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elbelcho

175 karma · joined January 24, 2011

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elbelcho··on Investigating corrupt Winamp skins
It's no longer a wrench, it's a wireless corporate-run ad-powered e-wrench which needs printer ink for bolt-screwning.

Perfect.

elbelcho··on The Space Quest II Master Disk Blunder
I have very similar feelings. My dad worked at a steel mill and was friends with a 'computer guy' at the mill who gave him a copy of SQ2 for me to play at home. I played that game relentlessly but was pretty young so I was confused by a lot of it.

Anytime I was really stuck, I would ask dad to ask the 'computer guy' how to get past a certain point and I seem to remember he would kindly provide hints, but not outright solutions.

It's probably been 35 years since, but I even remember with some detail a dream I had related to that game. It really had a big impact on me.

elbelcho··on Miles Davis and the recording of Kind of Blue
If you're looking for a comprehensible to mortals explanation of the genius that can be found in Jazz, watch this explainer on Coltrane's Giant Steps.

https://youtu.be/62tIvfP9A2w

elbelcho··on Datadog dashboard for the Texas power grid
That's factually incorrect. They've been suffering severe power outages due to poor maintenance and planning as far back as at least 2011 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/texas-power-...
elbelcho··on Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
The contested behaviour can influence the development of e-mobility in a crucial phase ... with possible negative spill-over effects on the growth of electric vehicles

Yes, but something tells me Google doesn't give a damn.

elbelcho··on Euro privacy watchdog calls for end of targeted advertising
Wiewiorówski's advocacy for an eventual prohibition on targeted advertising may be more of a negotiating position than a realistic goal.
elbelcho··on In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds have not improved
If left unoptimized, JavaScript can delay your pages when they try to load in users’ browsers. When a browser tries to display a webpage, it has to stop and fully load any JavaScript files it encounters first.
elbelcho··on A Vision of Post-Pandemic New York
The article doesn't take in account of the possibility of vaccination available in the next year or so. Yes, people will meanwhile die. Yes, there will be short-term segregation. But I highly doubt that, once vaccination is widely available, the city will remain segregated into "safe" zones and poorer "infected" zones. That sounds dystopian at best.
elbelcho··on I'm an AI researcher, and here's how I fight Corona
Amazing initiative. When did you guys start this whole thing? How do I join?
elbelcho··on Government Tracking How People Move Around in Coronavirus Pandemic
Snowden warned against this recently. The government might not give up these new powers after we're done with the virus.
elbelcho··on SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM
I feel like sentiment around soundcloud is a little mixed these days, but I'm glad to see that they're still financially viable enough to attract capital. Would be pretty bummed to lose all my playlists and likes if they went under.
elbelcho··on AirPods revenue does not exceed Spotify, Twitter, Snapchat, and Shopify revenue
Basically, everyone's just estimating. The original chart assumes 60M pairs of AirPods sold according to Kuo's estimates with an ASP of $200, while the author of the "correction" tweet is citing his own estimates at 35M pairs sold at an ASP of $162.

I'm not sure who is more trustworthy, but it generally seems like most people think $12B is too high and Cybart (the correction tweet guy) is closer to the actual sales figure

elbelcho··on Tesla Model 3 = 24% of Small and Midsize Luxury Car Sales in USA
Note that all the Tesla sales numbers in the article are estimates by the author of the article. There are no sources cited in the article. Other articles on this site from this same author are very clearly biased in favor of Tesla and electric cards in general. I would take this article with a grain of salt to say the least.

FTA: "Tesla reports quarterly sales and does not break them out by country or region. Eventually, we get registration data from Europe, China (educated estimates at least), and Canada and can then make a more solid estimate of US sales for the quarter, as well as monthly sales estimates. However, it’s a bit early for all of that since we don’t have September numbers from most countries yet. Even our data-loving friend and contributor Jose Pontes of EV Volumes didn’t want to venture out too far on a limb and provide an early estimate that he might have to walk back. That said, looking at previous months’ data, September figures from the Netherlands and Norway, and deeper historical data, I feel comfortable estimating Model 3 sales between 40,000 and 50,000 in the US in the third quarter. For this report, I’ve settled on 43,000."

elbelcho··on Google Is Uncovering Hundreds of Race Conditions Within the Linux Kernel
Reading the article, it seems like these are from an automated tool. I wonder how many of these are actual race conditions, vs false positives because of logic that the tooling can't decipher.
elbelcho··on Apple needs to change iPhone’s call UI because robocalls are killing us
Check out Google's call screening feature available on their Pixel phones https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387?hl=en
elbelcho··on The new Ford, a Silicon Valley software company
Honda is doing something somewhat similar: https://www.hondasvl.com/
elbelcho··on Introducing SourceTree for Windows – a free desktop client for Git
I've been using the private beta for a few weeks now and it is a fantastic product. I've become a huge fan of BitBucket and SourceTree over the last month.
elbelcho··on Amazon to Provide CD Buyers With Cloud-Based MP3s For Free
The page goes on to say that the first time you log in to your Cloud Player account they will "scan" your purchases and provide the MP3's for any eligible albums.

