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secondraft

77 karma · joined April 10, 2015

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secondraft··on Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation
From the timeline:

> got my Macbook Pro from work and signed in to my Apple ID on it.

Wouldn't this result in unintentional data sharing from the work device to your personal devices? (and vice versa)

secondraft··on a[low:high:max] in Golang – A Rare Slice Trick
and yet another one (thanks to Erik): https://github.com/tlk/go-wat/blob/41cc21294a953dc7ad07a9b40...
secondraft··on Hardware microphone disconnect (2021)
> There really should be a "Travel Mode" for MacOS that disables features like these.

Have you tried macOS Lockdown Mode?

secondraft··on New network of European sleeper trains planned
> Track capacity at night is often severly limited by maintenance work

Makes one wonder what it would do to the economics of train transportation if maintenance work was required to be carried out during daytime and passenger transportation was optimised for comfortable sleeper trains.

secondraft··on Teaching Compilers Backward
Elaborating from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dart_(programming_language)

> Dart was unveiled at the GOTO conference in Aarhus, Denmark, October 10–12, 2011. The project was founded by Lars Bak and Kasper Lund.

secondraft··on Homebrew 3.0
That has changed recently: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/10386
secondraft··on Homebrew 3.0
The decisions to enable auto update, the removal of `--with-foo` options, breaking the `brew list` command and the removal of `depends_on :x11` were all mistakes, as I see it. I have read loads of issues and pull requests to understand the reasoning but have yet to find arguments that I think justifies those breaking changes.

I get it, it's all made by volunteers, but I wish there was a package manager for macOS that was focused on professional users.

I wonder if the decision process in Homebrew has relied perhaps too much on analytics data leading to the dismissal/ignorance of features used primarily by users who have disabled analytics via the HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS environment flag.

secondraft··on Homebrew 3.0
Running `brew install hello` triggers `brew update` automatically unless the environment variable HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE is set:

echo export HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 >> $HOME/.zshrc

I do not think it was a wise decision to enable auto update on `brew install` as long time users expect `brew update` and `brew install` to be two separate steps (as it was for years) and because Homebrew no longer operates like `apt` and other package managers.

Looks like it was changed in 2016: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/288

secondraft··on ProtonMail, Tutanota urging EU to reconsider encryption rules
Okay I understand the concern, but claiming that there is intent to hold keys to all e2ee is jumping to conclusions. Imagine if investigators could ask authorities for permission to retrieve screenshots from your mobile device if you are under investigation. There would be no need for access to keys.

I am not arguing that this is desirable, but I do acknowledge that investigators may need help to navigate modern technology.

secondraft··on ProtonMail, Tutanota urging EU to reconsider encryption rules
If focusing on e2ee I agree, but how about hardware and software supply chains? How much is your e2ee worth if you are up against Apple or Google? Perhaps nation states are simply looking for similar powers?
secondraft··on ProtonMail, Tutanota urging EU to reconsider encryption rules
This is your conclusion but it is not stated anywhere in the resolution.
secondraft··on ProtonMail, Tutanota urging EU to reconsider encryption rules
You claim that somebody thinks it is reasonable policy to ban e2ee. Who is that exactly?

Consider this section from the resolution:

  Striking a right balance
  
  The principle of security through encryption and security despite encryption must be upheld in its entirety. The European Union continues to support strong encryption. Encryption is an anchor of confidence in digitalisation and in protection of fundamental rights and should be promoted and developed.
  
  Protecting the privacy and security of communications through encryption and at the same time upholding the possibility for competent authorities in the area of security and criminal justice to lawfully access relevant data for legitimate, clearly defined purposes in fighting serious and/or organized crimes and terrorism, including in the digital world, and upholding the rule of law, are extremely important. Any actions taken have to balance these interests carefully against the principles of necessity, proportionality and subsidiarity.
See https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-13084-2020-...
secondraft··on Do You Love Me? [video]
Looking forward to their next video being recorded on a smartphone by a robot.
secondraft··on Pongmechanik
https://www.niklasroy.com/project/31/pongmechanik (2004)

> Pongmechanik is an electromechanical version of the early digital tennis game Pong. It uses computer technology of the 1940's to implement a computer application of the 1970's. The control logic of the game is entirely built out of telephone relays, the same parts that the first digital computers used, which were built by pioneers like Konrad Zuse.

secondraft··on The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday
According to https://ourworldindata.org/peak-child (2018) the number of children in the world is plateauing ("very close to a long flat peak") meaning that the total number of children may stay constant in the future.
secondraft··on How to unc0ver a 0-day in 4 hours or less
> Talk about running in circles.

