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jtarrio

64 karma · joined May 25, 2013

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jtarrio··on Discret 11, the French TV encryption of the 80s (2020)
Yeah, that's the Nagravision that the article mentions at the end.

There were programs that could use a TV capture card and decode it in real time on a 486DX2. They worked pretty well (I felt ok using it because we already had Canal+ but it was on the living room TV and my computer was on the opposite side of the house.)

jtarrio··on Trying for 1 month but can't learn pixel art still
Draw, draw, draw, draw. Don't try to be good; just draw. Look for one thing you can improve on, then practice until you get a little better at it. Then look for the next thing and repeat.

You are always going to think that you could have done it better. That's the curse of the artist; don't let it discourage you. Keep drawing and then draw some more.

My kid draws all the time and she gets better at it. She also asks me to draw for her and (surprise) I'm getting better at it. Draw a person. Draw a house. Draw a cartoon character. Draw an orange that just received bad news. Draw a lettuce riding a motorcycle. Don't wait to be in front of your computer so you can do pixel art; draw on a piece of paper, draw on your tablet, draw in the sand. Draw on a liquid crystal drawing board (great for throwaway drawings: no mess, quick erase, no drafts left behind).

And be kind to yourself. You are going to think that your drawings suck. I promise they are better than you think (one is always their own worst critic), but also be realistic on where you need to improve technically. Do ask for advice from other people, and take it gracefully.

(You want to do pixel art. Start with the art, and when you are good enough at it, add the pixel.)

jtarrio··on IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80×24 display (2019)
You know, this is funny because QBasic did not use EDIT.COM. Instead, QBasic was the editor and EDIT.COM was a simple program that called "QBASIC /EDIT" :-)
jtarrio··on Hosting a website on a disposable vape
Modern smoke detectors, at least here in the US, have a 10-year sealed non-replaceable battery.
jtarrio··on Show HN: I built an HTML5 RTL-SDR application
Ah yeah, E4000 tuner, those were hard to come by even 10 years ago, so I didn't support them. Only R820 and R828 and compatibles...
jtarrio··on Show HN: I built an HTML5 RTL-SDR application
I don't have a dedicated place for announcements and such, but I post on my Bluesky whenever there's a major improvement (@jacobo.tarrio.org).

And you can always star it on GitHub: https://github.com/jtarrio/radioreceiver

jtarrio··on Show HN: I built an HTML5 RTL-SDR application
If you don't know, it probably isn't; they brand it quite extensively both outside and in the USB manufacturer strings (it appears as "Blog V4" in the device selection window.)

If it is indeed not one of them, I'd be interested in getting one to test on, so I'd like to know where you got it from. Can you email me? My address is trivial to find or figure out knowing my website is https://jacobo.tarrio.org :-)

jtarrio··on Show HN: I built an HTML5 RTL-SDR application
Yes, next up is frequency/band management. Recording will come later. Later still, who knows :-)
jtarrio··on Show HN: I built an HTML5 RTL-SDR application
Is your stick an RTL-SDR Blog V4? Because it looks like the failure happens when accessing a R828D tuner, which should be supported.
jtarrio··on I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
Naturalized citizen here: it's not hard at all. You've had the green card for 10 years so the marriage is not even a consideration. For once, you'll be on the "friendly" side of USCIS that wants you to succeed, not the one that wants an excuse to deny.
jtarrio··on The law depends on compute power
I'm Spanish too, so hopefully I can explain. The problem is that everyone treats the SSN as if it were a secret number known only to you, so they use it as both an identifier and an authenticator. In Spain, however, most people know to use the DNI number as just an identifier, using other methods (most typically, physical presentation of the ID card) for authentication.
jtarrio··on Why is speed at sea measured in knots?
It's just a convenient way to define a unit of length. Look up the original definition of the metre and you'll see that it's basically the same except for some constants.
jtarrio··on Why is speed at sea measured in knots?
The nautical mile is the length of a minute of arc along a great circle on the surface of Earth. I think the 14.4m figure is wrong; that should be 15.4m, which is the distance covered in 30 seconds by a vessel going at 1 nautical mile per hour.
jtarrio··on Getting a job in San Francisco
Depending on your educational background and working experience, you go into one or another category. Most people here will fit in EB-3, EB-2 and EB-1. If you are in EB-1 you can get it in about a year; in EB-2 you can get it in two years unless you're from China or India; in EB-3 you can probably get it in seven years, unless you're from India.