Hacker News Reader

Momquiston Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

Saying the truth is racist now? Are these cheap knock-offs Chinese or not? China remains the main source of counterfeit goods. This is a fact.

> Counterfeit goods are estimated to amount to approximately 12.5 % of China’s total exports and over 1.5 % of its GDP. This results in estimations that 72 % of counterfeit goods currently in circulation in three of the world’s largest markets for such products, namely the EU, Japan and the USA,have been exported from China.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/...

Momquiston Ad network uses advanced malware technique to conceal CPU-draining mining ads

It is possible to block web font request on a per-domain basis via an extension, even on Chrome. I have webfonts disabled by default for a while, and thought about building a whitelist of acceptable ones but have been too lazy to implement it yet.

Momquiston Ad network uses advanced malware technique to conceal CPU-draining mining ads

uMatrix is definitely great for this. I consider it a request firewall at browser level. And it works very well at blocking everything (JS, CSS, image, any type of request really) by default, should you wish to do so.

It also allows blocking webworkers which mining sites tend to rely on.

Momquiston Why Do We Sleep Under Blankets, Even on the Hottest Nights? (2017)

Since you are new to HN, you may not know this, but it is considered poor form to complain about being downvoted. And more often than not, it invites even more downvotes as a result.

From the HN Guidelines (which I recommend reading):

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If it bothers you this much, you're better off deleting your comment.

Momquiston A Simple Algorithm That Ants Use to Build Bridges

> as long as they propagate our values and don't crush us.

There's a paradox here I think. If they propagate our values, then there's a very good chance that they will crush us. How do more "primitive" people fare in our modern world? Where's neanderthal? What about our primate cousins? Or even the other animal species in general? If AI really share our values, at best we might end up in a zoo.

Momquiston Why We May Soon Be Living in Alexa’s World

First time I hear about Brian May being an astrophysicist. Very surprising (to me at least). He was awarded his PhD in 2007, for his study on the formation of zodiacal dust clouds.

https://phys.org/news/2008-07-brian-guitarist-band-queen-phd...

Momquiston Requests-HTML: HTML Parsing for Humans

> BeautifulSoup is great, but it's counterintuitive (I always need to refer to documentation even for very basic aspects that I've used dozens of times before) and it's often slow and has some really weird xml bugs)

I won't argue the slowness and the occasional bugs, but unlike you I find b4 to be very intuitive. And this is mainly why I use it, despite its faults. Maybe our use case are different, but with a basic knowledge of html, I only rarely find myself reading the documentation. Care to give some examples of what you find counter-intuitive?

Momquiston Planet Shadertoy

If you have a nvidia GPU, then it may well be the fault of the latest drivers (390.25), which have been buggy, and it's especially notable under Chrome/Chromium (video/audio stuttering, problems with vsync, general slowness, high CPU usage, etc..).

Arch has a recent thread about it: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=234241

Momquiston QuickBASIC Lives on with QB64

> What are kids today using to do this kind of 'make my own tinkered games' stuff -- do they go straight to Unity, or still something like QBasic?

Python, with pygame, is the modern equivalent I think. It's relatively easy and straightforward for beginners, free, and very popular (lots of resources, tutorials, etc...). https://www.pygame.org/news

For something more advanced but still python-ish, there's also Godot, which is a real engine and adds a visual IDE to game creation. Quite easy to install/setup too (everything comes in 1 file). Overall a very cool project. https://godotengine.org/

Momquiston Worst Roommate Ever

> I mean why would a successful, well-adjusted "gentleman" even be in a situation where the best option for him is to live in a shared apartment with a woman considerably younger than him? Sure he gave her a reason, but well, he has to come up with _something_ doesn't he?

But isn't this your logic/rational mind kicking in? I think you're making my point that trusting gut feelings (a well-adjusted gentleman) isn't reliable, and taking some time to calmly and rationally assess the situation (the quick background check the victim's mother did for example) is a much better alternative.

