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guidedlight

1,353 karma · joined September 9, 2013

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guidedlight··on Cork is making a comeback
Yep. Those do hold champagne under pressure no problem.
guidedlight··on Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy
NuScale looks to address this, by creating small, modular, self-managing nuclear reactors.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/us-regulators-will-c...

guidedlight··on Bruce Willis Sells Deepfake Likeness Rights So His 'Twin' Can Star in Movies
The Die Hard movie franchise very much has Bruce Willis as the protagonist. It wouldn’t really be the same without him.
guidedlight··on Citrix acquired and merged with Tibco for $16.5B
Citrix originally licensed the technology for the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to Microsoft.

RDP was a pared back version of Citrix, and the license terms left Citrix free to sell a with a more fully-featured virtualised desktop product running on top of Windows Server.

guidedlight··on The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]
There was a failed US pilot of Outrageous Fortune, a hugely popular comedy series from New Zealand about a crime family trying to go straight.

Like IT Crowd, poor casting was the likely culprit.

https://imdb.com/title/tt0461097/

guidedlight··on Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
I suggest you try the web app version, it’s faster and more stable.

In fact, I believe Microsoft will replace the desktop client with a web app shell.

You can try it out today;

1. Install the Microsoft Edge Web browser on Mac or Windows 2. Log into https://teams.microsoft.com 3. Click … > Apps > Install this site as an app 4. Enjoy!

guidedlight··on Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
Oracle database is rock solid.
guidedlight··on EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted
Given EV’s should have price parity with ICE by 2025-2027, I think its obvious that EV adoption should accelerate.

Unless you are purchasing a very cheap sub-$20k car, EV’s should become the only choice by 2030.

https://insideevs.com/news/506465/evs-price-parity-europe-20...

guidedlight··on Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
It appears that Amazon is not buying EA after all ...

https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/1563136384059285505?s=20

guidedlight··on The downfall of smart TVs: From promises of seamless viewing to ad tool
The latest Sony TV's that offer Google TV can leverage "Basic Mode" which disables the 'smart' functionality leaving you with a dumb TV with best-in-class picture quality.

It's perfect to pair to the device of your choice (Roku, Apple TV, Media Server, Xbox, etc).

https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en

guidedlight··on Crossrail Project Update
What's crazy is the Elizabeth line integrates three different signalling systems.

Between Paddington and Heathrow the European Train Control System (ECTS); west of Heathrow and east of Stratford a legacy system is used; and the central section uses a modern signalling system from Siemens.

guidedlight··on Raw footage inside Sears with Atari 800 and 2600 (1982) [video]
I can’t actually see the 2600 in this game, only a wall of shame behind the salespeople.

The only game control appears to be the intellivision running Donkey Kong.

It’s noteworthy that this was just before the 1983 video game crash.

guidedlight··on Recommended settings for Wi-Fi routers and access points
Your router needs to support 802.11k for devices to reliably switch between wifi networks using the same SSID.

This is normally a feature offered by enterprise or pro-consumer equipment.

guidedlight··on The man who made the “worst” video game in history (2019)
I agree.

My understanding is that ET relied too heavily on the instruction manual. Which was made worse by the hard difficulty being the default option, with no obvious onscreen indication that the hard difficulty was selected.

guidedlight··on Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?
I have some pre-teen children that have access to an iPad, Xbox, and an Apple TV.

My #1 recommendation is NO YOUTUBE, unless it's for education purposes. I don't have the App installed on any of my kids devices (they can access it via the website, but they don't do that). It's just a cesspool of garbage for kids. Even YouTube Kids is bad. Occasionally, they will complain about not having the YouTube app... but I never took it away, so they aren't missing it.

I've loaded up the iPad with fun age appropriate games and activities, that don't require any In-App purchases. If my kids want more apps, then Apple will ask my permission on my iPhone.

I use an Ubiquiti Dream Machine as my home router, so I have some basic content filtering and I have some categorisation of the traffic available, but nothing detailed.

