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geekles

91 karma · joined July 6, 2009

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geekles··on Twitter has officially changed its logo to ‘X’
I agree with this statement.

Twitter as a platform and product works better today than it did a year ago. Less bots makes a huge difference.

It's also not hard to imagine why they lost 50% of their advertisers. 50% kind of lines up with the percentage of "woke" (horrible label, but whatever) companies out there who basically "had to" pull their ad dollars to not piss off the camp they put themselves in.

Prognostication is fun, but to be honest, we don't really have any idea whether or not this rebranding and redirection will work. Time will tell.

I, however, applaud people willing to take moonshots.

geekles··on Wildfire restored a Yosemite watershed
They should have been doing this, but California is currently mis-governed.
geekles··on An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
As if this will be limited to "iThings". If you don't think this tech is coming to all devices, you're not paying attention to the state of the world.
geekles··on Apple, ARM, and Intel
Mac support in games is less important now than ever before. Services such as Shadow are how I game on my Mac now.
geekles··on macOS Catalina 10.15.5
The word "should" implies non-conclusivity.
geekles··on If this project is dead, just tell us
Meanwhile, Poetry just announced 1.0: https://python-poetry.org/blog/announcing-poetry-1-0-0.html
geekles··on Sunsetting Python 2
You've never encountered badmouthing from a pro builder about other tool brands? How many did you talk to? Builders make the Ford v Chevy debates look minimal in comparison.
geekles··on Pock: Display macOS Dock in Touch Bar
Sidecar adds a Touch Bar on the iPad to all Macs that support Sidecar.
geekles··on Firefox 67.0 Released
The new Microsoft Edge has prefers-color-scheme as well.
geekles··on Show HN: Sublime Merge – A Git client from the makers of Sublime Text
Hyper2 is pretty good for windows. Also the built in VSCode terminal is serviceable.
geekles··on I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores
No, actually, it doesn't.

What helps to prevent spammed low quality apps is the app review process.

Those who are spamming the app stores with low quality, keyword dense apps are those who are looking to make a quick buck, and they do not hesitate to pay the paltry yearly fee.

geekles··on I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores
The point of a PWA is that the app store is not needed. Why would you be trying to get a PWA into the app store?
geekles··on How to Become a Game Programmer
HN would disagree with the one rant the author spent the longest time on.
geekles··on Is massively collaborative mathematics possible?
Perhaps the Wave protocol could be adapted to this sort of purpose. It seems designed for it, really.
geekles··on Ask HN: How did you get started in hacking/programming?
I got started in grade school. We had a bunch of Apple IIc's and IIe's. We learned basic. I believe my first "real" program was a graphic of Spuds McKenzie, the Budweiser dog.

I didn't do much serious programming until I was about 24, the place I worked, a convenience store, just got cash registers with scanners. So we had all this scanning data but no easy way to collate it over time. I wrote a perl script that would parse our scanning data and tell me how much of x we sold for a period of time y. That was when I truly got bit by the programming bug.

My advice would be to have a problem you really need to solve, a goal. The rest is just trying to figure out how to make your language of choice reach that goal for you. It is so much easier to learn how to program when you have a real, tangible, and personal goal, and not some arbitrary exercise put forth by a language tutorial.

Something I wish I knew before getting into programming? Language choice is personal. Find a language whose syntax you enjoy and you can wrap your head around. Don't get caught up in language wars/debates. It's basically meaningless (although fun to argue about). Whatever language you enjoy the most is the one you should be using.

geekles··on Ask HN: What are the best technologies you've worked with this year?
Offtopic:

Everytime I see XMPP in print, it makes me think of that media player I use to use in fvwm way back when.

geekles··on The Arc Challenge in Ruby
The challenge should be LOC total, including the LOC of the libraries used. That is the only possible way to compare apples to apples. Otherwise, what is to stop you from wrapping the entire solution into a "library" and just making a simple call-out to said library.

What is the total LOC of the implementation, period. Remove all ambiguity.

geekles··on 2009 Open Source Top Ten
I'm glad I looked at this list, hadn't seen a couple of these projects before.

It should be called 2009 Ruby Top Ten, but interesting all the same.

geekles··on Smalltalk is stable and growing
I really dig smalltalk, especially the Pharo project, which I believe is a fork of Squeak.

The development environment is a joy to use, although unfamiliar to the uninitiated, but very powerful indeed. Some people do not like the image idea or the fact that they can't bring their tools with them, but I love it. Pharo lives on my USB stick and is ready and willing no matter what type of system I am on, or whose for that matter.

geekles··on Apple Gestapo: How Apple Hunts Down Leaks
This sounds like due diligence to protect shareholder interests.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." - overheard in an interview somewhere.

geekles··on Goo.gl: Making URLs shorter for Google Toolbar and FeedBurner
Is it possible to use this with Chrome? I haven't seen a way yet. It seems kind of silly to leave out support for their own browser. Google toolbar requires IE or Firefox.
geekles··on Goo.gl: Making URLs shorter for Google Toolbar and FeedBurner
Personally I like that. The more google records for me, the closer to a true lifestream we get. Saves me some work.
geekles··on GWT 2.0: So good it's ridiculous
The problem with GWT is java, which makes it meh.
geekles··on "Technically, you're already a cyborg..."
Google is the exobrain. All the world's knowledge in the palm of your hand.
geekles··on [dead]
If the rumors of this being a VoIP only phone, with a data access only plan are true, this is a "big deal".

This could be the beginning of the end for consumer telephony.