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wirthjasonon Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

I wonder if they have a new control technique up their sleeve. Innovative gameplay and pushing new control ideas is one of Nintendo’s signatures. That said, being the switch 2, not a new console, maybe they kept it the same and just upgraded the processing and graphics hardware.

Looking forward to more!

wirthjasonon Why use metaphors in conflicts? Because understanding is remembering in disguise (2009)

How could someone write a post like this and leave off the great book “Metaphors We Live By” by Lakoff and Johnson?

Is particularly found the part about how metaphors “hide and highlight” information. In other words the metaphor we use necessitates how we think. We often frame arguments using the metaphor of war and that frames how we think. The other party is an enemy that must be defeated, its bloody, and there is a loser. However we could frame it as a dance, in which case they are a partner, and for the outcome to succeed they must move together in harmony.

Lakoff has written other fascinating books like how metaphors are used in politics as well as math (“Where Mathematics Comes From”).

wirthjasonon Blockbuster Video VHS insert template

This is a great addition next to my race car VHS rewinder.

wirthjasonon Public toilets are vanishing and that's a civic catastrophe

You’re totally right. And it’s important to distinguish between the many forms of homelessness. There’s visible homeless, they are what most people think of. There are also invisible homeless, they don’t “look” homeless. Often you don’t know they are homeless except for carrying around some belongings and brushing their teeth in public places.

Businesses care about the first type because of the associated problems and are completely fine with the later.

wirthjasonon Public toilets are vanishing and that's a civic catastrophe

When I was in high school (ages ago) the boy’s bathrooms didn’t have doors. I guess it was to deter kids smoking, graffiti, and other bad things that happen. We were a middle class suburb so I don’t know how often this happened anyways. I was fortunate to never need to go but I always remember it.

wirthjasonon Public toilets are vanishing and that's a civic catastrophe

Will they really not let you use the bathroom?

The same idea exists in the US, and often bathrooms have a PIN code to enter or a special key only the shop owner has.

I’ve never been turned down when asking politely. Most people are rather sympathetic when someone needs to use the bathroom for legitimate purposes.

wirthjasonon Public toilets are vanishing and that's a civic catastrophe

The article has one good point: there’s diseases and conditions that cause people to need the bathroom, and even if you don’t have this upset stomachs are common enough that at some point it’ll impact you. Parents with young kids realize it too. So this is everyone’s problem.

However the article misses the point with statements like this.

    Quite simply, Lowe was right: there is often no place to go.

There are often many places to go, it just might not be a public toilet. There’s restaurants and coffee shop, gas stations, stores. Don’t confuse no public places to go with no places to go.

Public toilets are one of those things where all it takes is one person to mess up a good situation for everyone else.

There’s no incentive for people to treat them nicely. There’s an asymmetry, people want to use public toilets but who wants to clean public toilets? It’s always “someone else job.”

I see no problem having a little friction as a way to help control it. A small charge to use the bathroom or social capital of asking can be enough to remedy the problems of misuse.

wirthjasonon Raspberry Pi is now a public company

The words “public company” often carry a negative tone but ownership rules are complicated. It doesn’t mean much until you know the specifics. For example a non-tech example of a publicly owned corporation that people might not think of is the Green Bay Packers.

https://www.profootballnetwork.com/who-owns-the-green-bay-pa...

wirthjasonon She spent her inheritance on TikTok Livestreamers

“Addiction is a disease” is something I learned as a child of a (now sober) alcoholic parent.

It’s a strange classification at first because addiction seems like a matter of will and strength.

If we’re going to lump algorithmic addiction in with other addictions there’s a lot of interesting things that would flow from that. For example now that online gambling and sports betting is more common there’s disclaimers and commercials telling people to get help if they have a problem. Should the same thing be true for social media and Candy Crush games?

“Do you have a problem with social media, go to Facebook.com/gethelp for more information”

wirthjasonon Amazon Let Its Drivers' Urine Be Sold as an Energy Drink

I might have miscommunicated my idea. I certainly think everything that documentary shows happens and agree with everything you say. No dispute there. I just don’t know what percentage it represents.

Maybe my driver is a corporate driver, not a DSP, and has different metrics etc. I don't know.

BTW I really like the term “partner” in delivery service partner. It’s a weasel word that covers up what’s really going on. They are not partnering in the common sense of the word like “my wife is my partner.” (Although on a long road trip she wouldn’t hesitated to make me pee in a bottle rather than stop for my baby bladder. Haha.)

wirthjasonon Amazon Let Its Drivers' Urine Be Sold as an Energy Drink

Yes. He comes all the time. I haven’t been in this apartment for very long but he’s had this route for at least a year. I first met him on New Years Eve when ordering a board game to play that night. I came back from picking up last minute groceries and he was delivering packages. In the spring we talked NBA playoffs (he was very proud that he predicted the Nuggets to sweep the Lakers). During the summer when we talked about the Cubs. It’s coincidence we bump into each other but I see him driving the truck around.

wirthjasonon Amazon Let Its Drivers' Urine Be Sold as an Energy Drink

Obviously not all of this is true. I chatted to Amazon driver for my apartment about some local Chicago sports and he talked to me forever. Ironically I had to end the conversation by saying I needed to use the bathroom. He’s definitely not timed.

Can’t wait for Season 2 where he chronicles how to game the ratings system.

