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mustntmumble

127 karma · joined January 18, 2017

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mustntmumble··on Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?
I'll tell you what is NOT hot!

I have Phonak Audeos paired over bluetooth with my iPhone. A few years prior, I used to have Oticon, also paired with my iPhone.

With the Oticon, if I made a cellphone call, the iPhone would use the default iPhone microphone while the audio would stream to my hearing aids. It was good that way because in a noisy environment I could hold the iphone right up to my mouth and the other party would be able to hear what I was saying.

With the newer Phonaks, I was very disappointed to find that the new hearing aids would only use the microphone input that is built into the hearing aids themselves, and not the iPhone mic input. I discovered this when I realised that talking directly into iPhone mic did not make it any easier for the other party to hear me.

I complained to my Audiologist who explained that yes, the new hearing aids were copying the behaviour of Apple AirPods, which also have the mic input on the earpod itself, and that there was no way at all to configure the Phonaks to use the iPhone mic input instead.

Why is this a problem you might ask? Because my hearing aids are Behind The Ear (BTE) and thus the mic input on the hearing aid is a good 4 inches away from my face and thus my voice cannot possibly sound as clear as when I could speak directly into an iPhone mic.

When I next replace my hearing aids, I shall look for aids that do not mimic this crappy AirPods behaviour...

mustntmumble··on Ask HN: Anyone else use FreePascal as their low level language?
I learned to program in VAX Pascal, and didn't learn VAX C until later. I always found Pascal more intuitive, especially for string handling than C, and combined with the VAX/VMS System library and Runtime Libraries was able to build quite complex systems in Pascal. I found out later, after I joined DEC, that VAX Pascal was a popular Systems Programming language for a while.
mustntmumble··on [dead]
Incase anyone complains that a protest against genocide is not suitable material for HN, then heck, lets link to some cool tech that is involved:

https://globalsumudflotilla.org/tracker/

mustntmumble··on My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
To paraphrase Voltaire, I mean, Tallentyre, I mean, Hall, I may not agree with what you publish under the GPL but I defend to the death your right to assert the GPL...
mustntmumble··on Sixteen U.S. states still ban community-owned broadband networks
Huh, today I learned about Iron Rings! Thanks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

mustntmumble··on CheerpX is x86 virtualization to run executables and OS client-side
In addition to your points, I can't figure out the licensing - they state that CheerpX is a commercial product, but I am unable to find any information about paid or free usage tiers... Or maybe I just didn't dig deep enough...
mustntmumble··on HP bricks customers laptops with faulty automatic BIOS upgrade
Yes, and also they are not HP servers, they are HPE. HP split off the server division into HPE Hewlett Packard Enterprise some years ago. I have a very high regard for HPE products, not so much for HP products...
mustntmumble··on Cargo thefts spiked 68% in Q4, led by food and beverage freight
I agree! I had to drill down into the article a little and found this:

https://www.cargonet.com/news-and-events/cargonet-in-the-med...

To quote their media announcement:

CargoNet® has recorded 692 events across the United States and Canada in the third quarter of 2023, a 59% increase when compared to the third quarter of 2022. Like in the second quarter of 2023, much of the increase is due to ongoing shipment misdirection attacks, a kind of strategic cargo theft in which actors use stolen motor carrier and logistics broker identities to obtain freight and misdirect it from the intended receiver so they could steal it. In total, thieves stole over $31.1 million in shipments in the third quarter of 2023.

mustntmumble··on Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?
It does sound amateurish eh? I do most of my business logic inside Microsoft SQL Server Stored Procedure, and MS SQL just takes care of date pretty well.

But then, come to think of it, you don't need to use SQL to have good date logic. C# and Java both have excellent date handing libraries. I don't know about C++, but I'd be surprised if there was not a modern date library for C++, so I am of the opinion there should be no excuses for software not to work on the 29th of Feb.

mustntmumble··on Effective Rust
I would say Yes and No. I think Effective C++ was one of the first books to use this name, but now there is a publisher who uses "Effective xxxxx" in a series: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08R2PKL9M?binding=paperback&searc... but that publisher does not seem related to the original Effective C++ author...

