HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Qub3d

1,340 karma · joined March 22, 2016

Software Developer, part time writer. https://quentb.com
submissionscomments
Qub3d··on MacBook Neo
For monitors at least, if you plug in to the wrong port you will get a GUI prompt advising you to use the other one [1]:

> while the ports aren’t labeled, if you plug an external display into the “wrong” port, you’ll get an on-screen notification suggesting you plug it into the other port.

[1]: https://daringfireball.net/2026/03/599_not_a_piece_of_junk_m...

Qub3d··on The Objects of Our Life (1983)
Its a great compliment to The Big Short (2015). The Big Short gives you a nice explanation of what the heck is going on but mainly follows "outsider" points of view, while Margin Call gives a sense of the thoughts and concerns of the big banks at the time. Both how deluded everyone was, but also how flawed and human the systems were (as they ultimately reflect the people that built them).
Qub3d··on The Objects of Our Life (1983)
The context is that Jeremy Irons' character knew exactly what was going on, he wanted the risk analyst to state it to everyone else in the room, and keep him on track and focused. Right before that meeting, there is a scene as the characters walk in where they are warned by the CEO's right hand man not to try and bullshit, since he would know.
Qub3d··on The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux
In the featured article, it delves into this a bit:

> Earlier, I said that 'Widevine-in-Chrome-on-Linux-on-aarch64' is not an officially supported platform.

> I lied.

> Chromebooks exist, many have aarch64 CPUs, they run Chrome on Linux (more or less), and they officially support Widevine.

The whole post is worth a read. Its pretty sort and well written!

Qub3d··on Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office
My jaded opinion is that Musk may not really care about remote work, but it turns out return-to-office requirements are a useful way to get people to leave without having to fire or lay them off, and bypass stuff like the WARN act.

> “Day zero. Sharpen your blades boys," Calacanis texted Musk. "2 day a week Office requirement = 20% voluntary departures.”

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-text-messages...

Qub3d··on Apple is struggling to build Mac Pro based on its own silicon
I had to look it up too, pretty sure grandparent comment meant "if I understand correctly".
Qub3d··on Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
Over 14 years of QE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#United_Sta...

And Quantitative Easing is a "refinement" of the Greenspan Put in the late 1980s. So yeah, 30+ years at this point.

Qub3d··on Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
My Dad told me a story from the dot-com bust:

To save money at the time he drove a van for a carpool service (he could use it for free as a result). A lot of the guys on his van were in tech.

When the first rounds of layoffs hit, guys would get on at the end of the day and they would talk about their severance. The first question in response to “I got laid off” was “What’s your severance?”

At one point deep into 2002, he remembered a change. Now guys were getting on the van with all their stuff in a box. He played the game, even though he wasn’t in tech, and asked one of the guys with a box, “What’s your severance?”

He just got a flat look in response.

Qub3d··on Zuckerberg's leaked email on VR strategy (2015)
What does “EEE” mean in this context? End to end?
Qub3d··on Meta lays off 11,000 people
The link is that Ad Tracking Transparency (ATT) happened relatively close to FB's numbers going south, and its a great scapegoat.

https://daringfireball.net/2022/08/ft_effects_of_app_trackin...

> What I think makes ATT a tempting scapegoat is that it creates a great story. Apple enacted a change in the name of privacy and that change has adversely affected both Facebook and small businesses that relied on Facebook. That’s a dramatic, captivating storyline, with two rivals, both corporate behemoths, on opposing sides.

(The footnote on this blog is a great explanation as to why FB's adTech was considered so bananas and why its no longer as much.)

Qub3d··on Meta lays off 11,000 people
It's a good counterpoint to the equally throw away argument that "if you disagreed with x you should have shorted it".

The problem with shorting is you can't just be right about the eventual direction... You have to be pretty bang on with the timing as well.

Therefore it's absolutely possible for people to suspect or have strong belief that something is unsustainable without having the liquidity or confidence on timing to take action on it.

No it's not to say there aren't Perma bears and other I told you so people crawling out of the woodwork, but that doesn't mean that every person who didn't capitalize on this is Monday-morning quarterbacking.

Qub3d··on Microsoft has started layoffs today
FYI, the description of that addon says its unmaintained:

"PLEASE READ THIS FIRST ! Invidition is now deprecated and is no longer maintained. Please, use Privacy Redirect by Simon Brazell instead."

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/privacy-redir...

Qub3d··on How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?
The interesting question to be answered now is if "web3" skills are an effective substitute good (in the pure economic sense) for employers looking for developers.

I suspect a lot of pure web3 devs won't actually make a more competitive market beyond incentivizing yet another fizzbuzz-like hoop in the interviewing process to weed out people who learned about blockchain tech and otherwise can't code themselves out of a wet paper bag.

