taste, and cognitive impairment could all be cumulative. What happens if they are and we're subjected to decades of repeated damage?

Causality1on “Zero fucks given” in other languages

I feel like these have been translated in an over-technical way to deliberately make them seem more ridiculous. Is It can oxidize on my anus not really "it can rust on my ass"?

Causality1on English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

This phenomena also scales not only up to a room full of internationals but also down to within countries. For example, if you're American and have a stronger accent you'll typically use a more universal one at work, even if everyone you work with is from the same geographic area as you. That's my experience as a Southerner.

Causality1on Against Translation

The bigger issue is there's like five entirely separate theses that he kind of tries to ramble through in a single article that should've been split up. Some of his points are excellent but some of them are silly and childish, the products of someone who lives in academia and not the real world.

Causality1on Forest data for 236 countries and territories in the period 1990-2020

It's a little silly to make such a big deal out of 54% of global forest area being in five countries when those five countries make up more than 35% of the earth's land area.

Causality1on Pixel prevented me from calling 911

"Google uses AI to write apology for murdering user" is a headline I fully expect to read one day.

Causality1on NASA returns Hubble to full science operations

That's a great argument if it required a shuttle launch at 1.5 billion a pop. But modern rockets like Starship are a lot cheaper. Musk's $2 million number is probably horseshit but according to David Todd, the Seradata satellite market analyst, Starship launch cost could come in at $10 million. I'd say $10 million to bring Hubble home is worth it.

Causality1on NASA returns Hubble to full science operations

it's moreso disappointing that SpaceX keeps getting injected into conversations about NASA's scientific work

Why are you getting hung up on Starship being the current best choice for a return mission at Hubble's EOL? If I was making the comment in 2010 I'd've said returning Hubble is worth the cost of a shuttle launch. If Hubble miraculously lasts another decade I'll make the argument returning it is worth the cost of whatever vehicle is best suited at that time, possibly if unlikely a vehicle coming from the France 2030 development drive.

Causality1on NASA returns Hubble to full science operations

I can't figure out what your point is. I'm saying Hubble is such an incredible achievement and pillar of the spirit of space exploration it's worth spending the money to bring it home even if doing so doesn't generate any scientific data in and of itself.

Causality1on NASA returns Hubble to full science operations

With the retirement of the shuttle, Starship is the only vehicle in or near operation capable of bringing Hubble back to earth intact.

Causality1on NASA returns Hubble to full science operations

The purpose of NASA is not only to explore but inspire. In light of that, I'd be fully supportive of using a Starship launch to bring Hubble home.

Causality1on Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

I like the feature additions but dislike that there's no visual division between the menu bar and the title bar you can click and drag to manipulate the window. Windows 10 and 11 often make me feel as if I have some disorder of the nervous system as I'm forever clicking just to the side of the interface element I want to use.

Causality1on Tell me an engineering murderboard story (2017)

"And is static analysis a non-negotiable requirement of life-critical code?"

I started grinding my teeth to slivers. "Normally yes."

I feel like this story is missing something. If static analysis is a non-negotiable requirement, shouldn't he have had to get explicit approval from higher-up before using Python?

Causality1on Numerics applied to Casimir geometry generates intersection with Alcubierre warp

To my knowledge an alcubierre effect requires negative energy. If someone's invented something that behaves like negative energy why isn't that the headline? Warp drive is cool but it's a second-order consequence of what would be a physics revolution greater than relativity.

Causality1on uBlock, I exfiltrate: exploiting ad blockers with CSS

Can we put these people in charge of Windows Update?

Causality1on Too many species have been lumped together into Homo sapiens

Oh he never stopped being a xenophobe, but he drew a line between his personal dislike and the idea that other races were inherently inferior. This is a good read: https://motifri.com/lovecraftcontext/

I like to think that if he hadn't died so young his personal tastes might have matured.

Causality1on Too many species have been lumped together into Homo sapiens

Sometimes I feel bad for the people whose legacy was tainted by scientific racism, especially if they lived to see its end and changed their opinions accordingly. Lovecraft is an example of this.

Causality1on Too many species have been lumped together into Homo sapiens

There exist humans who are fifty IQ points smarter or dumber than other humans who also exist.

Sure but they're not all in the same ethnic group. What if a populous group had the peak of their intellectual curve far down the range? If, say, Gauls/French people were almost entirely simpletons equivalent to someone with Down Syndrome? Would they be enslaved and turned into a worldwide servant class? Every other group that were thought of as being inferior can be demonstrably equal to their oppressors but I think a world in which they weren't could be very different.

Causality1on Too many species have been lumped together into Homo sapiens

Frankly I think we're quite lucky we're not a more diverse species. There's no biological reason a human subspecies couldn't have gotten isolated in a valley somewhere and ended up being fifty IQ points smarter or dumber than the rest of humanity. Same goes for our sexes being identically intellectually capable. Would the principle of egalitarianism have ever emerged in such a world?

Causality1on One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

I wonder how many if those alpha worlds are preserved. I started when the alpha was free and the beta was pay, and the scope of those alpha worlds was just incredible. There wasn't much in the way of nature in the alpha so all those worlds were more art project than construction.

Causality1on USBefuddled: Untangling the Rat’s Nest of USB-C Standards and Cables

USB Type-C, almost universally called USB-C for short

Where and by whom? In my experience it's always called "type c" for short, dropping the "USB" instead of the "type".

Causality1on Fans pour funding into ‘The Chosen’

What you’re referring to as Mormon, is in fact, Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Everyone knows this. They're just not going to use an awkwardly-long term to refer to them. We don't refer to "members of the Roman catholic church", we just say catholics.