Hacker News Reader

s3m4jon A little bump in the wire that makes the Internet faster

Steam and torrents take advantage of all my gigabit bandwitdh. But generally if I'm using all of my bandwitdh, it's that I am consciously downloading/uploading stuff to do just that.

s3m4jon Voting system to be used in West Virginia elections is vulnerable

Also the "attack surface" of paper is so large as to be humanly impractical. A computer system howevever complex always has an attack surface that is actually practical.

s3m4jon Voting system to be used in West Virginia elections is vulnerable

There were concerns, there has been several inquiries into it, right after the vote happened. And it's been known for has long as democracy that we shouldn't mechanize voting.

That video is from 2014 well before the 2016 US election was a thing : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

edit : interesting how in the recent comments under this video there's cryptoblockchain enthusiasts who have completely missed the point about lack of trust.

s3m4jon EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

120 years give or take 10 years.

But the free market is always right. Right ?

s3m4jon The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

Disregarding the validity of your argument in itself, trust issues cannot be solved by black boxes. Humans laws have to be enacted by humans, because the real world is messy and rules and laws need "messy wiggle room".

s3m4jon iTerm2 has a new drawing engine that uses Metal 2

That's why I emphasized "choice", using sh for scripting is a valid choice.

s3m4jon iTerm2 has a new drawing engine that uses Metal 2

Zsh and fish are, imo, much better environments than bash. And bash, once tamed, due to its ubiquity, is a better choice for scripting.

s3m4jon Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

Considering the etymology and historic origin of "artist" as a skilled artisan. It's not even that novel an idea. Lots of things we consider art pieces are named after the buyer and not what we consider now the artist.

s3m4jon Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

It's not about apprentices, it's about people, technicians, actually making the 'objects' for and in place of the artist whose name is linked to the 'objects'. Because often those artist don't have the technical know-how or tools to make something. So they pay someone to make it. Hence the problematic question.

s3m4jon Unlike most millennials, Norway's are rich

Counterpoint, to take a loan you have to trust the system to both do right by you, and not collapse from under you. It might be difficult now to trust those two things.

s3m4jon The Spiral Language

https://github.com/mrakgr/The-Spiral-Language/commit/1dee010...

That one is really in the "mad scientist" mindset. I love it, I wish him and this project good luck.

s3m4jon Simple, correct, fast: in that order

To this day, knock on wood, I have had success at voluntarily avoiding those issues ^^ (aside from school assignements)

s3m4jon Simple, correct, fast: in that order

In my experience, it's been easier to push UTC time all the way from the db to the user javascript and operate on time then, than trying to manipulate time before sending to the user. YMMV, and it's only web dev.

s3m4jon I don’t know how to create a website

wat

s3m4jon All the things I hate about Python

It's also in the Wikipedia page about python that it is not a "weakly typed" language. It's literally in the resume box in the corner : "Typing discipline : Duck, dynamic, strong".

Edit: I was going to mention the author's confusion, but OP did it in their edit.

Edit 2: The author is "Staff Software Engineer at Tesla" ? And he doesn't know C pointers ?

s3m4jon The F-35 Is a $1.4 Trillion National Disaster

I also searched for something like "self-perpetuating system/bureaucracy" but didn't find an accepted term.

s3m4jon The F-35 Is a $1.4 Trillion National Disaster

Why do you reduce the choices between "building useless piece of hardware" and "bombing innocent people" ? There are lots of choices here. Just a sample : less tax or invest more in health and education.

s3m4jon How much is time wrong around the world? (2014)

>"We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of indirection."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_softwar...

s3m4jon EU copyright law proposal rejected

That was my thought as well, there's always something "big" going on. IMO, it would be difficult, near impossible, to coordinate votes with events, going through the bureaucracy involved etc.

s3m4jon Facebook finds Declaration of Independence 'racist'

Machine performs its jobs flawlessly, detects racism.

s3m4jon Youtube-dl: Command-line program to download videos

I think it's already been ruled (at least in Europe), that it isn't illegal to download from public streaming platform since "streaming" and "downloading" are the same thing.

I'll go check.

Edit: After checking, yes, of course as long as it's for personal use. It's against youtube TOS, but if the TOS is against the law...

s3m4jon Youtube-dl: Command-line program to download videos

Which is great with twitch. Instant benefits : no chat, video decoding outside browser. On some laptops it makes a big difference.

s3m4jon Youtube-dl: Command-line program to download videos

I keep expecting the maintainers to change the name some day... I mainly use it to archive content from Arte. I'm usually not in the +7 days cycle their website has.

s3m4jon PEP 572: Python assignment expressions has been accepted

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0572/#alternative-spelli...

s3m4jon Python 3 at Facebook

Just yesterday I was talking with my teacher about how he was tired of students (and parents) asking if he would add x and y languages to the curriculum.

s3m4jon Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America

I wince every year when it's tornado season and I see those flimsy houses being flung out by the wind. Just dig the earth, make proper foundations and build walls. It's not like you don't know how to do it, there's some fine buildings in the US (I heard).

s3m4jon YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

Not agreeing or disagreeing, but I read both this and his other post about JSON as configuration file and I have not seen him propose and argue for an alternative.

s3m4jon BitTorrent is selling for $140M to Justin Sun and Tron

Just a few seconds ago I was wondering if anyone of importance (technical importance) did in fact talk positevely about blockchain(s). If anyone is or knows someone like that, I'm interested.

s3m4jon What do Unix command names stand for?

They were sent over a network. Every baud counts. And then the output had to have a fixed width (not necessarily a fixed length, since it may have been printed on paper) because of "display" size.