So maybe writing and reading useful commit logs is not such a bad idea after all :)

Reminds me of this quote: "Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it."

secondraft··on Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus
One way of looking at it is to consider the area of road required per citizen during transportation. If a car consumes 10 square meters of road and a bike only consumes 2 square meters of road, converting a car lane into two bike lanes should immediately reduce traffic congestion. If and only if, of course, enough people are able and willing to do so.
secondraft··on Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus
> This is misleading - the city controls supply, not demand.

Well. Relevant quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

"Trying to cure traffic congestion by adding more capacity is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt."

secondraft··on Build “magic,” gravity-defying structures–with Legos, kite string, and physics
I need this on my desk.
secondraft··on Best Practices for Working with Configuration in Python Applications
I believe this "wall clock time" approach is broken by design as it pushes the burden of figuring out timezone details to those who are not located in that particular timezone.

A fair and therefore safer approach is to decide that by protocol the legally binding time is defined in UTC.

Your system will translate UTC times to and from any given local time using the IANA time zone database which is regularly updated. End users must be aware about the UTC time, that it is legally binding, and that the local time conversions are provided as-is.

This way the time of a meeting or deadline is protected from local governments messing around with timezone changes.

Additionally, dates are rendered in ISO8601 standard format with a proper footnote to help users learn about international standards.

secondraft··on Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)
> I've got two boys in 3rd & 5th grade right now and I'm actively fighting with both of them the idea that "learning" is a matter of being told the correct answer and then they forever after know the correct answer in its every nuance.

So there is a difference between insisting on being right and acknowledging the possibility of being wrong.

However, this reminds me of the book "Factfulness" where Hans Rosling shows how most of us rely on outdated information (that we were taught decades ago) when asked about the current state of the world. We simply fail to update our knowledge.

The book is highly recommended.

secondraft··on Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies
To be fair, video quality is usually great in developed regions where ISP's do not intentionally slow down internet speed via bandwidth throttling.
secondraft··on Show HN: Alt-tab-macos – Windows-style alt-tab on macOS
Ah, the shortcut for this is keyboard layout specific: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/193937/shortcut-fo...
secondraft··on Show HN: Alt-tab-macos – Windows-style alt-tab on macOS
Shortcut to cycle through multiple (non-minimized) windows of one app, in either direction:

cmd + <

cmd + >

secondraft··on Sonos smart speaker controller API and CLI written in Rust
Similar project but for Beoplay & written in Swift: https://github.com/tlk/beoplay-macos-remote-cli (shameless plug)
secondraft··on The largest offshore wind farm is nearly complete, can power 1M homes
The common advice (in Denmark) is to buy energy efficient electrical appliances. Fridges, washing machines, dishwashers, and led lights are labelled[1] so consumers can decide for themselves.

School kids are taught (well, at least I was) small habits such as boiling just the amount of water that you need, cooking with the lid on, turning off the oven 5 minutes before the meal is done, etc.

These energy saving habits are motivated by taxes on energy consumption.

The average household in Denmark use 4.4kWh/day per person (1600kWh a year) and the current recommendation is to be aiming at 1000kWh/year[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_energy_label

[2] https://sparenergi.dk/forbruger/el/dit-elforbrug (in Danish)

secondraft··on Amazon’s “two-pizza teams”: The ultimate divisional organization (2013)
Judging from the confusion here, one could argue that the "two-pizza team" definition is also vague and meaningless - at least to an international audience.
secondraft··on Netflix drops 10% after missing on global paid subscribers
> I think the biggest issue with netflix is precisely the lack of things like Friends, Seinfeld, The Office

Technically, it seems unnecessary to stream the same content repeatedly, and financially it seems wasteful to pay a monthly fee for access to the same content. How about buying the particular shows once (e.g. iTunes) and have the data stored locally (e.g. appleTV)?

secondraft··on Man with tiny brain shocks doctors (2007)
This reminds me of dropout regularization where you improve a neural network by removing random neurons from the neural network.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropout_(neural_networks) and https://youtu.be/u4alGiomYP4?t=33m53s

secondraft··on Cash: a cross-platform implementation of Unix shell commands in JavaScript
How about git bash from https://git-scm.com/downloads?
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