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emddudley

901 karma · joined May 5, 2011

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emddudley··on Claude is only available to people over 18 years
California passed a law AB-1043 that requires every OS developer to add age verification on the OS level.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/ab-1043s-internet-age-...

emddudley··on IBM Bob
One carousel quote literally ends with "Bib is a highly reliable partner."
emddudley··on AI companies are shredding rare books
Libraries are not archives, and weeding does not mean destruction.
emddudley··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)
I checked out your app but I'm not sure what it is for. I see that it has a map with tourist destinations in Toyko and an itinerary feature. But since I already have Google Maps and Calendar, I don't understand what new benefits this app brings. It is not very convenient to browse through the suggested tourist sites on the map or the explore list -- you need filters and categories.
emddudley··on Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold
For others like me that didn't know the term Sherlock:

It means "To obsolete a unique feature in third-party software by introducing a similar or identical feature to the OS or a first-party program/app." The term stems from Apple's 2002 release of Sherlock 3, which made a popular third-party app named "Watson" irrelevant.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Sherlock#Verb

emddudley··on Astral to Join OpenAI
Well shit, I feel betrayed. This is exactly the opposite of what I thought Charlie's goals were. I thought he was focused on making the Python ecosystem better.
emddudley··on Bucketsquatting is finally dead
Why is x-amz-bucket-namespace header needed when creating a new bucket in the account regional namespace? Is an account blocked from creating a bucket in its own namespace if it doesn't specify that header?
emddudley··on PalmOS on FisherPrice Pixter Toy
I was an intern at Fisher Price when they introduced the Pixter Color. I did QA on some of the games, the Dora one comes to mind. You can imagine the torture playing a level over and over.

The games were developed overseas (India I think?). I would send them bug reports in Mantis and overnight they would send a new build. Sometimes they would even fix the bugs. I would burn the builds on to EEPROMs and verify them the next day. The EEPROMS had a little round window so they could be erased in a UV box before programming.

Fisher Price used a video codec from Actimagine to fit video clips onto the game cartridges. That's how I learned about Virtualdub. I remember editing clips from a show called Winx.

The big competition was the Leapster LeapPad and they were trouncing us.

One fun thing the engineers did periodically was a toy teardown to see how competitors saved on cost. Cost was critical. They told me how Walmart basically dictates toy cost because they controlled the shelf space.

emddudley··on How to Attend Meetings
Looks like it has been deleted. Does anyone have a copy?
emddudley··on Pyrefly: Python type checker and language server in Rust
Pyrefly vs. ty: Comparing Python’s Two New Rust-Based Type Checkers (2025-05-27) https://blog.edward-li.com/tech/comparing-pyrefly-vs-ty/

HN discussion of above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44107655

How Well Do New Python Type Checkers Conform? A Deep Dive into Ty, Pyrefly, and Zuban (2025-08-29) https://sinon.github.io/future-python-type-checkers/

emddudley··on Binary Formats Gallery
There's an old XML one called Data Format Description Language (DFDL).
emddudley··on U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China
Short form video is tailored for the fast, instinctive, emotional brain. Not the slower, deliberative, logical brain.
emddudley··on EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections
Ironically, PFAS levels have been found to be higher in wealthy people. People with money own more furniture and clothing with stain resistant treatments, for example.
emddudley··on Understanding the PURL Specification (Package URL)
Not related to PURLs (Persistent URLs) administered by the Internet Archive.

https://purl.archive.org/

emddudley··on You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work (2019)
Similar to the cited "Do you Need Blockchain" there is NISTIR 8202: Blockchain Technology Overview, page 42.

1. Do you need a shared, consistent data store?

2. Does more than one entity need to contribute data?

3. Data records, once written, are never updated or deleted?

4. Sensitive identifiers WILL NOT be written to the data store?

5. Are the entities with write access having a hard time deciding who should be in control of the data store?

6. Do you want a tamperproof log of all writes to the data store?

https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2018/NIST.IR.8202.pdf

emddudley··on Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service
PURL (https://purl.archive.org/) is a similar permanent URL service but you choose the URL.

It used to be hosted at purl.org and run by the OCLC but in 2016 it was transferred to the Internet Archive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161002094639/https://www.oclc....

emddudley··on The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
You've been fooled.
emddudley··on Stimulation Clicker
I'm embarrassed to admit it but I found out this game has an ending.
emddudley··on The death of Glitch, the birth of Slack
Yahoo (Verizon) did eventually sell Flickr to SmugMug in 2018 for an undisclosed sum.
emddudley··on Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid
If we're talking about health and cookware, you're not going to want nonstick cookware.
emddudley··on Let your mower sing Happy Birthday for your loved ones
Between my smart mower, smart fridge, smart thermostat, smart doorbell, and smart TV, I won't feel lonely on my birthday ever again!
emddudley··on PyCon US 2024 Recap
I attended and I would say there was 98% compliance. The policy was that masks off was OK outside, while presenting, while eating, and briefly when posing for photos.
emddudley··on PyCon US 2024 Recap
I'm amazed at how many people she met. It was my first PyCon and I was happy with trying to chat with like 5 people. The conference was huge and very physically and socially exhausting.
emddudley··on Amazon virtually kills efforts to develop Alexa Skills
I have an Echo Show 8 that I wanted to watch YouTube on, but it doesn't work. Which model can access YouTube?
emddudley··on Google Podcasts service shuts down in the US next week
AntennaPod is what I moved to. I miss having the built-in sync between devices that I had with Google Podcasts, but AntennaPod is otherwise great.
emddudley··on Google Podcasts service shuts down in the US next week
I could be OK with that, except that YouTube Music is an awful podcast player. It doesn't have a way to queue up episodes. Also listening to podcasts severely degrades the music experience, the interface intermixes the music and podcasts too much.
emddudley··on YouTube Says It Has More Than 100M Premium and Music Subscribers
That sounded like an amazing deal, but it's a promotion. Google Fi offers 1 free year of YouTube Premium if you have an Unlimited Plus plan for a year.
emddudley··on Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Is in Development
I first noticed people referring to "compute" as a resource around maybe 2016.
emddudley··on 23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing
Ah, I really appreciate this. I did not know that the old TOS was available under the /4.1 link. And I like the full-version links!

In case the older version goes away, here is the archive.org version from October 25, 2023:

https://web.archive.org/web/20231025013949/https://www.23and...

emddudley··on 23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing
I have tried to quickly diff the previous TOS with the new one and I wasn't able to identify any big changes. I would like to know what the actual changes are. I see a lot of articles criticizing the new TOS, but no one is showing the actual wording differences.

Does anyone have an actual diff?

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