Hacker News Reader

ssimpsonon Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

I feel the same trying do develop an enterprise application with Unity. When I worked for Unity I found it fascinating that game devs (not coming from game development) were “locked into” a particular version. I hope the package system can alleviate some of that but there is a real need for some automation and upgradability.

ssimpsonon AWS us-east-1 outage

when working on CloudFiles, we often had monitoring for our limited dependencies that were better than their monitoring. Don't just know what your stuff is doing, but what your whole dependency ecosystem is doing and know when it all goes south. also helps to learn where and how you can mitigate some of those dependencies.

ssimpsonon IBM Logo Manual (1983)

it is supposed to be blank, its that way on my physical copy

ssimpsonon IBM Logo Manual (1983)

I have a physical copy of this with 5.25" floppies and everything. It's one of my prized possessions :D

ssimpsonon Hacker News in the Style of Teletext

Thank you! I lived in the Netherlands for a short time ('92-93) as a kid and I always thought teletext was so cool!

ssimpsonon Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

Youtube app update and now has a huge banner ad at the top when you start it up. Very annoying!

ssimpsonon Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

I have an old coworker in a group of friends that fits this description. Its frustrating because they will continue to spout this stuff off confidently, but not ever listen to the counter argument or understand that their philosophy is flawed. It makes it challenging to continue to engage with this group of friends.

ssimpsonon Radio users reminded not to use radios in crimes

Ham isn't an acronym :D

ssimpsonon More Than 70 West Point Cadets Accused of Cheating in Academic Scandal

My dad worked at USMA from ‘93 to ‘98 and I grew up around the Academy in high school. I always thought it was so cool how if say you left your calculator on the desk it would just sit there and people would work around it. I worked at Victor Constant as a patroller and had lots of fun hanging out with some of the Cadets that were in Ski Patrol as well.

ssimpsonon Pinterest pays $89.5M to terminate San Francisco office lease

I remember my VP saying one time "the CEO is going to be in our office this week, everyone needs to be here, no questions".

ssimpsonon Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

I feel like I am lucky, my club has a bunch of old dudes, but they are still learning and growing. A few years ago, I proposed adding a digital repeater, and it caused all kinds of trouble, but most of those folks left and now its great. We have awesome presentations on how to leverage raspberry pis, building portable battery packs, opensource VNAs, etc. But this is true, a lot of the hobby is very curmudgeon-y. Which is sad because there is so much cool tech.

ssimpsonon Illustrated Self-Guided Course On How To Use The Slide Rule

I've been trying to figure out how to use my grandfathers Dietzgen Maniphase Multiplex Decimal Trigtype Log Log rule. I found the manual on this site! Very cool!

ssimpsonon Riot Games newest title “Valorant” installs kernel driver to run anti-cheat

> Tencent paid $400 million for a 93 percent stake in Riot Games.[2][9] Tencent bought the remaining 7 percent in December 16, 2015; the price was not disclosed.[2][10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games

ssimpsonon Riot Games newest title “Valorant” installs kernel driver to run anti-cheat

Riot is owned by Tencent, a Chinese company.

ssimpsonon Open offices are a dead end

everyone wants to have offices in all the trendy downtown areas. a lot of the cost of the office goes to rent, so even if a desire for cubes or offices was there (which generally management doesn't because they are expensive) the budget won't be.

ssimpsonon The art of sharpening pencils (2007)

in some drafting, you can buy mechanical pencils which are basically graphite holders. They will hold a nice thick chunk of material. we used a small pallet of sandpaper to keep the tip sharp and learned to rotate the pencil while writing.

ssimpsonon Let’s Destroy Robocalls

I have the same issue. I'm in the PNW, but have a 210 number. I'm pretty sure most of the time they are just war dialing the prefixes to figure out who answers. The robocallers are also spoofing all numbers, as i get people calling me saying "why did you call me?!"

ssimpsonon Rackspace announces it has laid off 200 workers

it was more senior people this time. But it has been that way the last couple times too. I have a few very talented friends that lost their jobs. They also pretty much cut out a bunch of the private cloud group. Sad to see such a good company go this direction.

ssimpsonon Fallout 76 Day One Patch Is Larger Than the Game Itself

i know right?! i have have two kids and they are constantly streaming stuff off disney, nick jr, and pbs apps. i wish there was a way to cache locally the stuff they just watch over and over so i'm not getting hit over and over. Also, all the instant on streaming ads! i know its probably a small amount but what if that is what pushes me over. I'm probably going to switch to centurylink soon.

ssimpsonon Fallout 76 Day One Patch Is Larger Than the Game Itself

that was my exact experience when i bought one to play RDR2. I took forever to update, then when RDR2 came out that took forever to install and update. Not to mention all the updates chewed up 15% of my comcast data cap that month. Its sad that I have to think about my purchases in terms of how much of my data cap i'm going to go through.

ssimpsonon We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

All situations end up being a compromise. Most HOAs abhor antennas. I have an Endfed Halfwave antenna (EFHW) strung up in a tree. I can operate 6meter to 40meter band with it pretty well.

https://myantennas.com/wp/product/efhw-4010/

Also magloops are fun but are also a compromise.

ssimpsonon We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

You could always use websdr to listen

http://www.websdr.org

ssimpsonon We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

part of why i'm a fan of digital modes, short message ones like FT8 in particular. plus i've been getting lots of dx too! i really need to learn CW.

ssimpsonon We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_alloca...

notably: 13 centimeters – 2300–2310 MHz (lower segment), 2390–2450 MHz (upper segment)

ssimpsonon We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

awesome! i need to get my butt up some of the summits around me and do some SOTA work myself. I've got all the stuff, just need to do it!

ssimpsonon We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

do it! you can get started with some cheap SDR stuff to "see" whats out there. I you want to participate it is really a great hobby. I can't wait until my daughters can participate.

ssimpsonon We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

While i wouldn't call it a golden age, its definitely not a bad time if you want to do things like digital or satellite work.

New modes like FT8 really allow hams to work in at this crappy solar level. Pricing on HTs has gone down a lot due to the now illegal Chinese knockoffs, so Satellite work and local stuff is more accessible.

Personally I've only done FT8 for the last year and its great. I've been able to make contacts 8000mi+.

ssimpsonon FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

digital messages encoded in a format then transmitted using frequency shift keying for the data to audio. it has 15 sec transmit/receive cycles and due to the error correction involved has very few characters that are actually transmitted.

ssimpsonon Ham vs. Ham as Radio Amateurs Are in Conflict with ARRL

The neat thing about all the "new" stuff is its just a layer on top of the old stuff. If you think about it, CW is just a data mode you can grok with your ear. using cw skimmer and computers to send you can operate CW without even needing to grok. makes the qrp bit harder, as you have to hulk a device with you. some of the radios have rtty and psk built in (like the elecraft kx3) so you can use a keyboard or keyer to input your messages.

ssimpsonon Ham vs. Ham as Radio Amateurs Are in Conflict with ARRL

1. Might be able to use the FCC DB to look it up.

2. Hobby and EmCom. When I lived in Texas most of the clubs were HF contest based. Now I’m in the PNW and lots of the clubs are EmCom based which is interesting. Lots of neat operating modes just in Tech class. APRS, Satellite, Ham mesh networking.

3. Yes. If you want DX CW is a great way to do it.

4. Digital modes provide some new and interesting stuff these days. Using FT8 mode I can hit Japan, China, and Australia on 10-30watts.

I think radio is a great hobby. Bit expensive but still very relevant. I’ve learned a ton by practical application.