Hacker News Reader

siphon22on Consider Renaming Gimp to a Less Offensive Name

Wonder how many people who are up in arms about the name actually use GIMP? And how many of those are willing to monetarily compensate them for the lost recognition in the event they do change their name and are forced to start from scratch?

It is strange that the title words it as "Gimp" when GIMP has always been "GIMP", which has a very specific meaning(it stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program) that has nothing to do with the word "gimp".

I've used GIMP since I was in middle school and I have never ever known that it was a homophone for the more offensive term. I grew up in California and also never heard anyone use this term as an insult to anyone. Do non-American/English speaking GIMP users not have a say in this? Why do they have to have their GIMP become something else just because it happens to sound like a bad word in some other language?

It'll be a huge shame if they go through with this, but even if it does, I will always refer to their work as GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

siphon22on India Staring at a Water Apocalypse

Speak for yourself. Im a struggling bakery/cafe worker :p

siphon22on Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

Personally what i want out of shuffle is that once a song has been replayed more than n amount of times, it gets temporily removed from the queue for that session or an amount of time.

siphon22on Ask HN: What do you do on an Android phone that cannot be done on an iPhone?

Go to settings > about phone, and find the section that shows the "Build number". Tap it a bunch of times until it enables the Developer options for you. I don't know if it's different for Lineage, but that's how you do it for Android phones.

siphon22on Microsoft Tells FTC Repair Poses a Cyber Risk

I use a hp elitebook 8470p i got for 100 usd from some guys garage and it is simply amazing. No screws, not even one to get the bottom cover off! You just slide it off and bam, your cpu/heatsink, fan, ram, and hdd are accessible on pretty much the same layer.

siphon22on Europe has had five 500-year summers in 15 years

Wouldn't it be the sorry saps who buy real Rolexes putting themselves in debt? The guys buying fake ones are the smart ones, getting status without paying the full price.

siphon22on Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

Individualistic is a very kind, even positive term for that in my opinion. I would think if we called it a shithole city instead, they would be less inclined to act that way due to the shame.

No offense to good Berliners of course.

siphon22on Why are pedestrian deaths increasing in the US?

>I feel like these crosswalks give people a false sense of security that they can cross without vigilance at any time.

Yes, if the walking-person symbol is on the thing, I expect to be able to walk without dodging these megaton deathtraps who want to be one minute earlier to the job they hate. I especially despise that cars are even allowed to turn into a street while pedestrians are crossing. What's the point of the walking-person symbol light if you're gonna allow cars to go through anyway during it? Dumb.

siphon22on Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

There is no turning off or moderating those comments. It's an external function of an addon that has nothing to do with my hypothetical blog in which lacks a native comment section.

To see those comments, I would have to willingly decide that I wanted to see them and go to download the addon.This is the same for anyone else. If there are people who do this and think they can make any kind of association or blame on me for having pedos commenting on my blog's url, well, they are wrong, since I had nothing to do with that comment section and have no control over it. What do they want me to do? It's some other guy's addon and other people talking amongst themselves a great distance away.

siphon22on Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

>Allowing people to make as much noise as they can is almost as damaging to free speech as censorship.

The thing is, to see that noise you would first have to be on the specific link, want to see comments on it, then go out of your way to install the addon if you haven't already. This is so much better for the people running the websites as they do not have to even acknowledge the comments' existence and are not obligated to moderate anything. Anyone who wants to comment or see them should know what they are getting into. They can grow a skin or uninstall the addon.

siphon22on Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

I love this idea, was thinking about how nice something like this would be myself. Sad it'll get no chance because of people going "muh nazis", even though it will work with any URL. It appears theres this assumption that it will be used for politics related stuff which i have no concern with myself. No neonazis will be gathering on the URLs that are meaningful to me and id say most people. Read.write.as blogs/posts have no way to leave comments and feedback, so something like this would be cool. If i wrote blogs there, id like to see feedback and supportive comments if possible. And since its an external function from the site itself, i can either grow a skin or uninstall the addon. It just works.

siphon22on Ask HN: Password manager with best experience on Linux?

http://www.masterpasswordapp.com/

I use this. Check it out to see if it meets your requirements.

siphon22on Calgary student has been studying decibel levels in hand dryers since age nine

I feel your pain too well. So many good things we could have in society, but due to a small minority of people ruining it for the rest of us.