Anyway the introduction to Effective Rust explains the choice of name in a way: https://effective-rust.com/intro.html

mustntmumble··on A push to bury a weedkiller’s link to Parkinson’s disease
https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-standards
mustntmumble··on Ask HN: Are people still using Pascal?
I'm somewhat bemused that your school ran the toy ISO Pascal on a VAX, because VMS came with its own version of Pascal! VAX/VMS Pascal had some cool language extensions that made it extremely suited and extremely popular for VAX/VMS Systems Programming! VAX Pascal supported native VMS strings intrinsically whereas in VAX C you had to use cumbersome string descriptors to pass strings from C to the VAX/VMS RTL or Starlet (System Libraries). Ah happy memories, I miss VAX/VMS...
mustntmumble··on Fyrox Game Engine 0.29
A good example of how a well chosen title can have an effect on HN. I've never heard of "Fyrox" so "Fyrox Engine" didn't trigger my attention at all. However I'll (almost) always click on a title that has "Game Engine" in it.
mustntmumble··on Porting OpenBSD to RISC-V ISA [pdf] (2020)
The title should probably include the date, 2020.

It is a well written paper: I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot from it. Well done to the authors!

A relevant link for the current status of OpenBSD on RISC-V would be: https://www.openbsd.org/riscv64.html

mustntmumble··on When Did the Medieval Period End?
William of Ockham (of Ockham's Razor fame), and an important advocate of Nominalism, died in 1347. Surely you're not suggesting that the Medieval Period ended then?
mustntmumble··on Ask HN: Was this a phishing attempt?
Phishing for what? The amazon.jobs website only requires a login to... itself: amazon.jobs. So it is not phishing for your amazon.com login...
mustntmumble··on Samsung announces M8 smart monitor series
I agree. My 80 yo mother in law has stopped using her Apple TV because she is simply unable (or perhaps unwilling) to learn how to use the remote and how to navigate the Apple TV menus. I'm baffled as the Apple TV UI seems intuitive to me, but after spending a lot of time with her, I've realised she is simply just not up to it. Her memory is shot, which doesn't help :-(
mustntmumble··on John Roach has died
I agree, until the early 80s, while most computer owners I knew in NZ had a ZX81, Spectrum, Vic20 or C64, but there were a few people I knew who had an Australian made TRS80 clone called the Dick Smith System 80 - https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/system-80/
mustntmumble··on PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption
Relevant link: https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/appli...

(expand the section titled Computers)

mustntmumble··on Truck Art in Pakistan (2018)
Here is another article about the painted trucks.

https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/200502/masterpieces.to...

I was trying to find out why people started building wooden crowns on top of the Bedford trucks in the first place, but no luck... Did the crowns come first, and then get painted, or did the art come first, and then people added the crowns in order to create more surface area for the art?

mustntmumble··on Hawaii’s Beaches Are Disappearing
In the long term, you are probably quite correct. In the short term though, the sea-walls give an impression of safety and protection, allowing the owners to sell their properties at great profit before the values collapse.

Here in New Zealand, waterfront property owners have been making legal attempts to block authorities from placing warning notices in the Land Information Memorandum (LIM) documents. These LIM documents are examined by lawyers when a property is being purchased, so to have a warning about your property in the LIM can seriously affect the value of your property.

mustntmumble··on Dune Official Trailer
In the book it described Paul feeling almost unbearable pain, almost to the point where he was pushed too far, but the Priestess turned off the gom-jabbar just in time. Wincing was the last of Pauls problems at that moment... Paul was not a cold robotic person - he was subject to great emotions all the way through the book.