I feel 99% of the people on HN understand it but on the other hand there’s people like my 70 yr old mom who look at that and think, oh what a fantastic product. She is very susceptible to dark patterns, has no concept of sold by Amazon vs 3rd party sellers, etc.

wirthjasonon Japan's Hometown Tax (2018)

Thank you for saying Michigan is your state. Context matters a lot. It’s annoying when people generically use “in my state” or “in my country”.

wirthjasonon Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

Anyone know what the US market (no pun intended) is like? Similar games, different ones?

wirthjasonon How mobile apps illegally share personal data

Restaurants, particularly fast food, also do the same.

wirthjasonon How mobile apps illegally share personal data

Are there any guides or tutorials on how to do this kind of analysis on your own?

wirthjasonon Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

Hot take (as it applies to toasters): many appliances are crap, they break quickly and are not user repairable.

The odds of buying a toaster a year later might be higher than it sounds.

wirthjasonon Ask HN: How to handle Asian-style “Family name first” when designing interfaces?

On the flip side, I wish rat Japanese design allowed for middle names. It annoys me that my marriage certificate has my first and middle name concatenated together simply because my legal name on my passport has a first, middle, and last name.

wirthjasonon Why cartoon characters wear gloves [video]

Anime faces seem very easy to draw. Granted I don’t watch anime, so I could be missing something, but it’s not like they are going for photorealism.

wirthjasonon ‘Tesla syndrome’ explains why tech is making us miserable

I wonder if smart toasters could be in this category if the technology and APIs were made open in the way that a car is open (maybe not modern cars). You can swap out and replace components, fix broken parts, etc. even if the company no longer exists.

wirthjasonon ‘Tesla syndrome’ explains why tech is making us miserable

Curious to what people think is actual innovation - hardware, software, anything.

wirthjasonon Ask HN: As a self-taught developer, what are your self-directed learning tips?

All knowledge, by definition, had to be first learned by someone. That person didn’t have an exams or someone testing their knowledge.

As a child I looked to exams and grades to validate my knowledge. However I got A’s on exams and felt like I still knew nothing. As I got older I care less about external validation and more about my internal “self grader”.

A few ways you can test yourself is building something. Take your knowledge and apply it.

Or try to teach someone. If you can’t explain the concepts clearly then maybe you don’t understand it as well as you think you do.

Or pretend your the teacher, write your own exams and take them. Ask yourself, “what questions would I ask students to tell if they know something?”

Lastly, and this one I like the least, find some tests or exams online, books that have questions at the end, etc.

wirthjasonon Movie-Theater Behavior Has Gone Off the Reels

I’m trying to get my young daughter into the movies and have seen quite a few this year.

We see movies a couple weeks after their release and go mid-week (a 7pm-ish show after I’m done with work). Often the theater is empty. When there have been people nobody used a cell phone or did behavior that was distracting. (BTW bringing a 4yr old to the movies usually means we are the annoying group, like when my daughter singing the songs in the Little Mermaid.)

So my guess is that this behavior is likely limited to opening weekends at popular movies where telling someone you were there by posting a photo on social media is part of the experience for them.

wirthjasonon Why Businesses Can’t Stop Asking for Tips

Here’s some news about it.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/1/25/23570024/restaurants-...

An additional 3% fee (for whatever) is common. You can ask to have to taken off, but then I feel like an asshole. I get that things might cost more — rent, raw materials, staff, etc. The business should build that into the price upfront. It feels like a dirty trick to disclose it at the end and puts me, the customer, in an awkward spot that makes me feel bad.

wirthjasonon Why Businesses Can’t Stop Asking for Tips

I consider myself a fairly good tipper — a trait I picked up from my grandfather. However I feel this is tipping culture is nonsense. The calculated amounts at bottom are on the receipt total, including tax —- why am I tipping 20% on that? Then there’s the misc fees. A random X% Covid, inflation, health insurance cost.

It’s not that I don’t mind paying. I look at the total bill and shocked by the the difference from what it was to what was advertised. That puts a real damper on an otherwise good time.

Consequently I vote with my wallet and stopped going out almost altogether. I much prefer cultures where the price advertised is what you pay. I hope the silver lining to excessive tipping results from backlash and the movement to a non-tip society. My wife is from a non-tip society (Japan) and always asks me why some counties can do it and others don’t. It’s incredibly frustrating.

wirthjasonon In Phoenix, this is life at 113 degrees for more than 20 days

Growing up in Chicago as a kid I was always envious of people living in places where it never got “freeze your ass off” cold. They seemed magical. Not needing a heavy coat, being able to go outside in the the winter. I was young and didn’t really know any better. The Chicago summer is nice this time of year but winter can be brutal. I couldn’t fathom the downsides of the summer.

I’ve come to realize that it’s quite different, all the things I enjoyed as a kid, playing outside, riding bikes, backyard sports, etc. are all but impossible in that kind of heat.

I’m not sure which area is better prepared for climate change but reading these articles makes me appreciate where I grew up and remind me, when I’m freezing my ass off, that sometimes the winters aren’t so bad. As my parents used to say, “you can always wear an extra sweater but there’s only so many you can take off.”

wirthjasonon Harry Frankfurt has died

I mention Harry Frankfurt every time I discuss ChatGPT because of his explanation that a bullshitter is more dangerous than the liar.

As On Bullshit explains, there’s the truth teller who is only concerned with the truth. The liar who tells the opposite of the truth, and thus must know the truth. Finally the bullshitter who neither cares about the truth or lies but rather the appearance of truth. He could be telling the truth, he could be lying, and he doesn’t care as long as you believe him.

wirthjasonon Swig – Connect C/C++ programs with high-level programming languages

Curious of the different reasons reasons people are creating Python bindings. Was it because the project started in Python, then when performance became an issue the slow parts were rewritten in C++. Or it started in C++ and Python bindings were added later.