neotek

I saw the mechanism in person recently on a trip to Greece and it was a strangely electric experience. That such a thing could have been made two thousand years ago is hard to believe. It seems almost supernatural, an artefact of time travel or something. I watched it for more than an hour, but it didn't do anything.

Seems to me there are quite a lot of people for whom the cruelty of what they're doing really is the only point, whatever other arguments they might make.

That's called the naturalistic fallacy, and there's a clue in the name that should indicate how reliable an argument it is.

And re "nutritionally inferior", every dietetics and nutrition peak body on the planet agrees that a fully vegan diet is suitable for all people throughout all stages of life. In fact, billions of people have already lived perfectly normal, perfectly healthy vegan and vegetarian lives throughout history. If your diet — any diet — is nutritionally incomplete it's because you made the wrong choices.

"Now" as in "all of those things are true now, but they weren't when this project started ten years ago."

How do you figure? Is distrust of the CIA anti-Americanism?

First thing I used to install on macOS was Binaryage's superb asepsis utility, which intercepts the creation of .ds_store files and redirects them all to a local container folder, until SIP killed its development.

It always seemed suspicious to me that Apple, a company that is famously obsessed with UI/UX, would settle on such a ridiculous process for storing file metadata.

So many fond memories of building eggdrop bots with Tcl scripts in the good old days of IRC. Trivia games, quote dbs, channel management, nick squatting, all sorts of shit.

WACUP can!

Seconding WLED, it's fantastic. Super easy to install and operate, compatible with HomeAssistant, the built in effects are great, the web app / native mobile apps are powerful but straightforward, and the community offers plenty of help and other resources.

You missed the point spectacularly.

"Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?-Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have....

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."

— Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45

I did the same thing, only my program pretended to be a DOS-based Novell Netware login screen.

It was just a simple QBASIC program (that's all that was available on the Computer Room machines) running under my own login, which would write usernames and passwords to a text file in my user directory. I figured that I'd harvest a few passwords until someone got frustrated enough to call for the IT admin, at which point he would try to log in and reboot the PC when it failed, apparently "fixing" the problem and erasing any evidence of my dastardly crime.

I was right, and for a few glorious days I got away with it... until one particular arsehole picked on my best friend during recess, and I used his stolen credentials to log into his account and trash his files.

Long story short, I ended up getting expelled, which by a curious confluence of events put me on an unorthodox path that completely changed my life. Funny how things turn out.

>pman

Oh man. I didn't know just how badly I needed this in my life, thank you!

Why does it seem like every single crypto company inevitably engages in shady business practices and ends up collapsing in a scandal? How hard can it be to just make a shitload of money taking your skim from trades or lending at appropriate rates for an appropriate return?

Microsoft puts ads in the file explorer, pre-loads its OS with bloatware and unremovable (other than by using third-party hacks) system tray icons for software nobody wants or cares about, spies on absolutely everything all of the time, and sometimes surreptitiously re-enables all of the above when you've gone out of your way to disable them - and it's Apple you think is pushing their services into your face all the time?

I feel like Windows users have become hostages without realising it, trapped in an endless cycle of abuse designed to mentally beat them into submission until they just stop noticing the horror of what Windows has become. Even the UI is an insane hodge-podge of bizarre interaction paradigms and half-finished flows that make it seem like everyone on the design team suffers from split personality disorder.

If it's what you have to use because you need Windows-only tools or you have games that won't run under Proton or WINE or whatever then I get it, but I will never understand people who consciously choose to use such a hateful, abusive OS.

And for what it's worth, I can't think of a time that macOS has ever mentioned Apple Music or Apple Arcade or any other Apple service other than iCloud to me, and even then it's only been when I've run out of cloud storage space and needed to upgrade anyway.

>Apple is one of the world's biggest proliferators of e-waste through indirect means.

This seems like a very disingenous way of saying that Apple is one of the largest companies on the planet and sells hundreds of millions of devices a year.

