OldTimeCoffee

>But making previous features or UI elements less discoverable because you want them to appear only when needed (and who decides when I need something out of the way? Maybe I like to see it all the time) — that’s not progress.

It seems it's a trend to make everything require more clicks for 'cleanliness'. In the end, it just makes everything frustrating. You end up having to add search to make anything usable. Windows 10 and Android settings are both great examples of this.

I'm not 100% how to respond to this except that virtually all Americans are enrolled in SS. If you have an SSN, you're enrolled. You need 40 credits at up to 4 credits per year (~ $5500 is required to get all 4 credits). After working about 10 years (even part time) you should qualify for benefits.

According to the SSA, approx 90% of Americans over 65 collect. https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/basicfact-alt.pdf

There are still hardships because it's not a full income replacement, but it's a far cry from 'not all are worry-free rich'.

Edit: The majority of the remaining 10% are covered by state level public employee retirement systems who don't accumulate SSA work credits and private pensions. SSI also exists to provide 75% of the poverty line if you have extremely limited means. Here is a paper by the CRS about senior poverty. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45791.pdf

Very few people are on fixed incomes, though. Social security has a yearly inflation adjustment. You would have to be on a private pension only to be on a fixed income.

Parent here, have you asked them if not having a phone has been a problem? Or are you just assuming it isn't because it hasn't been a problem with them for you.

It's incredibly rare and PA is absolutely an outlier. That's why the case that is mentioned was newsworthy.

Typically when it's used it's to recover money in cases of fraud. For example, where the parent or child conspires to hide money from the state to avoid paying for care. To the best of my knowledge, PA is one of the only states that allows private entities to sue. Some states are like Ohio where it's a criminal statute, so only the state has standing to bring charges. All said, don't get legal advice on the internet, this is an armchair discussion by laypeople.

As an aside, I don't see why the children should have any specific burden to take care of their parents medical expenses now that we have Medicare and Social Security. We've decided it's better to have all of society to take care of our elderly rather than tie it to their children's ability to pay.

It's not cut and dry and it requires the company or state to sue. So 'can be' is very unlikely because the laws are not typically enforced. Federal law can also prohibit companies from collecting.

More info is here:

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/your-obligation-pay-...

Because Wikipedia only talks about their existence, not a discussion of them.

The GPU in the M1 is about as powerful as a nVidia 1650ti in laptop form. Unless they heavily prioritize GPU development or work with AMD/nVidia they'll never be a player in the game market due to serious lack of GPU power.

Absolutely for many CPU bound loads the M1 is a great processor. It just lacks any GPU power which is what you need for games.

FERPA is the regulatory framework that governs how student records are handled. To the best of my knowledge it's similar to HIPAA but not as strong as it only applies to public schools. There may be additional state laws about it as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_...

You make a good point that it might not be the steady state of the display market, but I think it is for the majority of TVs today.

As alternatives, you can buy commercial displays that are effectively TVs (with HDMI in), however they lag in specs and lack some features. You can also buy hospitality versions of TVs as 'dumb' TVs for a similar price, but these also tend to have lower specs. You can buy large format computer monitors (55" is about the highest I've seen) but they are substantially more expensive (roughly 3x more expensive) and typically use DisplayPort instead of HDMI.

I only learned about the options because I'm looking to replace my 2013 Plasma TV that has a power supply problem.

That's great, until they stop making the ad free version. It's like TVs, there are no high end ad free TVs now.

> Total remote control of the device allows quite a bit... disabling thermal protection, disabling fans, changing voltages on regulators to be out of allowed range, etc.

Having total remote control of an IoT device doesn't mean any of these things. Thermal protection is hardware driven typically on die, on cheap devices fan control is implemented in hardware because it's cheaper and easier than software solutions. Voltage regulators are hardware devices that aren't adjustable, even adjustable ones have a working range that is set via resistor. Switching power supplies aren't software driven.

