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jval43

1,911 karma · joined January 20, 2016

No AI used in my comments. Software engineer by day. I’m subscribed to hnreplies.com (no affiliation), so I’ll get an email if you reply to one of my comments.
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jval43··on Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits
>So... what? What do I do with this?

Try to understand these issues or rather how they could affect your business processes and software implementations down the line rather than dismissing them on a technical level.

You can store the Unicode representation just as you normally would. But what you don't do is assume that your Unicode representation is the only representation of the actual name.

More concretely, there are names that have multiple equally valid ways of writing them. You can probably expect that usually the same one is used, but you should absolutely not require this when building your business processes.

Even more concretely, as an example there are transliteration or simplification / shortening rules that allow people with otherwise strange or long names to buy an airline ticket. The actual, real name may not be any of the ones you have in your system. This matters e.g. when searching for someone or in customer support.

As for people without names (or unknown names), you should probably recognize that the handling might differ by country. E.g. records with "John Doe" in the US might have to be handled differently: analogous to "NULL != NULL" in SQL John Doe != John Doe. Or maybe even "Jane Doe == John Doe" in some cases. See also "Fnu Lu" (First Name Unknown, Last Name Unknown) used in the US.

And although I don't have knowledge about all the countries in the world, it may very well be that this leads to situations where the "no name" has to be handled specially or at least understood to be a special case, completely differently from other cases.

jval43··on My $6k Advance as a Self-Published Technical Author
Slightly OT, but man those Kickstarter fees and "payment processing" fees add up to a lot of money in total. Almost 600$.

I should start a payment processor, or something else where I can just take a percentage for not much work at all.

jval43··on Making a smart bike dumb so it works again
Not with a hub-type one. These work magnetically and you basically obly lose the 3-5W of power they produce.
jval43··on A Reddit bot drove me insane
I was an active contributor to /r/espresso for a while, but in the process of the hobby I realized I disagree with some of their advice and best practices. Minor stuff really.

I would not describe the sub as toxic or anything, but it's literally impossible to get a dissenting opinion across on Reddit. Other hobby subs were the same.

Every single time I mentioned an opinion differing from the "hive-mind" consensus it was downvoted to hell, with no responses, counter arguments or anything resembling discussion. I would have liked to trade experiences but that's not possible.

While at the same time some of the other posters giving advice freely admit they don't actually have experience with what is discussed and are just repeating older posts.

There is no real value in that, and nowadays you can get mostly the same experience by just asking ChatGPT. Both have no clue and no real opinion of their own when it comes to details.

I take part in a few forums now, and it's a breath of fresh air. Much better experience and a lot more personal as well.

jval43··on Installing air filters in classrooms has surprisingly large educational benefits (2020)
I did not say this study is flawed or that every study is flawed. And I have made no exaggerations or said that you personally look at it the most positive way.

Reading comprehension is important, and especially important in a discussion like this.

I do however really mean that some studies are not worth looking at all in more detail: if the methodology is flawed, the results are meaningless. At most the premise of such a hypothetical (not saying this one necessarily!) study could be used as an idea for further research, but not to build knowledge on or derive knowledge from the results.

jval43··on Installing air filters in classrooms has surprisingly large educational benefits (2020)
Science is a long game, it's not about sales where you need to sell right now. Extreme results will be attempted to be replicated, which in turn costs a lot of funding. That is money and time, sometimes a whole persons career.

This money and time is taken directly away from funding other, potentially more worthy or more likely to be correct studies.

There is no point of looking at every (flawed) study in the most positive way, unless you have unlimited time and money to pursue every avenue of research.

Often (not always), the studies that are most heavily promoted among the news and in business or politics are really not the best research and other, less visible but more solid research gets ignored in favor of whats popular or what has had good marketing.

This is very frustrating for people doing solid good research, because every so often someone else will come along with wild, exaggerated claims and very little data to back it up, and then gets funding for it.

It takes literal years away from good science just because someone markets and speaks well.

Which is fine in business, but in science this is not something "the market" can or will correct for well, simply because the timespans are so long.

jval43··on Installing air filters in classrooms has surprisingly large educational benefits (2020)
Yes because most studies that end on up HN are there because they were reported on somewhere as news.

