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altern8tif

254 karma · joined April 29, 2015

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/altern8tif; my proof: https://keybase.io/altern8tif/sigs/B9DzX3KZzmenh7PRqCAe6KYQAjdUp-YpzHGwbQiUzzM ]
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altern8tif··on I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers
Seems a possibility for the medium term.

I've also seen speculation that it's an engineering experiment to see if they can squeeze all the essential components of a high-powered computer into a space the size of the camera plateau. Which may eventually lead to viable AR Glasses (or a cheaper Vision).

altern8tif··on Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team
The blockchain isn't the problem. It's supposedly the solution.
altern8tif··on New MacBook Air
That takes courage.
altern8tif··on Browser extension that strips Google Analytics tokens from URL query strings
I don't think that's the point. Sure you can vote with your wallet, but it is still pretty annoying to have an insurance salesperson or a telemarketer make an irrelevant sales pitch to you every few minutes.

While targetted ads should technically alleviate this annoyance, in reality it doesn't really work as well as advertised (pardon the pun).

altern8tif··on Apple Plans Giant High-End iPhone, Lower-Priced Model
Agreed. Similar reason why Starbucks has a Venti size and no longer lists their Short size on the menu – so that it makes it more reasonable (from a consumer standpoint) to purchase the medium-range option (Grande), thus pushing up the average price point.

Not saying that iPhones are priced the same way as lattes, but that's a known pricing consideration.

altern8tif··on How and why we moved to Vue.js
Same here. BEM is not "technology". It's a philosophy or an organisational pattern.
altern8tif··on Why I left Google to join Grab
I wish more people would work on ideas that would impact the poorer half of the human race.
altern8tif··on DuckDuckGo moves beyond search to also protect you while browsing
@yegg, is DuckDuckHack coming back?

That was one of my first forays into open source and was hoping that there is more that I (and the community) can do to help improve DDG further.

altern8tif··on Ethereum programming for web developers
I've got a team exploring the idea of executing a smart contract that transfers assets (be it crypto-asset or real world assets) upon a specific real-world trigger event (via oracles).

But you're right, the legal issues are a dime and a dozen. It'll take some time for the law to catch up (eg. digital wills). The technology is ready for this, we just need to right confluence of factors to make this a reality.

altern8tif··on Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
What is Wavecrest's business model as a card issuer then? [Genuine question]
altern8tif··on Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today
The dollar is only "backed by oil" if you can take your dollar bill to the US Treasury and get it exchanged a dollop of crude of an equivalent value.

The last time the dollar was backed by any asset was when it was under the gold standard. Boy was that a mistake.

altern8tif··on Buy, sell, send and receive Bitcoin Cash on Coinbase
I think he's referring to cryptocurrencies as opposed to listed securities.
altern8tif··on Bitcoin mining and energy consumption
> But Satoshi also recognized that having more computing power on the network made the network stronger as long as the people with the power, like Laszlo, wanted to see Bitcoin succeed.

Not sure if I entirely agree with/understand this. Even if they do want Bitcoin to succeed, how different is it from the current capitalist system if 40% of the bitcoins are owned by 1% of the population?

Doesn't the (economic) power that Bitcoin takes away from governments end up in the hands of a select few? We are then back to square one.

altern8tif··on Regarding the NiceHash security breach
Depending on whether you used their internal wallet (which they heavily incentivised), sellers might have lost their earnings in BTC from selling their hashpower.
altern8tif··on Judge Tells Uber Lawyer: ‘It Looks Like You Covered This Up’
I'll be damned if Uber isn't a required case study for business school students in the (near) future. They are fast becoming the Enron of this generation.
altern8tif··on Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017
May not be exactly what you're looking for, but under the Customize menu, you can toggle the Title Bar.

This adds a macOS-style title bar and flushes the tabs to the left of the window.

altern8tif··on Ask HN: Why is iOS 11 such a mess?
That's really surprising considering that we've seen beta releases of iOS for quite a number of years now.

Isn't the point of a beta release to make sure that the OS is battle-tested with users who would use it like they do in real life?

Would have thought it might have covered most of the typical real-world use cases. Especially since it probably has one of the highest number of users/testers of any beta software programs.

altern8tif··on Ask HN: What are top promising technologies of tomorrow must get involved today?
Don't mean to be a downer, but it feels like we'll get to self-driving cars before we can automate/autopilot drones.

Having to consider additional degrees of freedom (z-axis, correction for wind/weather conditions) makes autopiloting drones additional degrees of magnitude harder.

altern8tif··on “realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error”
Genuine question here:

Are there defamation or slander laws in the US? How does that reconcile with the First Amendment?

altern8tif··on The Evolving Economics of Bitcoin, Gold and Fiat Currencies
How does Bitcoin make the transition from a gold-like store-of-value to a medium-of-exchange then?

If the general consensus is that Bitcoin's value will continue to appreciate, it makes more sense for one to hoard it rather than to use it as digital currency.

altern8tif··on The Evolving Economics of Bitcoin, Gold and Fiat Currencies
If everyone kept all their cash under their mattresses, what makes you think your employer would be able to pay your salary? Where would your employer get the cash to pay you?

A healthy economy requires money to flow through it at a healthy, manageable rate.

altern8tif··on Identifying a Large Number of Fake Followers on Instagram
Wouldn't it be obvious if you constantly switch your account back and forth between public and private?
altern8tif··on iOS Privacy: Easily get a user's Apple ID password, just by asking
Am I missing something here? Isn't the notch already taken up by FaceID sensors/front-facing camera? It isn't really "extra screen real estate".

I do like the idea of a separate indicator for system-wide security events though. Perhaps an LED indicator although that doesn't seem very Apple-like.

altern8tif··on The underground world of Singapore
More accurately, it's raining or not raining.
altern8tif··on Tesla and SpaceX Share More Than Musk
I wonder if this happens for Square + Twitter as well.
altern8tif··on My wonderful world of macOS
The extensibility of Alfred makes it a whole order of magnitude better than Spotlight. Check out the Alfred ecosystem over at packal.org. The Spotify and Github workflows are my most used shortcuts.

What Spotlight makes up for by being the out-of-the-box default option, it lacks in versatility due to Apple's walled-garden policy.

altern8tif··on Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How
Not entirely relevant to the original story, but Facebook does use machine learning to identify faces as well (similar technology to how Google or Apple uses in their Photo apps).

So even if you've never been tagged in a photo or checked into a location, there is a possibility that just by appearing in a random stranger's Facebook photo, they would be able to place you in the vicinity of said stranger at a particular time, and make more conclusions/connections from there.

altern8tif··on How Instagram uses your mobile microphone to spy on you (and serve ads)
> computer scientists aren't actual scientists

I think a lot of folks here are gonna disagree with that.

altern8tif··on How Instagram uses your mobile microphone to spy on you (and serve ads)
Wouldn't it be easy to test your hypothesis even further?

Instead of a random conversation, keep repeating a certain outrageous/uncommon phrase (say Korean cuttlefish snacks) and monitor your feed to see if any weird ads appear.

My guess is that Facebook/Instagram probably categorised your profile as someone who enjoys the outdoors and watches movies (which can be said of a large proportion of the world population), and knew that you might have been hiking then (location tracking and possibly via your face appearing in a friend's post?). Consequently, a "relevant" ad was pushed to you.

altern8tif··on “We are working on getting Sublime Text 3.0 final ready to launch”
This does not really affect one's day-to-day use of VSCode, but their comprehensive release notes (down to crediting contributors for key issues) gives me great confidence in the team.

I frequently point to VSCode as an example of a well-run open source project.

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