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stonemetal

3,102 karma · joined November 7, 2008

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stonemetal··on Chicago Police Hid Mics, Destroyed Dashcams to Block Audio, Records Show
Action after it makes the evening news, not an on going part of the system that is actually capable of changing it.

> how disbanding the old department is a cover up, it's a pretty real consequence.

Consequence to who? Not the corrupt officers who weren't the scapegoat, all they had to do was re-apply for their old job.

stonemetal··on Chicago Police Hid Mics, Destroyed Dashcams to Block Audio, Records Show
I see no mention of systemic checks and balances or corruption investigation further than a couple of bad actors. So yeah cover it up replace it with something hopefully less corrupt, but not what needs to happen to prevent it from happening again.
stonemetal··on Free the Law: all U.S. case law online
There is quite a bit of IP law handled in Texas thanks to patent trolls in East Texas. So I can see there being some interest in getting it covered. MA? Maybe it is interesting from a historical perspective since it is one of the older areas of the US.
stonemetal··on The Electric Car may be entering its “cell phone” period
Nothing you said contradicts what he said. Yes, commuting can be handled by an EV, but the three holidays a year when you drive 300 miles to your inlaws means you need a second car, a rental or some other way of handling that.
stonemetal··on Google's Android Generates $31B Revenue, Oracle Says
>but OEMs are willing to jump hoops (contract with Google) get the $0

So OEMs pay Google for contracts and the only reason to get these contracts is to get access to the apps, but the apps are free? Sounds like paying Google for the apps.

stonemetal··on Project Rider – A C# IDE
An Integrated Development Environment as the name suggests integrates all of the tools in a developer's environment: editor, compiler, debugger, source control, servers. An editor is just one part of that.
stonemetal··on Building Maintainable Software – Free O’Reilly Ebook
Number of bugs per method.
stonemetal··on Building Maintainable Software – Free O’Reilly Ebook
Yes, but how long a method does it take to make you claim it is a smell? One of Steve McConnell's books lists a couple of studies that suggests optimal method length between 100 to 250 lines of code.
stonemetal··on Crude Falls Below $30 a Barrel for the First Time in 12 Years
Yes, a barrel of oil brought up by fracking costs around $62 (Canadian oil sands cost $74) per barrel(according to NPR below). Though that is total cost, marginal cost of pumping after you drill and frack the well is around $35.

Oil demand tends to be fairly inelastic. Almost all of oil pricing is supply driven. OPEC decides on a target price and produces to meet that price. The current price has happened because Saudi usually stops producing to keep prices stable and high, and for now they just haven't slowed down at all. Either they need money badly enough that they will take any profit at all or they are using oil prices as a weapon.

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/04/361204786/falling-oil-prices-m...

stonemetal··on Google is Forcing Routebuilder to Shut Down
>Except when a tenant is kicked out of their apartment with no notice, they might literally die. When Routebuilder gets shut down ...

The owner of Routebuilder loses income, gets evicted, and might literally die.

The impact might be small on Routebuilder's end users but destroying someone's business is destroying someone's business even if their business value was trivial.

stonemetal··on Open Guide to Equity Compensation
Are they signed by both parties? It could be considered a contract, or at least proof of a verbal contract. It isn't talked about in the linked article because that is some weird made up thing that sounds kind of fishy.
stonemetal··on Why I Write Games in C
It is a container that intrudes on your data structure. For example in a linked list the next pointer is inside your structure instead of your data structure being wrapped in a node type.
stonemetal··on Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
>Linux, an open-source project where payment isn't a top-priority for developers, but merit is!

That makes nice PR to bad it isn't all that true. According to the linux foundation more than 80% of kernel development is done by people being paid for their work.

stonemetal··on Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2016 Edition
While it is a vendors issue, they don't just randomly support hardware. They go where the big guys are. As you say NVIDIA\ATI contribute to Direct X, but it happens because MS makes it happen. Google dragged the cell vendors into supporting Android. Desktop Linux just needs a backer that is big enough to make them put forth the effort.
stonemetal··on Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2016 Edition
> Red Hat, Google, IBM and many others

And they are all working on desktop\Laptop support right? Linux is great in the data center because it has big guns behind it in the data center. Linux runs well on cell phones because Google put in the effort. As soon as someone is willing and able to put in the effort on desktop Linux, it will be as good as it is in those other areas.

