Hacker News Reader

> single bits are rarely used for booleans

SQL Server still has no boolean type and groups bits in the same row into a byte if possible.

xhrooton Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

There was a guy who made a forum bet he could land a Cessna 172 - first try - with nothing but MS Flight Simulator experience.

Here:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34/other-other-topics/pro...

And outcome:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=35915547&p...

xhrooton Mars Photo Booth

Huh, it's pretty good at lassoing the intended subject. Even picks out a computer rendered vehicle well: https://xhroot.s3.amazonaws.com/roci.png Original here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=86940...

xhrooton Phrases that incorrectly trigger Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant

So if I go down the IOT aisle at Best Buy and say

"Ok, who is reading a city in Montana a letter?"

everything will light up?

xhrooton CamelCamelCamel Is Not Tracking Amazon Pricing Anymore

Seems temporary:

> Amazon Europe has requested we temporarily shut down operations in order to lighten their burden while they try to get necessary products into peoples hands.

> So, as of now, and likely until the end of the COVID-19 crisis, we will not have a working website in Europe.

https://twitter.com/camelcamelcamel/status/12421791057154539...

xhrooton BMW’s new flat logo is everything that’s wrong with modern logo design

Maybe they should have gone with a slight tweak of the 1963 version https://cdn.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/BMW_logo_... and scored retro-nostalgia points with the older crowd, too.

xhrooton Microsoft Application Inspector

Heh, the icon is named "audible":

    "displayName": "Dynamic command execution",
    "detectedIcon": "fab fa-audible"

It's probably unintentionally used by an engineer unfamiliar with the product as audible is more common as a descriptive word than as a brand.

https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInspector/blob/08c91...

xhrooton Microsoft is creating a new Rust-based programming language for secure coding

> IronPython, IronRuby

"IronRust" would be amusing

xhrooton Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

I-1000 is literally called "Affirmative Action and Diversity Commission Measure"

https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affirmat...

xhrooton 42 is found to be the sum of three cubes

Javascript in FF/Chrome:

    > (-80538738812075974n)**3n + 80435758145817515n**3n + 12602123297335631n**3n
    42n

https://caniuse.com/#search=bigint

xhrooton Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

And my favorite: Coloring CD edges with a green marker to improve sound https://www.stereophile.com/reference/590jitter/index.html

xhrooton Boardgame.io: State management and more for turn-based games

Yeah, I filed https://github.com/google/boardgame.io/issues/9. The source in github does check if the cell is filled [1] but the demo code must be from an earlier version that didn't.

[1] https://github.com/google/boardgame.io/blob/master/examples/...

xhrooton Amazon Cognito

As were the originally proposed names "Cadabra" and "Relentless" (http://www.relentless.com still redirects to Amazon).

xhrooton World

https://s3.amazonaws.com/xhroot/world.html

Happy?

xhrooton Amazon Pairs Print and Digital Books With New Program

Presumably, one could download the eBook to every book they've purchased on Amazon, even if they no longer own the print version (e.g., resold or lost). I'm hoping O'Reilly, Manning, and Apress get on board with this, but I can see why they'd hesitate.

xhrooton The Onion releases fartscroll.js

It's because Firefox doesn't support mp3 via the HTML5 <audio> tag due to licensing IIRC. IE supports mp3 but not ogg. Chrome supports both.

xhrooton Why we Die

In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins proposed that grandparents - obviously well beyond child bearing - can affect their gene propagation by caring for their grandchildren, at least indirectly.

What a true scientist; most people are content to think we dote on grandchildren as a civilized people with innate appreciation for new life. Rather, our genes will eradicate those who fail to help their offspring's offspring survive.

http://musingsofscience.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/book-review...

xhrooton Ask HN: What's the Google+ stack?

http://ssl.gstatic.com/gb/js/pwm_377e54339fe6909b01c5d023b52... uses goog.structs.SimplePool, so you know at least that part uses Closure, http://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/docs/class_goog_st....

xhrooton Google I/O 2011 Countdown clock

What's supposed to trigger this sound? http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/static/punch-go.mp3