Yes and HVAC prevents people from dying due to heat waves. It's been an increasing problem in the Mediterranean region because of climate change. HVAC is needed more in those areas than ever before. I can't imagine you're seriously arguing against HVAC and it's more an argument that we need to build more efficient houses and commercial structures so HVAC works more effectively.

What the article describes won't work in most houses as it's designed around a thermal chimney. It doesn't work with high temperatures, even at only 85 degrees it's 78 inside. They note that building is effectively unusable during heat waves and the hottest part of the day. And the article ends by noting that the problems are continuing to get worse as the temperatures increase.

AC cooling has massive advantages, there are solid reasons why every building should have heat pumps. Doing some of these techniques can reduce the load on HVAC systems, but eliminating them entirely is a bit silly.

Well, this is Windows 8 all over again. A start menu that doesn't make any sense. Why did the separate out search from the start menu? Why get rid of the folders? It's gotta be organized somehow. File explorer now has way more whitespace (because touch).

If someone can get the designers to understand that Windows doesn't run primarily on touch devices, that would be great.

I just wonder who is clicking on the border instead of the text or icon on the tab. I don't see where a visual demarcation of a tab is helping someone navigate when there are other much stronger visual indicators. Is there some secret turn off favicon and title text mode for tabs I don't know about?

I agree, these UI changes are practically unnoticeable except the menu changes. I would like more contrast for the address bar, though.

bsdiff is pretty similar to RTPatch, which is what the game industry used in the past. I'm unaware of what you're describing ever being used in practice, especially among large game houses.

That said, patches aren't really downloaded as standalone patches anymore because of Steam distribution. The way Steam handles it is documented, and if you're interested, it's available here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading#Building_Ef...

But as an overview, Steam splits files into 1MB chunks and only downloads the 1MB chunks that have changed. The 1MB chunks are compressed in transit. Steam also dedups the 1MB chunks. I would assume that this works fine to manage the tradeoffs between size and efficiency.

They do this, but not as a binary diff. The new files are just shipped as an override of the old files that are loaded after the old files. It's substainally faster than applying a binary diff and file sizes really aren't a concern for the most part.

The game industry really hasn't used binary diffs and patching since the 90s when they used RTPatch.

There are other solutions to this problem that the game industry uses. Binary diff patching is slow, incremental, involves large diffs and has the possibility of corruption. It was used back in the mid 90's (RTPatch was the big name), but really isn't used anymore because of the drawbacks.

Games frequently use an override directory or file. The patch contains only the files that have changed and is loaded after the main index and replaces the entries in the index with the updated ones. This is the most common way of doing a patch if it's not just overwriting the original files.

Some games load their file as a virtual filesystem and then the patch just replaces the entries in the virtual store with new ones. Guild Wars 2 works this way. This is only common in MMOs though.

Having substantially more L1 and L2 cache per core but no L3 has to be a massive part of why the M1 performance is so good. I wonder if Intel/AMD have plans to increase the L1/L2 size on their next generations.

Most users don't have 'tens-thousands' of GB of data as part of their use case. You're describing a business case, not an end user consumer case.

You may have missed the point being made. You find a good security professional the same way you find a good lawyer or doctor. Ask around for a reference for a good one. Then check their credentials (e.g., what certifications they have).

I believe there was an article on HN recently about a startup that used a "lawyer" that wasn't because they didn't check their credentials after getting a great reference. Just because there are consequences doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Both of those were true pre-COVID and houses prices were not going up nearly as fast as they are now. People staying in their houses makes them actually pay attention to where they're living. Some end up wanting to renovate and some people just want to move.

It's a high demand low supply time so prices increase and interest rates don't have much to do with that.

That's not how it ends up working, though. People just share screenshots or tell friends of the broken website and people stop using the website not uBO.

And there are sites that will throw up a banner that says 'Adblockers might break this, if you have problems disable your Adblocker and try again' which is pretty effective. Funny enough, in my experience, sites with that banner tend to work with uBO enabled (probably because they're testing it).