You're right that being in a desperate need for a roommate, for financial reasons, may have been a major factor here. But again, psychopaths are manipulative and able to choose their victims and spot their weaknesses. Bachman may well have sensed this was a great opportunity, and pushed the right buttons (immediately writing a check).

Momquiston Worst Roommate Ever

Gut reactions to psychopaths tend to be the opposite: they are charming, and charismatic. Theres's a very good chance that you will like them, from the first impression. That's one of the traits/signs of a psychopath. That's why you shouldn't trust your gut, at least not in this case.

And the experiences of the victims in the article reinforce this point, at least in the first encounters: a courtly gentleman, he was very respectful.

Momquiston Show HN: Hacker News Classics

The url can be found via the archive's API, and you can specify a timestamp.

http://archive.org/wayback/available?url=http://yorktownhist...

It returns a json with, notably, the closest archived page given the timestamp.

https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php

Momquiston The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

That's assuming that someone recognizes which strategy was responsible for failure. Blaming the competitors, or the employees, is probably much more comforting and easier for upper management.

Momquiston The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

> But, at least for me, the industry has done a decent job of competing with piracy on convenience.

It has, but the fragmentation that you mentioned is starting to seriously erode this progress. If the situation worsens on this front, I can definitely see a resurgence of piracy, again because of convenience.

Momquiston The House That Spied on Me

I wasn't talking about economic competitors, but opponents to Google/Apple in the political area (e.g. EFF), who may lobby for changes. Therefore my note about the democratic process. Minorities may make demands, but whether they pass or not does rest on the majority. Hence the need to sway popular opinion, which I don't see happening.

Momquiston The House That Spied on Me

> Most people don't realize how bad all sorts of things in their life are.

I'd say that most people are regularly bombarded by all these issues in the medias. If they still don't realize, then this is because they actively filter them out.

> If you think things in the world should only change because of popular opinion & sales, then things like emancipation, environmental protection, worker protection, consumer protection laws, and other such things would never have happened.

I never claimed that things shouldn't change, only that I very much doubt they will. It's on the opponents to Google/Apple, to convince the majority that there are real issues and that measures should be taken. That's how democracy works, right? And I don't see that happening in the near future. Privacy? We have nothing to hide. Low-level customizability? We only need something that just works. They are the popular answers on these issues that need to be countered.

Momquiston The House That Spied on Me

> This is why both android and ios are NOT the mobile os of the future.

I too would like a more open OS for mobiles, but you have to realize that the majority of users doesn't care about this. They are unconcerned about most privacy issues, don't need to ever tinker at a low level with their devices, and they are the ones ultimately deciding on what the future will be. What matters is the UI, and that the various features "just work".

You are in a minority, however vocal, that has little to no say in what the future of mobile OSes should be. My take on it is that whatever will replace android and ios will be even worse on these issues.

Momquiston Cryonics Myths

> If you want to advocate cryonics for the masses, think about what you would do if you had to live in a world with the reanimated masses of the 18th century.

Sounds like Riverworld. I think it could be quite interesting. But anyway, whether it's a potential mess or not is something for our future descendants to decide on.

Advocating cryonics today doesn't imply that our descendants, even if they have the technology, will accept the resurrection of masses. We have immigration laws today, I'm sure the same concept could be thought up for "people outside their own time", if it ever is an issue.

Momquiston VLC 3.0 release

This is on Windows.

From my own experience, a few months ago, on Linux mpv was still the better choice (more performant, better image quality, some more polished/reliable features like subtitles) as long as you don't mind the minimal UI (or use a front-end).

Momquiston A photographer capturing subcultures that refuse to die

> Which is why I personally dont even consider it.

So, assuming you're a man (bear with me if you aren't): are you so open-minded and rational that you do consider female clothes in your shopping too? Do you look at women's watches and glasses too? Do you often wear pink?

