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drinianon Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?

I wrote about the tools I use to help with this a while back:

https://auspicacious.org/posts/2020/10/03/rehumanize-yoursel...

For HN specifically, I don't browse the site but rather subscribe to the once-weekly Hacker Newsletter; there's already more than enough commenters and voters here. This is the first comment I have made here in many years; usually I'm many days late.

drinianon Vizio reboots the PC: a quiet American success story

Or at least a no-OS version, quietly offered through a few tech-friendly resellers.

drinianon Ask HN: Zero-cost startups for ordinary Americans?

I would not be so ambitious -- but I have to believe that any entrepreneurial activity is better on a resume than nothing at all. It can't lose money.

drinianon Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

I haven't tried this in a few years, but I recall that Kubuntu and Ubuntu desktops used to have serious issues co-existing on the same box for some reason.

Don't really care, now, as I'm on Lubuntu.

drinianon 30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format

Remarkably, I know of at least one early-1990s film -- Rockula -- that was never released on DVD, but is available on Netflix Instant streaming.

drinianon Kim Jong-il tweet: South Korean Park Jeonggeun held

This is not "starting to become" for South Korea. The fact of the matter is that South Korea is far more democratic now than it was during the Cold War. These laws restricting the dissemination of North Korean propaganda have been in place for decades, and were often used with the tacit approval of the US in years past to suppress dissent.(In fact, until about ten years ago, it was technically illegal to import Japanese pop music into South Korea!)

The only difference now is that their use is becoming increasingly controversial. This, at least, is a good thing.

drinianon Public speaking for normal people

Probably a bit late for most readers here, but I highly recommend taking advantage of whatever opportunities for public speaking and performance your high school offers -- whether that's just walking on stage as an extra in a school theater production, or joining the debate club. Even a little can go a long way in relieving anxiety for the rest of your life.

drinianon Everything You Need to Know About Wall Street in One Brief Tale

Libel laws place more burden of proof on the accuser there? I understand that's the way it is in the UK.

drinianon Government won't disclose why 12 girls suddenly developed tourettes in New York

Sensationalist headline, interesting article.

drinianon JSTOR Tests Free, Read-Only Access to Some Articles

Thanks for clearing that up. They are a very different sort of organization than the one behind my old summer job.

That being said, I don't really care what their Web interface looks like, but the wording used in this press release is not related to reality, and that bothers me.

drinianon The White House's Response to SOPA

Everything that China blocks with their national firewall is considered "illegal" in China. That is, in fact, the exact same justification, even the same wording, that was used to build the Great Firewall of China.

It's true, in many ways US law is much more just than Chinese law. But that doesn't mean that walling off US citizens from the rest of the Internet in any way is a good idea.

drinianon JSTOR Tests Free, Read-Only Access to Some Articles

What on earth does "read-online access" mean? Are they making people use some kind of Flash application to read them (so you'll have to screencap important stuff), or are they just blocking access to the PDFs?

I would continue by asking who on Earth let people with such poor technical knowledge run a major academic publisher, but I have a funny story about an internship several years ago at another academic publisher.

Circa 2005, IIRC, I sat in on a sales meeting where I was told that the company was seriously considering requiring institutions to buy microfilm copies of journals in order to get online access, as their margins were higher on microfilm. Or something like that.

drinianon The White House's Response to SOPA

new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity.

In short, reserving the right to build a Great Firewall around the US.

drinianon B&N refuses to release source code of Nook Tablet, censors user requests

It's not an attack, I'm just pointing out that it's unprofessional and makes the author look like he pays no attention to detail.

When dealing with legal issues, detail is of course paramount.

drinianon B&N refuses to release source code of Nook Tablet, censors user requests

I applaud his efforts, but he's aggressively misspelling Barnes and Noble's name in that post, and that lack of attention to detail makes him much harder to take seriously.

drinianon Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

A lot of people in this thread seem to think that being in school until 5 or 6 PM would mean being in the classroom for ten hours a day or more.