They're up because housing has virtually no supply and massive demand, though. Houses are terrible assets as investment vehicles as they have very low returns and high disposal costs. They're really a last resort unless you want to be a landlord.

You should really read up on the history of copyright, because it's the genuinely the exact opposite of what you're saying. Copyright initially enforced restrictions on printing press operators and was used as part of the censorship mechanism. There's an argument that copyright actually slowed progress and countries with weak copyright advanced faster. It logically follows because allowing unlimited copies of works to be made regardless of ownership allows for dissemination of information quicker.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...

Progress of knowledge is covered differently and it's why the US has carved exceptions for facts (they're exempt from copyright) and we use a patent system for inventions. Think of current problems with companies like Elsiver that use copyright as a cudgel to keep academic papers from the masses.

Klinger was seeking declaratory judgement that he could use the non-protected elements. Doyle estate was saying he couldn't. It was agreed by both parties that he couldn't use elements contained in the 10 stories.

From the case listed "And the claim is correct, for he acknowledges that those copyrights are valid and that the only copying he wants to include in his book is copying of the Holmes and Watson characters as they appear in the earlier stories and in the novels."

Mickey Mouse will most certainly not be in the public domain anymore than he is now. Disney can also fall back on trademark law to take care of Disney's use as well.

Yep, ideas vs execution. You see it in books and music pretty frequently as well. Twilight is a great example because it spawned a ton of clones. Music was pretty insulated until fairly recently with some lawsuits over similarities being a bit... questionable.

Side note, this has been a really good thread to read and respond to.

Sherlock Holmes is not in the public domain in full. Most of the things we think of as 'Sherlock Holmes' are from stories still in copyright. It's why you see Elementary as a property and Sherlock as modern day. Counterintuitively they had to come up with new ideas because the existing ideas are locked up with copyright.

Couple of other issues.

"Small studios and independent artists could use the original Mickey character"

"Other manufacturers could make Mickey Mouse merchandise. This is probably the biggest direct harm to Disney, but I don't think it'll make much impact on their revenue."

The reason you've seen them make Steamboat Willie LEGO and the current "old-style" Mickey Mouse cartoons is because they're setting up a copyright argument if someone tried. They're also setting up the same arguments that Sherlock Holmes uses which is that the elements of Mickey in Steamboat Willie have been used recently and are thus still locked up by copyright. You can distribute Steamboat Willie, but can not otherwise use the property. The Sherlock Holmes case is here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=163248743572192...

"Which is exactly what copyright was supposed to encourage."

No, copyright is an exclusive distribution right. It's a government granted monopoly to provide protection to creative works. The history of copyright is pretty interesting in an of itself and starts with the printing press in the 1500s. Long story short, though, it's always been about commercial exploitation of a creative work.

This was edited to correct some info.

Fair enough, but commercial viability is the point of copyright. It's an exclusive distribution right of a creative work. We've carved out tons of exceptions for copyright for things like parody, educational purposes, etc., but at it's core it's a distribution right and nothing else. Instead of working in an existing property, it's better to create something new, even if you're inspired by the other thing. The entirety of the music industry for how this works in practice in our current framework. The games industry also has lots of good examples of creating new works using existing ideas without violating copyright.

To respond to this specific point, though "...we have a right to build upon that heritage to create something even better for the next generation". We already do this, we create tropes and then write new stories using those tropes. Creating new is better than just rehashing existing properties and longer copyright terms actually encourage new works because you can't rely on older properties for your material. I think they're too long for virtually all works because most works are commercial failures. They could find new audiences if their distribution rights weren't locked up. MST3K is a great example of doing something new with an existing property that is only possible with term limits.

The point I was more making is how do you handle successful things that are long term viable. Such as Mickey Mouse, Sherlock Holmes, etc. Though, yes, it's overstated the impact. The 1976 act was more impactful than the Sonny Bono Act.

Everything having a lifetime copyright has it's own problems, but cutting everything to 20 years creates it own.