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hrkristian

379 karma · joined June 30, 2013

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hrkristian··on Flutter vs. Other Mobile Development Frameworks: A UI and Performance Experiment
Android Native also has hot reload, what on earth are you on about?

You get both with Android Native, layout preview and hot reloading.

hrkristian··on Ether Is the Digital Currency of the Moment
Isn't this exactly what people were saying about BitCoin as well?

BitCoin has a genuine inherent worth now and while it's still not nearly large enough to fend off crashes, it's there and it's growing. I don't see the argument for why Ethereum is different in this respect.

Perhaps I'm just not getting the real point of the linked article?

hrkristian··on A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant
Education could use such an overhaul to be honest. Look at internet resources like Khan Academy and how they're proving the merits of mass-distributing a well-functioning formula for teaching.

As far as this bot is concerned it seems to do one thing very well: Reducing the costs of offering a teaching method for those who require "human interaction" to learn optimally (spoonfeeding if you want).

hrkristian··on A comparison between funding education in Nordic countries and the USA
It's nearly impossible to be nuanced in the comic strip medium, but that does not mean it's useless for serious commentary.

The one in question is right this moment spurring serious discussion (here on HN, in this thread,) that's no doubt its intended purpose. Which in your analogy makes it not a dictated scheme, but a scetched canvas; ready to be painted.

hrkristian··on Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is great for security
Indeed, or make it even simpler: F6>CTRL+C

The F6 functionality is the reason I welcome this, Chromium devs aren't really taking control from us more tech savvy users, they're making it easier for regular users to spot the relevant part of a URL.

I already use F6 for all interaction with the omnibar as it is. Also, I'm not sure which browser it was (Opera or Firefox), but I distinctly recall either of those a few years ago having the exact same functionality discussed here, where only the domain was shown unless the URL field was active.

hrkristian··on The slow death of purposeless walking
Walking our dog always felt like a chore growing up. I'd attribute it to being young, but it's now many years later, they have a new dog (both dalmatians) and walking him when visiting is still a chore.

He's either on a leash (by law) pulling relentlessly, or he's free, needing vigilant watch. It's perfectly doable having him walk next to you, but he's still stressing out at everything and it seeps into your bones.

Might be many would benefit from taking walks like you do, I run instead, no patience for walking, but I probably should if only for the benefit of learning to be more patient.

The idea of doing something so unproductive and slow is really hard to get over, though.

hrkristian··on New axe design uses lever action to make splitting wood easier
I've spent nearly every winter growing up swinging axes, and I cringed a bit when I saw him strike branches.

For the most part the axe does a wonderful job against anything, and that guy has ridiculously good aim, but anyone who have at some point been bad at chopping wood probably knows those twists to the side can do a real number on your wrists and hands. It seems to happen quite a bit.

It's still an amazing innovation, and I hope to be able to pick one up as a gift. The article is sadly not very informative.

hrkristian··on Is the Video of the Meteorite and the Skydiver Legit?
Statistics are bordering on pointless in establishing the validity of the video and claim.

We know, full well and without any calculation the chances of such a shot are infinitely small, given that, the only reasonable action is ignoring it for the sake of tangible evidence.

For example, the skydiver was in a wingsuit, and the rock flies past him just as his parachute had opened. This means another person would have needed incredible timing to be able to match a rock throw/drop; having it go past him at a recordable distance while not hitting him.

I'm a skydiver so I've had my share of scares connected to parachute deployment, hanging around above something is for example a huge no. As the parachute opens, it's practically dead in the air; widening in area rapidly. Were someone to hang above him he is putting himself in real danger, his wingsuit is susceptible to changing winds and a few hundred meters (a reasonable estimate for how far you can expect a human to be able to aim a falling rock near another skydiver) go by in a flash.

There is also the practicality of holding onto a rock in a wingsuit (which you'd need to be able to follow his trajectory in the air). He could have devised a contraption on his stomach for the rock, and pulled it out at a proper distance, but a wingsuit diver pulls in with both arms in a quick motion in order to pull his 'chute, and would have to do the same for the rock, or suffer a nasty spin at a time he needs full control...