Also: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QrCfivcQe48/hqdefault.jpg

mustntmumble··on America's window of opportunity to beat back Covid-19 is closing
You are entirely correct in what you say, and if this was just a virus that most people get sick then recover from, then I'd agree with the point you are making. But there are reports of lingering after-affects that suggest that many people may take years, if ever, to recover from Covid-19:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-dama...

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2020/07/06/months-after-infect...

So I think for that reason, maybe we should indeed have a "The world is ending" dialogue...

mustntmumble··on SCI Runs OpenVMS on x86-64
I am going to attempt to transcribe what was said about the Hobbyist Programme:

The last thing that I wanted to touch on has to do with a new community licensing programme. I have been with VSI almost 3 years and everywhere I've had a chance to talk to people or go to events, I am always asked about Hobbyist Licenses. I'm pleased to let you know we are introducing a new community license programme which will begin in the fall of 2020. As many of you are aware, HPE allowed those on the HPE Hobbyist License programme to make one additional request or purchase of the HP version of OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses towards the end of last year and with that programme winding down, we have gone ahead and decided to proceed with a similar programme called the Community Licensing Programme. The content available will be basically for Integrity users and for Alpha users. There will not be anything for VAX users, no VAX licenses. There will be some requirements placed upon the user in terms of agreeing to our end user license agreement, our EULA, and also the stipulation that these are not to be used for commercial gain or for commercial use and there will also be some limitations in terms of what the users get but we believe it will be robust enough for you to do the things that you wish to do. So again, we're delighted to announce this programme and delighted to be working with you for all of these changes that are going on and we're excited. We appreciate you, we appreciate the business that we receive, and the good news is that we are continuing to grow. And also regarding the community license we do anticipate the same for x86. So with that I would like to now turn the time over to Mr. Clair Grant. ...

(sorry for any errors or omissions, please do not regard my poor attempt at transcription as being accurate, I urge you to listen to this section yourself, it starts at about 7 mins 50 seconds)

Personally I'm very sad that VAX licenses will not continue to be provided, as I love the VAX architecture, and have great nostalgic fondness for it.

mustntmumble··on Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live
Scientific American is a magazine for the general public that have a high school level education in science. It is not a peer reviewed scientific journal, thus the SA articles do not have the same level of footnotes and references that a scholarly journal might. Having said that, I think on balance, the quality of journalism in SA is excellent, thanks in part to highly skilled and qualified editors.

Anyway, this article by the "discoverer of the Solar Wind" (maybe validator is a better word), Eugene Parker, is relevant to this discussion: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~sshepherd/research/Shielding/docs...

mustntmumble··on The Knapsack Problem Is All Around Us
Do you, or any other HN readers, know of any articles on how to solve the problem of working out the best Point of Sale checkout promotional offer?

If I have a set of retail promotional offers going such as:

Offer 1: buy two shirts from this set of shirts, and get a 50% discount

Offer 2: buy a shirt from this set of shirts, a jacket from this set of jackets, and a tie from this set of ties all for a set price of $99

Offer 3: all ties are on sale at half price

I'm trying to figure out if the google libraries linked above can be used to solve this problem, but I can't figure out how to convert the offers into values that can be used by the google library...

mustntmumble··on An emulator for a Sun 2 workstation
Awesome, now I'd love to be able to run (via emulator) a NeWS (Network extensible Window System) (networked display postscript) workstation... Google searches have turned up nothing...
mustntmumble··on Screen Recording on macOS Catalina
I'm sure Ben Franklin had Catalina in mind when he said "Those Who Sacrifice OS Security For UI Convenience Deserve Neither."

Seriously though, I'm willing to put up with mildly inconvenient UI changes (that diminish over time) in exchange for a more secure operating system.

mustntmumble··on The rise of solar is ‘jeopardising the grid’ and it's a lesson for Australia
I also have never driven across the Nullabor. Would you kindly elaborate on what you mean?
mustntmumble··on Von 4 bis 17 Euro: So teuer ist Wohnen in Deutschland wirklich
It is not entirely clear to me, from the article - is the rent figure specified on a per month basis?
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