tomwheeler

I never thought I'd say something nice about Google Chrome, but this feature was the only reason that I sometimes used that browser instead of Firefox. The split view is incredibly handy when you're looking at a web application and an observability tool for that web application at the same time.

At least where I live, the only information they log when looking at my ID is my name and address. Scanning my ID gives them additional information, which increases the vulnerability.

I don't trust them to store it securely nor to avoid the temptation to use that information for other purposes. The only countermeasure is to prevent them from having that information in the first place.

In my state, you can buy products with pseudoephedrine over the counter, but the law requires you to show ID to the pharmacist who then logs your name and address. There is absolutely nothing in the law that requires scanning or storing the customer's ID, and I don't know why anyone would agree to let them do it.

> it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data'

And even this assumes that the government can and will protect the data from the various bad actors who want it, something they have absolutely failed to do on multiple occasions.

The article title ought to name the company (Umart). I assume they didn't because they want the clicks, but I'd argue that giving Umart the bad publicity they deserve would make companies reconsider whether to implement anti-customer policies like this.

And eventually, future calculations from CBS about whether they have more to lose by suppressing the story or airing it will favor the latter. Or so few people will still watch CBS that their business fails. Either way, it's a win.

This is insufficient, since the 22nd amendment only limits the number of terms to which a president can be elected. A president can legally serve longer than that.

For example, consider a president who dies in office a few days into the term. The VP becomes president, serves out the remainder of that four-year term and then be elected for two more terms. The statute of limitations would therefore need to be 12 years or more to have the desired effect.

While I certainly understand the appeal of tax arbitrage, California has at least one thing going for it. Unlike most states, it generally disallows non-compete clauses as a matter of public policy.

Tech thrives on the mobility of talent, so it's no coincidence that California is where the tech industry thrives. Almost 70 years ago, eight engineers at Shockley Semiconductor had a better idea and left to start Fairchild Semiconductor. That led to Intel, AMD, and National Semiconductor, later spawning NVIDIA, SGI, Qualcomm, and ultimately creating trillions of dollars in wealth. No other state will ever overtake California's dominance here unless it allows for that same mobility of talent. Almost every state tries to _attract_ billionaires these days, but this is one reason why most states can't _create_ them.

Much like an operating system promises to make everything easy if you use its APIs for file I/O instead of implementing your own low-level code to control the hardware yourself. Personally, I'd much rather think about storage in terms of files instead of sectors on a disk.

> It'd be an interesting experiment to take memory snapshots after each step in a workflow, which an API like Firecracker might support...I think some durable execution engines have experimented with this type of system before, but I can't find a source now - perhaps someone has a link

Trigger.dev currently uses CRIU, but I recall reading on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45251132) that they're moving to MicroVMs. Their website (https://feedback.trigger.dev/p/make-runs-startresume-faster-...) suggests that they're using Firecracker specifically, but I haven't seen anything beyond that. It would definitely be interesting to hear how it works out, because I'm not aware of another Durable Execution platform that has done this yet.

One day I'll retire, and the day after that I will still write code even though I'm no longer being paid to do it. And I'll still play my guitar every day even though I have no interest in being famous. I'll do both of those things for as long as I am able because they bring me joy.

For all of these same reasons, I never signed up for the "member rewards" program at the local grocery store. I did read the terms and conditions once, when I needed a good laugh.

At least they gave me a free battery every month.

I feel sorry for their database because I was a teenager with a bunch of guitar pedals and an ongoing need for 9V batteries. I made up a LOT of phone numbers.

A $5M home in Palo Alto is hardly a mansion.

> I vaguely remember, back in 2010, when I wrote my app, you couldn't style a button consistently across all browsers. They were grey boxes in firebox, or used other OS standard styling.

I'm sure I'll trigger a lot of designers by saying this, but I'm probably not alone in valuing basic usability FAR above styling. I much rather have an ugly button that looks like 90's era Tcl/TK than something pretty that doesn't behave like I expect it to.

