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nerflad

671 karma · joined December 15, 2016

recovering SRE, irrecoverable musician. NYC
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nerflad··on New York City considering legislation to ban cashless retailers
I love that New York still runs so heavily on cash. Cash is an absolute necessity for a free society. It represents every person's freedom to voluntarily exchange goods and services without (easily) being tracked, monitored or mediated. It's a bit shocking to me how so many tech types underestimate or fail to see this.
nerflad··on Drafting Only Men for the Military Is Unconstitutional, Judge Rules
It's a nice thought but look at, for example, Donald Trump's deferment to see how it actually plays out for rich people.
nerflad··on Anti-Application video for YC120
The only way I could comfortably answer that question is "Irrespective of greatness or potential for it, here's a list of projects I've done/been involved in and am proud of:".

The "adjusted for privilege" bit seems to be trying to discourage people from talking about where they went to college. It is definitely an awkward question and I think Bryan was right to skewer it.

nerflad··on UK makes it an offence to view terrorist propaganda even once
Thank you
nerflad··on UK makes it an offence to view terrorist propaganda even once
You are right. The first thing I thought about when see the headline was Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi). It will literally be impossible for people like her to work in the UK. I can see this dramatically affecting the kind of reporting the BBC/Guardian etc is able to do, unless they are able to get exemptions or just ignore the law and risk the consequences.
nerflad··on Facebook will reveal who uploaded your contact info for ad targeting
At least on FB you can unfollow the main offenders. My feed is surprisingly tolerable. Enjoyable, even. The unrelenting barrage of political content comes to me from Twitter. Twitter is designed to surface popular tweets even from those you don't follow, and it's almost always low effort political tripe. It's exhausting.
nerflad··on Valve Breaks the Shackles of Proton
I'm guessing Ark on Windows uses a lot of shaders that only work with D3D.
nerflad··on My PHP Development Setup
To me (not a designer), modern connotes modernism. But contemporary just means "current" or "present day". I could be totally wrong about this, but I always try to use contemporary unless I'm specifically referring to modernist art/design philosophy.

(SenHeng beat me to it)

nerflad··on Feds Can't Force You to Unlock Your iPhone with Finger or Face, Judge Rules
This might be a good time to let others know: Android (at least my OnePlus) has a "Lockdown" mode in the shutdown menu that locks the screen and prevents the usage of the biometric methods. You have to use the password. This is good because passwords have already been hashed out in court and are unequivocally protected by the fifth amendment; you don't have to tell an officer your password (and entering it for them constitutes telling them).
nerflad··on Ask HN: What was the Internet like before corporations got their hands on it?
Which drum company? I'm an aborted software developer and jazz drummer by trade.
nerflad··on Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game
This is one of those difficult problems where I have a lot of respect for game designers. What's least unsatisfying?

1. Leaving it out altogether

2. A "brush horse" button that you click and that's the end of it

3. Making the player do it with the mouse

In American Truck Simulator you don't have to clean your truck, but you do have to get gas. Since a horse's cleanliness is more vital, maybe a cleaning mechanic (or at least a button/corresponding animation) should be in the game. Then you have to address the timing, which environmental/time factors, etc. would cause the horse to get dirty, if taking the horse into a lake will rinse it off (wait can our horses swim? Need to check with the dev team). I think I'd have a hard time designing a simulator that would actually be fun. So many trade-offs to consider.

nerflad··on Please do not attempt to simplify this code
Not all organizations have such robust communication structures, low levels of dysfunction, or git hygiene. Also, as mentioned, in a corporate environment where the software is proprietary and certain source files may sit dormant long enough for the original authors to move on from the company, it's important that they don't take the "how/why" part with them, so to speak, and leave the next maintainer SOL.
nerflad··on Sqlite – Most Deployed Database in the World
Considering the Type-flexibility of SQLite, would it necessarily be too difficult to have an object-relational mapping that works across both DB's? I guess it depends on the application. Surely it would be a pain, but perhaps still a possibility.
nerflad··on The Yoda of Silicon Valley
Or entropy. (In this case, social entropy?)
nerflad··on Simulating identification by zip code, sex, and birthdate
1970 -- The Unix Epoch, of course! I imagine a lot of us here use that one.
nerflad··on End-to-end encryption does not prevent Facebook from accessing WhatsApp chats
Would there be any way for a user to see if/when the token has been reused? Doubtful but perhaps Google provides (or could provide) some kind of log similar to how Facebook lets you view Active Sign Ins and Sign In history.
nerflad··on The Tragedy of Saudi Arabia’s War
> But given enough time, all of this will just be statistics.

Certainly you are joking. You know you're paraphrasing Stalin right now?

nerflad··on “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”
My version of being Nice and Respectful tends to skew toward "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all".

