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purplejacketon iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus

I'm still rocking the iPhone 6. Thanks though.

purplejacketon The Princeton Companion to Mathematics [pdf]

This book is brilliant. An overview of all of mathematics, insofar as that's possible. High quality articles. For instance Terence Tao wrote the entry on Compactness and Compactification (topology/analysis) among others. I've had the print volume for a few years now, highly recommended.

purplejacketon Threads hits 5M signups in the first four hours

Top comment.

purplejacketon Little Free Library

I hired a handy man to build one of these in front of my house a year ago and it has been a great project. In fact, I use it as a motivation to go out on bike rides in the city. What I do is take a chunk of books from my place, go to the next mini-library swap them for a chunk of those books, go to the next mini library, rinse and repeat. I've become familiar with about a dozen of these within a few miles. I know which ones have books that move quickly, which ones are slow, which ones are sources (oversupply), which ones are sinks (high demand for books there). Which ones are good to bring kids books to, etc. I've also found local bookstores where I can get extra free books. I often strike up interesting conversations with people. For example, one time I met a guy who ended up giving me half of his entire book collection because he was moving to the country and couldn't keep everything. It took a while for me to get that collection to the neighboring libraries, there were so many!

Pointers: If you're going to build one of these, don't make them too deep! A foot deep is actually sufficient, I think. Not more than 14 inches. Multiple levels are great. My favorite mini library has 4 levels: a pretty tall bottom level -- some books are tall! -- and then gradually shorter as you get to the top one which you can fit paperbacks into. Also, quantity: It's nice to have a little free space so people feel they can leave books. You can put one or more books facing forward so the full front cover is viewable. This also makes the library more attractive. Too many books is not good. Then it's hard move them around to find things. Also, a jumble is no good, I like to keep it pretty well arranged. If there are extra books, I just bring them inside for my next bike trip.

Have fun!

purplejacketon Gravity Probe B

Wikipedia: «At the time of their manufacture, the gyroscopes were the most nearly spherical objects ever made (two gyroscopes still hold that record, but third place has been taken by the silicon spheres made by the Avogadro project). Approximately the size of ping pong balls, they were perfectly round to within forty atoms (less than 10 nm). If one of these spheres were scaled to the size of the Earth, the tallest mountains and deepest ocean trench would measure only 2.4 m (8 ft) high.»

I wonder how this compares to the sphericity of a neutron star.

purplejacketon Ask HN: What's your favorite board game?

Yup, I agree. Chess, full stop.

purplejacketon Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Flive...

Ooops.

purplejacketon Scott Ritter account suspended from Twitter

Also this coverage: https://thepressunited.com/updates/twitter-bans-us-marine-fo... Excerpt: "You’re suspending a decorated Marine Corps veteran and former chief UN weapons inspector who bravely warned the world about the Bush [administration’s] Iraq WMD lies. Silencing voices of dissent will make your platform un-usable"

purplejacketon Scott Ritter account suspended from Twitter

Some coverage of this story here, including an analysis of the photographs from Bucha: https://techstartups.com/2022/04/06/twitter-suspended-accoun...

purplejacketon Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK

Looks like UK could learn a thing or two from the United States based on this story. Damn, I never thought I'd see myself saying _that_ .

purplejacketon Hackers gaining power of subpoena via fake “emergency data requests”

Didn't we see this ago on Mr. Robot? https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/7/12835320/mr-robot-hack-rep...

purplejacketon Apple silently fixes iOS zero-day, asks bug reporter to keep quiet

Richest company in the world.

purplejacketon Tesla Autopilot Hits a Deer [video]

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding me?

purplejacketon Masked email from Fastmail and 1Password

Fastmail: Couldn't you give a 2 or 3 paragraph summary of your service instead of this silly "easy to read" format that seems all the rage for web pages over the last 10+ years? I mean, fastmail of all companies should get this. I have to come to hacker news to actually understand what is being offered, rather than some glitzy marketing haiku that could mean any number of things.

purplejacketon Apple proposes adding "model" element to HTML that displays 3D content

I want a <latex> element.

purplejacketon Defender (1981) by Eugene Jarvis and Sam Dicker

I wonder how hard it would be to code an AI to play this game.

purplejacketon Defender (1981) by Eugene Jarvis and Sam Dicker

Here you go, all space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7SOiKahy_k

