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ishields

91 karma · joined November 23, 2016

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ishields··on Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
That's a valid interpretation, but it's based on assumptions. Personally I didn't even notice the use of "they" vs "he" or "she" since it's not really relevant to the discussion. In fact, OP has clarified that he/she used "they" only because they were unsure if gender changes apply retroactively since at the time of the leaks, manning identified as a "he"
ishields··on Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
"They" is the only option when you don't know the gender of the person but it is still valid even if you do know the gender, though less commonly used in that situation
ishields··on Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
Come on now, "They" does not imply any gender and is appropriate to describe any person
ishields··on Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
> It would do a lot to encourage others to indiscriminately leak classified info

A one-time presidential commute or pardon would do no such thing. Saying that "this specific case has been looked at and deemed to be okay" doesn't automatically equate to "everyone can do this and they won't get in trouble." There's a huge difference between whistleblowing and treason

ishields··on Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate
>2. The election of Donald Trump is a 'lose-lose' scenario. How? What, specifically, about his proposed policies has a demonstrably negative impact on the quality of life for American citizens and the United States' geopolitical influence?

There's more to a president than their proposed policies. Trump's bigoted rhetoric is already having a demonstrably negative impact on the quality of life for many minorities in the USA (and he's not even in office yet)

https://twitter.com/i/moments/796417517157830656?lang=en

ishields··on How Lever (YC S12) Got to 50–50 Women and Men
Nice slippery slope argument. If you're really so ignorant that you truly don't believe that society on a whole treats the same behavior differently depending on the sex of the person who's doing it then you really need to get outside.
ishields··on Streama – A self-hosted streaming application with your own media library
Actually there are various ways to get proper matches without the exact filenaming convention they recommend. There's a feature where you can "Fix Incorrect Match" described here:

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201018497-Fix-Inco...

This lets you pick the movie/show/whatever manually from a few different sources. If your media isn't immediately recognized, you can do this to correct it.

Additionally, they have a "Personal Media" metadata agent you can select for media that's your own personal media (like home videos) which will allow plex to read the metadata directly from the file instead of searching for a match. There's more info on that here:

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200265246

I have never had the issue you described where something doesn't show up at all, just that it's incorrectly matched (in which case the tile will just show a screenshot and the title will just be the filename)

Additionally, I've found that if you use their recommended folder structure, the filenames matter much less. For example, if you have this directory:

/Media/TV Shows/Show Name/Season 1/

It seems like as long as the file contains the season/episode like "S01E01" it will match correctly based on the directory information. I haven't messed with it much but I have never had to rename a file to get plex to recognize it when I use directories like this

ishields··on NeverSSL
Any site that doesn't redirect to the SSL version (if applicable) will work. The benefit of using something like captive.apple.com is that it's specifically designed to NOT use SSL in order to trigger redirects and such, whereas something like example.com just so happens to not redirect to their SSL version, so it's (essentially) guaranteed to work vs example.com who could decide in the future to redirect to their SSL version if they want
ishields··on Ticketmaster is a horrible company
I'm generally speaking about concerts more than sporting events, and as someone who frequently goes to concerts, I wouldn't consider live music to be anywhere near the same thing as listening to recordings
ishields··on Ticketmaster is a horrible company
That's a fair point. I think for me it's more a matter of principle. I believe everyone should have the opportunity (within reason, I don't expect bands/companies to take losses) to see live performances, so the argument of "well someone else is willing to pay more so tough luck" doesn't really hold weight to me. I think that a truly "good" ticketing company wouldn't put maximum profits above the artists/fans. I also don't believe that ticketing companies should be taking 40% (or more) of the ticket price.

Here's an interesting article: https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits-...

It describes a band going on a 28 day tour in which they played 24 shows and ended up losing $11,819 overall, despite good ticket sales. Just out of curiosity I ran some basic numbers. They note in the article that they made just under $100k from tickets. They also mentioned that they sold 1129 tickets for just one show. Since that show was noteworthy, I'm going to assume that it was the biggest show of the tour, so for the purpose of calculations, I'll be conservative and estimate that they sold 750 tickets per show on average. Again, conservatively estimating, I'll assume their tickets were sold for $20 total, including fees. With those numbers, the total amount of revenue from ticket sales would be:

750 tickets x 24 shows x $20 = $360,000

So if they took away $100k from that, they're getting ~28% and in the end they operated at a loss. This is also a band that doesn't have a label, which is not true for many, which reduces that even further. Even if you drop the 750 estimate to 500, they're still taking away less than 50% when the whole tour is about them in the first place.

Obviously this is all speculation and assumptions but as someone who goes to a lot of concerts and has spoken with a lot of people involved in the industry, unless you're some super huge pop sensation (which is a whole different can of worms since many of those "artists" are not even involved in the creation of their own "art") this seems to be pretty indicative of the state of the industry.

I'm a firm believer in the importance of creative arts outside the realm of traditional capitalism, so I'll continue to have beef with Ticketmaster and any other company that preys on artists and fans for the sole purpose of maximum profits, but I can understand where you are coming from if you don't share the same ideals as I do.

ishields··on Ticketmaster is a horrible company
While this may be true in a pure capitalistic sense, many believe that experiencing the arts isn't something that should be limited to the rich
ishields··on Ticketmaster is a horrible company
> "In any case the market drives the show prices for the most part"

I completely disagree. Maybe for the ticket face value that may be true but look at the provided example:

$18.50 face value for a ticket (driven by the market/demand)

+ $1.50 "facility charge" + $4.50 "service fee" + $4.00 "order processing fee" + $2.25 "shipping"

so no you're paying $18.50 for the ticket plus $12.25 in fees just in order to get your ticket. That's 66% of the face value of the ticket in fees alone (assuming you don't get tricked into the $8 "protection" which would bring the fees to 109% of face value of the tickets)

Want to get 2 tickets? You'd think that you'd only have to pay the fees once since it is all processed together but nope, now the fees all double.

