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chrismeller

2,014 karma · joined April 5, 2008

I’m Chris and I job here very goodly. All comments are my own and in no way represent my employer.
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chrismeller··on SC sheriff's office quoted me $9k for a simple Flock records request
I’ve used MuckRock to request records on ALPR systems for years. I gave up several years ago because SC agencies had started rejecting them all under an exemption for law enforcement / public safety.

There’s no appeal process in SC, so they know they can just stonewall you and you’re highly unlikely to try to sue. The law is also just ambiguous enough that you risk losing even if you did sue, so it’s a lose-lose for the filer.

chrismeller··on Ask HN: Do you have an aversion to recent TLDs?
I admit that I still subconsciously treat com/net/org as somehow more legitimate, though there's no logical reason. I do like that there are more options now, but some of the gTLDs are quite ridiculous.

And I really don't like that companies like Google/MS can buy their own TLD now. I don't think allowing a trademarked term to be used should have been allowed.

chrismeller··on Show HN: Created macOS app to help you keep your distance from your screen
Anyone know of something similar for Windows?
chrismeller··on Voting Machine Hacking
Title should probably be updated to indicate this is from 2009.
chrismeller··on An open letter to the Obsidian team
I use Obsidian, but don't have much invested in any plugins or themes, so maybe I'm just not informed enough on the backstory here.

While I can't disagree with anything said, it's also not really unique, is it? This is the classic open vs. closed ecosystem debate - do we protect users with a walled garden or do we let them load up anything they want, even if that turns out poorly for some subset of them?

If you're going to plead for some kind of change, I think it would be more helpful if you had specific action items. A willingness to help is great, but how do you propose to help? A lot of people are technical, that's awesome. What are they going to build to fix the problem? Who or what is preventing them from doing that now?

chrismeller··on California electric vehicle drivers will lose carpool lane privileges
I was wondering the same thing, so thanks for the explanation. Disappointing that the article didn’t bother to explain it.

From Section 166 it looks like the state can also convert an HOV lane to an HOT lane and set the toll amount. The contrarian in me wants to believe there’s some ridiculous loophole in there…

chrismeller··on Tesla is looking to redesign its door handles following trapped-passenger report
> What is "hardware" anyway? Does a microcontroller-based integrator or debouncer count?

Hmm, good question. In this context, I guess "continues to work after the EMP"?

chrismeller··on Tesla is looking to redesign its door handles following trapped-passenger report
I don't own a Tesla, but I've been a passenger in well north of 100 different ones over the years (Uber/Bolt/etc.) and had no idea there even was a mechanical release. In the event of an emergency I would... not fare well.

Years ago (decades now?) I remember James May on Top Gear doing a segment where he was looking for the first mass-produced car that "looked like a car". Of course there have been tons of changes, but it's also amazing to me how much some things are still the same 100 years later.

Particularly when it comes to safety devices it just seems like you shouldn't mess with that combination of intuitive design and ingrained societal learning from media. It's literally something a child can do...

chrismeller··on Ask HN: What are you using your Raspberry Pi for?
My main one is for ADSB using adsb-lol.

I also have the Pimoroni Enviro+ in my living room. I've got their Grow kit somewhere as well, but... no plants since I moved.

I used to have a Kubernetes cluster running on some Pi3's, but they got a little too slow and I was bumping up against the lower memory. Lots of other self-hosted stuff, but it's all on some old off-lease computers I found cheap, not on a Pi.

chrismeller··on Ask HN: What are you using your Raspberry Pi for?
Can I ask for a few more details on your GPS NTP setup? That thought popped into my head the other day but I can't think of a real reason to do it, it'd really just be a cool way to waste some time.
chrismeller··on Tufts Offers Free Tuition for Families Making Under $150k a Year
I was thinking the same thing. I know I’m cynical, but I’m sure there’s some blanket rejection reason like “suspected fraud” that is used shockingly frequently. You can’t argue with it because fraud is a real thing, but somehow you just know…
chrismeller··on Microsoft Set to Dodge EU Fine with Offer to Unbundle Teams
Slack vs. Teams is one of those great examples of designing a product from the ground up to do exactly what it's supposed to do well vs. seeing a business opportunity and throwing a bunch of crap together to meet it.
chrismeller··on Microsoft Set to Dodge EU Fine with Offer to Unbundle Teams
My subscription is actually for "Microsoft 365 blah blah blah (without Teams)" and costs some small amount less, so I had just assumed they already had?
chrismeller··on Why Are ADHD Rates So Much Higher in the U.S.?
I was surprised when I moved to Europe that at least several (many?) EU countries don’t even authorize any ADHD drugs to be prescribed. So sure, maybe the doctor knows you have it, but even if they say you have it… so what, what can they do about it?