That additional time would be fantastic if used for athletics, self-study, club activities (with a lot of personal freedom for the students), and so on.

drinianon The Styrofoam Cube In This Letter Serves A Bureaucratic Purpose

Registered mail is supposed to be held to a different standard for proof of delivery than delivery confirmation as well.

drinianon What it costs to live in Japan

By the way, you can get a prepaid Softbank mobile on a 90-day entry permit if you look in the right places. I had luck at the Don Quixote in Roppongi (no surprise there). It probably didn't hurt that I had my Japanese address written out in kanji and folded in a piece of paper inside my passport.

Data service, though, is still unavailable prepaid, I think.

drinianon The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

Hey, if you're willing to shoulder the true costs of that style of living -- environmentally, that's at least air pollution, and runoff from increased paving and lawns replacing woods and fields; then there's the cost of building out utilities, which you'll share with far fewer people in the exurbs -- then I guess you can. I suspect that far fewer people can truly afford suburban density than our current setup has allowed.

drinianon How the FRA is Regulating Passenger Rail Out of Existence

Effective, good-quality regulation is a form of subsidy.

This article is right to look at the costs of not updating regulation to meet reality.

drinianon How the FRA is Regulating Passenger Rail Out of Existence

I don't buy that. Every other country with high-speed rail has rail regulations as well.

drinianon Google Fiber: 151Mbps down / 92Mbps up

To be honest, I have their business service at home to avoid trouble when I'm running VPN servers, etc. and the occasional Web service from home -- not to mention the usage cap issue.

And it's nice to know that they're up to 35 mbits upload (much faster than what I have), but their hardware is capable of much more (assuming it's on par with Google Fiber's).

drinianon Google Fiber: 151Mbps down / 92Mbps up

How about just convincing Verizon to sell the higher speeds to those who want them, at a higher price? The hardware's there, but their most expensive FiOS business connections are far short of Google's numbers.

drinianon Why Arabic is Terrific

Going back in history about five hundred years, I wonder if you could compare the Arabic dialects vs. classical Arabic to Romance languages vs. Latin.

drinianon 90 Percent of People Don't Know How to Use CTRL+F (or CMD + F)

The really interesting point is that people don't seem to put any thought into what should be possible with a computer.

Intuitively, people with a decent mental model of how text is processed by computers would expect that the computer could search through that text, and look for a command in the program to do that. But many people's mental model is that they are looking through a sheet of paper displayed on the screen.

How to change this is going to be difficult.

drinianon Finally, USPS.com got nice look'n'feel

When you're mailing something that needs more than one stamp, you still have to know the current value of that Forever Stamp.

That being said, the reason you can't just print postage online for anything but Priority/Express seems to be a really bad deal the USPS made with PitneyBowes.

drinianon NASA's Successful Quantifying of Comedy Timing (By Penn Jillette and Teller)

I think government needs to use tax money for “police, courts, and defense” and that’s it. If I were king of the world, there wouldn’t be a king of the world and NASA would be private. But who cares what I think? We have NASA and they do the coolest things. It can’t be justified with Tang and Crazy Glue. Exploration of space is worth it because humans need to explore.

Cognitive dissonance much?

drinianon Poll: How much do you make as a programmer?

What rights do you have as an employee? Vacation time, maternity leave, severance pay?

In the US, these things are not mandatory. Good employers (like mine) are relatively generous, but not like what I've heard in Europe.

drinianon Star Trek Has Arrived on Netflix as Promised

Unfortunately, they left out part two of the TOS episode "The Menagerie." And I think I spotted a misspelling or two in the titles. Of all the titles to get wrong, this is a big one.

drinianon How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru

Broadcast media (as compared with "narrowcast" grassroots media) still plays an enormous role in shaping the national narrative in the US. I would imagine it's the same in Peru.