Hacker News Reader

larrymcpon Punctuation Matters: How to use the en dash, em dash and hyphen

Ironically on a punctuation blog, it looks like he has a punctuation typo in his title. In the headline, the semi-colon after "hyphen" should actually be a colon. So the corrected headline is "En dash, em dash and hyphen: what’s the difference?"

A colon is used in this context, when you're introducing the question that follows.

larrymcpon You won't be able to run Windows 11 without a webcam

Yep, still chugging along with Windows 7 here; it sure is fine by me

larrymcpon How CNN's Jeff Zucker and His Cronies Manipulated the News

Yeah, you don't need TV news. TV news is mostly commentary these days

Just check the AP & Reuters feeds each day. You'll get straight news, and you'll also save a lot of time.

larrymcpon “The Wall” Housing Structure In Fermont, Quebec

Yea the building is open to the public; there is a hotel and I have stayed there, and some stores too; there's a grocery store on the lower level. I did some "sightseeing" indoors so to speak; I walked the corridor all the way down through the pool & gym area and the school area.

larrymcpon Ask HN: Why do I get robocalls from recently-called area codes?

Oh my goodness, my employer uses Twilio as our phone provider. If people started blocking Twilio, then for example a customer might call our support team to ask a question, and then after we research the issue we would we unable to call him back. So I sure hope that doesn't become a thing... whew

larrymcpon Is the madness ever going to end?

I noticed on his "About" page that he says that English is not his native language. So I'll cut him a break on spelling! I wrote to him with proofreading changes including this one, and he has now corrected them.

larrymcpon The Prisoner-Run Radio Station That’s Reaching Men on Death Row

Weird; that console he's sitting at is not the type that is used for radio broadcasting- that console is for music production & mixdown. (Radio consoles don't have all those adjustments on each channel)

Ironic that a prison radio station would have such a hugely overspecced piece of equipment!

larrymcpon Tell HN: If you use Verizon, opt out of “Custom Experience”

I see a lot of vitriol in this thread, but I can't seem to understand what harm would actually be caused?

Would appreciate it if someone could give me an example or two. As in, "A bad thing that can happen to you as a result of Verizon's actions is: [insert actual bad thing that can happen here]"

larrymcpon Removing my site from Google search

Thanks, ok I just looked at that one too. Most of the examples on that page don't pertain to Google, and the ones that do pertain to Google are not harmful (e.g. targeted ads, or someone's emotional reaction to data collection).

Since his ire is specifically directed at Google, I'm still left wondering what specific harm he is envisioning from Google's activities.

larrymcpon Removing my site from Google search

The first sentence grabbed my attention, and I was looking forward to learning about the "threat that surveillance capitalism poses to democracy and human autonomy". But then the article fell flat: he gave no examples of that threat, and neither did the linked article in The Guardian.

Are there specific examples of this type of harm? The only complaints that he made were that Google makes a lot of money (which I have no problem with), and that Google's conduct feels "creepy" to him (which is merely an emotional reaction).

He did hint at Google "modifying your off-screen behavior", and I was eager to learn about that as well... but then he left that unexplored too, and gave no follow-up or examples of that intriguing scenario.

larrymcpon YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

Why can't we take a fair use copy? That is not a violation of copyright.

That's not covered under "Fair Use": see [1] for fair-use criteria. It is definitely a violation of copyright, yea.

[1] http://fairusetube.org/guide-to-youtube-removals/3-deciding-...

larrymcpon Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

I saw that he mentioned a few of them in the article. He writes:

I can tell you that virtually everything I’ve used, from networking (legacy to VPC) to storage (Cloud SQL v1 to v2) to Firebase (now Firestore with a totally different API) to App Engine (don’t even get me started) to Cloud Endpoints to... I dunno, _everything_, has forced me to rewrite it all after at most 2–3 years.

larrymcpon OpenDyslexic: A Typeface for Dyslexia

I tried this in a few different browsers but the pages weren't rendered in that font as the site indicates. Instead it seems to be rendered in Comic Sans.