But reaching in still causes a dive, and loss of control, he loses forward momentum and falls rapidly, and he has to pull out a few pounds of rock in sync with the free hand in order to maintain direction, and now, in the midst of all this he has to be sure his rock does not hit his friends parachute and rip a hole, at an altitude I would be uncomfortable deploying my emergency 'chute, if he even notices the nasty tear in time!

There are actually more points to be made, but all in all, the film may have been doctored, but the jump itself most certainly was not an elaborate hoax.

hrkristian··on Gnome 3.12 Released
Indeed, or Alt-| in my case (Norwegian layout), and it works for currently focused application, as well.

Try doing that with multiple instances (3+) of your browser though. I've got general browsing on WS1, Netflix on WS2, tutorials and the likes on WS3, and usually Gmail etc on WS4. Imagine cycling through those, and sometimes more for various reasons, without separating by workspace. Tedious, tedious, tedious.

hrkristian··on Gnome 3.12 Released
I've got about ten extensions running, most of them I feel makes sense aren't in the base.

The one exception is one modifying alt-tab behavior so it doesn't group programs on different workspaces together. Honestly, that's the one behavior I cannot understand exists in the first place, makes navigating by keyboard nigh impossible.

hrkristian··on Ready Player One – what Oculus + FB will look like?
It actually is in development already.
hrkristian··on The Government Is a Hitman: Uber, Tesla and Airbnb Are in Its Crosshairs
>they demand that drivers have things like a commercial drivers license

Not really relevant, you're essentially saying normal carpooling should require a commercial licence on the driver's part.

I agree on your sentiments, there are regulations for a reason. However, these apps are simply put P2P with a third party responsible for platform legitimacy; not the legitimacy of the clients (other than by extension.)

I haven't personally used Uber, mostly because I doubt it's got much traction in Norway anyway, but if the ranking system is as effective as, say, ThePirateBay's VIP/Trusted system then what we're having is fear-mongering and not an actual problem.

As for liability, whatever happened to accepting "at your own risk"? I suppose it's a problem of perspective for me, being guaranteed not to pay more than an equivalent of $700 a year no matter how badly my body is mangled.

hrkristian··on Earth dodged a massive magnetic eruption from Sun that could have wreaked havoc
Apparently it's a bit of a hothead.
hrkristian··on Crimean accelerator packing its bags as region moves to embrace Russian ideals
Finish reading the article before commenting.

>Ant-Lab owner Petrov is now moving to Kiev, where the startup scene is more embraced. Ukraine’s capital has six accelerators, GrowthUp, EastLabs, Happy Farm, WannaBiz, Founder Institute, iHub and Polyteco.

The article is railing against Crimeans, not Ukrainians, although yes that earlier sentence did seem a bit odd.

hrkristian··on MH370: A different point of view
At the time of my reply your comment is 10 minutes old.

That means you've been able to read the exact same posts as I have been reading in this comment section. Comments from experienced pilots, one of whom explicitly states it's impossible for everything we know to have happened to just "happen by accident".

It's reasonable to downvote your crusade, you're hogging a whole page with it.[1]

[1]http://i.imgur.com/lswNgAI.png (@125% zoom)

hrkristian··on Good laptops for Linux
Doesn't surprise me at all, it's one of the main selling points for Apple.

It's fine on my laptop (Arch Linux), same as in Windows, but with an i7, GTX 660M and no optimus, and a 15.6" screen there's not much power to save.

hrkristian··on Goodbye Popcorn Time
Too true, Norway, despite having one of the works richest populations, are also hardcore pirates. It's not a question of money, it is exclusively one of service.

Delayed releases? Pirate. Poor quality? Pirate. Ad-riddled media? Pirate.

I subscribe to so much different stuff right now, but the second a service demands I watch ads over just paying more, it stops receiving money altogether.

Freedom.

hrkristian··on Google Fiber expansion moves fast; San Antonio approves construction
Well made point. Combine that with chrissnell's point [1] and it makes even more sense in my mind.

Google Fiber isn't really necessary for the common household, yet. They might be mixing an investment in start-ups with a political agenda. For the latter, if they can push the competition in the rest of the U.S. to even 10% of their offering you'll still have a massive speed increase (and a brand spankin' new infrastructure).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7397174

hrkristian··on Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours
Planes do have that, the engines also report automatically to a ground base every thirty minutes. The aforementioned trackers can be shut off in the cockpit, however, which seems to have happened.

