TurkTurkleton

You think that "the dirty industry" will voluntarily work to reduce negative externalities if they aren't regulatorily required to do so and if doing so is less profitable than mounting a PR campaign to draw attention away from them would be?

A bit after that he switches to a keyboard called "Kika" which appears to enable typing with the keypad and provides predictions. A bigger objection to this device to me would be the fact that UI animations appear to chug like a freshman at his first kegger and overall it doesn't look to be all that responsive.

Dude. I get it. It's HTTP all the way down. I know that; I'm a professional software developer and have been Into Computers since I was old enough to read. That's also how I know that "just dump your video files into a directory and let Apache serve them and watch them on a computer"--or, yes, "just connect your computer with the directory full of video files directly to the TV"--is a shitty user experience, which is the point you seem bound and determined not to concede, since you are instead laser-focusing on the literal reading of statements like "I'm not going to re-encode every single video file I have on the off chance I want to watch them away from home" (obviously I meant I'm not going to do that AHEAD OF TIME versus letting my Plex server do it on-demand and stream it to me when I'm using a device not on my local network), or splitting hairs about binaural hearing and the utility of surround sound.

In any case, I yield; you have Won the Conversation; congratulations. I'd give you a gold star, but I don't think HN allows emoji in comments.

I feel like you're intentionally missing the point.

Your "dump all your videos into a big directory and Ctrl-F the Apache directory index" workflow will necessarily limit you to watching on devices that can navigate to arbitrary URLs and play videos from them. This will, in most cases, limit you to a computer (built-in browsers in "smart" devices, be they TVs, consoles, or purpose-built streaming boxes, will often play videos only grudgingly), and I don't know about you, but I don't want to sit and watch TV episodes or an entire movie at my computer desk with its relatively tiny monitor and relatively shitty speakers. I want to watch them on my big TV with the fancy sound system in the living room. So what would you suggest for this use case? Connect my computer to the TV? OK, great, but the video card won't output surround sound over HDMI, so now I have to futz with a bunch of other connections if I want more than just stereo sound. And once that that's sorted, how am I supposed to pause the movie when I have to get up to piss, because the TV remote can't control my computer?

> Apache will stream your stupid 75GB BluRay files without any need to re-encode, so long as the client device can decode it, even across a 10kbit connection, so you go ahead and enjoy your wasted processor cycles and higher electric bill.

Again, missing the point. Yes, Apache will happily squirt those bytes at whatever requests them, but that will not produce an enjoyable user experience (i.e., one where I can WATCH THE FUCKING MOVIE) over a sufficiently slow connection, and I'm not going to re-encode every file I have at a low bitrate on the off chance I want to watch it away from home.

> Meanwhile, whatever thing you bought will be abandonware in less than 2 years. And chances are about equal your thing is just running a crappy wrapper and gui for Apache anyway.

My Apple TV HD in my bedroom is still receiving updates seven years after it was originally released. The Apple TV 4K in the living room is still receiving updates five years after it was originally released. I run Plex to stream my local media to local (and my own remote) clients, and it is still actively maintained after 14 years--and if if Plex, Inc. should go under, there are plenty of alternatives that won't necessitate me regressing back to a computer connected to the TV.

Yes, yes, we're all very impressed with your techno-asceticism, but also some of us just want shit that Just Works, has a remote control that isn't just a wireless keyboard and mouse, and doesn't require us to actively sysadmin our TVs.

> Oh, you want to stream remotely from your home server? All you need is Apache and an IP Address.

Hey, you know what "Apache and an IP Address" won't do? Automatically re-encode my enormous remuxed Blu-ray rips at a lower bitrate so I can stream them over my comically limited upstream to a criminally throttled hotel wi-fi connection.

You can't use Fastmail for free at all, custom domain or no.

> Also, if I ever use "rockstar" or "ninja" in my posts, I hope someone finds me on the street and punches me in the face. I'd deserve it.

Are you sure you'll never find yourself blogging about bands' flamboyant frontmen (or frontwomen), or covert agents in feudal Japan?

It must pain you deeply whenever you look at your car radio and it says "AM" and "FM" instead of "medium wave" and "ultra-short wave".

While there is precedent[0] for reclassifying a game based on content included on the distribution medium but not normally accessible within the game as released, I think you would have a hard time making that case here since you're probably going to have a much harder time inducing a GBC game to render an HTML document or JPEG image.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_(mod)

AIUI and IIRC, iSH implements just enough of an x86 emulator to be able to interpret x86 binaries and JIT "compile" them to a series of function calls rather than directly to native machine code, and it implements enough of the x86 Linux ABI to be able to run most binaries. In short, it's effectively treating x86 machine code as a scripting language, and Apple does allow scripting languages (e.g. Python) on the App Store.

The iSH team did run into some friction with Apple over the fact that the built-in filesystem image is Alpine and thus includes a package manager, but apparently they were able to resolve that situation in a way that allowed them to keep `apk` in the built-in filesystem image: https://ish.app/blog/app-store-removal

Starlink, unfortunately, will not present meaningful competition. It will really only be viable in sparsely populated areas--even once the full constellation is deployed, there simply won't be the bandwidth for large numbers of users in densely populated areas like major cities--and both Starlink spokespeople and Musk himself have not been particularly coy about that fact...though I suppose neither have they tried particularly hard to push back against the prevailing tech-media narrative that once Starlink is fully armed and operational it will have Comcast, Spectrum, Cox, et al. quaking in their boots.

