Hacker News Reader

trobertsonon The Rise of Pirate Libraries (2016)

Would you be willing to share that script? I'm heading to grad school in a month, this would be very useful.

trobertsonon Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

Yes.

trobertsonon A Year of Google and Apple Maps

At a guess, previous generations would talk in terms of distance-to-destination, whereas we talk in terms of time-to-destination. They would think of a highway and a neighborhood as having the same "speed limit" (foot or horse-and-cart). We, with cars, think of highways as having a much lower time cost (or higher time efficiency) than neighborhood roads.

trobertsonon Show HN: Sorting Two Metric Tons of Lego

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton#Units_of_mass.2Fweight

Metric ton / tonne: 1000 kg

Imperial (long) ton: 2240 lbs (1016 kg) (UK)

Imperial (short) ton: 2000 lbs (907 kg) (USA, Canada)

trobertsonon What I Heard from Trump Supporters

> a lot of the responses sound emotion driven, with the overwhelming emotion being the fear of change.

I got a different fear out of it. They are afraid that their current circumstances are going to be permanent. The majority of Trump voters have awful circumstances. Many regions within the USA are effectively third world. People don't have drinkable water. People don't have internet, or even phones. People don't have transportation. People live on oxy (an addictive opioid), because that's all they have.

Hillary promised them more of the same, and that terrified them.

trobertsonon Fallout 1.5: Resurrection

You have fully understood the absurdity. People are paying hundreds of real life USD for a new texture for their gloves.

trobertsonon Fallout 1.5: Resurrection

> Is this typical of games these days? Do a crappy "main" game but "fix it" with DLCs?

A lot of AAA devs have started using games as a platform for DLC. Valve, for example, just launched glove skins [0] - 300 USD for a texture. DLC is far more profitable than games, nowadays.

As for Bethesda, long-time fans have a general understanding that Bethesda games get worse with each iteration. Their DLCs are usually better than the main games, but not by much.

[0]: https://steamcommunity.com/market/search?q=&category_730_Ite...

trobertsonon Inside a Fake News Factory: ‘This Is All About Income’

You'll note that those results all start appearing in July - after the DNC shoved Sanders out of the race. When the corruption was relevant, the "reputable" media was silent.

trobertsonon How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study

> the official narrative across the media industry - much of it literally state propaganda - has been consistently proving hallow and unreliable.

> The "fake news" surge is a grasp by establish monopolistic forms of misinformation distribution to maintain their domination and credibility as sole sources.

This is exactly it. The following google trends graph makes this obvious: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=fake%20news

trobertsonon Stallman: Why it is important not to have children (2012)

If you "feel bad for him", you are not looking down on him.

If you "feel bad for poor him", you are referring to him in a way that implies his position is lesser.

"Poor $noun" is nearly always derogatory towards $noun. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a neutral or positive use for "poor $noun".

Verbal communication is imprecise enough that people will overlook "poor $noun". In text, you have the opportunity to proofread and revise your statements, so "poor $noun" drastically changes the meaning of the phrase.

trobertsonon Stallman: Why it is important not to have children (2012)

> expression of sympathy

Whether you intend it or not, it's an expression of condescension. It states that you are in a position where you can look down at (feel bad for) a lesser (poor Stallman).

You may not mean it that way, but it's exactly the same sort of phrase as "Bless your little heart".

trobertsonon Elm is Wrong

> the language is an unsurmountable pile of poorly-thought-out and impossible-to-compose new ideas on top of the least interesting pieces of Haskell

For a Haskell programmer, what he tried to do (use typeclasses) is extremely common. It's some of the most basic stuff you can do. Elm is clearly modeled after Haskell, and absolutely fails to maintain the basic patterns that Haskell users take for granted.

trobertsonon Video Games Are Boring

It's funny that every single game you mentioned is a "theme park" open world game, and exactly zero of them are "sandbox" open world games.

trobertsonon Subpixel: A subpixel convolutional neural network implementation with Tensorflow

Considering motion blur, "pixel-perfect" is a difficult requirement.

trobertsonon Announcing TypeScript 2.0

A good type system will expose the existence of side effects. However, it is true that good type systems are very rare in industry.

trobertsonon Peter Thiel’s Embrace of Trump Has Silicon Valley Squirming

> But he lies so much and makes so many factual errors how can you trust him on anything?

This applies to Hillary too, you know? The most awful thing about this election is that neither candidate is trustworthy. They are both blatant liars.

trobertsonon We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

If that's what you do, then yes. If you choose instead to only advertise your positions at women-focused conferences and programs, the legality changes. You haven't prevented men from applying and being accepted, you've instead changed the audience of your advertising, which will change who applies.

trobertsonon There Is No Handbook for Being a Writer

Everyone has something to say. The achievement of writers is being able to suitably express their thoughts to their audience.

Regarding Bukowski, you should check out his Wikipedia page. I'll snip some highlights, and draw some conclusions.

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

> poet, novelist, and short story writer

> Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over 60 books

You don't write thousands of poems without understanding language. He may not have had a complete collegiate education, but you can be sure he ended up studying language on his own.

trobertsonon Why people still go to grad school

The point of the (grad and above) academic treadmill is to become a scientist. KKKKkkkk is saying that the author did not mention this at all, which means the author may have been misguided or under false pretenses.

trobertsonon Forbes Site, After Begging You Turn Off Adblocker, Serves Up Malware 'Ads'

Stylish lets you write your own CSS. It doesn't give you a GUI for it, it expects you to look up the elements yourself. I have custom CSS for a number of sites, and find Stylish sufficient.

trobertsonon U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

It will be interpreted as Republicans shutting down the government... again. Moderates and Independents, and Centrists on both sides tend to strongly dislike that, and it could swing the election to a Democrat victory.

trobertsonon Write like you talk

Generally speaking, people who give talks have them prepared beforehand. They practice speaking it, to make sure that it's clear and understandable. So to say that it's easy to write a transcript for a planned talk isn't really saying anything. It's already been written, and writing the transcript of the presentation is just a rewrite. Not all talks are prewritten, but almost all of the good ones are.

I'd also like to note that presentations are very dissimilar to conversations, and some interviews. Conversations are at least a two-directional flow of information (more directions with more people), whereas the bulk of presentations are a one-way flow of information.

trobertsonon A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

> jitteriness of digital video

Not the same thing, but "film grain" is a thing.

trobertsonon Why No One Uses Functional Languages (1998) [pdf]

The common opinion is that Scala is a poor man's Haskell, with few of the strengths and more weaknesses. It's seen as, at best, a stepping stone from imperative languages to "real" functional languages.

trobertsonon Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

Rather than single out engineer and UX guys, it would be more accurate to say that some person(s?) foresaw the problem, and their concerns were dismissed by someone above them.

trobertsonon A Year of Functional Programming

Only after the learning curve, though. It isn't immediately approachable as an imperative language.

trobertsonon Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming

For those new to OpenGL or graphics programming, there is also this [0] repo on github, which contains a variety of OpenGL examples and single-file projects.

[0]: https://github.com/progschj/OpenGL-Examples

trobertsonon Ask HN: Best current Linux-compatible laptop?

I've got a T530, and have had several distros on it at varying points. I highly recommend ThinkPads as well.

trobertsonon Why a prolific Clojure user switched to Haskell

On your last point, I would switch "may take time" to "will take time". All functions pure, all data immutable, strongly and statically typed, all computations lazy? It will take time to get used to.

trobertsonon Facebook acquires Oculus VR

Already exists. It's called Second Life.