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nullhole

1,503 karma · joined October 25, 2023

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nullhole··on Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin
Fix?
nullhole··on Shade Map
Factor of 3 sounds like a feet-metres unit error
nullhole··on 2026 Eclipse Webcams
What are you talking about? Where on earth does taking an unplanned day off work get you jail time?
nullhole··on NASA figured out how to keep its Voyager 2 probe running for another year
Not a very good title, given that the subtitle for the very same article gives the important context that "Voyager 2 would have had to shut down one of its last remaining instruments later this year, until NASA made some power changes."

(as an aside, a celebratory coffee mug for when Voyager 1 finally gets to the 1-light-day-from-earth mark would be very popular, in case anyone from the JPL store is reading this. 'Yesterday's sunrise, today!')

nullhole··on Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick
Yeah, mine are the AP ('professional') class ones.

What matters is the amortized cost per year, I think - more expensive up front but cheaper in the long run.

nullhole··on Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick
I mean, not all of them?

Mine's a fancy-pants Stihl battery mower, but it works quite well and has been doing so without problem since I bought it ~4 years ago. The other battery stuff from the same brand (trimmer, chainsaw, kombi-tool) have the same story.

nullhole··on The case for physical media ownership
> I disagree with the interpretation that it needs to be held physically. Digital ownership is still ownership. I go out of my way to find music on Bandcamp, games on GOG, and rip movies myself using MakeMKV.

Files on a hard disk that you own are still files that you physically own. The only difference between those files and, say, a DVD, is that the encoding is more space-efficient.

nullhole··on The war on terror primed America for autocracy
My first reaction is that the step to torture was a step backwards, a disregard for what we've learned about the efficacy of torture in getting reliable information, and an embrace of sadistic revenge as an end in itself as state policy.

It's the state policy part that I find the worst. Individual acts of senseless violence you can blame on the individual; state acts that in retrospect are senseless violence you can - in some cases - blame on what was known at the time.

To purposefully do that when you now it's useless is a rare evil; to declare it's useful when you know it's useless is an Orwellian, totalitarian turn.

And it was torture, not 'labelled' 'torture'. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, high-volume constant music, others I'm glad I don't know about. It was torture.

nullhole··on The war on terror primed America for autocracy
The OK-ing of torture was a clear step into the totalitarian camp and a clear breach with justice, liberalism, and decency.
nullhole··on Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
Why on earth? Because I love that TV series, and the passage from that TV series is what comes to mind for me.
nullhole··on Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
The passage that comes to mind for me whenever this idea comes up, from the Brett version of the Holmes story "The Dancing Men":

  H: So, Watson.
  W: Hmm.
  H: You do not propose to invest in South African securities?
  W: How on earth do you know that?
  H: Now, confess, you are utterly taken aback.
  W: I am!
  H: I should make you sign a paper to that effect.
  W: Why?
  H: Because in a few minutes you will say it is all so absurdly simple.
  W: I should say nothing of the kind!
  H: You see, my dear Watson, it is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though possibly a meretricious, effect.
  H: I can tell by an inspection of the groove between your left forefinger and thumb, that you have decided not to invest your small capital in the gold fields.
  W: I can see no connection.
  H: Very likely not; but I can quickly give you a close connection.
  H: Here are the missing links in the very simple chain: You had chalk between your forefinger and thumb when you returned from the club last night. You put chalk there when you play billiards, to ease the cue. You never play billiards except with Thurston. Now, Thurston, you told me, four weeks ago, had an option on some South African security which expired in a month, and which he desired you to share with him. Your checkbook is locked in my drawer, and you have not asked for the key. So, you do not propose to invest your money in that manner.
  W: How absurdly simple!
  H: Quite so. Every problem is absurdly simple when it is explained to you.
nullhole··on Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion
s/perpetual/permanent

perpetual has pejorative connotations and only started appearing in marketing speak when software rental became the new business model.

nullhole··on A fundamental principle of aeronautical engineering has been overturned
Not to be that guy, but 38-53um is 1 order of magnitude smaller than 200um
nullhole··on .NET (OK, C#) finally gets union types
What types of problems are better solved in F# than C#?

Is having a combination of F# and C# in a single codebase possible? Is it recommended?

nullhole··on The lasting influence of Netscape Time
He's redirecting requests coming from hn to a photo of a hairy ball in an egg holder with some mildly insulting text, and setting a cookie so the redirect happens outside of hn links as well. The text even comes with a tone of the moral high ground, so you know he's not being an asshole, just "being honest".

It's fair to say he's not interested in having his views known to readers here.

https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png

https://web.archive.org/web/20260512201857/https://cdn.jwz.o...

nullhole··on 'No way to prevent this,' says only package manager where this regularly happens
> large portion of the time, the maintainer notices what happened a few hours later.

So add it at the package manager level instead of the user level then?

nullhole··on The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)
There's also clearly a voiceover, they must lose points for that too. /s
nullhole··on Programming Still Sucks
> When the applause fades, my employees, or reports, or "my team" when I'm feeling jolly

was good too

nullhole··on The Vatican's Website in Latin
Well at least the spelled 'appendix' correctly
nullhole··on Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March
> You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.

What's the other way around? "Updates decide when you happen"?

Sounds like part of a Yakov Smirnoff joke.

nullhole··on The Classic American Diner
One neat inflation calculation I stumbled on is that inflation since 1945 to today is ~20x, so, from the film-noir era to today,

5¢ = $1

25¢ = $5

$1 = $20

$5 = $100

nullhole··on Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay
I have a mixed opinion of unicode, but it's hard not to love the box-drawing / block-element chars.
nullhole··on Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
"Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something" - Mitch Hedberg
nullhole··on The Importance of Being Idle
It's hard to escape the tick-tock of time slipping away, even if there's no clock in the room
nullhole··on The Importance of Being Idle
There's a Far Side cartoon in that

"Oh boy, look at that all that melting ice cream.. I hope he sits on our anthill!"

nullhole··on OpenGridWorks: Electricity infrastructure, mapped
Related, mapping of OSM infrastructure data:

https://openinframap.org/

nullhole··on Astral to Join OpenAI
That's right. You can also introduce or correct information with a point-of-information, at least as I was taught them.

Other types of interjection are point of personal privilege (eg seat is uncomfortable) and point of inquiry (clarification).

I came across them in the debating world. Point of information can be pretty effective if you're able to make a statement of fact contradicting something the other side declared.

See also: https://senate.oregonstate.edu/sites/senate.oregonstate.edu/...

nullhole··on Astral to Join OpenAI
> As a point of order: Astral did not, in fact, burn through its VC money.

That's a point of information, not a point of order.

nullhole··on Strikes in Middle East since 28th Feb in real time
"What fools we are to live in a generation for which war is a computer game for our children and just an interesting little Channel 4 news item"

- Tony Benn, MP, in the UK parliament, speaking against a resolution authorizing bombing of Iraq in 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfXmpJRZPYI

nullhole··on Global warming has accelerated significantly
Wildfires have to be a big one as well, the time range and geographic range is growing on a seemingly yearly basis.

Related, home insurance cost increases (and, in places, unavailability) from wildfires & worsening storms hits the pocketbook directly.

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