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nullhole

1,503 karma · joined October 25, 2023

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nullhole··on Phone numbers for use in TV shows, films and creative works
Futurama used the alien alphabet to get around this because, as the commentary said, they didn't want to use another 555- number.
nullhole··on Disk Prices
This bit from the FAQ stuck out to me:

  Can you add complex filters and sorting?

  The intent of this site is to be a simple reference rather than a comprehensive search index. If you would like to do more complex analysis, try entering the following into Google Sheets: =IMPORTHTML("https://diskprices.com/", "table")
nullhole··on Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?
Maybe I'm prudish, but I really dislike the term 'enshittification'. It sounds ugly, and it makes what would otherwise be polite discussions vulgar.

'Degradation' seems to carry most (all?) of the same meaning and doesn't have those downsides.

nullhole··on Bach Cello Suites (2024)
Dvorak's cello concerto in b minor, Rostropovich vs Yo-Yo Ma

(I'm strongly in the Rostropovich camp, myself)

nullhole··on Shipping 100 hardware units in under eight weeks
'Sophies Choice(s)' is an inappropriate reference to throw around for cell phone hardware decisions imho.
nullhole··on QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
Also PROJ, the quiet bit closer to the core that does projections.

The sqlite db alone that's packaged with PROJ is a pillar of knowledge that one can only marvel at. The most authoritative and wide-ranging collection of projection/datum information I'm aware of.

https://www.osgeo.org/projects/proj/

nullhole··on Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency
> deleting accounts that haven’t logged into their service in some arbitrary amount of time

One year, to be exact: https://proton.me/support/inactive-accounts

nullhole··on The 16-year odyssey it took to emulate the Pioneer LaserActive
I have a Pioneer DVD player of the same vintage, and it's still working to this day. The remote is sturdy, too. Currently lives in a summer house but gets regular use.
nullhole··on Uncertain<T>
Lidar points aren't points, they're spheroids centred on the most likely location
nullhole··on CCTV footage captures video of an earthquake fault in motion
It's tracked by some national agencies, for example NZ has a deformation model. This link has a summary & links to some lectures about the deformation model: https://www.linz.govt.nz/guidance/geodetic-system/coordinate...

Metres of movement would definitely be significant for a lot of mapping use cases. This is why the time component of any coordinate measurement is important, both due to earthquakes as well as plain old plate motion.

nullhole··on ESA’s Moonlight programme: Pioneering the path for lunar exploration (2024)
That's roughly my understanding.

Worth noting too that your original, pre-LPS[1] position/orientation/trajectory is coming from other sensors with their own error bars, namely your IMU and whatever information the ground can glean from radio signals.

If your LPS accuracy is better than your IMU accuracy, I don't see why it wouldn't make sense to start using it once it's available.

[1] gotta call it something and GPS doesn't really fit

nullhole··on Why are there no good dinosaur films?
A lot of strong opinions in the article, but Ebert wasn't stupid and wrong. He said - correctly, I think - that there was a sense of awe and wonder at the first dino scene, with the Brontosauruses:

  "But consider what could have been. There is a scene very early in the film where Neill and Dern, who have studied dinosaurs all of their lives, see living ones for the first time. The creatures they see are tall, majestic leaf-eaters, grazing placidly in the treetops. There is a sense of grandeur to them. And that is the sense lacking in the rest of the film, which quickly turns into a standard monster movie, with screaming victims fleeing from roaring dinosaurs."

I mostly agree with him on that, and I say that as someone who deeply loves that movie.

*I'm sure I got the species slightly wrong, the long-necked extra-big ones

nullhole··on Europe's first geostationary sounder satellite is launched
I've worked with similar data in the past. As you say, nothing but respect for agencies that make such useful data publicly available.

Are there any other standout national agencies you've dealt with?

And, have you seen any degradation recently with NOAA data? NGS has always impressed me, but I've been worried about their future lately.

nullhole··on uv: An extremely fast Python package and project manager, written in Rust
It seems like that'd work as long as you restrict yourself entirely to the pip interface. Stray outside of that, and you start accumulating a real dependency on uv itself.
nullhole··on U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites
> “Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.” — John Sheehan, S.J.