Given that Apple regularly supports devices almost a decade old with firmware updates, has one of the most aggressive environmental agendas in the industry, and has invested billions of dollars in recycling programs, I would hazard a guess and say that on an adjusted basis they probably compare very favourably to competitors like Samsung and other OEMs.

>USB-A is the de-facto standard for thumb drives. Are we all just supposed to throw them away overnight because Apple blessed us with computers without USB-A ports?

You're upset about having to reach seven inches further to plug in a USB drive. If that's enough to cause you to throw all of your thumb drives away then I'd say that reflects more on you than on Apple.

>Or, they'll sell you a dongle for $19 which can be had on Aliexpress for $0.75.

There's a considerable engineering (and therefore cost) difference between a dongle that carries all the required electrical certifications, and a 75c Chinese firestarter that stands as much chance of damaging your computer as enhancing it, but that's moot anyway since nobody is forcing you to buy the Apple-made adapter in the first place.

>Would it have killed them to throw an extra USB-A 3.x port on the nearly empty front panel?

Given the form factor, quite possibly. It isn't as simple as just cutting out a slot and sticking a connector in, you need to route that connecter internally and find space on the logic board for the supporting circuitry, which has all sorts of difficult implications for the board layout.

And for what? How many thumb drives do you think the average person needs to plug in at any given moment? Why do you assume that your extremely narrow use-case is so important that it must be given the highest possible priority for Apple's engineers to meet?

The overwhelmingly vast majority of consumers, even pro consumers, will do just fine plugging their thumb drives into the back of the very small box sitting in front of them, or plugging in a USB hub to one of the USB-C ports on the front. Why add complexity and cost to solve a non-problem for a tiny subset of users who, if they're anything like you, were never going to buy an Apple product irrespective of what ports it has on the front?

Some people on HN start their link indexes at 1, some start them at 0. I, an intellectual, start them at -1.

Oh man, what a blast from the past. Another great site in the same vein was Acts of Gord[-1], which followed the exploits of a used game store manager. Similarly semi-apocryphal and perhaps a little overstated, but highly enjoyable.

[-1] http://www.actsofgord.com/

Blender is truly one of the most incredible pieces of software I’ve ever used in my entire life. The user interface may look daunting at first glance, but it’s actually incredibly intuitive to use and contains a host of amazingly powerful features that I desperately wish would find their way into every other program I use.

For example, absolutely any aspect of the interface can be bound to any key combination simply by right clicking on the control and choosing “assign keyboard shortcut”. You can adjust values, check and uncheck boxes, execute any menu command, trigger any action, and reconfigure it all on the fly in whichever way suits your workflow in that particular moment.

Another example: every internal function is searchable and executable by hitting F3 and typing a fragment of the code path / menu item title / function name into the box provided. Can’t remember how to slide a vertex along an edge? Just hit F3 and type “ve sl” and the function you’re looking for will be right there at the top of the list.

And another example: every input field can derive its value from simple Python calculations, called Drivers. Let’s say you have a 300 frame animation and you want to change the strength of a mesh deformation from 0 to 1 based on the current frame number. Rather than keyframing anything, you could simply enter ‘#frame / 300” into the deformation modifier’s strength input field and Blender will take care of the calculations for you. You can reference other input values by right clicking on that input and choosing “copy data path”, which will copy the internal reference to that particular piece of data to the clipboard so you can use it to power another input’s driver. So for the above example, if you weren’t sure how many frames your final animation was going to be and you didn’t want to have to go back and change the “300” every time you changed the animation length, you could simply copy the data path for the “frame end” input field and use that in the calculation instead, ie ‘#frame / bpy.context.scene.frame_end’ (that may not be the exact correct path, I’m describing this from memory just as an example of the concept). Every variable is exposed and can be referenced by almost any other variable. If your Driver is more complex than a one liner, you can open a fully featured driver editor window which lets you set and name variables within the driver’s scope, describe parametric functions, and tie multiple drivers together across multiple objects.