It's unclear whether or not the engines actually have been reporting for hours, as Rolls Royce are apparently denying it according to some comments further up.

hrkristian··on How a Light Saber Works
>This implies that a sufficiently powerful Force user could parry a lightsaber with their bare hands!

Relevant YouTube clip: [1]

Star Wars games are considered C-Canon[2], so I think it's a safe bet a work as huge as SW:ToR can be considered authorative. I also remember Knights of the Old Republic 2 having a feat called "Unarmed Parry" or so which allowed parrying any melee weapon.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ToztqqDcaY#t=203

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Expanded_Universe#Off...

hrkristian··on You are a Marxist – but don't worry
>The minute you take away the natural freedom of the big strong man to beat the nerd to death and take all his stuff, you're "structuring" society. After that, you're just arguing about what sort of structure you prefer.

Wisest words I've read so far on HN.

hrkristian··on How the NSA Plans to Infect “Millions” of Computers with Malware
Better then, to have hardware switches similar to the iPhone lock switch.

I'd welcome that in general! Make the switch open up the camera app directly, and a similar one for the mics; binding it to your phone or recording app, depending on what you prefer.

Make each switch a LED which -if they are- signals ON-state as the screen is turned on or off.

Edit: And incoming call screen would have to reflect the mic being off, in which case flicking the switch would accept the call.

hrkristian··on Crytek jumps on Steam Machine hype train, announces Linux support
It's all resting on Valve and their SteamOS. If they're able to make it a viable gaming alternative, we might just see a pretty significant change.

The best part is, a game made for or ported to SteamOS (and Steam Machines) runs perfectly fine on my Arch install, played Portal 2 beta just yesterday.

By contrast, a game made for X360/XOne (Steam Machine competitor) does not by default run on a desktop OS, even Windows. The same goes for PS3/4.

You still have the fragmentation of the PC market, but much less so as optimization on the developer level can be reserved for Steam Machine hardware, I'm confident my GTX 660M will run stuff just fine even so.

That's a potentially huge win for Linux as both a desktop OS and a platform. I can easily see it snowballing, with teenagers going "Yeah, I ditched Winlol and OS-SuX for Fedora, rippin' though Crysis 4. Yo have you tried extensions in GNOME Shell? Shit's so cash", that's a culture change in favor of Open Source. Might not happen, might just happen.

/I obviously have no idea how teenagers talk these days

hrkristian··on Chromium on Linux replacing GTK+
The CD thing was really common for me back in the XP era, which also happened to be the plethora of messed up CDs era.

It usually wasn't an OS level event, though, merely explorer.exe, so killing it sufficed if ejecting didn't. (Note: This was when ctrl-alt-del opened task manager directly, so you didn't have to right-click the explorer.exe managed task-bar, which would hang if you did)

hrkristian··on Popcorn Time Is So Good at Movie Piracy, It’s Scary
With those speeds you might want to try forcing bandwidth, if you haven't already.

ctrl-alt-shift-S brings up a bandwidth selection in the Netflix player.

hrkristian··on Dark spot under cockpit of A-10s
Bit of a learning curve for sure, but flying them was amazing when you got good at it! I remember especially the Apache being a juggernaut in any situation, even in dogfights with planes like the A-10.
hrkristian··on Dark spot under cockpit of A-10s
I played Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat when I was much younger, and the developers did a pretty great job of replicating the A10 sound, you felt incredibly powerful controlling that vehicle for the sound alone.
hrkristian··on BBC News website: responsive design in beta
I could not agree more.

BBC.co.uk used to be one of my daily check-ins, before the redesign some months back which brought with it that horrible slideshow with unintelligible pictures and a ridiculous lack of text.

I can't actually find what I'm looking for anymore, and I never even bothered making an effort to.

Awful.

hrkristian··on What’s gone wrong with democracy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

A technocrat can technically (heh) be a full-time politician, but the idea -in a nutshell- is to limit a position of power to people with relevant education.

Example, you'd require a medical degree to be a Minister of Health and Care Services.

hrkristian··on Fashions in Shaving and Trimming of the Beard, 1842-1972 [pdf]
Indeed, some may be circus women.
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