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relium

126 karma · joined March 4, 2022

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relium··on Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds
Now I'm curious if it matters what you watch.
relium··on Show HN: BillAI Bass, an AI-Powered Big Mouth Billy Bass Using Strands Agents
Reminds me of Mike Neil's FishHack at the 2000 MacHack. https://tidbits.com/2000/07/03/the-machax-best-hack-contest-...
relium··on Show HN: A graph paper generator that renders vector PDFs in the browser
Nice. I remember writing a PostScript graph paper generator when we got our first LaserWriters back in 1985.
relium··on I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle
The current Mac version of what started as the PowerPC Graphing Calculator app can be downloaded from the Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/graphing-calculator-4/id522175...

The iOS version is at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pacific-tech-graphing-calcul...

relium··on The real cost of owning a home
I think 1% per year is insufficient for repairs. Even a paint job will cost more than that these days.

There's also a potential HOA fee, even in many neighborhoods with freestanding homes.

But there are tax benefits of home ownership too. The interest deduction used to very significant, although less now since they raised the standard deduction. There's also a $250K/500K non-taxable capital gains benefit when you sell a house for more than you paid.

relium··on How to convert between wealth and income tax
Federal payroll taxes in the US are 15.3% (7.65% for each side).
relium··on A forecast of the fair market value of SpaceX's businesses
They are pushing business-to-business service too, like ships, airlines, and retail/office backup. Plus smartphones can talk directly to their satellites. A lot of countries will use them for military use. Whether it adds up to a reasonable IPO I can't tell - market irrationality is hard to measure.
relium··on My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix
My MacBook Pro M1 keyboard broke too and Apple wanted $900 to replace it. I bought a $30 replacement on Amazon and started replacing it myself. Unfortunately the repair was a bit too complicated for me, but luckily one of my co-workers had more patience and replaced it for some beer.

This video is a good overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGmMpEEP5ls

relium··on Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]
The best book I've ever read on the topic was the classic Mac OS Human Interface Guidelines. I still recommend them even though some of the specifics are out-of-date.

https://dev.os9.ca/techpubs/mac/pdf/HIGuidelines.pdf

relium··on Apple Platform Security (Jan 2026) [pdf]
The ones I remember most affecting performance were zeroing allocated memory and the Spectre/Meltdown fix. Also, the first launch of a new app is slow in order to check the signature. Whole disk encryption is pretty fast today, but probably is a bit slower than unencrypted. The original FileVault using disk images was even slower.
relium··on Show HN: isometric.nyc – giant isometric pixel art map of NYC
Very cool. Street names with an on/off toggle would be nice.
relium··on Verizon outages reported across U.S.
>Note, you have to click on the providers to see absolute magnitude

I noticed that a little while ago too. Very bad UI. Tempted to post in r/dataisugly.

relium··on Verizon outages reported across U.S.
We had edge delivery issues when I didn't use my ISP's DNS, especially from Apple. Not exactly sure of the mechanism, but downloading Xcode would take 2 hours instead of 10 minutes.
relium··on Apple picks Gemini to power Siri
Jobs brokered a $150M deal with Apple's arch enemy Microsoft in 1997.
relium··on QuickDrawViewer: A Mac OS X utility to visualise QuickDraw (PICT) files
PICT supported vector commands like FrameRect and FillOval, bitmap commands like BitsRect, and even embedded PostScript via PicComments.

Version 1 PICTs: https://show.docjava.com/posterous/file/2012/07/9614411-DOC0...

I have the Version 2 documentation around here somewhere. I don't think I've looked at it in 20 years, though.

relium··on Testosterone Administration Induces a Red Shift in Democrats
Note this quote from the article:

“Weakly affiliated Democrats had basal Testosterone levels 19% higher than strong Democrats and all Republicans.”

So it's not as simple as "more testosterone means more Republican".

relium··on When Bruce Lee trained with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
That's Roger Murdock. He's the co-pilot.
relium··on SQLite's File Format
The one issue I have with SQLite's file format is that if part of the file gets corrupted, you can't easily recover the rest of the file. I asked Richard Hipp about this many years ago and he said that fixing the problem would unfortunately break binary compatibility.
relium··on Build Log: Macintosh Classic
His aunt obviously had good taste. -Eric "The Grouch" Shapiro
relium··on Apple unveils new Mac Studio
It'll likely be very workload dependent. The M4 Max will probably do a little better in single threaded tasks like browser benchmarks and the M3 Ultra will do better in things like video transcoding and 3D rendering.
relium··on Ball: A ball that lives in your dock
I still wish Sesame Street would let me write a modern version of The Grouch. -Eric Shapiro
relium··on Prostate cancer cases worldwide likely to double by 2040, analysis finds
Have you tried Tamsulosin (Flomax)? It seems to help a lot of the symptoms.
relium··on Prostate cancer cases worldwide likely to double by 2040, analysis finds
About 40 years ago my father, an oncologist, told me there were two common types of prostate cancer, the fast growing type that kills you and the slow growing type that doesn't. We've learned a lot about it since then, but that description is still essentially true.

It causes 30,000 deaths a year in the US, which is not insignificant - in comparison breast cancer kills 40,000.

relium··on Insomnia REST client now requires an account
This sucks beyond belief. The whole reason I moved to Insomnia from Postman was because Postman uploaded all of our APIs and credentials to their server without asking. I have clients that demand privacy - we can't even discuss the existence of their APIs outside the company.
relium··on My New Old Macintosh SE/30 Computer
Thanks for this. I had more fun writing The Grouch and another goofy app named VideoBeep than I did with 35 years of more serious software. -Eric Shapiro