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sorum

374 karma · joined November 20, 2018

Twitter: @sorum Linkedin: jsorum
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sorum··on Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%
…for you

(sorry, old Internet forum reflexes activated)

sorum··on On cigarettes
You're underselling this poster. It goes hard AF.

Racking my brain if there's another poster that unintentionally goes as hard as this one.

sorum··on Source code of Swedish e-government services has been leaked
Yep, that tracks.

There's also the underlying current of Jantelagen (Law of Jante) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

sorum··on LinkedIn sues software company allegedly scraping data from profiles
This one seems different from the (correct) ruling in favor in hiQ Labs, where the courts were quite clear that scraping the public Internet was completely legal.

This is a case of a company creating millions of fake user accounts, so they’re behind the login wall and not on the public side of the Internet anymore. At least, that’s how I’m reading this.

sorum··on How shut-down Bay Area tech companies ditch their fancy gear
The failed startups are a vital part of the Aeron economy, putting these back-savers into circulation at 1/3 of MSRP
sorum··on Exercise may be the 'most potent medical intervention ever known'
> but it hurts even more when exercising (back hurts, RSIs, etc)and so people don’t exercise and they protect their body like it is glass.

100% this. Whenever I've had longer breaks from strength training, clocking in the kind of hours I do in a desk chair eventually gets me to back pain, Aeron chair be damned.

The only thing that works for me then is to hit the weights; squats and deadlifts to be specific. Obviously not doing 1 rep max, relatively high rep range (8-12).

- Week 1: muscle soreness is horrible.

- Week 2: muscle soreness is quite OK and the regular back pain is all but gone.

- Week 3 onwards: gravy.

sorum··on New iMac with M4
It does seem that way, doesn't it? Shame, it was the perfect form factor for family room, office front desk.
sorum··on New iMac with M4
What is preventing them from launching a 27" version?

I've been waiting to upgrade our 2017 model in the living room, was hoping the 27" was finally going to come now. Guess Mac Mini is the only route to go...

sorum··on My Homelab Setup
Honestly, it was a very close call.

I had two shopping lists written down, one for Unifi, one for TP-link. It was a combination of a couple of factors. It was actually a really tough decision, because they both seemed very good value for money. I wasn't factoring in cameras, just controller + switch + APs.

It was a combination of a couple of factors (this was in 2022):

- UI and integration

- Number of reviews and write-ups

- What I could find in stock

If I were doing it again today, I couldn't guarantee that my decision would be the same. It'd be a tough one...yet again.

sorum··on My Homelab Setup
I was considering TP-Link at point of purchase, since there are some options there with more throughput. Like everything, it's a tradeoff calculation and this time I favored the convenience
sorum··on My Homelab Setup
I can throw in my vote for Unifi. Stuck the UDM and the rest of the gear in a rackmounted enclosure in my daughter's wardrobe and haven't needed to think about it even once in 2+ years. It just manages itself nicely.
sorum··on X-Wing is video gaming's Greek Fire
> Nobody in their right mind is going to say the crusty ol' Baldur's Gate II is better than the theatrical extravaganza that is Baldur's Gate III.

Them’s fighting’ words

sorum··on Volkswagen Will Bring Back Physical Buttons in New Cars
How GM thinks removing CarPlay and Android Auto is a strategically beneficial move, is mind boggling. I literally can't imagine how the reasoning happened, except for some really strong-willed exec with a lot of political power pushed it through.

Can't wait for the post-mortem analysis in 10 years.

sorum··on Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says
> where it falls down is really understanding natural language.

I would settle for Siri understanding simple commands. Natural language is something for Apple customers in the 2040s. I want to not have to use creative language skills to decipher things in Reminders. "Who is this Paul Cage I'm supposed to call? Oh, repairing the pool cage."

Forget LLM or natural language processing; Siri needs to catch up to 2018's Google Assistant

sorum··on Improved audio rendering with an optimised version of memcpy (2013)
Hah! Never thought of that. Nice one
sorum··on Improved audio rendering with an optimised version of memcpy (2013)
There used to be an ABX plugin for Foobar, where you could test yourself if you could make out the difference between an MP3 of your choice and a lossless one.

I think I scored worse than a coin flip when it came to 320 files

sorum··on Audio engineer explains NPR's signature sound (2015)
> (Side note: an external camera has the benefit of being able to point it on your cats. In long-running meetings, showing off your cats tends to be a great mood improver)

The rule is: if a pet makes it into the shot somehow, you HAVE to bring them up for a close-up

sorum··on Ask HN: What low-tech way do you use to manage competing tasks/to-dos
Time blocking with pen and paper. Simple, fast and has revision history built in.

- Start with your fixed time commitments: meetings, commute, lunch etc.