As someone with some horrific environmental allergies, I see it as similar. The US has a ton more allergy medications available (both RX or OTC) than any of the other countries I’ve lived in or visited, so of course there are more people who have a diagnosis. In Finland they just stared at me wide-eyed and shook their heads when I asked if they had Sudafed. “Oh no, very strong…”

chrismeller··on Ask HN: What is the worst communications tool you've ever used?
The UI is also just… awful. It gets so confused about what is read and what isn’t. Muting a channel doesn’t really work the way you would expect. Scrolling through messages suddenly just stops and waits 30 seconds to load the next “page”. Even reading through JIRA updates in Teams is hard because the UI is so bland and blank it’s tough to distinguish between the individual updates, but in Slack I have no problem.

Oh, and of course there are three different ways to add a code snippet now, and all three absolutely suck. In Slack there is one, and it just f’ing works.

Teams is free because no one would ever pay for it.

chrismeller··on Concrete spheres for energy storage; California plans a 9-meter diameter sphere
I was actually wondering why the whole thing needed the complexity of being underwater and felt like I was just an idiot, so thanks.

From the article it sounds like the only reason to deal with the hassle of the water is so you can put these somewhere no one ever sees?

chrismeller··on Please do not write below the line
You moved WHAT?!

That jacket was specifically adjusted and positioned exactly there because it blocks just enough of thr EM interference from the old ass microwave in the small kitchen three floors down!

If the jacket isn’t there and Marge in accounts receivable starts making her breakfast burrito early one morning while they’re running payroll the main query times out and doesn’t automatically retry, so the header of the CSV file can’t pull in the right fields for each location, the export writes out blank headers, the bank can’t read the file, and THE ENTIRE COMPANY doesn’t get paid!

For the love of god, PUT THE JACKET BACK!

chrismeller··on Kopia: Open-Source Backup Tool with E2E Encryption and Deduplication
I read the docs, but wasn’t really sure that sets it apart from Duplicacy or Restic?
chrismeller··on Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition
> Civil rights watchdog

Well not quite. They keep getting money every year, but officially their mandate expired in the 90’s and has never been renewed. As crazy as that is by itself, they certainly don’t have the authority to do anything.

chrismeller··on Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript
This is the same argument behind paying for a streaming service. Could I "find" everything I want to watch somewhere else and maintain it myself on a Plex server? Sure, but the cost-benefit analysis just doesn't make sense to me.

Particularly the older I get the more I value my finite free time. Throwing $20 at something to remove a problem that would take me hours (not to mention a large startup cost) to do myself is just an obvious choice.

chrismeller··on No new iPhone? No secure iOS: Looking at an unfixed iOS vulnerability
I understand that, I’m just saying that they claim it gets security updates, so it seems like the kind of thing they should include.
chrismeller··on No new iPhone? No secure iOS: Looking at an unfixed iOS vulnerability
The iPhone 6S mentioned was released in 2015, but should run iOS 15, which Apple still should be releasing security updates for?
chrismeller··on Internet Archive appeals, says judge Koeltl "misapplied the fair use factors"
All the libraries I’m a user of (and there are a half dozen or so) have licensed all the content through Overdrive (Libby).

I don’t know how Overdrive licenses it from publishers.

chrismeller··on Boost.inc Line 109
Link straight to the line: https://github.com/openembedded/openembedded-core/blob/cce77...
chrismeller··on Sunday service suspended at all NYPL locations
>Who goes to the library before noon?

I know several older people who use it as an opportunity to get out of the house. They get their coffee and head to the library to read the newspapers.

chrismeller··on Ask HN: CDK vs. Terraform – which one do you prefer and why?
I haven't spent a ton of time in either lately, but I do lean heavily towards Terraform simply because it's vendor agnostic.

I'm probably never going to end up switching completely between providers, but I like having the ability to mix and match services if I do need to.

chrismeller··on [dead]
Directly from the ! icon next to the mentioned stream:

> You may be encountering issues playing Al-Quds Radio 102.7.

> Your browser is forcing a secure (https) connection to our website.

> Because Al-Quds Radio 102.7's stream is not secure (http), we are unable to play it.

> To listen to this channel, please use another browser or get the official Radio Garden mobile app.

chrismeller··on You Might Be Drinking Too Much Without Knowing It
http://archive.today/E5deN
chrismeller··on Teens Want Parents to Track Their Phones and Monitor Their Every Move
http://archive.today/isXJ5
chrismeller··on Two Scientists Taking Down Cold Medicines That Don't Work
http://archive.today/QYogs
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