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er35826

59 karma · joined December 17, 2013

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er35826··on The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)
But right now, it's a legal cat and mouse game for both sides. With DRM, it becomes illegal for the mouse to do anything but get eaten.
er35826··on U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they’re being created
I'm not sure his evidence given supports his statement of "no correlation" between a state's Business Tax Climate index. He says the most business-unfriendly state is showing the smallest decline, while the business-friendliest state is showing the smallest decline.

While the full data may actually show no correlation, his highlights show the correlation "business friendliness -> lower business creation."

er35826··on Drop Dropbox
It's only right if you believe there's no cost to your spying being uncovered.

If you don't think there's any cost to being caught spying, I welcome you to try spying on someone, anyone. Then you can answer the question of "Is it worth it?" which leads directly into "Is it a good idea?"

er35826··on Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
There's money in both places to be made. They're not exclusive.
er35826··on Microsoft Will Soon Bring Back The Start Menu In Windows 8.1
I don't understand the utility of this boot to desktop feature. The moment you want to do anything, you're back in the start menu launching programs.

What problem does it solve, besides moving the first thing you use to the second thing you use?

er35826··on 2-Year-Olds Convert Binary To Hexadecimals In Game Experiment
My first game was 1 point. I tried clicking on the falling bugs and saw some numbers lighting up, but I didn't quite realize I had to click on the numbers at the bottom to 'prep' rockets.

My next game was a much more respectable 25.

er35826··on High-Speed Traders Rip Investors Off, Michael Lewis Says
The problem is not the HFT firms buying stock cheaply and reselling it for a profit. As the article points out the problem is investors placing a buy order, and the HFT firms seeing this buy order and snapping up the remaining stocks before the original buy order is fully completed.

This has the negative side effect of essentially making it impossible to buy for the listed price, even when there are supposedly enough shares available for purchase at that price.

As I pointed out in another comment, it's not just buying low and selling high; it's like Walmart interrupting a customer to jack up the prices on a purchase in the middle of that purchse, precisely because that customer is buying that specific item.

er35826··on High-Speed Traders Rip Investors Off, Michael Lewis Says
If computerized grocery checkout machines would stop halfway through the 10 cases of discount soda you bought to raise the price on the remaining 5 cases, then this analogy would be what the article is talking about.
er35826··on How Corruption Is Strangling U.S. Innovation (2012)
It's also a problem if you're an artist that makes something 'close enough' to Mickey Mouse, and you don't have the resources to both fight the legal battle, and support yourself while your income stream is shut off due to the legal battle.
er35826··on Every Quadrotor Needs This Failsafe Software
The article mentions that 'full control' becomes increasingly unlikely as you lose rotors, but partial control is still possible. You can influence how fast the quadrocoptor falls, reducing impact velocity or steering it to crash in a more favorable location.
er35826··on T-Mobile Turns An Industry On Its Ear
That is essentially correct, though the math was completely hidden.

The justification for higher contract rates was because they were using that difference to subsidize new phones whenever you signed a new contract. So, 80 bucks a month for basic service and a few hundred MB of usage.

The problem was that after the 2 year contract ended, when they supposedly were able to recoup the cost of the original phone subsidy, your rate never changed. You'd still pay 80 bucks a month, even if you were happy with your current phone.

T-Mobile's change, much like the rest of the world, was to break out the math explicitly like you show. Then once you've fulfilled the (PRICE_OF_PHONE / CONTRACT_DURATION) term, it would simply vanish.

er35826··on NSA Employee Shared Password, Key, Classified Data with Snowden [pdf]
I've said it before and I'll say it again: He chose Russia and China because priority #1 when you're running FROM someone, is to not get caught by them. Those were large nations he could (relatively) easily get into, that are not friends with the US and would not immediately turn him over to the US.

I'm sure he would have preferred to run and hide in Switzerland or Canada, or Japan, or any one of a hundred other countries, except that they would have hauled him in and stuck him on a plane/boat/truck back to the US as soon as he was identified.

This is a perfectly reasonable 'not a spy' reason to run to those countries, in case you lacked the imagination to go any further than 'he only went there because he was a spy.'

er35826··on Curse Of The Gifted (2000)
As was already pointed out, the AP Calculus test has been designed assuming that you have a calculator to handle the 'easy' number crunching portions for you.

The test is designed so that you still need to have a fairly high-level understanding of calculus and how the functions work. They aren't testing your ability to crunch out 56/7, but your ability to understand that the rate of flow of a liquid out of an irregular trough changes as the fluid level drops, and that you can model each portion of the equation correctly. A calculator isn't going to help you know that you need to account for a changing volume, and that the volume is directly correlated to the outflow.