There are no alternative ticketing options short of going to the venue and getting tickets in person, so there is not really any competition, so I'm not sure how you can say the market drives the prices when the prices are set by a company that has no competition (and the lack of competition is due to exclusive deals, not really anything else)

ishields··on Ask HN: How much do you sleep?
Personally, I believe a flexible work schedule is a privilege. I think it's a great thing and I think that it's totally fine to work non-standard hours, but I also think that if you are going to make the choice to not be in the office during core hours (I'd consider 9-5 "core" but I think companies should define this) then it's also your responsibility to be available during those core hours when it's necessary. If a meeting needs to be held at 3 (which is a completely reasonable meeting time within core hours) and you need to be at that meeting then I think it's on you to make accommodations for that by having someone else pick up your kids that day or making some other arrangements since it's your choice to work a nonstandard schedule. Same goes for a 9am meeting and someone who comes in at 11am. In a work environment where employees can make their own schedule I think having "core hours" where every employee is expected to be available at least sometimes is totally reasonable since otherwise your personal schedule is going to be negatively affecting your job performance, and that's a personal responsibility issue, not a job issue.
ishields··on Amazon Dash Button's Wireless Audio Configuration
I've worked with ultrasound on the receiving end on android before, using the built in mic to capture ultrasound data. We never came across a device that was unable to hear the data, and we tested on what I would consider a pretty large variety of phones. As far as transmitting goes you're probably right though, and seeing as the dash button is the receiver in this scenario it makes sense
ishields··on Show HN: PandwaRF – RF Hacking Tool with Sub 1GHz RF Transceiver, BLE and USB
As someone with some but not much exposure to RF, can anyone shed some light on how this is different from a regular transmitter/receiver hooked up to a pi (I've done just this with a pi zero for ~$20) and what the use cases for this might be?
ishields··on AirPods are now available
Which is better, unlimited "battery" or a 40 hour battery? It may not be a big issue for you, but for me that's a very significant tradeoff. And I haven't looked into studies but I have personally done multiple side by side comparisons of the same headphones/speakers connected via bluetooth vs wired and have yet to find a set where I was not able to notice a difference in the sound quality. For me, that's enough, but I'd encourage you to try it out yourself or seek out some studies (I haven't even bothered looking).

In the end it seems more of a question of which bothers you more:

1. degraded sound quality and drastically shorter (since one is unlimited) battery life or

2. having a wire from your headphones to your audio source.

For me, there's no question that 1. is more of an issue, for others, 2. is a bigger problem. I consider bluetooth an alternative to wired headphones but absolutely not a replacement since both have tradeoffs

ishields··on AirPods are now available
I'm really glad that I'm not the only one who's been frustrated by iOS recently. Their user interactions have become so inconsistent and there are so many places (like control center) where simple tasks like pausing music playback have additional friction for really no reason. Why would they split it into 2 screens when one worked just fine? Why did they eliminate slide to unlock? (My conspiracy theory here is to upsell people new devices because the home button unlock is absolutely horrible to use on anything < iPhone 6s). There are lots of places where things are just downright much more difficult than they have to be. In the end, I switched to android after using iOS for the last ~5 (maybe more?) years and I have to say my phone actually feels smart again
ishields··on AirPods are now available
Just out of curiosity, what type of situations cause this to happen to you? This literally has never happened to me except while working out, and workout time amounts to probably 5% or less of my headphone usage
ishields··on AirPods are now available
It's less about the process of pairing being painful and more about the amount of time it takes to pair. I also use a plantronics headset sometimes and it usually takes somewhere from like 15-60 seconds to actually pair up and have audio coming through. Vs the 2 seconds it takes for me to plug in a wired pair
ishields··on AirPods are now available
For me it comes down to a few things. Bluetooth has some major downsides: First, you now have to charge your headphones or you can't use them. This is a HUGE downside when coming from something that literally never needs to be charged, I mean considering nothing else, would you rather have something that needs to be charged daily or something that never needs to be charged? Second, transmitting audio over bluetooth requires digital compression, which affects sound quality. For some this might not matter, but when I listen to music on headphones I want the highest level of quality. This is probably less of an issue for anyone considering airpods, as apple's headphones, even the wired ones, have never been great. Now the classic response to these points is "But just charge them at night, I never have to worry about it!" or "I can't even tell the difference in quality!" and these things may be true, however for me, if I'm sacrificing sound quality (even if it's minimal) and sacrificing unlimited "battery life" (in quotes because there is no battery life for wired headphones but you get the point) I better be getting something well worth it in return. In this case, that something is what, not having to plug my headphones in? Not having a wire connecting me to wherever the sound is coming from that literally never gets in my way except MAYBE very occasionally when working out? I'm sorry but that is absolutely nowhere NEAR worth the tradeoffs. It's not that I'm against bluetooth headphones, it's that the benefits do not outweigh the costs. How many times have you really found yourself genuinely bothered by wires on your headphones? I know for me the answer is almost never (realistically only when working out, which is the only situation where I'd even consider wireless headphones)