Definitely not easier. But good practice.

purplejacketon Defender (1981) by Eugene Jarvis and Sam Dicker

I like Stargate too. In fact these days it's the game I'm playing. Though I go back and forth. For me, back in the day, I went from Stargate to Defender because the 7/11 got rid of their Defender and the Safeway on the next block got a Stargate :-)

What I noticed about Stargate back then, coming from Defender, was that it was easier to shoot things. I think this was because the Stargate chip was an upgrade--the faster CPU wouldn't steal time slices from me at odd moments, so the game was more predictable. I remember Eugene Jarvis and Sam Dicker talking about the Defender->Stargate upgrade process at the California Extreme arcade convention in 2014. Stargate is a fun game, and these days I play more casually, not really trying to perfect my skill.

As someone else in the comments noted: Defender is more raw. It's like those characters from the older version of the Matrix: Difficult to kill. It's like Yngwie Malmsteen's demo tape before his first album. There is a basic visceral appeal to it.

purplejacketon Defender (1981) by Eugene Jarvis and Sam Dicker

I love this video game. For a brief moment, about four years back, I was the top player on the Williams Defender Players Unite facebook group at hard difficulty settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iEqoYW013E

And, for the hackers, here's a version of the Defender ROM, modified by a programmer named Jim Bowley, to render an impossibly difficult version of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhZlOwEvd5M

The above is running on JROK -- http://www.jrok.com/ -- custom silicon to emulate the original chip (much better than MAME), it's contained in an original cabinet, with an original monitor, and a custom built control panel, designed to be as authentic to the original as possible, and hand-built by Jim Bowley https://www.jbgaming.co.uk .

Here's a player, mikeville66, whose video inspired me to get better. This is maximum difficulty on the first-run ROM chips, the infamous Green ROMs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrkx6vuiMrE

And if you're interested in an instructional video of how to play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PEpDMgR9D0

Defender was a big game back in the day, grossing about a billion dollars worldwide.

purplejacketon WeWork Parent Weighs Slashing Its Valuation in Half

Can people please stop putting this paywall crap up here on hacker news?

purplejacketon Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound

I can do better than skim reading. I just save to Pocket.

purplejacketon De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

Today I shed tears for beloved De Beers :-(

purplejacketon New York Times CEO: Print journalism has maybe another 10 years

How many more years do vinyl LPs have?

purplejacketon Light Traffic

For fucks sake, where are the pedestrians??

purplejacketon Ask HN: I have a job; should I still go on Patreon for free open-source stuff?

I agree. When I was in political activism circles we made CDs and pamphlets and such which we would sell during events. We charged maybe $5 for a CD, a low price, but not zero; we found that if people paid for the material they valued it more, rather than just tossing it aside. I feel this analogy holds some weight in regard to working on open source as well. People don't have to give you much, but if they give something, especially if it's regular, as on Patreon, they'll feel invested into it, and _you_ will feel more serious about it as well. It's a two way signal: that you're investing your time, energy and enthusiasm, and your patrons are thanking you for it.

purplejacketon The Problem of Doctors’ Salaries

Yup. As unionjack22 says, this is just a hit piece. For instance, hospital bureaucrats can make way more than doctors. This from a 2014 NY Times article: "The base pay of insurance executives, hospital executives and even hospital administrators often far outstrips doctors’ salaries, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times by Compdata Surveys: $584,000 on average for an insurance chief executive officer, $386,000 for a hospital C.E.O. and $237,000 for a hospital administrator, compared with $306,000 for a surgeon and $185,000 for a general doctor." -- https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/sunday-review/doctors-sal...

purplejacketon US military intelligence agencies have influenced over 1,800 movies and TV shows

What I really want to know is: How was it that Neo's passport expiration date was 9/11/2001 -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Neo-Passport.png

purplejacketon Nontransitive dice

OMG, I just finished working through an example of this with my student, like literally minutes ago, and look what Hacker News brings me ...

purplejacketon Stockfish – Strong Open-Source Chess Engine

There's a variant of Stockfish called "Brainfish" that has a way of incorporating information about the opening. More info here https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Brainfish and here http://spcc.beepworld.de/ (ratings)

purplejacketon Ask HN: Should I quit Uber?

Uber is up there with Monsanto, and circa 2000 Microsoft in terms of nasty. I wouldn't work there no matter how much they paid me.