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phobius

37 karma · joined April 3, 2011

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phobius··on Time to Play Fair, Spotify had enough of Apple's walled garden [video]
For better or worse, here's Apple's response:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/03/addressing-spotifys-c...

Frankly both sides seem immensely dodgy in their approach - manipulative language, half-truths, blame-shifting

Am very curious whether Spotify in Europe will actually become 30% cheaper to the end user if this goes ahead (or, if Apple's response is to be believed: 45% cheaper after the first year) as their careful "we're doing this for you" messaging says, or it just ends up being a cash grab

phobius··on Netflix Premium in the Netherlands: €13.99 a Month in Chrome, €15.99 in Firefox
I'd equate it more to the difference between spending an extra $100 on a solid pair of boots which last 4x longer (cheaper over time) - we're not talking diamond-encrusted phones here

(That said, Apple are doing a great job of losing this value prop)

When I've bought Macs they've often been an older model - luxury-pricing-wise that's nothing next to an Alienware or Surface

phobius··on New DNA structure inside human cells known as the “i-motif” has been identified
really insightful response, thanks!

(aside: wow, Feynman really is the gift that keeps on giving...)

phobius··on New DNA structure inside human cells known as the “i-motif” has been identified
so many of the misleading headlines on this topic could be fixed by saying "confirmed" instead of "discovered", or "identified"
phobius··on Encoding data into dubstep drops
does the hive mind know what the commandline tool is that he used for displaying audio spectrum?

(or @benjojo12 if you're watching... your setup has inspired me, and I want to play)

phobius··on Encoding data into dubstep drops
spot on. also there's likely to be some phase issues in some mixes

aside: seems to be a smooth enough lerp between bits so as not to destroy speakers, but might cause a record needle to jump (can anyone more versed weigh in here?)

phobius··on Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]
could be a well-meaning tech culture screw up; Most tech people know that airplane autopilots weren't end-to-end automated for the majority of their existence
phobius··on Several Apple Services are Experiencing Outages
may be complete coincidence, but about 8-9hrs ago my friend's iphone started acting up; emails vanishing while they were reading them, sub-routes in apps silently failing back to main screen...

even if this is unrelated - disconcerting to hear that the unit's usability is so closely tied to online services

phobius··on Apple rejects Puffin Browser on iOS
Is it not possible there's just a security violation they need to sort out?

Am unfamiliar with Puffin, but the post leaping straight to "it's a conspiracy!" without indicating what the stated rationale for rejection was appears a bit off.

(I'd I'm normally first in line to attribute things to corporate greed)

phobius··on Audrey – A smart personal assistant app that helps you to get things done
in fairness, "Cortana" and "Siri" both sound pretty effeminate to me (and speakers of romance languages)
phobius··on Dropbox on Mac now updates itself with a process in background
Thought this too as soon as the notification popped up.

To the best of my knowledge I haven't updated recently, so they've basically had an auto-update feature sitting dormant for a while.

Nothing fishy here.

phobius··on Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground
I've uttered the same sentiment myself (admittedly as an excuse for still running a 386sx in the mid-90's)

However this is only productive if you're not working with (a) compiled code, on a (b) project large enough that compile times are non-negligible

In some build environments, the difference in RAM or CPU is measurable in terms of (literally) hours of wasted time per day :(

phobius··on Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
Agree this is an annoyance - how would you propose keeping features like YouTube or Netflix autoplay/playlists in this scenario?
phobius··on Inside Magic Leap
Recommend you look at this history of emerging technologies announced at SIGGRAPH.

Tends not to be a linear progression at all; if the attention of more than a couple researchers is applied to any of these things then they grow very quickly - couple this with improvements in parallel processing power and it becomes quite viable. (see: physically based lighting, rigid body -> full crumple simulation, fluid dynamics, Photoshop's "smart fill", or really any game tech)

Apropos of nothing: Same applies in terms of hardware - what we can do with light field cameras now was science fiction just over a decade ago, but within a couple years of crossing a research tipping point we went from 10x10' camera arrays to <$100 hand-held commercial products.

source: graphics tech and SIGGRAPH nerd for the last 23 years

actually there was an extremely slow build up of this tech, with a sudden and rapid escalation - but between 1908 and 2010 was a very shallow incline :)

phobius··on Jacob Appelbaum allegedly intimidated victims into silence and anonymity
Appelbaum's response:

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1soorlp

Obviously this topic needs to be treated with extreme care, as assuming innocence would be just as damaging as assuming guilt.

Though it is rather interesting that Appelbaum would receive such similar accusations as Assange - especially given his history of gender advocacy and related activism.

phobius··on [dead]
This was a hoax perpetrated by Joey Grether

http://12xspiral.com/intro/ http://pholx.com/thenumberswebgrethersspiral/

Supposedly there's also a post of him admitting it was to gain attention - but I've yet to see it.

phobius··on Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At
Seems to have been hn'd

Here's a google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

phobius··on Ask HN: Best offline password manager
There was a brief report of metadata being stored in the plain: https://myers.io/2015/10/22/1password-leaks-your-data/

There's a rebuttal from AgileBits: https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/10/19/when-a-leak-isnt-a-lea...