In terms of video games, my recommendation is have a games console in the living room. They have access to video games, but they can play them where everyone can observe. They can have their own video games, this isn't a problem. Microsoft sends me a family report every week about what games were played, but I don't pay much attention to it. Purchases require parent approval on Xbox too.

With a 0.2 and 2 year old, you are somewhat lucky. The ages are close enough that they will play with each other a lot... and screen time won't be too much of an issue until they hit teenage years.

Good luck.

guidedlight··on The 970-HA-JOKES Payphone Project
In Australia, Telstra made all calls free and operate a wireless network for all broadband customers. Free calls goes some way to stopping the vandalism problem.

Otherwise they are advertising space. I think the US pay phones are too small to accommodate advertisements.

guidedlight··on Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody
In Japan people are officially declared dead in hospital. The media will often report clearly dead people as being in a state of "carido-pulmonary arrest".
guidedlight··on Toyota’s Chief Says Electric Vehicles Are Overhyped (2020)
Reliance of cobalt is already reducing.

Half of all new Tesla’s now use Lithium Iron batteries which are cobalt-free and have improved safety.

guidedlight··on Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable
I agree that Jira is too complex, which makes it slow. It's also way too customisable at the project level, so moving to scaled agile is hard because of it. Honestly, it's easier to start again if you want to be successful with SAFe.

If Atlassian wants to be profitable, they need to replace their founding CEO's. Mike and Scott have done well to grow the business, but the required skillset is different from this point on. Mike in particular seems to be very distracted these days.

guidedlight··on Just another Apollo? Part two (2005)
I highly recommend this too.

For me it demonstrates what is possible if we continued to employ the risk taking attitude of those early space programs.

It seems being risk adverse makes human progress very slow and expensive.

guidedlight··on BBC to close BBC Four and children's network CBBC, move content online
Australia did away with its TV license in 1974, and continues to operate the ABC as a government funded broadcast network comprising 5 TV channels and several radio stations.

It’s fine.

guidedlight··on Show HN: My website, hosted on a 386 25 MHz, 4 MiB of RAM, 38400 baud internet
The 286 is a 16-bit CPU, whereas the 386 is 32-bit CPU.

This alone made the 386 far more capable and compatible with modern software (Linux requires 32-bit).

guidedlight··on It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV
I'm 90% sure that all Sony TV's give you the option of a "Basic TV" when you go through the initial set up.

Edit: Yep. Any Google TV based television will do this. https://9to5google.com/2021/02/24/google-tv-basic-tv-mode/

guidedlight··on Unreal Engine 5 is now available
Its possible that the Matrix demo was railroaded in the late parts of development by the purchase of Weta Digital by Unity.
guidedlight··on Windows 11 may not be as popular as Microsoft had hoped
Windows adoption is largely driven by corporations.

Most corporates align on a common policy of migration to every second major Windows release following this pattern:

Windows NT 4, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10

With Windows 2000, Windows Vista, and Windows 11 skipped.

Which is a shame as these same corporates who have fleets of Apple Mac computers normally migrate annually about 6-9 months after each major annual MacOS release.

I hypothesis the reason may be that Windows upgrades tend to be major IT projects with historically large testing and remediation activities, whereas MacOS upgrades are small, introducing a small number of feature enhancements. New Mac computers also are only compatible with the latest MacOS release further encouraging rapid corporate adoption.

guidedlight··on Microsoft Says Windows May Need Up to 8 Hours to Update
The global energy required for Windows Update must be incredible. They really need to optimise it.
guidedlight··on Show HN: Loadjitsu – a modern load testing alternative to JMeter
I can’t stand JMeter’s drag and drop test plan interface.

Everything should be code.

I actually prefer LoadRunner. But it’s way too expensive.

guidedlight··on From Engineer to Manager [video]
That’s a fantastic point about understanding finances.

Too many engineers don’t value their own time, and would spin their wheel for a week than buy a fully featured third party component which is a few hundred dollars.

guidedlight··on The Sound of Silence: A Noise Map of the U.S.
Correction. Internal combustion engines are loud.
guidedlight··on Ask HN: Email saying my Amazon Route53 domains will be transferred?
I’ve received the same email. I’d love to know what’s happening.
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