> selecting text is scarcely possible

I find non-selectable text maddening, but I recently found an macOS app called TextSniper that restores my control. It lets you select an area with the mouse (as you would when taking a screenshot) and it then OCRs the text and puts it into your clipboard. It almost makes Google Analytics usable again.

I have an M2 Max MBP for work and a Framework 16 for home.

Build quality of the MBP is better. The machine feels more solid. The battery life is better, although to be fair, I run Linux on the Framework so the hardware itself isn't the only difference.

The Framework 16 wins hands-down when it comes to ports, one of my biggest pain points with any Apple laptop in the last 10 years. It has six of them and I can mostly arrange them according to my needs. In the rare cases where I plug it into an external monitor, I swap out one of the USB ports for an HDMI port. If I'm using more older devices than normal, I replace the USB-C ports with USB-A ports. I say "mostly" here because not all ports work in all positions.

The repairability and openness of the Framework laptop were the big draws for me and it delivered well on both counts. I'm happy with it.

> But in fact, customer call centers tend not to be able to even know that you called in yesterday, three days ago and last week.

Nor what you told the person you talked to three minutes earlier, during the same call, before they transferred you to someone else. Because their performance is measured on how quickly they can get rid of you.

In 1995-1196, I worked at an ISP. Our first step when trying to troubleshoot an access problem for a new user was to run the finger command on our server to see if the account had been provisioned yet.

30 years later, I still recall the time I had to calm down an angry customer after a frontline support tech told her that he was going to "finger her to find out what the problem is." He _really_ didn't think that one through!

Ian Murdock, who grew up in Indiana, joined Sun Microsystems in early 2007 to lead Project OpenIndiana.

Not much of a user-agent...

> The music industry figured this out: I pay Spotify, they have 95% of music content I could ever way, the UX is good enough. I have no reason to pirate music anymore.

> Why is this so hard for the film industry?

My theory is that the United States has compulsory licensing for music, but not movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license#United_Stat...

To my knowledge, a radio station or music streaming service doesn't have to negotiate with the record label to play a given song, they just have to pay a small royalty as defined by law. However, that doesn't hold true for movies. Each video streaming service has to negotiate the right to carry a given movie with the film studio that owns it. Those film studios play the streaming services against one another, often allowing the exclusive right to offer certain content for a limited time, after which they then lease the rights to a competing service.

> FM radio uses the headphone cable as an antenna, so with the move to bluetooth I assume it got squashed for similar reasons.

Some may prefer Bluetooth headphones, and there are countless apologists who now retroactively parrot the manufacturers' excuses for why headphone jacks were eliminated, but it wasn't something the _users_ asked for or wanted.

"Oh, but phones are waterproof now," they claim! Well, so was the Samsung Galaxy S5 I bought in 2014. And by the way, it also had a user-removable battery, removable storage, an FM radio, and an IR blaster. All these years later, you can't find a new phone with all of those features and it's very difficult to find a flagship phone with even _one_ of them.

Lobbyists

Cows can jump a lot higher than people expect. They can also throw their weight at a fence and break through.

These hand signals are known as arb. I was told (when I worked for a brokerage firm) that the name stems from people involved with arbitrage needing to communicate quickly, before the rest of the market caught on to what they were doing).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_signaling_(open_outcry)

It happened to me last week at a small Thai restaurant in Las Vegas.

I have fond memories of the manager letting me play with the computers for hours. Our Radio Shack was in the mall and I'd drop in and start writing programs on the TRS-80 display models while my parents were shopping.

The manager not only didn't kick me out (like the manager of the bookstore always did if I looked at a book for more than five minutes), he'd come over and teach me some things when he wasn't busy.

Obviously so they could track your purchases. Thankfully, I learned a valuable lesson as a kid when my parents told them "None of your business."

Too bad this question has become so commonplace that few people seem to challenge it anymore.

It felt like malicious compliance. Oh, you want security? OK, here you go, hope you choke on it.