Before Israel? Like before 1947? When half the place was under British rule and the oil industry was a fraction of what it was today?

That's about as useful as saying that before the atomic bomb, we had no enemies in the Middle East.

What a dishonest way to make such an inflammatory accusation.

nullhole··on Munich from a Hamburger's perspective
The entire country of Chile.

Türkiye's just a spoilsport in this game.

nullhole··on CCD co-inventor George E. Smith dies at 95
Some years ago I tried to get a crater on the Moon (or alternatively Mars) named after Willard Boyle. His (and Smith's) contribution to the practice of astronomy should be unquestionable.

The naming wasn't possible at the time because there is already a crater on the Moon named Boyle (after the British natural philosopher and chemist Robert Boyle, 1627-1691), and duplicate names aren't allowed. Use of the first name ('Willard') wasn't suggested at the time.

It may be time to re-submit the request, but for the name "Boyle-Smith", if combined names are allowed.

[0] https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/Categories "The Moon : Craters: Scientists, engineers, and explorers, as well as other persons connected with astronomy, planetary, or space research who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field. ... First names are used for small craters of special interest. "

nullhole··on Precision Clock Mk IV
Heh, my thoughts exactly!

Those chips are also useful for getting better positions from navigation signals. One could imagine using them to help filter out spoofed signals, for example.

nullhole··on Precision Clock Mk IV
They exist[0], but aren't cheap (~$1400 US/chip for the base model).

[0] https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/clock-and-timing/co...

nullhole··on The Who Cares Era
> Buybacks do not do that any more than dividends do.

There's at least a clear relationship if the dividend is reinvested.

If the dividend is spent, though, eg by someone in retirement, then they're different. Under buybacks, the retiree would have to sell some shares to get cash, and would eventually run out. Under dividends, the retiree would be able to continuously pocket money.

nullhole··on Denmark to raise retirement age to 70
> Does anyone know if there's any kind of metrics for healthspans? Meaning the "good" part of life before it's just doctors, medicine and retirement homes.

The metric I've come across is Quality Adjusted Life Years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

nullhole··on Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students
Probably this:

https://www.trumpstore.com/product/trump-2028-hat/

nullhole··on Why Bell Labs Worked
What’s the name of the other group?
nullhole··on I put sheet music into smart glasses [video]
I'd be neat to have information displayed while driving a car. A subset of information currently displayed on a dashboard would be an obvious first choice (speed for one).

You could also maybe perhaps tie in a car's knowledge of adjacent vehicles, which is something I've wanted for ages. Since some newer models have some level of awareness about the speed / distance to / relative location of cars around your car, you could eg overlay the speed/acceleration info onto adjacent cars, so you'd know if you'll need to pass or speed up. Seems at least possible since the glasses have awareness of your head's orientation, something missing from any existing windscreen-style HUD system.

nullhole··on How a single line of code could brick your iPhone
A soft brick would be a brick before being fired in an oven, no?

So maybe the term shouldn't be 'soft brick' but rather 'muddied'.

"That updated muddied my device, I had to clean it up with a restore"

nullhole··on I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
Well, PC also means Personal Computer, and letter also means element of alphabet, so it's not like there isn't room for confusion
nullhole··on Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash
I mean, the stunt they pulled to effectively release CS2 as free-to-use abandonware was pretty good. Still use it to this day, still works fine.
nullhole··on US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU
The bit I love is that countries with which the US has a trade surplus aren't getting the opposite of a tariff (a grant, I guess) on their imports to the US, they aren't getting zero tariffs on their imports to the US, they're getting 10% tariffs.
nullhole··on Why is C the symbol for the speed of light? (2004)
"How can I eat cookies when the theory of relativity has escaped me?!" is a pretty good line
nullhole··on Elon Musk's Starlink Expands Across White House Complex
Gift article (via bluesky): https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/elon-musk-sta...
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