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ericras

854 karma · joined January 21, 2011

http://twitter.com/eric_ras
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ericras··on Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market
Non-paywall version: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-06-30/shadow-bri...
ericras··on RFC: PHP license update
Prevents any dispute over the significance of a certain word or phrase being capitalized vs not.
ericras··on US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders
If your contribution is to quote an old rap song and make a meta complaint about how people will react to you, then you're right - you don't deserve a positive reaction.
ericras··on Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
That book was seminal for me too and is the genesis for where I am today. Flanders' accurate criticism of "mystery meat navigation" was incredibly influential for me and still reverberates in my mind when I think about usability issues.
ericras··on Ugly infrastructure: Why can't we have nice things?
I agree. They have painted large concrete structures like this in cold weather places in the United States and they start chipping and deteriorating almost immediately. A deteriorating "public arts" project where untalented "artists" graffiti the side of an overpass is far worse than plain concrete.
ericras··on FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities
No one is above the law.
ericras··on The Adrian Dittmann Story
Stop posting the same comment and link over and over.
ericras··on Elevator Saga: An elevator programming game (2015)
A command line version of SimTower.
ericras··on Terminated
Doing all the things YouTube does, like transcode videos, gets complicated quick.

At the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, we created our own video hosting site, https://mediahub.unl.edu/ (https://github.com/unl/UNL_MediaHub) to self-host videos for when avoiding government or k-12 firewalls is desirable as well as integrating with rev.com for captioning.

It's really unfortunate that higher education hasn't banded together more often to develop projects of mutual interest.

ericras··on InfoWars files for bankruptcy in U.S. court
You're still speaking in a generality like the parent post is complaining about with the press coverage.

There would be a big difference between Jones saying "the shooting was fake, it was a hoax" versus "that father on screen, John Smith, is a liar and an actor and doesn't even have a kid plus he's probably a pedo".

Well, which is it? What did Jones actually say about Sandy Hook? That seems to never get reported.

ericras··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2022)
Lincoln, NE | University of Nebraska | PHP Web Applications Developer | Full time permanent

Primarily PHP developer for public facing web applications. Two openings available through this job listing: one primarily a Drupal CMS developer, and one non-Drupal PHP dev.

https://employment.unl.edu/postings/77997

ericras··on Show HN: HN Avatars in 357 bytes
oh man thats not fair
ericras··on Twitter suspends account tracking Maxwell trial
I just got banned from Twitter a couple days ago for the same reason: "platform manipulation and spam". I only occasionally tweet about college football and don't do anything illicit at all. All I can figure is I was banned simply because of the accounts I follow, which included @TrackerTrial among other "controversial" conservative-type political accounts.
ericras··on New iMac with Vesa Mount
It didn’t use to be a separate model. You used to be able to remove the stand from the standard iMac and attach a Apple VESA mount adapter in its place.
ericras··on Loot boxes too similar to “problem gambling” to avoid regulation, report says
>> or at least requiring more fully transparent "odds" statements about the likelihood of specific in-game items in those loot boxes

Published odds is definitely needed. When I bought physical packs of baseball cards as a kid, by the mid/late 90s they had odds listed on the back of getting the special cards, autographs, etc. That was absolutely vital to being an informed consumer.

ericras··on Social Media Influencer Charged with Election Interference
The meme in question: https://twitter.com/squid_o_the_day/status/13544897278319697...
ericras··on Openstreetmap is having a moment
"Needing a moment" or "I need a moment" in American English is the negative version.
ericras··on Progressive Web Apps – Present, Future, or a Lost Opportunity?
Not everything is made for a general public consumer base. PWA might be a good idea for an internal-facing staff application when a director says they want an app.
ericras··on [dead]
The criminal conspiracy was very well documented in the Mueller report? As Greenwald says in the first sentence, no American was charged with conspiracy/collusion/coordination with Russia. All the people sent to prison are for process crimes or unrelated matters (Manafort). Hell, Roger Stone is going to prison for lying that he was part of a conspiracy with Wikileaks, when in fact he was making that up!
ericras··on UN Security Council Holds Closed Hearing on Turkey: Syria Update
That's not a very good threat. Diversity is Europe's strength and they will be welcome with open arms!
ericras··on The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)
That’s a good way to describe it. It’s interesting that an anti-pattern (bad UI/UX) can be an asset like that. Snapchat is the Bloomberg Terminal for teens.
ericras··on Suicide Prevention Hotline Number Should Be 3 Digits, 988, Agency Says
The Suicide Prevention Hotline may go to a national center and forwarding to local 911 may be complicated.
ericras··on Suicide Prevention Hotline Number Should Be 3 Digits, 988, Agency Says
The downside is that with a mass of publicity around promoting it, some people (such as children) will get it mixed up with 911 and in an emergency there will be a delay in getting the proper help.

Edit: I'm not necessarily against this idea, I'm merely trying to participate in due diligence.

ericras··on Russian Hack of Elections System Was Far-Reaching, Report Finds
That’s not good. But as with all things in life, you have to treat it proportionally to the impact as well as weigh it against other issues. Russian nationals (who, as of last week, Mueller was unable to convince a judge were tied to the Kremlin) buying Facebook ads to post memes of Jesus arm wrestling Satan is pretty damn low on my give-a-shit list.

All sorts of foreign nationals participate in our elections. They volunteer on campaigns. They appear as pundits on our news shows. Clinton’s campaign contracted with a foreigner (Steele) to dig up dirt.

The threat posed by China to the United States is 100x greater than Russia. Casting Russia as our greatest enemy rather than trying to find areas of mutual interest is a huge foreign policy misstep by the left in America.

ericras··on Russian Hack of Elections System Was Far-Reaching, Report Finds
Which would make it trivial to set up a candidate so that he/she could be investigated (“legally”!) by the FBI under the guise of “protecting democracy”. I’m old enough to remember when Democrats didn’t want to empower the FBI/CIA/etc any further for fear of a police state.
ericras··on Russian Hack of Elections System Was Far-Reaching, Report Finds
This has been my problem with the Russia story. We never get enough detail to make our own judgement of the severity of this. The media and the Democrats lump everything together under the umbrella of “Russia hacked our election/democracy”. Aside from the nonsensical nature of that statement, it has been a catch-all term for everything from Facebook ads to hacking some state commission’s Wordpress site that contained no secure data.... to possibly real hacks of important systems which are still classified. I really don’t care about the former but the later would be a big deal.
ericras··on Russian Hack of Elections System Was Far-Reaching, Report Finds
You would have to know more about the proposals he blocked to have an informed opinion. This is such a surface level strife of McConnell that it’s close to “why won’t he think of the children?” The article should have linked to a previous story specifically about that proposed legislation.
ericras··on Give Your Yard Back to Nature
They use illustrations to sell the point because perhaps photographs wouldn't be so convincing.
ericras··on The SaaS Opportunity of Unbundling Excel
It means that non-programmers can do "programming".
ericras··on At Colorado, a Breach in Football’s Wall
The University of Nebraska's Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior (which is housed inside the stadium) is trying to overcome the selection bias of these studies by doing a baseline scan of all football players: https://www.starherald.com/sports/big_red_wrap/football/at-n...
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