On second thought... I should acknowledge my elitism in that last sentence and maybe be more cautious. Good grief, I got my last 4 years of professional experience working on IoT, which I bet was looked down upon in a similar manner by others when it started.

Maybe the takeaway is that we should all to the best of our abilities keep at least a casual hand in the water of tech so we have a general idea of the current.

Qub3d··on Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
DuckDuckGo uses Apple Maps, which has quietly become a solid alternative the past few years. (https://xkcd.com/2617/)
Qub3d··on Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
We've made machines so much faster that a lot of old software is unusable because its too fast.

One of my favorite examples: Lego Island's driving mechanic is tied to frame rate, so on a modern machine tapping left or right will fling your car 90+ degrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CmqbccCqI0

Qub3d··on Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times
This is actually what lichess does - if it flags you as a cheater, you are silently paired against other cheaters.

They have almost the entirety of the lichess system source code publicly available, but from what I can gather they have a private set of weights on inputs - I assume to prevent cheaters from fully reverse-engineering the system.

Qub3d··on macOS Subsystem for Linux
I host my blog using GitHub pages and hugo. Its all still markdown, but it also allows people to go to my vanity url and see stuff formatted exactly as I want it to be.
Qub3d··on Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
That is a fascinating thing to me - I have noticed that a lot of people arguing that the WMF is out of control and needs to cool it are editors.

It really feels like there is a fundamental disconnect between project contributors and the team making decisions at the foundation level. Of course, I expect to some degree that there will be disagreements, and that is why a foundation needs to exist, but the last couple of years its seemed a lot like people are just being stonewalled.

Ultimately, the communications gap is by far the most concerning part of it for me, even to the point where I would suggest the donation campaign is a symptom rather than the cause.

Qub3d··on OpenWrt 22.03
I use one on my full-duplex gigabit connection and it generally sits in the 800-900 Mbps range. This will vary depending on things like if you decide to enable smart queue management (SQM) or other features.

There are some recommended tweaks I've applied but so far I like it much better than my old WRT3200ACM unit. https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/e8450?s[]=linksys&s[]=e8450&...

Qub3d··on Responding to recruiter emails with GPT-3
Interesting. Is there a US variant out there, too?

(This one looks promising: https://github.com/jceloria/recruiter-spam/blob/master/list....)

Qub3d··on Supply chain issues are killing synth companies
Absolutely, and if I had an iPhone at the time I probably wouldn't have bought it.

I only started bothering with discrete amps when I picked up headphones with a 600 ohm impedance.

Qub3d··on Supply chain issues are killing synth companies
Objectivity and audiophile in the same sentence always makes me suspicious, especially when you are looking at the 100s to 1000s of extra dollars for 3-5% improvement on measurements (and good luck detecting that in an ABX test).

I moved to a modi/magni stack from a Fiio portable and I don't know if I'll ever bother to upgrade again.

Qub3d··on Supply chain issues are killing synth companies
Jason, the cofounder of Schiit Audio (its pronounced exactly as you think it is) regularly posts updates about the company to an audiophile forum, and his posts regarding the supply chain problems they've fought in the past 2 years are fascinating:

* https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-happened-the-story-of...

* https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-happened-the-story-of...

* https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-happened-the-story-of...

Qub3d··on Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)
> What you experience in the very few tech hubs in USA is absolutely not what you'd experience literally everywhere else in the world.

I'd push back against this. I have worked for a few tech companies in pretty small midwest towns and found the culture much better than what I see and hear from FAANG experiences. I turned down an AWS position and ultimately declined to continue interviewing for an Apple position because of some management red flags.

Although I will freely admit my career and life goals are definitely not the average West Coast developer's.

Qub3d··on Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data
https://xkcd.com/743/
Qub3d··on Twitter Notes
Wow, I am really getting a lesson in how inaccurate our memory can be. Thanks for the info!
Qub3d··on Sleeping longer than 6.5 hours/day can help you lose weight: study
Nice! I personally have been amazed at my own increase in energy and weight loss simply by using a sit/stand desk and getting a fitness tracker.

The hourly reminders to move really do show the science is right on when it comes to how effective even a few minutes of movement regularly throughout the day improves your health.

Qub3d··on Twitter Notes
My bad, I was working from memory. I probably did an s/Microsoft/Amazon/ in my head.
Qub3d··on Twitter Notes
Randall thought similarly: https://xkcd.com/1045/

I think there are places for both. However, reading up on a lot of business case studies, I noticed that a major tipping point for a company is often when they decide to step out of their niche.

Diversifying can handicap a company if they aren't careful, because it reduces resources to the core product.

However, it can also be a real boon (see: Microsoft + Azure, which now makes most of their revenue)

Qub3d··on Writing one sentence per line
This is all brushing up against the central theme of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", which approaches its core thesis by dissecting the process of teaching college students how to "write Quality".
Page 1 of 17Next →