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pfalafel

191 karma · joined November 9, 2018

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pfalafel··on If You Want to Leave Twitter Because of Elon Musk, These Are Your Options
There are no options. It is as if the world water supply is suddenly owned by a guy you cannot trust. This is bad.
pfalafel··on Elon Musk wants to own Twitter to protect his ‘freedom’, not everyone else’s
Right after the story broke that @ElonJet denied Elon's $5k offer he started buying up Twitter shares. https://twitter.com/TweeterTweaker/status/151146344287544115...
pfalafel··on Ask HN: How do you structure your to-do lists?
- My to do list lives in a single text file.

- There is a dashed line below the items that have been completed.

-----------------------------------------------

- Below that line are the remaining tasks

- in the order I want to tackle them.

- I spend a lot of time looking at these items.

- I keep reordering the items while trying to think of ways to solve them.

- When a task is finished, it moves up above the line.

- Over time, the line is slowly bubbling down.

- Yet, the list below keeps growing.

pfalafel··on Francis Fukuyama’s Defense of Liberalism
This is disappointing and it changes how I think of HN.
pfalafel··on iPod Classic with Bluetooth Audio and Wireless Charging
Love it!!!
pfalafel··on You Hate Contemporary Architecture (2017)
Upvoted. I guess the author could do another great article, claiming the exact opposite.
pfalafel··on Show HN: Pretty Good Audio – WebCall Telephony Server
This WebRTC telephony solution offers high quality audio. When I first posted about this in March [1], it was only possible for others to call me. Now everybody can register unique phone numbers and receive calls from anybody else. WebCall basically mimics a small telco now. You can use my WebCall server, or run your own. If you do this, please let others use your server as well. Traffic and load are really low. It is possible to host up to 30K concurrent users on a 1GB server. But you can also limit the number of users and run WebCall "on the side", like an e-mail server.

I will be here again at 21:00 Berlin (3pm NY) to answer any questions. In the meantime, why not register a (burner) phone number and post it so others can call you? You can always fetch a new phone number when you need one.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26572925

pfalafel··on If AT&T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google
> It kind of ruined it for me to have suggestions like this that were totally impractical with 1920s technology.

This text is not about what could or couldn't be done 100 years ago. It is about today.

pfalafel··on Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?
Two runners overtake the field at incredible speed, only to cross the finish line at exactly the same time. Would also raise eyebrows.
pfalafel··on Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?
Why are gravitational waves limited by the same speed limit? There is no mass traveling in that case, I suppose.
pfalafel··on Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
Just came by to say that I still use Unity.
pfalafel··on IPCC: Sixth Assessment Report
World leaders will fail to honor their climate pledges unless they make "immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions" to greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.dw.com/en/ipcc-report-climate-change/a-58801312
pfalafel··on The Nightmare That Is a Reality
The essay is from 1944. The page is from 2021. It contains a discussion of the essay.
pfalafel··on Gravitational waves confirm one of Stephen Hawking’s black hole rules
I still like to know if hitting "the core part" of a black hole will be like hitting a super massive brick wall.

In other words: Does the massive part have a dimension (like the surface area has), or is it all in a dot?

pfalafel··on Tank Man
Hey Bing, where is this supposed to end?
pfalafel··on W.G. Sebald – The Posthumous Sublime (2006)
One detail maybe worth mentioning. Sebald wrote The Emigrants in German. But he also contributed to the English translation. Sebald left Germany and moved to England in 1966 when he was 22. By the time The Emigrants was translated to English, he has already lived in the UK for close to 30 years.
pfalafel··on W.G. Sebald – The Posthumous Sublime (2006)
This article (first published in The New Republic) is really great. It contains a lot of detail about Sebald's life and all the things that are often said about him. These kind of articles are supposed to create an appetite for the author and his books. So after reading it, you are hopefully convinced of reading something from the author itself.

But I don't think his life says anything about the quality of his writing. Here on HN I will try to convince you by pointing out that Sebald is writing the most beautiful code. Skip all articles and go read one of his books. For instance The Emigrants. You can read the long articles about his life afterwards.

pfalafel··on Ask HN: What is a good fictional universe to get immersed in?
Fox News
pfalafel··on What should the next chat app look like?
A single ID, identifying all your communications, is certainly not ideal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998245
pfalafel··on Telephony Without Phone Numbers
Let's call it super audio-only. When you talk to someone on WebCall, their voice will be clearer and more present than it is in most real-life situations. This alone is worth everything.

But there are many other aspects. Whenever you call someone on their phone, you interrupt that person in the middle of something. When you set up a call with Duo, you give the person a bit of lead time. I love this.

In the future, telephony will be much better than what it is today. And it won't be video.

pfalafel··on Telephony Without Phone Numbers
I am really sorry for this. Maybe you have a second ISP from which you could try? On my end all systems are bright green.
pfalafel··on Telephony Without Phone Numbers
This sounds like our DDoS protection. I have just relaxed the criteria. Hope it is better now.
pfalafel··on Telephony Without Phone Numbers
I am doing some calls in parallel. For me it seems to be working. Can you describe what happened in your case? Edit:typos
pfalafel··on Telephony Without Phone Numbers
I am the WebCall developer. I can see a number of people are using the service right now. However, I can not see what is happening on the P2P links. If you run into issues, please let me know. Same if you think there is anything missing.
pfalafel··on WebRTC 1.0 telephony app using “hifi” Opus codec with up to 500kbs bitrate
OpusFAQ: "Opus scales from about 6 to 512 kb/s" - https://wiki.xiph.org/OpusFAQ#In_what_ways_is_Opus_optimized...?

Edit: quote from section 1.14 (direct link does not work bc of the question mark in their section ID)

pfalafel··on WebRTC 1.0 telephony app using “hifi” Opus codec with up to 500kbs bitrate
I made a lot of phone calls tonight. Two quick observations: 1) Many people think I'm a bot. And they want to test me with smart questions in order to find out if I'm a bot. How do you prove that you are not a bot? 2) It seems that aprox 90% of the calls are getting relayed. I expected more calls to come through as P2P. The audio quality is still excellent in most cases. If both sides use a headset, it is almost better than sitting next to each other. This is much better than normal telephony.
pfalafel··on WebRTC 1.0 telephony app using “hifi” Opus codec with up to 500kbs bitrate
I think the 500 limit is a max bitrate setting, independent of any specific codec. If you deliver audio+video you will need to consider exactly how much of the bandwidth you use for audio. But when doing audio only, simply using the highest possible bitrate seems to be a reasonable choice. In most cases the network will set limited.
pfalafel··on WebRTC 1.0 telephony app using “hifi” Opus codec with up to 500kbs bitrate
Your phone number is not getting leaked by an WebRTC app. Definitely not. Your IP address might, in case a true P2P connection is established.
pfalafel··on WebRTC 1.0 telephony app using “hifi” Opus codec with up to 500kbs bitrate
I configured the max possible bitrate in the spec. I wanted to find out what is being used in the end. And how it sounds. Most people are calling without a microphone. Please use a headset.
pfalafel··on WebRTC 1.0 telephony app using “hifi” Opus codec with up to 500kbs bitrate
No 3rd party services involved at all. All server components are running on a single server of mine. Sorry, no source code released yet.
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