Hacker News Reader

metafizikalon Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

everyone has conspiracy theories about what is "really going on here", this is to stamp out a competitive threat in google, or whatever, but I do think this story probably is just that hospitals (and "traditional enterprises" broadly) are not using GCP for their cloud infrastructure and are instead going with AWS or Azure.

metafizikalon The falling price of a TV set

luckily Chromecast seems to be an important piece of Stadia, so it should be around for a long while

metafizikalon Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

why continue to make the planes when you have no idea when you can actually push them out the door? given that they continued to produce the MAX while they were grounded, they must be running out of storage space...

metafizikalon MoviePass Worked Out Great

For my local movie theater, AMC's subscription is $24/month. Doesn't seem bad if you see three movies per month (it says three per week with no blackouts). Considering that I see maybe 5-6 movies/year in the theater, it's not actually worth it at all.

metafizikalon Airlines are finally fixing the middle seat

For real. I always think of this bit[1] while I'm riding in the middle.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFx1Cpxpx1E

metafizikalon Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

I agree, I bet this is about designing non-computer products for him, but it looks like he'll still have some level of input on Apple products as an external consultant.

metafizikalon Tobacco Use Is Soaring Among US Kids, Driven by E-cigarettes

Yup, kids love their Juul. Smoking is uncool, but Juuling is what all the kids are doing. Arguably it's creating worse nicotine addicts that cigarettes ever did.

Interesting article from a short while back on the topic: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/the-promise-of...

metafizikalon Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

a well-encoded mp3, ogg, or aac file will be audibly transparent to almost every end user, even on extremely high-end equipment. mp3 does have the side benefit of being supported on damn near everything.

metafizikalon Inside the Marriott-Starwood Loyalty Program Turbulence

Welcome to Marriott.com! Would you like to share your GPS coordinates with us?

metafizikalon Some Amazon employees bought NYC condos before news of HQ2 location emerged

I'm sure the SEC will find some way to call this insider trading, if they want. The mortgages are destined to be securitized!

metafizikalon What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick?

There was an interesting article in the New Yorker covering this as well, for those who want to read more: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/12/the-power-of-n...

metafizikalon 2018 Mac Mini Review

I have the 5i5 (Skylake) NUC running as a HTPC, and it's pretty nice. At the time I think I paid about $600 with the RAM and an SSD. I use it for the typical things, playing music and movies, but also for some lean-back computing on the couch when I don't want to sit at my desk to do email or whatever.

A quick glance at Amazon (US) says that a 7i5 NUC with 8GB of RAM and a 250GB SSD is $540.

metafizikalon Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

Microsoft gloms together the pay-per-use/subscription part that totally doesn't need "the cloud" (Office apps) along with the other bits that do (email, Skype/Teams, OneDrive, etc.). It makes sense that they do from a financial reporting perspective, because they sell them and you buy them as one thing.

How exactly should they split out the email or OneDrive component from Word or Excel of your $10-20/month? I don't think there's really a sensible way to do it without overcomplicating things.

metafizikalon Apple's New Map

When I was hiking in Big Bend, TX, there was a lady with one of those Google Maps backpacks taking imagery for street view, presumably it was collecting other interesting data as well.

metafizikalon iPad Pro

But iOS doesn't have a concept of swap like a traditional PC OS like macOS or Windows does, does it?

metafizikalon iPad Pro

What if I have really weirdly shaped tears?

metafizikalon How to permanently leave Facebook

If you're on an iPhone, you can use App Limits as a part of the iOS 12 Screen Time functionality.

metafizikalon Hire by Google: Applicant tracking system and recruiting software (2017)

Which is a bit weird because the main buyer of G Suite is a CIO, and presumably its Finance/Payroll/HR making the final decision on the hiring software.

metafizikalon New Planes That May Change Travel

While having a guaranteed wider seat is nice, I've never found the width of coach seats to be all that terrible -- it's the lack of leg room, and the airlines continue to have sole discretion on how many rows of seats they'll jam in to these new planes.

metafizikalon You can't play Bach on Facebook because Sony says they own his compositions

Eyeballs, basically. The eyeballs are on YouTube already, so if you want an audience and you're off YouTube, you're fighting an uphill battle.

But classical music, sad to say, largely is a niche pursuit. Niche content can always find a home somewhere and users will seek it out.

And I haven't followed the news closely, but if the EU is indeed going to mandate Content-ID style systems, theoretically these niche sites that don't have one will be under some level of legal and regulatory exposure? Not quite sure how any of that would work in practice.

metafizikalon Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

On the other hand, most credit cards already sell transaction data to third parties.