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dilandau

5 karma · joined May 4, 2020

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dilandau··on We Can Do Better Than SQL
>sql alternative #1427904 that absolutely nobody will ever use

Love it or hate it, sql is a standard and there is a ton of knowledge (stackoverflow answers, books, tutorials) and tooling (query builders, orms). This is either hopelessly naive, or hopelessly arrogant.

dilandau··on Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees
Doesn't understand the difference between free-lance software engineer and indentured gypsy cab driver.

...not going to make it.

dilandau··on Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A
Rightful king of the top comment.

I got a phone that is just usb-c. Carrying around the adapter sucks, and Bluetooth is an even bigger pain in the ass.

dilandau··on Making Advanced GUI Applications with Godot
It's easier to pull out a soapbox and make ridiculous speeches like these, than to actually make a gui application.

If you're making something for free or for fun, then let curiosity guide you. Bureaucrats like yourself can comment all you want. I'll be making applications.

dilandau··on The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free
Great point. You could say that the "lies" are propaganda, as much as the advertisement that they are the vehicle for. Inundated with this much propaganda, which points to the impotence of the individual, no wonder we're seeing so much mass unrest.
dilandau··on Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac
Ah yes, the "computer as glorified typewriter" blog post. Needless to say, I think these appeal to people because:

Encourage consumption (of old/novelty hardware)

Promise of "productivity" (the holy grail for hn commenters)

A pip on your shoulder for being different/special

Deflect from the hard problems internet addiction and procrastination, to "hey do this instead"

dilandau··on Perl7 is a fork of values
Love to see the Perl team discussing these issues in such a thoughtful way. Over the years I have learned to value stability and backwards compatibility, through hard lessons (which were often quite expensive to my employer). But no one value is good or bad, per se, rather they should be selected carefully: and that is the point I took away from this article.
dilandau··on GTK 3.99
When 1 company is responsible for the most cancerous, complicated, baroque, developer-hostile libraries? I think it's fine to ask these questions.

Would you create a new open-source desktop application using gtk4? Would you want to package and maintain systemd/pulse/etc?

Also: why are you responding to all the critical comments in the thread, and writing dismissive replies?

dilandau··on GTK 3.99
I still use tcl/tk and it's still the best choice for apps of modest requirements, in my opinion.

It's stable (unlike gtk), and truly free (unlike qt, which is also a c++ behemoth). It's utterly simple and elegant.

dilandau··on GTK 3.99
This is the comment I wish I had made. The transition from 2 to 3 was terrible for end users, distros, and app developers. I wonder if redhat is trying to embrace/extend/extinguish because it's impossible for me to see gtk (and gnome) teams actions as anything less than overtly hostile.
dilandau··on GTK 3.99
StatusIcon and AppIndicator is extremely annoying.

Clientside decorations, ridiculous headerbar, button+hamburger menus, etc, etc. They are trying their absolute hardest to copy Mac os, and making sure everyone's stuff breaks in the meantime.

dilandau··on GTK 3.99
GTK is openly hostile to 3rd party developers and theme makers, ever since gtk became synonymous with gnome (around 3.0). This is going to be a nightmare for open-source developers and distros, which will likely be forced to support both for a long time to come.

Me? I'll keep writing tcl/tk applications. It's stable, cross-platform, and did I mention it's stable?

dilandau··on Does Having an Anime Profile Picture Make You a Better Programmer?
Lain is certified midwit tier. It appeals to the r/iamverysmart types.
dilandau··on Does Having an Anime Profile Picture Make You a Better Programmer?
If you want to 10x, I suggest an anime username as well.
dilandau··on A new funding model for open source software
For fucks sake if you are trying to make money, why are you doing open source?

Or, to put it another way, if you are doing open source, why are you so hung up on getting paid for it?

dilandau··on Del.icio.us
You left out the worst of them: Twitter.

Slot-machine of the internet. rage, outrage, xenophobia, name-calling, name-dropping, celebrity, manufactured 140 chars at a time. It's a culture killer.

dilandau··on Rite Aid deployed facial recognition systems in hundreds of U.S. stores
I think it's a factor of these systems being cheap. Cheap software, cheap cameras, cheap storage, cheap compute. It's a shame we don't have a better use for all that stuff.
dilandau··on Rite Aid deployed facial recognition systems in hundreds of U.S. stores
(triggered)

I mean, I carry my phone around in my pocket, so I kinda expect at least big Google is watching me. And probably the cell network. And probably the government, passively.

But RITE AID? What the hell, a fucking pharmacy? I mean: the customer is typically just buying whatever their doctor prescribes them. I guess they have aisles of cosmetics and cold medicine and stuff, but still, this seems remarkable for its banality and at the same time invasiveness. It's the worst kind of evil: stupid evil.

dilandau··on Rite Aid deployed facial recognition systems in hundreds of U.S. stores
What companies are behind the development of these camera+software solutions? I reckon it's just a couple?
dilandau··on New ‘Meow’ attack has deleted almost 4k unsecured databases
Strawman. And a weak one at that. Fuck off with conflating the minimum amount of competency needed to secure the data you needlessly collect with that kind of naivete.
dilandau··on A Surprise AWS Bill
No fucking shit, came here to say:

If you literally put a massive file on the public internet, what the actual fuck are you complaining about? The quality here is such shit.

Let's snipe at amzn, everyone hates them because they're winning, because of hn readers dependence on AWS to run their shit web apps... It's like: ope! It's been a day since we had a "amzn scammed me" post. Nevermind that the people complaining are either a) too ignorant and footgunned themselves, b) minimizing or lying about their own complicity, or c) outright scammers themselves.

dilandau··on Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
Yeah, because some asshole business team decided that why should anyone sell a decent product anymore, when you can squeeze your customers for their personal information, and have a recurring/ongoing revenue stream?

It's like these shit-tier blogs and webdevs, who are tracking every single thing you do on their sites. Are they just incapable of creating? all this tracking...it's anti-creative in the extreme. Mechanical, soulless, lowest common denominator. It's medium.com and web 3.0. Where's the exit bros?

dilandau··on New ‘Meow’ attack has deleted almost 4k unsecured databases
What about developers just being competent before deploying a database on the public internet?

At least google "securing X" before just pumping data in.

dilandau··on New ‘Meow’ attack has deleted almost 4k unsecured databases
Victims are not the DB admins. Victims are the people whose private data, or data they expect to be private, is exposed due to developer incompetence.
dilandau··on Pentagon’s UFO unit will make some findings public
Personal theory: UFOs are not aliens "like people" but are somehow related to information/energy/consciousness.
dilandau··on A few negative online reviews early on can hurt a restaurant
To one who understands complex systems theory, this is completely unsurprising. All the emergent phenomena (fake reviews, pandering to Instagram, faux-chic, aspirational minimalism) in turn create more reaction, more phenomena.

If we ask ourselves: were online reviews a good thing? To me clearly no. Authenticity has been the price.

dilandau··on The Four Quadrants of Conformism
Was PG always so precious, or have I just aged out of appreciating these sublimated attempts at bolstering ones sense of self?
dilandau··on Amazon Warehouse scam: 16TB HDD swapped for 8TB, returned for full refund
Another outrage dump where prime members and AWS customers vent their spleen on the teat that nourishes their lives. It's a frail rebellion. A piece of performance art. Experimental theatre
dilandau··on The Four Quadrants of Conformism
In which pg spills a few hundred words humblebragging about his maverick status.

I think the thing to measure is defiance rather than conformity, by the way. Much more interesting.

dilandau··on Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
It's cringey as hell, but from a "making my career" perspective, it's clearly valuable to many in charge of hiring.
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