Another poster mentioned that their child's high school didn't have any paper towels, which I can only assume is because the kids were wetting them and throwing them around the bathroom ceiling and walls to make them stick, which is something even I (regrettably) took part of as a middle school child.

siphon22on Calgary student has been studying decibel levels in hand dryers since age nine

Please use the paper towel grab. Don't disrespect your shirt like that, which will still be on you wherever you go the rest of the day until you change it.

siphon22on Consumers Are Becoming Wise to Your Nudge

Nothing about the store differed externally in the years that i looked at it, but ive never gone inside so maybe it was changed in some way like you mention? I live in California btw but im not aware of the laws regarding this.

siphon22on Consumers Are Becoming Wise to Your Nudge

I know such a furniture store thats been going out of business for like 3 years. Pretty amusing.

siphon22on Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

We need to become more vocal about tourist etiquette so that it becomes part of the social consciousness I think. Back then, we were making fun of people we considered unwashed for not having passports and being untravelled, and now we are surprised that unwashed people are ruining nature in other countries.

siphon22on What Happens After Amazon’s Domination Is Complete? Its Bookstore Offers Clues

That sounds depressing. Seriously. Similar kind of thing happened at a bakery I work at. We used to make so many varieties of baked goods, but they've been cut down to the items that sold well. I mean, that means less food goes to waste in the end, but it is still disheartening and I think is a shame as the glass displays looked so much more pleasing with the plentiful variety it had before.

siphon22on The internet is an SEO landfill

I get where you're coming from. But I'm going to offer another perspective. There is a shitload of content being made on the internet, and I believe you too would agree the vast majority of content on the web could be hardly called "knowledge" and are more likely to have a negative effect than good on society. And it's literally all free, they don't get paid for that, it's just what people naturally do, and technological advancements have made it really easy to do.

In such a landscape, how do we incentivize the proliferation of actually useful content and knowledge? It's not so easy as to just putting words out there most of the time is it? The content we consider valuable have significant amounts of time, research, and thought behind them I would assume. Time is a limited resource, and it is often that the people who have the most valuable knowledge to offer have less of it while those who post meaningless crap have the most.

siphon22on The internet is an SEO landfill

>I'd gladly donate some local lectures on the stuff I know if I had the time.

It sounds like your time is a limited resource and you choose to allocate it to other areas of your life instead of for the good of spreading knowledge. Why then, do you think others should give their time away for free?

Not trying to be hostile, just a thought for you.

siphon22on A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

I apologize for the wrong assumption, it's just confusing why anyone else would downvote me for asking a genuine question that was also just informing the writer of the medium post about a mistake that may have confused other readers too.

siphon22on Veganism Is Technologically Inevitable

Am I missing anything being vegetarian and consuming milk, cheese, and other forms of dairy products?

Just curious since you seem to know what you're talking about.

siphon22on A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

>"Were are problems?"

What is this sentence? I had to stop reading here.

siphon22on I Wrote This on a 30-Year-Old Computer

>600 dollars >no control or arrow keys

what a steal

siphon22on Women in Tech Is a Family Issue

>The only women’s bathroom on my office floor was centrally located next to several popular conference rooms.

That's a feature, not a bug I'm assuming. The men have to walk way farther to get to the bathroom when they need to go.

Maybe it's time for some good ol' equality and bring the men's bathrooms next to the women's by the conference room? :-)

siphon22on WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

Joke about a person vs planning a terrorist attack

siphon22on Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

Other people doing bad things does not negate that Muslims also do bad things. I hate this deflection/whataboutism as if it means anything.

On another note,

>Muslims are being killed in Palestine by Israel and still Muslims are terrorists.

>US attacked Afghanistan for oil and still Muslims are terrorists.

>US threatening to attack Iran and still Muslims are terrorists.

You can talk about and criticize all three of these things freely if you want, without worrying about being retaliated against physically by extremists or being censored by platforms who are afraid of the lashback if they fail to do so as Muslims are somehow a protected minority.

siphon22on New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced life in the universe

I hope they never find it, cause when they do, that will mean the end for them.

siphon22on Google Maps will tell if your taxi driver is off course to rack up a higher fare

For some reason I had brushed over the fact that he mentioned a bunch of taxi drivers just meeting up to kick someone's ass for being rude or whatever that means. That's pretty surreal to imagine.

siphon22on The Deafening Silence

We already do that. Aren't there some towns in some states that have a dog as their mayor or some shit? It's pretty amusing to me.