I didn't want to show my age (any more than I already did by knowing about ZZT). Also due to said age I couldn't remember the character number in CP437... though I did remember that the shaded blocks were mysteriously separate from the solid one at 219.

Since I imagine there are many HN readers that might not get it: "The King in Yellow Borders" is a ZZT inside joke. When editing a ZZT world, new boards by default are created with a yellow border of what (if memory serves me) in Unicode would be U+2593 "dark shade" blocks. A game containing boards that maintain these borders in an unironic way would generally be perceived as... well, I'd say "amateurish" but ZZT creators were generally all amateurs, so let's go with "unrefined".

(It's also a pun on The King in Yellow but that reference is explained in the itch.io page.)

Microsoft's Java implementation that got them sued was J++. As part of the settlement, they weren't allowed to add any new features to it, and it quietly faded into obscurity, along with its CLR counterpart J#, the latter having finally left even extended support in 2017.

C# was developed independently of J++ and J# (though J# was based on J++ to provide a transition path for J++ developers), and although Anders Hejlsberg (original lead architect of C#) did also work on J++, he also worked on Turbo Pascal and Delphi before coming to Microsoft, and I'd suspect that those influenced C# more (more conceptually than syntactically, of course).

It is. The unit Kelvin is equal to the degree Celsius. If you want to convert temperatures, you need to use tempK and tempC:

    You have: tempK(1)
    You want: tempC
            -272.15

At least in Big Sur, you can just place the override in /Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides instead of /System/Library/[...]. This may work in earlier versions as well, but it equally wouldn't surprise me if it was only added to Big Sur because of the Signed System Volume thing.

Ah, right. It's so rare that removal of functionality is seen as a positive that I wasn't thinking in that direction, but yeah, that would be a definite improvement.

I have seen ATMs here in the US that have quick withdrawal options directly on the main menu, but it's usually just one or two preset amounts, and usually from your checking account (since it's still relatively commonplace to have both a savings and a checking account).

> Even on the other side of the world here in China, that basically defines the menu options available today some 40 years later.

Perhaps this bespeaks a lack of imagination on my part, but I can't imagine many (or really, any) other bank transactions I'd want to conduct while hunching over an ATM rather than in person or online from the comfort of my own home.

As a native English speaker and middling foreign-language speaker of German, "halzenfugel" sounds to me like a mock-German word that an English speaker would make up.

It was added in iOS 14. Not hardware specific. It works on my iPhone 11 Pro Max. It's an accessibility feature that has to be specifically turned on though.

Such synecdoche is common in headlines on both sides of the pond.

> Could we have even got to modern development level without so much free power?

It's only free if you don't consider externalities to be a cost.

And so that expectant mothers who end up losing their child can be further traumatized by them: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2018/12/12/dear-tec...

Those are excellent points that I had not considered (or even been aware of). Still, though, while the set of brands and products available at a brick-and-mortar store is predetermined in a way that the customer has little to no influence over, it's at least much more visible if I go into Kroger one week and there's a full selection of different brands of mac & cheese, and then come back the next week and it's all Kroger brand with no sign of any other brand; whereas if I go to Amazon and search for, say, AA batteries, or Lightning cables, and all I see is AmazonBasics batteries and AmazonBasics Lightning cables, is that because Amazon stopped stocking Energizer batteries and Anker cables entirely, or because Amazon forced them to a later page of results to bolster sales of the AmazonBasics brand?

The difference is that when you go to Kroger you search the shelves with your own eyeballs. When you go to Amazon, their opaque algorithm does the searching for you, and it could be (and probably is) prioritizing Amazon brands or "Amazon's choice" over other brands. I suppose an argument could be made about the layout of store shelves serving a similar purpose to the prioritization inherent in search engine algorithms, but I don't think it's a perfect parallel since the shopper arguably has more agency in determining what products they see and when in a meatspace store versus online.

You can't write query plans directly because you would have to manually take into account a number of factors that the query planner considers for you automatically, such as size of the table, statistics on the distribution of values, whether there are indexes that could be used to speed the query, and so on. Some SQL dialects (like Microsoft's T-SQL) do give you some ability to influence the decisions the query planner makes, though, like forcing it to use specific indexes, or forcing it to use scans or seeks.

There's also a setting that controls the thickness of font strokes, independent of color. I forget exactly how it's labeled (not at my Mac right now), but I remember it's a dropdown with combinations of options for using thin strokes on dark backgrounds and/or Retina displays. I believe it defaults to using thin strokes on Retina displays. I believe turning this off will make font rendering identical to Terminal. Either way, I think it looks better turned off, even on a Retina display.

Credit Karma was/is pretty open about the way in which you are the product, though: they show you ads for credit cards and loans that you are likely to be approved for, based on your credit information which they already have.

Ah, yes. I always forget that the entire global economy is built on debt. That actually makes it worse, in a way, but at least it makes sense in context.

I am a salaried software developer, and my employer requires me to track my time, for precisely the reason you describe. And I still think it's stupid, despite having heard this very explanation at least twice (or thrice, if you count your comment). It doesn't make it make any more sense; it just makes corporate accounting sound like so much smoke and mirrors that accountants and investors willfully participate in. Maybe I'm focusing too much on the fact that those dollars are coming out of their bank account into mine every two weeks like clockwork regardless of the fact that they're pretending that they're trickling two years' worth of salary out to me slowly over a period of seven years or whatever, but it just seems so arbitrary and nonsensical to pretend that they're not spending that money to pay me right now.