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mark-r

5,970 karma · joined September 5, 2008

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mark-r··on California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops
I live close to a city that only allows city-owned liquor stores, Eden Prairie MN. But it's trivial to drive to the next city over and shop wherever you want.
mark-r··on I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked
Maybe the whole point of this was not to ruin some food, but to prove infiltration of a DoD network in a way that would leak broadly because it's not classified?
mark-r··on The Hugging Face incident and the road ahead
This is the blueprint for how the singularity will occur. Only there won't be a post-mortem for it.
mark-r··on I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated
I think both WWV and WWVB were on the chopping block a few years ago, because the government decided it wasn't worth the $100,000 per year to keep them running. Thankfully that decision was overturned.
mark-r··on I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated
That might do to keep it within a minute during power loss, and maybe that's good enough for most people. But if you really want to be worry-free you need something more high tech.

It would be worth it for me not to have to touch it twice a year for DST.

mark-r··on I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated
My uncle was a huge clock collector. Many of his would go off on the hour, it was quite the spectacle.
mark-r··on I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated
The beauty of living in the modern age is that there are times when you don't have to worry about being wasteful. This project is a perfect example.

It's likely that the most power consuming part of the clock is the display.

mark-r··on I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated
I once researched how accurate GPS time is, and the answer is it's within 40 ns. Good luck finding a way to transmit that to your CPU that doesn't add a much larger delay.
mark-r··on I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated
Is there anything which adjusts your base clock frequency based on NTP or anything else, so that when you are unable to correct the time it's still more accurate than an untuned free-running clock?
mark-r··on Show HN: I mapped every US golf course
The time it takes to play a game of golf is much longer than any of the other activities you mentioned.
mark-r··on Show HN: I mapped every US golf course
You may not need to be rich to play golf, but you need to be rich to have the spare time to do it.
mark-r··on Show HN: I mapped every US golf course
Within 5 miles of my house are 5 golf courses. I believe only 1 is government owned, by the city.
mark-r··on It's a shame what's happened to radio
I never used to like the morning show hijinx either, until I discovered that a friend hosted such a show. I tuned in every morning after that. He retired a couple of months ago, and I think I've only listened to the show twice since then. His replacements are OK but there's no draw anymore.
mark-r··on It's a shame what's happened to radio
There's a local station that advertises the fact that they don't do requests. I'm sure the reason they don't is because they can't - the playlist was mapped out long ago and there will be no deviations. The main DJ voice is some guy reportedly from Vancouver who records the voiceovers for this station and probably 40 others just like it. What he lacks in spontaneity he makes up for in snark.
mark-r··on It's a shame what's happened to radio
I believe talking through the intro was an actual skill that was taught to DJs, and the closer they could cut it the prouder they'd be. I've always hated it, and there have been occasions when I've switched stations because I couldn't take it anymore.
mark-r··on What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph
The founders of SO had a theory, that irrelevant noise was what drove a site into insignificance over time. Even if it was just polite chit-chat. They took pains to automate out as much as they could, and put in place a culture that actively discouraged and removed it when possible. That culture remains even though the founders are long gone.
mark-r··on What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph
There's no need (or reason) to blame AI. Between the culture of discouraging new questions as seen in the comments on this thread, and the fact that Google can easily find existing answers, the value of asking new questions has clearly gone way down.
mark-r··on Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment
The question applies more broadly than Union Pacific. Why hasn't this been an industry standard for 100 years?
mark-r··on Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't
It was such an amusing story I never thought to double check it. I'm sure I first heard it before Snopes existed. Thanks.
mark-r··on Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't
There's also absolutely no chance that a pure plastic box is going to have proper RF shielding. Good luck finding one with the regulatory marks that make it legal to sell.
mark-r··on Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't
I heard a story long ago when it was Japan, not China who was the source of cheap garbage. The town of Usa, Japan got a lot of manufacturing so they could all say "MADE IN USA".
mark-r··on Most rewrites serve the engineer, not the business
Given enough time, that describes every codebase that exists.
mark-r··on Most rewrites serve the engineer, not the business
I love Chesterton's Fence and haul it out whenever I can. Even though it's about 100 years old and the context is barely relevant anymore.
mark-r··on Libre Barcode Project
The LaserWriter was like something from the future compared to the Laserjet. I think they used the same Canon print engine, but the HP was far less sophisticated. It only used bitmap fonts, nothing scalable like Adobe's Type 1 for Postscript. Knuth probably used a supercomputer for his typesetting.
mark-r··on Libre Barcode Project
And if you don't know the origin of the phrase "lucky 10,000" then it's your lucky day too!

https://xkcd.com/1053/

mark-r··on Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off
Thanks for mentioning the actual frequency. The article says "long wave" many times without specifying what it actually means.
mark-r··on Libre Barcode Project
I once worked at a company that used a Code39 font cartridge in HP Laserjets. When HP stopped putting font cartridge slots in their printers, I had the task of intercepting print jobs and detecting the font selection sequence, then taking the text and converting it to a Code128 bitmap graphic. It wasn't hard at all, kind of fun actually.
mark-r··on Should you normalize RGB values by 255 or 256?
In 8-bit (per channel) color there is a standard for when the context is unspecified: sRGB. It was developed to match the characteristics of a "typical" display at the time of its creation. It won't be 100% accurate, but it represents the best you can assume. You're not forced to throw up your hands and give up.
mark-r··on Over 8M Thermos jars and bottles recalled after 3 people lost vision
Thermos bottles are relatively heavier to their contents than flimsier bottles. That goes double if they're only half full. I have a couple of the recalled bottles, so I just weighed one - 14 ounces empty.
mark-r··on Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?
So the lesson here is to wait for the black part to become available, then buy the beige or brown because you know their teething problems are gone?
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