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aldebran

459 karma · joined December 9, 2021

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aldebran··on Stop Flock
Police departments aren’t understaffed. It’s a priority problem not a lack of resources problem. I live in a tech heavy, wealthy city. It’s small. No violent crime. Barely any crime at all. There’s occasional break ins and car break ins. When this happens it’s a big deal.

We had one last year. Everyone around has cameras. The cops refused to do anything about it. They refused to get recordings. The neighbor went door to door and gathered it herself. Cops refused to do anything even though you can see the car and the plates from multiple videos, multiple angles.

Guess what the cops always have resources for? Hiding behind bushes and trees to ticket people going 5 over. Or at turns where they know they’ll get people before people see the cop car.

Our HOA came together and asked the police department about this. They gave us bullshit about how custody of evidence etc is hard and even if they put people in jail, the lenient judges will let them go anyway. It was fucked up.

Our HOA was going in hard about installing floc cameras everywhere. I had to fight hard not to get that done. One of the reasons I won wasn’t because privacy, it was because the cops literally were like unless we can directly pull video feeds from cameras, we won’t do much. And that access wasn’t available to those police department. At least at the time.

There have been many other such stories I’ve personally witnessed in the cities I’ve lived in.

Cops seem to have plenty of resources to bully people of color, seize assets and hide behind trees and bushes to ticket people, reduce the period of orange lights so people get more tickets etc. but never enough to actually do their jobs.

aldebran··on US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year
You’re misinformed or willingly stupid if you think there are H1 hiring sprees with the last set of changes. H1 hiring has tanked.
aldebran··on No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive
Bro I worked in the windows team. I’m telling you how it was.

Trust the HN crowd to know.

aldebran··on No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive
^this is good, legit feedback for why this product/feature isn't good. It's not just "MSFT BAD!". Thanks for sharing.
aldebran··on No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive
HN seems to think PMs have a lot more power at Microsoft or large corps than they actually do. I assure you, a bunch of this stuff just comes top down because some VP's million dollar bonus rides on it.
aldebran··on Launch HN: Recall.ai (YC W20) – API for meeting recordings and transcripts
Related but tangential: is there a way to grab video frames from a meeting? Audio transcript is great. Looking at a use case to grab participant video.
aldebran··on AI hype is crashing into reality. Stay calm
What does GPT-5 do that just wasn’t possible before or wasn’t possible as well as it is now?

In my daily use cases I only see regressions.

aldebran··on Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs
There’s a simpler non malicious explanation for this. Asians know other Asians in tech and hire based on who they are familiar with rather than their ethnicity. It’s also why women managers tend to have more women in their teams.

It’s not malicious. Just a side effect of people’s network. Should that change? Yes. You want a heterogenous team. And this is exactly why DEI is important hahaha

aldebran··on Sudha Car Museum
I’ve been here as a teen. It’s amazing! I was blown away by the creativity.
aldebran··on Who makes the most reliable new cars?
CR poll asks about any problems faced. Phone didn’t connect to the multimedia unit? That’s a problem.

Not saying MB quality hasn’t changed but given the large feature set the problem surface area is also very large. More opportunities for owners to find issues.

By comparison, Lexus uses tried and tested old technology to the point it’s boring to own. But it’s super reliable.

2nd thing not captured here: not all car models are equal. The lower end Mercs and other premium manufacturers models aren’t built to the same standards by my experience. There’s a difference in quality of a German car made in Germany and a German car made in Mexico. The higher end models used to be made in Germany (not sure if that’s still the case).

All of this affects this rating. You might be fine buying an E class but the experience of owning a CLA might be shit.

aldebran··on The iOS option to charge battery to "80% Limit" shouldn't just be for iPhone 15
This makes sense. There are 3 “ways” a battery charges.

1. OS’s battery driver does the charging. This is possible when the computer is on and the driver has control. 2. Firmware driven charging. Typically used in sleep mode 3. Analog Trickle charge - no intelligence, no code is executing. Charge slowly from a dead battery so as to not damage any components.