This usually happens in usually these cases:

1. when a paper is extremely good and it's results are groundbreaking, or

2. when a study itself claims it has groundbreaking results, or

3. when it's a regular study that's gotten some great marketing/promotion e.g. by their university.

The case of 1. is extremely rare, and even when everyone believed the results and they were peer reviewed by a reputable paper like Science, some of them turned out to be academic fraud that was later retracted.

Most studies that pop up on HN are of types 2. and 3. That's just because otherwise they would not get news attention.

But most studies in general are in category 4: the ones an academic or professional would read going about their daily business / research. These range from terrible, to OK, to really great, but 99% never make the news.

As a (former) academic, I've read lots of papers and like in real life it's usually the people (papers) that get attention who scream the loudest. There are some gems too of course, and it's right to not ignore anything.

But in my personal experience and over time, I've been very right to be very sceptical once a result turns up in the news because of the 3 ways it can get there.

This is amplified even more so with papers that base their results / outcome purely on statistics, such as most experimental studies done. These derive their results from the statistics (sample size, experiment design, etc) so their power and the probability of their result being correct (what the authors say) it directly coupled.

jval43··on ACARS Drama
Collation rules already differ by locale or language in many programming languages, libraries, and applications.

This is necessary because the order of words or characters is sometimes only sensibly defined if you know the language a text is written in.

jval43··on Show HN: "Git who" – A new CLI tool for industrial-scale Git blaming
Yes, exactly.

That is what I use git for each and every day.

jval43··on Google begins testing AI-only search results
Translations suffered a similar fate already a while ago. Some of the results are completely unusable AI gibberish now, sometimes even with invented words. That's for English -> German.

What's baffling is that translation is the core competency LLMs were designed for.

jval43··on The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks
That's just a cooperative, and those exist in capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative.

You can found one today if you want, don't need communism for that.

jval43··on The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"
This time around the changes might actually take effect quickly enough for people to feel them during the current administration.

Compared to the previous playbook of making changes and then blaming the effects on the next administration. While taking credit for everything good kicking in from the previous administration of course.

jval43··on “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”
Even Google ratings are sometimes gamed nowadays. This wasn't always the case, they used to be reliable. Tripadvisor ratings on the other hand were always garbage.

I recently had some really bad experiences with some fast food places in my corner of the world, at a train station as well.

They all had 4.9 stars but lots of 1 star reviews matching my experience. But also tons and tons of eerily similar 5 star reviews with a generic photo of the counter (no faces, no food) and a random name and glowing review of who "served" them. Which is impossible at those places.

jval43··on Ask HN: Is anyone still using Dreamweaver?
Tools like FileMaker, Dreamweaver and others empowered regular people to do "personal computing" and allowed them to help themselves build the tools they needed.

It seems to me like that was a golden age of genuine personal computing that went by too fast and with many avenues left unexplored.

jval43··on Apple Debuts iPhone 16e
>It is not rational at all; they would rather buy something shittier for their money than get more value. My grandparents are like that.

It's entirely rational. I bought plenty of used phones, and even repaired them myself because I couldn't afford new ones. Would not do that again.

The risk of getting scammed, or getting a phone with issues is too high. Both have happened to me in the past. It can even be dangerous if someone swapped out the battery with a cheapo fire hazard. A lot of resale prices are also simply too high to be worth it.

Now imagine your grandparents. As you said, the exact model/chip doesn't matter, any phone is good enough. What they're buying is an appliance that will last at least the warranty period (2 years, EU), but likely much longer. Basically piece of mind at a fixed price. They won't get scammed (online) or ripped off (used in a physical store) if they buy directly from Apple.

jval43··on Apple Debuts iPhone 16e
I only see plans with 65$/month for 36 months, so 2340$ over 3 years. Which is a lot of money.

They even tell you what the actual rate is in the fine print. It's just priced in: 17.49$ over 36 months comes out to 629$.

>Monthly payments shown are for customers who qualify to pay $0 Down, $17.49/mo. for36months; 0% APR. Retail Price: $629.99

jval43··on We were wrong about GPUs
This is my experience as well. I answer many such calls from devs as part of my work.

