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btreesOfSpring

218 karma · joined February 26, 2014

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btreesOfSpring··on Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties
There is a reason why German kids don't have spelling bees.
btreesOfSpring··on HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
Acronym use here to single being part of an in-group. It is one of the most annoying shift in tech language over the past decade. I partly blame it on all the certification testing that has popped up over that time frame.

It isn't like there hasn't always been tech acronyms but they are so causally communicated these days without regard for audience.

btreesOfSpring··on Open Letter to Google on Mandatory Developer Registration for App Distribution
Would rather a more robust and distributed app store system that figures out how to police these edge cases of fraud rather than one vendor (Apple or Google) whose monopolies push developers into subscriptionware across the board. Something more akin to how internic moved from one domain name registrar to what we have today, chock full of competition and new top level domains.

It feels like independent development on devices has slowed in recent years. More stores appealing to different developer models/tools and monetization strategies please.

btreesOfSpring··on TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe
I have been trying to trouble shoot a Time Machine issue since upgrading to Tahoe. It is usb backup. So far none of the most recent stated fixes work.

An initial backup on newly formatted disk will run but very slowly. Perhaps reaching 100% but it never finishes. At some point the percentage will change and the backup will stay stuck at somewhere near 10%. Cancel backup and run it again. Gets to ~10% and stays stuck. Multiple drives. Re-fs'ed. Boot into safe mode. Networking off. Etc, etc. etc. The TimeMachineMechanic app doesn't have any revealing feedback. I can run a full tar backup to the same disks.

No idea.

I haven't tried backing up to a network share but really, it shouldn't be this difficult.

Clearly someone didn't test a bunch of edge cases when pushing this one out.

btreesOfSpring··on Squishy Go
It is always funny to see the brain force a context switch. Clicked the link thinking this was going to be about golang.

Nope, go game.

Thanks for the pleasant surprise.

btreesOfSpring··on Verizon outages reported across U.S.
Your post reflects another online observation. With the rise of online sports books, this sort of predictive doomerism has flooded almost every team's online comment section. It no longer feel like fandom or community in the same way. Just lots of voices that will be glad to say, "I told you so," in the loss and crickets with the W. Wish there was some accountability mechanism for all the negative noise broadcasted into the channel.
btreesOfSpring··on I program on the subway
When I was part of a team developing a highly durable texting protocol, those of us in NYC would regularly test messaging while riding the subway. Between stations, you didn't have network access but different devices upon entering the next station would handle and recover from the interruptions in various ways.

The subway produced so many repeatable network connection edge case problems. It was fantastic.

btreesOfSpring··on Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
A shorter and consistent iteration cycle by meaningful working groups on the legislation until a long term workable legal framework is enacted from the lessons gathered. Something like, every four months, X working group will present updates to legal recommendations and they will be voted on at that time. Allow for public input throughout the process. Mistakes will be made but can be short lived with the correction cycle. They are trying to tightrope walk complex legislation for tech. Might as well take on a tech release cycle to get out of beta and into release version 1.0 of these laws.
btreesOfSpring··on ADS-B Exposed
Check out https://adsb.im
btreesOfSpring··on Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers
Reminds me of the time I wasn't passed on an interview for a product I was part of the pre-release testing team but I didn't have enough year's of experience with the tech for the job. I'm guessing it was just an excuse to say I wasn't getting the job but it has forever given me the ick with HR tech pre screen interviews.
btreesOfSpring··on Flight engineer reveals what it was like to operate Concorde
Found the anecdote at the end about him diagnosing problems while on a modern computer automated aircraft fascinating. Of course the roll of flight engineer was going to go disappear but it seems the are still knowledge gaps that modern pilots have that this roll was able to better address.
btreesOfSpring··on 30 years of The X-Files
In Search of...[0] was the introductory conspiracy show for baby boomers.

The X Files was GenX's turn at the Art Bell wheel[1].

Stranger Things[2] is built on these foundations for the younger generation sprinkled generously with nostalgia of those eras of conspiracy television.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of..._(TV_series) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Bell [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_Things

btreesOfSpring··on Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source
For WatchOS, you would start by running the Sleep App[0] and notice that there is an issue with your sleep stages.

Next you might move onto an app, like SnoreLab[1] where you record the audio of your sleep each night and can listen back to where you are having sleep interruptions. At that point, you would likely hear your breathing process.

Moving onto the Withings Sleep Analyzer[3] (as shown in the article) will fill out your data but by step 2, you will should probably already be setting up an appointment with your doctor for sleep apnea.

[0] https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/track-your-sleep-apd83... [1] https://www.snorelab.com/ [3] https://www.withings.com/be/en/sleep-analyzer

btreesOfSpring··on UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years
The Economist ran a story the other week on the topic of food costs talking about how the tomato can be looked at as a type of energy store & how British supermarkets differ from other European supermarket chains by rationing out veg rather than increasing pricing. [0] This was to say the "shortages" were more of a quirk of the British market rather than purely due to Brexit.