#1 is the only case where an app. Can control any aspect of charging.

aldebran··on The iOS option to charge battery to "80% Limit" shouldn't just be for iPhone 15
It’s close enough for the purpose of the article.
aldebran··on Ask HN: What outdated tech are you still using and are perfectly happy with?
- My automatic (non quartz) watch. Another watch that’s hybrid - has a battery reserve and charges by solar and hand movement.

The only time I don’t wear them is when I shower.

No charging, no updates, no BS. Works 100% of the time while being stylish.

- 2011 MacBook Air. Replaced the battery last year. Still going strong.

aldebran··on *(char*)0 = 0; – What does the C++ programmer intend with this code? [video]
Wait, you’re the presenter!
aldebran··on Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
Man I used to tell family in India that the US is better despite corruption because the corruption was at very high levels. Companies paying to pass bills that benefit them. That as a citizen you didn’t see it daily. I even used examples of how cops in India do this sort of thing. How naive of me…
aldebran··on Signtime.apple: One-on-one sign language interpreting by Apple
I’m confused. Is the statement that people learn ASL for money and some social kudos?
aldebran··on Amazon sellers say they made a good living – until Amazon figured it out
Couldn’t one argue Amazon is the middleman too?

Not in every case but these sellers do provide value. They find obscure items for an underserved market and sell something people want.

Amazon literally has a team looking at data that basically leverages the work done by these sellers to turn a profit.

At minimum it’s like getting sherlocked.

aldebran··on Amazon to add limited ads to Prime Video starting in early 2024
Yes of late my experience has been that Amazon is pricier or the same cost but rarely better.

Or for non well known branded items, just drop shipped stuff that you could get on aliexpress cheaper…

Only if I could convince my spouse to cancel…

aldebran··on Airlines make more money from mileage programs than from flying planes
The CC interchange rate is fixed in Europe but not in the US. Should they be? ;-)
aldebran··on Clone-a-Lisa
Can this be given a multiplayer flair? Would be a very fun party game!
aldebran··on DMV tells Cruise to reduce its driverless vehicle fleet in SF by 50%
But also like 5 people who need a ride once in a month.

Cities have lots of people, many that don’t bother with car ownership.

aldebran··on Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract 3 papers
Interesting! I’ve always thought engineering and Philosophy were good for the same reason. Builds logical reasoning and ability to communicate.
aldebran··on Nuns got squeezed out of the communion wafer business
Now you have. Lol
aldebran··on Microsoft has started layoffs today
People with “Insufficient results” also known in other places as PIP
aldebran··on Microsoft has started layoffs today
I’m hearing they’ve laid off low performers…
aldebran··on Launch HN: Boostly (YC S22) – SMS marketing for restaurants
Unsurprisingly, HN is going to be tough on an offering like this. I know there is a need for this tool though.

Questions:

1. How do you capture phone numbers even for optin? Does the restaurant port over their phone number to your automated answering before reaching a member of the staff? 2. What POSs do you integrate with and how? Does the server need to ask a customer for their phone number and enter it in the POS which then you pull periodically from? 3. When a customer redeems a promo, do you process orders or let the POS/server/other online ordering do it? 4. Do you tie promos to specific items that the business has higher profit margins on?

aldebran··on EPB launches America’s first community-wide 25 gig internet service
To the people saying 1G+ is overkill:

Latency improves too! For me that was the biggest change I noticed. I’m sitting at 3ms! My friend send me a screenshot of 0.9ms.

aldebran··on H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home
This is just categorically false. Shopping / delivery / payments are a few categories where startups in India are doing much better.
aldebran··on H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home
This is unfortunately still the case. H1B lottery is still a thing. I had to lose a team member and the person saw a similar email in their inbox. Sucks!
aldebran··on The End of Manual Transmission
When you hand crank an engine to start it, you really feel connected with the car you’re going to drive.

An automobile doesn’t have the same connection with a rider as a horse does.

I get it. I’m a car person too. I loved stick shifts and in the beginning they were much better than automatics. But now they aren’t. Automatics are much faster, more energy efficient. So all the arguments against it have evaporated to “you can’t feel the connection”.

I wonder if the technology laggards feel the same way some of us do about transmissions…

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