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43920

876 karma · joined April 12, 2018

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43920··on Open Library
It’s been a few months, but here are some issues I had using the web reader on an iPad (didn’t realize there’s an app):

- the reading controls would overlap with the safe area/home screen navigation bar

- pinch-zooming on a page would sometimes glitch out and scroll to a different page

- the slider to change pages was too sensitive on a touchscreen, and I also kept tapping it by accident

I really like openlibrary, and it’s let me read some books I couldn’t find access to anywhere else - thanks for your work on it!

43920··on Ask HN: Should I get a Master's degree in CS?
I don't see myself doing a PhD, it's too much time to commit to something I'm only marginally interested in. (I haven't read the link yet, but just based on the ToC, it doesn't look like it's going to convince me otherwise!)

> Another option is to go into industry and take night/evening classes through an online masters like Georgia Tech or Stanford Online

Have you done this before?

43920··on Ask HN: Should I get a Master's degree in CS?
That sounds really neat! Unfortunately it doesn't look like I'm eligible for the scholarship since I'm not an EU citizen [1]. I also don't know if I would be able to work at all under whatever visa I would get. But tuition is so much cheaper (and food/housing also somewhat cheaper it seems) than in the US, so it still might make financial sense.

[1] https://www.studentsurvivalguide.dk/posts/survival-guide-to-...

43920··on Ask HN: Should I get a Master's degree in CS?
I have a preference towards Germany (I did a short-term project working on research at a university there recently), but would be open to somewhere else as well.

My grades from my undergraduate program are good (4.0/4.0 GPA); it's possible my grades could decrease a bit, but I don't expect them to drop significantly in the future (although you never know).

I really do want to learn CS better; I think the opportunity to do that would be good. But the expense / opportunity cost is high enough that it does seem like more of an economic question of "will this help me get a better job?", which there doesn't seem to be a good answer to.

> At least where I am, the level of CS teaching in Universities is not as good as in the US (at least my limited sample of known people/universities).

Would you mind saying where that is? (I can email also if you don't want to here)

43920··on Post-pandemic, the battle between Uber and Lyft is looking more one-sided
I have the opposite problem: after signing up for Lyft, it made me "verify my payment method" by adding a second payment method with the same address. My second payment method had the same problem, and the only option left was to directly connect a bank account, which I didn't want to do. Uber took my credit card without a problem.

...anyway, fraud detection is largely anecdotal.

43920··on Declining quality of consumer-grade products – 2009 fridge compressor autopsy
This just happened to me too - 3 year old Frigidaire, failed compressor. Would be interesting if this really is a trend rather than just anecdotal, but I suppose we'll never know.

What's ridiculous is the lack of reasonably-priced replacement parts. I tried to get the fridge repaired, and the cost of a new compressor + the cost of having someone swap it was more than the cost of an entire new fridge.

43920··on Collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge
The NTSB (almost?) never determines a cause in the preliminary report, even when the cause is obvious. Example: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY22FH001.aspx
43920··on The optional chaining operator, “modern” browsers, and my mom
> Li-ion battery arrangements inside those devices seem to hold about 80% of their usable capacity and voltage for about six months, with average usage patterns. A year after that this drops to 50% of original capacity, or below. This is known, if a bit too generalized.

What? Taking the example of Apple (since they make their battery ratings easily accessible, but other manufacturers are similar), iphone batteries are rated to hit 80% at 500 charge cycles, and ipad/macbook batteries are rated to 1000 cycles [1]. Assuming you discharge your battery from 100% to 0% every day (which is at the upper end of average usage), iphone batteries should last ~1.5 years, and macbook batteries around 3 years.

Apple also has a pretty good battery replacement service, at least in comparison to other manufacturers. When my iphone battery wore out after ~3 years, I shipped it to Apple and paid $60, and they sent it back a few days later with a new battery. My macbook battery lasted ~4 years of heavy usage, and they did the same thing for ~$200. A user-swappable battery would definitely be easier (and cheaper), but the service they offer is good enough that it's still feasible to get a replacement and keep the device past the battery lifespan.

[1] https://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/

43920··on Tumblr has added more strict tag filtering for their iOS app
Steve Jobs in 2010: "We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone." (https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/steve-jobs-android-porn/)

On the web, Apple has a lot less control over content, and so it would be difficult for them to censor it effectively (and customers perceive it as open, so if Apple introduced mandatory filtering in Safari, it likely would cause a lot of backlash). But in the App Store, where they have more control, creating a device free of adult content absolutely seems to be their goal.

43920··on Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
I just read this recently also, and I agree it’s a great book. “dystopian steampunk alternative-Victorian vibe” describes it well - it’s a society with advanced chemistry and materials (“elderglass”), but no gasoline, electricity, computers, etc.
43920··on iPhone apps can tell many things about you through the accelerometer
Source?
43920··on Long-term NAEP scores for 13-year-olds drop for first time since testing began
> The latest release comes from NAEP’s 2020 assessment of long-term trends, which was administered by the National Center for Education Statistics to nine- and 13-year-olds before COVID-19 first shuttered schools last spring.

> The long-term assessment is a crucial piece of data for another reason: It was administered to students between October 2019 and March 2020, making it a final snapshot of academic trends before the emergence of COVID-19. Loveless said he hoped future analyses of how kids learned during and after the greatest disaster in K-12 history wouldn’t overlook the “deeper,” persistent stagnation that preceded it.