- Then it's a matter of balancing the quicker tasks with the "meatier" project work.

- I'll usually have two blocks for faster tasks, email backlogs etc.

- Then you look at your project list and allocate as much time as you can to these bigger things.

Once you've drawn up your day, you follow it like a calendar.

Things will inevitably change during the day: some things take longer than you planned, urgent things pop up. The beauty here is that you then have to redraw the rest of the day's blocks, so you're forced to make a conscious decision on what gets cut.

I got this from Cal Newport's book "Deep Work", which I highly recommend, but you can also read about the method in this short blog post he wrote

https://calnewport.com/deep-habits-the-importance-of-plannin...

sorum··on No One Wants a Printer, but Everyone Wants to Print
Two use cases for scanning:

1. Forms that can't be filled out digitally

Forms that can only be filled out by hand are annoyingly common. Surprising amount of PDFs to fill out that are just a scan of a hardcopy, where they haven't bothered marking up the fields so that you can fill it out in a PDF viewer. It's essentially an image, so the infuriating process is Print --> Fill out with pen --> Scan --> Email

2. Documents I want to preserve

Financial, tax, medical, legal, school-related, receipts for major purchases etc. Trying to go paperless, so +80% of incoming paper gets thrown away. Remaining 20% gets scanned. After being scanned I shred or throw away the hardcopy. Only a tiny fraction of documents do I keep the hardcopy, where it would be important to show that you have the original (think certificates, notarized stuff etc).

sorum··on No One Wants a Printer, but Everyone Wants to Print
Maybe it's the combination of living in the US + having kids, but I'm finding myself printing a LOT. Not a week goes by without a couple of forms to print, fill out by hand and (perversely) scan and email back.

Main culprits are schools, doctors, dentists and extracurricular activities.

sorum··on No One Wants a Printer, but Everyone Wants to Print
> The only reason you may not want it is the space it takes.

Having a separate scanner, I'm really liking the size of Brother's smallest models: 14 inch long, 14 inch wide, 7 inch tall.

sorum··on No One Wants a Printer, but Everyone Wants to Print
I'm using a Mac and the default AirPrint drivers. Don't have any of the Brother software installed, even the scanner works perfectly through the native macOS settings.
sorum··on No One Wants a Printer, but Everyone Wants to Print
People are tired of two things in general: lousy business practices around ink cartridges and the damn printer not cooperating.

Two birds with one stone: buy a Brother b/w laser printer or a scan/fax multifunction one. You’ll never look back.

If you for some reason don’t like Brother, you have two other brands to choose from: Ricoh and Epson. Yes, your only 3 good choices are from Japan; they seem to be the only ones who know what they’re doing.

sorum··on Tell HN: It is impossible to disable Google 2FA using backup codes
As others have commented, on your phone you rarely ever need to authenticate, so I keep mine at home.

If you buy a Titan Key you get two (USB-A, USB-C), so sticking one of them in your safety deposit box, locked desk drawer at work or another secured space is a good backup.

sorum··on Surveillance Footage of Tesla Crash on SF’s Bay Bridge
It's one of the reasons we have dashcams in both our cars.

Added bonus is that if you witness an incident, the police is very happy when you can send them the video file to prove how it all happened.

sorum··on Ask HN: What $500-2500 product improved your 2022
Same here, the UDM Pro [1] and any of their U6 WiFi APs [2] are great. I went the extra mile and wired up each room with 2-3 ports, so had to get one of their PoE switches because you quickly run out port space on the UDM.

[1] https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-unifi-os-cons...

[2] https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-wireless

sorum··on Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
Same here. Once you get used to having Ethernet ports in all rooms and wired WiFi access points...there's just no going back. If we move to a new house in the future, the CAT6 will be pulled into all rooms before the furniture arrives even.
sorum··on JFK Assassination Records – 2022 Additional Documents Release
Very good write up, but it needs more "back and to the left"

All joking aside, great summary!

sorum··on No one wants to have kids anymore
> The low-sleep phase is temporary. It’s such a short duration relative to the rest of your life as a parent that it really doesn’t matter much in the long run. Same goes for changing diapers and dealing with baby vomit.

The weird thing is that I miss this phase. They're little for such a short amount of time and there's just nothing else like this pre-toddler phase. Maybe it's the oxytocin that just wipes your memory clean of all the fatigue and sleep deprivation.

sorum··on EU Regulator: Proposal to force websites to pay telcos puts Internet at risk
Rudolf van der Berg [1] delivered a good talk on the topic "Big Telco vs Big Tech, why telcos want money for traffic (again)" [2]

He has a good, dry humor and some very valid points on why this is just the same old story as it ever was.

[1] https://twitter.com/internetthought

[2] https://youtu.be/WNk4QzPL4jU

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