I can usually tell at the end of a call which group they belong to. I've been wrong a few times too.

As long as they don't waste my time I'm fine with everyone, some people just have other priorities in life.

One thing I'd say is in my experience there are many competent and capable people in every group, but non-competent ones are extremely rare in the first group.

jval43··on GitHub reveals how software engineers are purging federal databases
https://sequelize.org/docs/v6/core-concepts/paranoid/
jval43··on The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
That video is what made me get a Toyota hybrid.

Seeing how simple the whole mechanism is, I totally get why the empirical reliability is so good.

Not to mention that the lecturer shows and explains things very clearly.

jval43··on No Calls
Counterpoint: Recently dealt with a vendor at work and asked their support several highly technical questions together with a bug report for an issue we were having.

They not only answered in 1 day, but also provided a real solution / workaround for our issue, as well as a technical answer to the questions and a technical analysis of why the bug occurs.

Outstanding support, and I would never have guessed it from their website.

jval43··on A Billion Pixels a Second: Inside Apple's iPhone 16 Camera Labs
Not my intention.

>Doing 120 fps video at 4K so that any chosen frame looks amazing without artifacts is really quite an achievement.

Apple silicon is extremely impressive. In this case however dedicated cameras can still do more, which I felt was a relevant observation.

jval43··on No more needles Tracking blood sugar on your wrist
>when marketing uses AI

In my experience when marketing wants to use AI, they will. Regardless of whether it is ML, basic statistics or even just a few if-else blocks.

It used to be the way you describe up to about 2-3 years ago, now the term is meaningless.

jval43··on A Billion Pixels a Second: Inside Apple's iPhone 16 Camera Labs
Mirrorless cameras nowadays can push as much as 8k60 (twice the amount of data over 4k120), every frame at full quality. All that with better optics/sensors and less "perceptual testing", thus less of an overprocessed look.
jval43··on A Billion Pixels a Second: Rare Look Inside Apple's iPhone 16 Camera Labs
Your comment makes no sense.

Every mirrorless body has a center marking for the middle of the sensor, so the camera can be mounted exactly centered on a tripod. It's actually important for photos to be exactly on axis if you want to do panoramas or stitching.

The only reason the body is not exactly symmetrical is engineering and ergonomics. Many point and shoots of the past in fact had the lens exactly in the center.

And "chirality of the optical path" is not anything related to this, in fact the term is not usable in this context at all.

jval43··on Cloud Efficiency at Netflix
The resolution mostly isn't the issue, the extreme compression and the resulting artifacts are what ruin the experience for me.

Take any movie with dark scenes, and it'll look horrible regardless of 720p vs 4k.

jval43··on Carlsen disqualified from World Rapid and Blitz championship for wearing jeans
Yes, and it's wrong in all those cases as well.

The rules aren't even universal, tennis clubs, schools, and even countries have different rules altogether, which highlights the absurdity of it all.

If you're going to enforce arbitrary rules, they must at least be objectively defined. Otherwise it just becomes a power trip for whomever decides.

jval43··on GPT-5 is behind schedule
Incorrect information by itself is at best useless. Incorrect information that is thought to be correct is outright dangerous. Objective truth is crucial to science and progress.

We've come too far since the age of enlightenment to just give it all up.

jval43··on Moon
There's a short paragraph on "earthshine" towards the end.
jval43··on macOS 15.2 breaks the ability to copy the OS to another drive
Bluetooth on Windows is a nightmare too. Headphones, keyboards, mice etc might work initially, but at some point they don't connect anymore and it's almost impossible to fix. Mac is better in that regard, unpairing and repairing usually works. On Windows it's just broken.

It's why I only use hardware with fixed dongles (Jabra, Logitech, etc).

jval43··on IMG_0416
FWIW that is not a Pixel-specific issue. I encountered this on other cameras (IIRC Olympus and GoPro) as well. It's maddening.

The issue stems from the fact that images are written with proper EXIF time and timezone metadata while videos from the same camera might only store a timestamp field. Whether that's local time, UTC, or something else depends on the camera and how you configured it.

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