Everything is extensible, everything is controllable, everything is connected to everything else — the power it gives you is simply unparalleled, I’ve never used any software of any kind that even came close to putting this much raw control into the user’s hand.

What’s your use case, if you don’t mind me asking?

Parler has (had) ten million accounts, over half of which were considered active, that’s hardly a small number. And the big and obvious difference between Parler and Facebook is that Parler wilfully ignored disgusting and credible calls to violence, including direct threats against elected representatives and ordinary voters alike. Attempting to draw a parallel between them is disingenuous at best.

Healing requires you to eliminate the disease, you don’t just forgive the cancer and assume it won’t spread.

Peacefully knocking together a working set of gallows, complete with noose.

You may know this already, but just in case: the iOS camera app has a QR reader built in, just point the camera at a valid code and it’ll automatically display a tooltip containing the URL which will open in Safari if you tap it.

>The whole copyright strike system is in addition to the DMCA, and is part of what was negotiated with the labels (in addition to ContentID).

That's completely false, and all you need do is click the links I provided to see that it is. Copyright strikes are only issued in conjunction with DMCA takedown requests, Content ID does not and cannot cause you to receive strikes, and does not and cannot shut your channel down.

>Also, what are you quoting "with no recourse" from?

From a parent comment at the start of this thread, which I've only now realised wasn't made by you, so please ignore the phrase "as you suggest" and focus on the substantive portions of my comment that address the inaccuracies in your claim.

>No, the DMCA allows for counter claiming and it not being an issue. Google's policies go beyond what's required for the DMCA, and stem from the early several billion dollar copyright lawsuit they settled out of court with the major labels fairly early on. It's an extralegal system negotiated between Google and the labels.

You're conflating two different things, perhaps intentionally.

Content ID, which is the additional system you're referring to, does not and cannot cause an account to be closed[1]. If content in your video is flagged by Content ID, all that happens is that the advertising revenue from your video is directed to the purported copyright holder, or the video is removed from YouTube. You do not receive any strikes and your channel is not limited in any way.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/copyright/#...

Copyright strikes[2] are a completely different kettle of fish, and Google is bound by the DMCA to immediately and without question remove the allegedly infringing content. In fact, they are expressly forbidden by law to perform any sort of investigation before making the content unavailable or they risk losing immunity under the safe harbour provisions.

And far from accepting DMCA claims "with no recourse" as you suggest, they openly publish a variety of training materials to teach users exactly how to file a counter-claim[3], and they routinely accept those counter-claims and restore the content.

[2] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2814000

[3] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807684

>Can you give an example of someone they've sued for making false claims?

Christopher Brady.

https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-20-youtube-lawsuit-false-ta...

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/15/20915688/youtube-copyrig...

As a retailer who has been stung by this bullshit with PayPal many times in the past, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the payment doesn't go through ever, at all.

It isn't flagged and reviewed, it's just outright rejected with a cryptic error message indicating that someone, somewhere breached PayPal's terms of service. No money leaves the customer's account, no money arrives in the vendor's account; the process simply fails.

The app is well worth downloading, and given how much time I've wasted just futzing around in it, I was more than happy to pay a few bucks to unlock the additional features. Really superb.

If that's the stuff they're willing to openly brag about, it makes me wonder what dirtier things they're doing behind closed doors.

The last time I looked, the money Apple earned from the entirety of the MFi program — not just cables, but every single third-party Apple accessory on Earth — made up less than one half of one percent of their annual revenue. It's such a vanishingly small part of their business.

It's far more likely that the purpose of MFi is to make sure that any officially licensed accessories aren't pieces of shit that Apple will cop the blame for. Most users aren't going to blame the cable manufacturer when their phone won't charge properly, since the vast majority of people have no idea about the complexities of modern charging protocols, so they're going to mistakenly think the phone is at fault and blame Apple.