0. https://www.economist.com/britain/2023/03/02/britains-tomato...

btreesOfSpring··on Effective Altruism Is about Getting Rich with a Clean Conscience
Not sure what the end-game is in this line of thinking but the consistent narratives against both charitable giving or government intervention to produce institutions of social assistance can not be good for the unfortunate and marginalized.
btreesOfSpring··on Analysis of Apple Watch running data
Garmin user for ages. Forerunner 9 series is my jam but you might want to find what works in your price point along with the need-to-have/want-to-have feature matrix of your choosing. Garmin's UX is stuck in the Symbian era of OS design. So I appreciate the competition that Apple brings to this segment.

Sport gear reviewer DC Rainmaker has a full write up on the good/bad/ugly of the Apple watch for athletes[0]. He also has plenty of other reviews on other brands of sports watches if you want to see what is out there for you.

[0] https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2022/09/apple-watch-ultra-in-dep...

btreesOfSpring··on Next steps for Rust in the kernel
All great points. It is also a young enough language that significant kernal dev can have significant influence on the future of the language itself. CPP's future seems to be predicated upon its past adoption.
btreesOfSpring··on Why I quit using SwiftUI
Here is a 30 minute podcast episode titled, "Different, But Not Worse," on SwiftUI vs UIKit.[0] This thoughtful take is a whole lot less adversarial towards adopting SwiftUI than what you tend to read on this forum.

[0] https://www.relay.fm/radar/247

btreesOfSpring··on High-speed rail board completes environmental clearance in northern California
CityNerd does an informative video on SF-LA highspeed rail vs aircraft[0]. Your variables may vary.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cvt8QA4SvY

btreesOfSpring··on Detecting Fake 4G Base Stations in Real Time (2020) [pdf]
This makes the most sense.
btreesOfSpring··on Detecting Fake 4G Base Stations in Real Time (2020) [pdf]
Not sure why the calls would be scam calls though. It would be one thing if they were legitimate marketing spam calls originating from phone number traceable back to the business originating the conversation but these are clearly cases where the number is faked in the new area code/country::city code in order to incentivize picking up. (Is that the car rental company? Is the hotel reaching out for some reason? Etc...)

I guess my paranoia here stems from this link in the OPs pdf[0].

0. https://venturebeat.com/2014/09/18/the-cell-tower-mystery-gr...

btreesOfSpring··on Detecting Fake 4G Base Stations in Real Time (2020) [pdf]
I don't know if other travelers have run into this but somewhat regularly when I arrive in a different major metropolitan area, I will get scam-spam calls within a day spoofed from that area code despite the fact that my phone number has nothing to do with that region and I haven't been in that specific location either ever or at least a longtime. It happens in both North America and Europe.

I know fake base stations might not be the reason for scammers targeting my phone but would be curious if others have seen this and have their own hypothesis?

btreesOfSpring··on Code doesn’t have to be a mess
This is a great point. Often I find situations when working with the subject matter experts where the code unveils edge cases in the business reasoning that the SMEs haven't considered. In many of those situations, the issue can be pedantic and the code can point to a catchall. Even so, it is funny how common these kinds of knowledge gaps appear when you are tasked with transforming assumptions into a functional working entity.
btreesOfSpring··on Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis
The Strong Town series by Not Just Bikes on YouTube is often linked on HN but the third video[0] in the series covers your question. Take a look if you are curious about where the "making ourselves poor" point of view is hatched.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

btreesOfSpring··on Shimano Forces Hammerhead to Remove All Di2 Related Functionality From Karoo
I'm pretty sure the top five finishers in last year's Trans Am Bike Race were all running Di2. The elites in the ultra-endurance self-support races are probably the hybrid rider type of the two groups of cyclists you are talking about here.
btreesOfSpring··on Symbian Source Code
It feels like Garmin devices are still dependent on this era's tools. When someone asks me about issues with using my Garmin Edge 1030 for navigation, I often say it works fine enough but it is sort of like using a Symbian phone in the early 2000s.
btreesOfSpring··on Christmas is the busy season for ham sniffers
Initially thought the same thing but the domain was a giveaway that the topic of ham radio was going to be highly unlikely.
btreesOfSpring··on The Objective-C Runtime and Swift Dynamism
I'm getting the loading error, "An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. If you are the application owner, check your logs for details."

Not sure if there is a mirror, a write-up, or another example anyone might be able to pass along.

edit: this google cache version is working[0].

[0] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gXiqzW...

btreesOfSpring··on Berlin police find radioactive iodine on playing cards
The restaurant in question is in the Marzhan district of Berlin[0].

[0] https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/polizeibericht/article21267... (Article in German)

btreesOfSpring··on Chromium: FTP resources will be marked “Not Secure”
Not Secure: <reason0>, <reason1>, <reasonN>
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