Which topics still have a good experience on Quora? I find the quality of the discussion, especially the quality of many of the questions themselves, to be quite low. They need more aggressive community moderation to filter out duplicates, miscategorizations and nonsense before potential answerers are notified/requested. It makes the site look bad.

Almost every day I get an email that says something like "nerflad, so-and-so requested your answer to the question 'how dows computer work?'". Nearly all of the music questions are especially asinine and I just don't have the patience.

Like so many others, I have completely stopped using Quora. Yes, occasionally there are still diamonds in the rough and Alan Kay will pop in to say something, but these kinds of interactions are the exception rather than the norm.

Stack Overflow's moderation is considered Draconian by a lot of people, but it's their lifeblood in my opinion. Q+A sites need a hedge against the descent into Yahoo Answers madness.

nerflad··on Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users
If I recall correctly this is not the first FB vuln relating to View As. I searched and can't find it, but I seem to remember there being a bug around 2009 where you could basically take over a friends' account by viewing your profile as them.
nerflad··on Fullscreen mobile modal: how hard can it be?
> It’s completely reasonable for a product to advertise for a newer version.

No argument from me there. A notice on the splash screen, even a tool tip at start-up would work fine, but it was a full screen advertisement, several minutes after start-up, which stopped playback (!) without warning. These interruptions are what I find completely unacceptable, and I believe they stem from fundamentally misunderstanding what the user is there for, or outright disrespect.

nerflad··on Fullscreen mobile modal: how hard can it be?
In the previous century when web technologies were more primitive, modal dialogs were created in new browser windows. We all remember pop-ups and what a horrid experience that was. Developers (and spammers) abused this behavior so much that browsers now reflexively prevent pages from opening new windows in most cases.

I leave almost any site that interrupts me with a full screen modal dialog, especially if it's a prompt to subscribe to a newsletter. This abuse has become the norm. I have even seen desktop software adopting this behavior. A licensed copy of Guitar Pro 6 will interrupt you with a fullscreen ad for Guitar Pro 7. Unforgivable. Respect what the user is there for, and you might earn their business.

Edit: I recognize that there are some positive, responsible uses for this technique (extending forms/controls; search suggestions, assist the user rather than interrupt) and good examples are shown here. Please excuse the Sunday rant.

nerflad··on Hosting files in url minifiers
Google Drive, for example, re-encodes in place every video file you upload (!). So I wouldn't be surprised if imgur was doing something similar to combat steganography.
nerflad··on Amazon hits $1T market cap
I can ssh into my Android phone. You'd be surprised how useful this is.
nerflad··on A Constructive Look at TempleOS (2015)
Might just be the slashdot effect, but his site is currently down.
nerflad··on ‘Overtourism’ Worries Europe. How Much Did Technology Help Get Us There?
Yet there are people who live in those places. Pointless? That statistic really puts in perspective for me how much empty space there is in the world.
nerflad··on America is one of the few cultures with insults for smart people?
There are plenty of "public intellectuals" with cults in the US, though. Jordan Peterson and Neil Tyson come to mind.
nerflad··on ‘Overtourism’ Worries Europe. How Much Did Technology Help Get Us There?
If you moved the entire population of the Earth to the United States and spread it out evenly, there would only be about 2000 people/square mile (7% as dense as New York City).

So not overpopulation as much as everyone wanting to live in/go to the same handful of places. And now they are all mostly making choices based on the same sets of data (Yelp reviews, AirBnb etc etc).

nerflad··on Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures
> I basically was taking issue with seeing a reply to a post that was highlighting this difference that is a real perceptual one (not just a notational one, but described, unfortunately, with focus on notation) with the claim "there is no difference".

It is impossible to quantify or intellectually stratify feelings and perceptions. All I have to say is "I feel it differently" and now your stratification is incomplete. But you can say without a doubt that 3÷4 === 6÷8.

Of course I am aware of the conventional approach to playing 6/8 that results in this perception that beats 1 and 4 are not of exactly equal weight, and of all the different ways you can play two against three, three against four and so on. Polyrhythm doesn't stop at hemiola by the way. Are you also feeling five against three, seven against five, etc.?

I can show you examples of music in 6 where you may be unable to find the downbeat at all. So you can't say for certain how I or anybody else is going to hear it in every case. These prejudicial approaches to music cause closed ears.

nerflad··on Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures
> addressing someone with grave intellectual disabilities.

Well, I did say I was a drummer!

nerflad··on Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures
Who's we?

Your decision to give certain beats more or less emphasis is a subjective one. You can glean absolutely no information about a piece from the way the rhythm is subdivided, except maybe the intended tempo.

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