Here is my guess: you don't. You may think you're completely disconnected from the social cues inherent in clothing/accessories, that you consider clothes as purely functional. But chances are, in practice, you really don't. Signalling your gender "to all and sundry" as you put it, is one of the major non-verbal cues that clothes provide. It's part of those "random pre-designated styles" and is taught from a young age, and understood by everyone. Your tastes reflect that, whether you consciously acknowledge it or not.

You don't see men in robes, for example, in modern western cultures, whatever their potential comfort/utility/beauty, they simply are not considered for men in day-to-day life. Even though, there were periods and cultures where they were perfectly fine for men to wear.

Momquiston The Curiously Elastic Limits of Endurance

https://www.runnersworld.com/sweat-science/brain-training-bo...

It's based on the Brain Endurance Training (BET), by Samuele Marcora of the university of Kent, who is quoted in the OP's article (for his definition of effort).

https://www.kent.ac.uk/sportsciences/people/profiles/marcora...

Momquiston A photographer capturing subcultures that refuse to die

> Why dress up / acquire certain things, in order to conform to some random pre-designated style?

Why speak english and not invent your own language? Clothing and appearance is (also) communication. And to be understood, some of the signals must be common enough.

I belong to this community, to this generation, to this area/country, to this social class, etc... It can also project ideologies, affiliations and aspirations. Once upon a time for example, in Western Europe, some intellectuals adopted the Mao suit. It was a very strong political statement.

Moreover in many cases I doubt your assertion that these styles are random is true. There is a history behind most of them, and this is what imparts them meaning.

Momquiston Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

Note that progman.exe was still shipped with the OS (it disappeared for good with Vista), and you could even set it as the default shell at boot.

I don't remember anyone using this setup ever though. Maybe this was too obscure and technical for the users complaining.

Momquiston Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

> I agree with you that keeping the file metadata in a separate fork is far superior to keeping the file metadata in a three character extension

Since we're talking about Win95, then the 3 characters limit doesn't apply (long filenames was a major new feature of this OS after all). .jpeg and .html were relatively common for example at the time, and worked fine.

I find the extension system still kludgy, but arguing than it was worse in part because of the limited pool, is incorrect starting from Win95.

Momquiston HappyOrNot terminals look simple, but the information they gather is revelatory

https://www.happy-or-not.com/en/smiley-terminal/

Momquiston CRPG Book Released

I have no answer to this question, but various people are revisiting old CRPGs in a more or less exhaustive manner. My favourite one is crpgaddict who plays a list of CRPGs in chronological order, with at least 6 hours spent on each one. He's been at it for a decade now, and his list still isn't finished...

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/

Momquiston Mark – A simple and unified notation for both object and markup data

Reminds me of a recent talk at FOSDEM based on this premise.

The circuit less traveled. Investigating some alternate histories of computing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlERSVSDl7Y

Momquiston OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

> Still have the old games, but I haven't had the willpower to learn how to use Wine.

Maybe check PlayOnLinux? It provides a front-end to Wine and automatizes game installations via custom scripts. Basically, you select your game in a list, it installs it, then puts a launcher on your desktop.

https://www.playonlinux.com/en/

Momquiston India's farmed chickens dosed with world's strongest antibiotics, study finds

The GP is simply suggesting that you're selective and biased in the issues you're trying to solve. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing: you have to choose your battles.

But someone else could propose only eating meat to solve the massive use of pesticide. Apart from the possible health issues, he would be as right in his position as you are.

Momquiston Firefox 59 to strip path information from referrer values for 3rd parties

You misunderstood me. It may not be strictly required for sites to use JS to build these warnings. But in practice, today, that's how it works on sites that display them. And it definitely requires the user to have JS enabled to pass these obnoxious pop-ups.

JS is also used for things that are doable with CSS or even HTML only. This isn't the first time.

My tin-foil hat persona suspects it's yet another way to force me to disable the various script and ad-blockers in the guise of protecting users for privacy concerns. But my more realistic side assumes this is just laziness.