It'll help you get the right formula for the area of a circle or volume of a cylinder, but not the higher-level reasoning that is really important.

er35826··on Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?
I've lived in three metro areas, and only one had significant choices in provider, and that was a decade ago, 2004. I had the choice of three cable providers, and I was just on the edge of a local ISP's service area so I was able to get a decent price and great service.

I lived in northern Bothell, in Seattle, and I had one ADSL provider (not even 'fast' DSL) and one cable provider to choose from. In the metro area I live in currently, I've had exactly one DSL and one cable provider, and I've moved across the city and the variety didn't change.

er35826··on Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?
Somewhat. Most people in the US only have a choice between the specific type of line they use (Cable, DSL, Satellite). There are typically only one provider for either Cable or DSL in an area, and you're not even guaranteed to have an option between either.
er35826··on This sound system is so powerful no human could survive hearing it
Start the countdown to Disaster Area.
er35826··on Why Games Should Enter The Public Domain
You should be able to.

See the regular launching of "Sherlock" shows, and the multiple on-air concurrently.

Edit: Though Sherlock does have some limitations. Elements of the Sherlock stories introduced after 1922 are still copyrighted, but things from the vast majority of Doyle's stories are public domain and usable by anyone.

er35826··on A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky
> Just look around at people wearing headphones right now. Have attitudes really changed? As a technologist, do you see someone with headphones and think "progressive"? Of course not, you meerly ignore it unless there's a practical reason to care.

I don't normally consciously acknowledge that someone is wearing headphones, and that is the point. The article is pointing out how little we think of people wearing headphones in public now, while they used to be very noticeable and with largely negative connotations.

er35826··on Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call
Anecdotally, I've found it's quite common with alot of European ESL speakers. I have worked with quite a few other people from varying countries, and it's somewhat common that they end many sentences sounding like a question.
er35826··on US and UK spy agencies scoop up private data from 'leaky' phone apps
Don't be alarmed citizen. They only 'know' about your movements if they actually look at them. Until then, they don't 'know' anything as long as it sits in their archives untouched.
er35826··on UX: Why do washing machines have windows?
And there's only one narrow failure mode where a dishwasher can actually fill up with water: If the drain is blocked. Any other failure mode (broken water heating element, broken agitator, power failure) still allows the water to drain so it won't flood.
er35826··on Thorskan – Better Reality 3D Scan
This would appear to be the same environment as the demos from the article. Note the 'Node' graffiti on the wall, and the general shape of the room.

I'd really like to see a before/after comparison, to see what the original environment looked like, as well as an actual description of what they've done.

er35826··on Fired? Speak No Evil
No limitation on the clause is a big concern.

If you write a public review 3 years later about how a product from that company sucks, that could be held as a breach of this contract you signed, and would at the very least be a non-free legal headache for you. A headache that would likely cost you much more than the company to deal with, to boot.

er35826··on Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
I'm an electrical engineer who has pared my skill list down to 'troubleshooting.' For my equivalent of a fizzbuzz, the exercise is to present someone with a potential failure (the light in the room is off) and ask them how they'd go about investigating the problem.

I like to see all kinds of answers, but particularly more theories are better, especially when justified at least loosely. Things like "change the light bulb", "flick the switch", and "check the circuit breakers" are evidence that they have the right mind for breaking a situation out into many different causes.

edit: I absolutely loathe 'out of the box' as a meme, but I love hearing responses like "is anything else in the room turned on?" as it shows a simpler, more direct way of assessment.

er35826··on 1.85% of Steam users run Linux
This is not true at all. Most gamers aren't rocking dual-boots, and most gamers are still comfortably running with just a single Windows install of various flavors.

For a personal anecdote: I've been a gamer my entire life, but I didn't start dual-booting (or using two systems) until I decided to get serious with programming and hacking.

er35826··on Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower
Clapper was also in the unfortunate position of being legally required to lie: Refusing the respond, or deferring his response to a closed session, would have been evidence enough that such a program existed.

Anything other than a simple, direct denial would have been 'leaking' information about the possibility of such a program existing, which is expressly against the law as well.

er35826··on Accidental Tax Break Saves Wealthiest Americans $100 Billion
The gp isn't using the same definition of 'rich enough'. You're inferring that rich enough comment to mean "rich enough to live comfortably on and afford the things I need/want".

Instead the gp is talking about a threshold of "rich enough" where you can roll your money into these GRATs and other investment vehicles. It requires a far greater level of wealth, because you're living on the returns from investments and financial objects entirely, and in order for those returns to be enough to live on, you need a much bigger chunk of money than 150k a year.