43920··on T-Mobile is definitely not trying to charge you $10 more
They were forced to start offering that plan in order for the government to approve their merger with Sprint: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/t-mobile-says-sprint-merger-m...
43920··on Amazon Kindles with 3G will start to lose cellular network access in December
Well, yes, that is true :)
43920··on Amazon Kindles with 3G will start to lose cellular network access in December
For the old Kindles, this’ll be close to 15 years of usability, which is really good. However the list also includes a bunch of newer models:

> Kindle Keyboard (3rd generation), Kindle Touch (4th generation), Kindle Paperwhite (4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th generation), Kindle Voyage (7th generation), and Kindle Oasis (8th generation)

The 7th gen paperwhite, for example, was still being sold until 2018 [1]. It seems kind of ridiculous to still be selling a 3G-only device 3 years ago, and to only be offering a partial credit for a device that’s going to stop working so soon after purchase.

[1] https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2018/11/09/kindle-paperwhi...

43920··on Installing Windows 11 on Legacy BIOS Without Secure Boot
The logo standards only apply to new hardware; what they’re doing now applies to existing hardware as well.
43920··on Massachusetts ferry service slowed by ransomware attack
Martha’s Vineyard alone has a summer population of ~100k; from the Steamship Authority’s website (now unavailable):

> In 2018, the Steamship Authority's vessels made a total of 23,997 trips carrying 3,055,347 passengers, 483,047 automobiles and 190,557 trucks of all sizes to or from the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket

The ferry is the only connection from MV to the mainland for food, supplies, etc. (There’s also a small airport, but it isn’t big enough to handle any significant amount of cargo). So it’s a pretty big issue for the people living there. That being said, as long as the boats can still operate, it shouldn’t be too big an issue, even if they have issues with ticketing.

43920··on iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests
There's probably a decent number of sites that get most/all of their traffic from impulse purchases off of Facebook ads, and who have no actual branding. Obviously they should go ahead and just get a domain name, but they likely haven't had any reason to care up until this point either.
43920··on Intel Fires Back at Apple's M1 Processors with Benchmarks
Zoom doesn’t use Electron, and AFAIK it’s all native code.
43920··on Ask HN: Why are 5 inch USB floppy drives so uncommon?
This is something I might be interested in... please do make a list!
43920··on I Bought Apple Silicon
Youtube is basically optimizing for their own costs over that of end users by using VP9, which uses less bandwidth but often is software-decoded. So the real answer is basically that they can, but it would cost them more.

(Of course, the YouTube frontend is also fairly bloated, which doesn't help. There isn't much of an excuse for that one).

43920··on Global chip shortage threatens production of laptops, smartphones and more
I would imagine the extra power use probably isn't enough to outweigh the environmental costs of manufacturing new hardware, at least for your average consumer device. For servers, maybe the higher power usage is sufficiently high for it to be beneficial?
43920··on Neverware is now part of Google
From the FAQ: "Over the long term CloudReady will become an official Chrome OS offering, and existing customers will be upgraded seamlessly as that happens."

So it sounds like there is some kind of actual migration plan, even if Neverware itself is getting shut down.

43920··on On the Loss of a Cofounder
What kind of programs do non-US countries have to take care of people with mental illness? The actual medical care would be easier to get for sure, but the type of care described in the article ("She bought a 5,000-square-foot house on an acre of California's Central Coast, a spot they chose in the hope that his father, Rendon, could walk with him along the shore. She worked with a landscape architect to tailor the outdoor space to Lee's needs...") seems like it would be hard to get in any country.
43920··on Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
Maps.me at least still is collecting data; if you look at their privacy policy (https://legal.my.com/us/maps/privacy/), they use your location data to “tailor and improve the adverts that are presented in the Services“.

As far as I know, OsmAnd is fine, and there’s also a couple of alternatives: https://gurumaps.app/ https://www.qwant.com/maps (Which can be installed as a PWA)

43920··on Why do printers still suck?
I had one of those too, and it worked great for about 6 months, until one of the print nozzles became clogged. It turns out that on most printers, the print heads are part of the cartridges (=replaceable), but on the ecotank printers they're built-in to the printer - so if the printer's built-in cleaning system doesn't work, it's almost impossible to unclog.
43920··on Roof blows off new Tesla Model Y
The AC controls are moved to the touchscreen in the new Outback.
43920··on Benchmarking static website hosting providers
Github Pages uses Fastly (https://www.fastly.com/customers/github) as a CDN, which is pretty comparable to Cloudflare AFAIK.
43920··on Apple Bricked My Gen 1 Apple TV
Can you do this? https://osxdaily.com/2016/08/23/login-apple-id-two-factor-au...
43920··on This electrical transmission tower has a problem
Right, I should clarify. PG&E absolutely should have known about, and prevented, the specific situation that caused this fire, and the fact they didn't do so is a huge problem. However, the surrounding area is such a high fire risk that a fire almost certainly would have occurred even without this failure (which the thread mentions: https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1306377626487894017), and so the specific cause of the fire seems almost irrelevant to me. Even if PG&E did spend billions more on maintenance, and fix their inspection procedures, I don't see how this area would ever be safe, and so focusing on the power company as the source of the issue seems misguided to me.
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