It turns out the only album that I purchased on CD that was eligible was an album I bought as a gag gift for a friend.

Here I was expecting some awesome free* MP3's but instead I got Barry Manilow.

elbelcho··on Leaky (YC S11) is Hipmunk for Car Insurance
The product that cover hound is offering at this moment (as far as I can tell) is practically without use. It just gave me links or phone numbers for 4 companies that sell car insurance in my state. I can get similar results by searching for "Ohio car insurance" and clicking the ads that come up.

What appears to be their full featured future product looks EXTREMELY interesting. It appears that coverhound will almost work like an automated insurance agent, for example, give them your info once, and they'll check rates for you on a regular and recurring basis. THAT product seems extremely valuable to me and would be doing the world a great favor.

elbelcho··on Many don't have $2,000 for a rainy day
I understand that minimum monthly payments and interest only payments are absolutely wasted and provide you with no benefit.

However, the emergency I'm referencing is not a general "my finances are a disaster" emergency. I'm talking about an emergency that has an impact far beyond your immediate financial situation.

I'm talking about "I cannot afford food" or "I cannot afford transportation to a job interview" type of emergency. That's a real emergency, in my opinion.

elbelcho··on Many don't have $2,000 for a rainy day
I disagree.

Saving money for an emergency should be a priority over paying off a credit card debt. In an emergency, you cannot count on the credit card bank keeping your account open. You cannot count on them maintaining your current credit line. ALL banks are "evil" in the sense that they operate with their best interests at heart, and no matter how horrible of a position it may put you in, the CC bank has no obligation to maintain your current credit line.

Having a $2000 emergency fund, even if it's in a shoe box under the bed, is more important and more VALUABLE than $2000 worth of open credit on a credit card. The $2000 under the mattress is almost entirely under your control. The $2000 in open credit is almost entirely OUT of your control.

If you're in a real emergency, what would your rather rely on?

elbelcho··on Update on PSN Password Reset Process (now fixed)
"There was no hack involved" ... "There was a URL exploit"

I suppose that if your system is vulnerable to a "URL exploit" that's not _technically_ a hack in the strictest sense of the word, but the barn door was still wide open for the possibility of their system being hacked, so I don't see how there is any meaningful difference.

elbelcho··on The tent that turns into concrete in less than 24 hours
Was this featured on Dragon's Den (A BBC show were inventors pitch idea to investors) a year or more ago? I seem to remember someone pitching something very similar to this.
elbelcho··on Why Startups Could Use .NET, But Don’t
I think your opinions are based on out of date info.

There are no real "cross-browser pains" when developing ASP.NET. I think you'd really have to go out of your way today to develop something that "works better" in IE than other browsers.

MS contributes to and supports Jquery and includes it by default in new projects.

Silverlight isn't really being pushed at all except on WP7. It was more of a flash competitor anyway and never was meant to compete with HTML5.

There are quite a number of FOSS tools for .NET development, and incredible amount of 3rd party support that's not FOSS.

Granted, most of their stuff isn't being released as OSS. I believe some of their newer tech is releasing source through codeplex.

Overall, most of the complaints I've seen in this thread about Microsoft are better directed at the Microsoft of the 90's and early 2000's than the Microsoft of today.

elbelcho··on Data Structure Visualization
This is an update to a Java app that was posted on HN a few days ago:

http://5mins.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/data-structure-visuali...

It appears that they are the exact same visualizations of the same structures and concepts

elbelcho··on Warning: How Google Checkout Screwed Project Zomboid
I agree. I'm a huge fan of Google. I honestly don't even expect them to support their 'free' products like Gmail with 1 on 1 customer service. I frankly wouldn't either.

But when Google has your actual cash as in the case of Google checkout, and you can't even get a decent reply from them? That really shakes my faith in them as a company.

elbelcho··on How A Non-Salesman Sold Two Startups - with Nori Yoshida (YC W11)
Seems ok to me.

Love your interviews by the way. Your voice, mannerisms and speech patterns are inviting and easy to listen to.

elbelcho··on AllTheWeb closed by Yahoo early April, no-one notices (1999-2011) RIP
Yahoo! Where good things go to die!
elbelcho··on Fixing the little things in Gmail
I'd really like to see them improve search speed.

It's the one advantage, in my opinion, that desktop outlook has over gmail.

elbelcho··on Why I went with them and not you: feedback to an interviewer
I'd be interested to know if the author finds this article embarrassing in 10 years.

When I started in professional software development 10 years ago (about), I probably would have made many similar points.

I see a lot of the same attitudes in CS students today. They are just absolutely CERTAIN that the entire world can be easily categorized into their predefined concepts.

As you get older and more experienced, you'll realize that a lot of your early opinions were naive at best. I have a feeling the article's author will feel similarly in the future.

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