Wonder if there's something I'm doing wrong.

larrymcpon How to survive a ransomware attack without paying the ransom

How is ransomware able to spread to all the PCs in a company? (Especially PCs at different locations around the globe)

The malware needs to execute itself on each computer. But I would think this would be thwarted by hardware firewalls as well as apps like Windows Firewall.

If my PC at work gets infected, somehow it can magically infect the guy down the hall's PC too? I thought that was made impossible years ago.

larrymcpon [dead]

Bloomberg has now revised the headline title to "China Sends 1.1 Million Party Members to Share Uighurs’ Homes". We should probably do the same here.

larrymcpon College Board Drops Plans for SAT Student Adversity Score

I think you mean "than", not "then". "than" is the word that fits in those phrases.

larrymcpon Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

I read the link you provided, but there wasn't any "OMG yes" light-bulb moment in that article.

Do I care if Google & Facebook track my viewing habits? I'm not sure I understand what the potential harm to me might be.

larrymcpon Dad Reflexes [video]

I couldn't understand the 3rd clip, with the dog. Was something going on that was much more dangerous than I could tell?

larrymcpon Mothers Are the Unsung Heroes of Prison

I thought so too at first, but a few months ago I read the judges' decision in his appeal. He had actually ordered some murders as well, and that was factored into his sentence.

The murders didn't actually take place, but he did order them and he was under the impression that they were carried out.

larrymcpon Facebook Still Tracks People on Yelp, Duolingo, Indeed

Oh, yeah I can explain that, no problem! I'm one of those people myself. I've never heard of a single example of potential harm that could come as the result of tracking. So as you can imagine, to me these articles seem like a bunch of made-up hoopla over nothing.

To explain my mindset, basically it boils down to:

"Can something bad happen to me as a result of tracking?"

And nobody has ever said "Yes, here are examples."

larrymcpon What If Google Doesn't Reward White Hat SEO?

This article is pretty hard to see in its default rendition. Light text on a light background? Not sure that's the best design choice...

larrymcpon Show HN: The Easiest DIY Phone System for Your Small Business

There are lots of typos and grammar errors on every page of the site. I would recommend getting those fixed, as this will cause you to lose credibility with potential customers.

Visually attractive site design though!

larrymcpon Google’s cloud business under Greene was plagued by internal clashes

To me that's one ingredient in quality journalism, actually. I feel more confident in a piece if it tries to include multiple points of view, multiple interpretations etc.

Always good to see the "critics said x, but supporters said y" habit as one indicator of impartial reporting.

larrymcpon Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

I was curious about one of the exceptions that he mentioned:

> Our game console repair petition was denied, meaning repairs of PS4 and Xbox One systems are going to stay expensive.

Wonder why game systems were excluded? They're basically computers too.

larrymcpon Why People Keep Rear-Ending Self-Driving Cars

This paragraph midway through the article sums up their guess:

...the computer was in charge in 22 rear-end crashes, [so there is] reason to believe that the AVs are doing something that makes cars behind them more likely to hit them. Maybe that’s driving herkily-jerkily (as we experienced in a Cruise car in San Francisco), or stopping for no clear reason (as we experienced in an Uber car in Pittsburgh). That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It indicates a conservative focus on safety: Better to stop for a fire hydrant than run down a preschooler. But part of being a good driver is behaving in a way others expect, which doesn’t include constantly stamping on the brakes.

larrymcpon How a Website Exploited Amazon S3 to Outrank Everyone on Google

Thanks very much: we have been completely mystified at what these sites are doing by listing fake coupons for our business too. So basically it's just black-hat SEO; I should have guessed.

larrymcpon I saved 15% or more on car insurance by switching my gender

But then you'd need to switch your gender back to male if you wanted to save money on, say, healthcare, clothing, and haircuts.

I wonder if it might all even out, at the end of the day.

larrymcpon Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

Some other great Western-language examples are highlighted here: https://websitesfromhell.net/hell/

Funny.

larrymcpon Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

Listening to the Lana Del Rey & Radiohead tracks just now, I noticed that to my ear they also resemble yet another song, "The Impossible Dream". Similar chord progession and similar melody in some places.

Where does it end, LOL...