stonemetal··on DOJ defers payments to local police agencies through asset forfeiture program
It creates an obvious conflict of interest. The cops now have a reason to abuse their power. They get paid.
stonemetal··on DOJ defers payments to local police agencies through asset forfeiture program
Take it from you and put it in evidence? Sure, but that is a time limited thing. The court will either rule it is your TV, and they should give it back to you, or it is ruled as stolen and given back to the proper owner. The part where they keep it is obviously wrong.
stonemetal··on Humans Are Slamming into Driverless Cars and Exposing a Key Flaw
The only problem with the article is the speed limit is much more complicated than the number printed on the sign. The actual speed limit depends on the flow of traffic and weather conditions. Merging on to a high way where people are driving 80 then driving 65 is violating the law.
stonemetal··on New U.S. FAA rule requires drone owners to register by Feb 19
In and of it self nothing. Though I have to say I have never registered for anything that didn't include receiving a set of rules. I would be really surprised if registering didn't get you a pamphlet on how not to get arrested while flying a drone.
stonemetal··on We ditched Google Analytics
With it in house it is under their control: they can anonymize it, not collect certain information, they can't cross index it with your traffic from other sites, etc.
stonemetal··on Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client
I don't see why it couldn't, they are doing it for FireFox. On the other hand Mozilla has been on the path to retire Thunderbird for some time, this is just the next step.

Mostly I think it is an effort vs reward thing. Thunderbird doesn't have the user base and doesn't have a revenue stream the way fire fox sells the search box. I wonder if anyone over there has thought about cleaning it up and selling it as a white label email client.

stonemetal··on Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client
>I'm not sure what you're actually comparing this workflow to.

He is comparing it to what they have now, XUL + CSS + JavaScript. Replacing it with html isn't as big a change as it sounds, their UI is already written in XML and rendered by Gecko, all they are doing is moving from a custom XML like XAML(MS) or FXML(Java) to standard HTML rendered by Gecko.

stonemetal··on Ask HN: If Donald Knuth woke up 10,000 years ago, how would he build a computer?
He wouldn't. He would finish TAOCP. Frankly the math is more important than any chunk of hardware.

Even if he just got really bored and wanted hardware, I don't think he would have the knowledge to do it. It is one thing to know how to use all the tools, it is another thing altogether to know how to engineer high quality tools with nothing but sticks, stones, and no help.

stonemetal··on Xv6
What language did you have in mind? It has to be suitable for writing an OS, so Java, python and what not are out. The project has been around for more than a decade so the language has to have had a stable v1 release more than 10 years ago. Also the original code you are working with is in C so you will need to translate it. C seems like a perfectly reasonable choice.
stonemetal··on Bitcoin Surges Past $400
In general nothing. In specific there is no FDIC for bitcoins so if a MtGox type situation happens then you have no coins.
stonemetal··on YouTube Red, a $9.99 Site-Wide Ad-Free Subscription with Play Music
If they agreed to share ad revenue, continue to share ad revenue. Subscribers don't see ads, so no ad revenue to share. Sign up to share subscription revenue at your convenience.
stonemetal··on Tesla shares dive after Consumer Reports yanks recommendation for Model S
And if a crazy hurricane "Sandy" situation occurs again, you can always go out to the local gas station to grab more gasoline for day 8, day 9, or day 11 without power.

During Sandy 80% of New Jersey gas stations were closed, so no you couldn't just run to the local gas station for a top off. Batteries + solar aren't going to power your whole house through Sandy but it will keep a minimal power level indefinitely so you can charge your phone, run your fridge, and perhaps have a night light to read by. Though I have to agree I don't see the point of giant batteries outside of a doomsday prepper strategy. It is much easier and cheaper to just draw power from the grid at night.

stonemetal··on Ogo, a new take on personal transportation
Me too, in the video they show an operator scooping a basket ball off the floor without effecting his direction of travel, but I wonder how hard that is to do in an instinctive way.
stonemetal··on A Critique of the CAP Theorem
>How can you have consistency and availability if there's a partition?

I don't get why people seem to have such a problem with the CA trade off, but seem to understand the CP or AP tradeoff. If you trade partition tolerance then have a partition your clients need to handle that just like they need to handle inconsistency, or unavailability if that was the trade off selected.

stonemetal··on 400 days of Go
Not really, Go uses duck typing for interfaces. You declare an interface to require functions X, Y, and Z. Any type that has functions X, Y, and Z suddenly implements that interface whether you want it to or not.
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