Hacker News Reader

I'm guessing it's going to do all this stuff on the device, and not done in the cloud.

taikion The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

Nearly every sentence of this post is factually wrong. A wide variety of DRM free video exists on the internet, some of it is even paid material. Louis CK, Jim Gaffigan and Greg Proops have all done DRM-free work.

My iPhone can play any video encoded in the right formats using the Videos app. It can also run VLC. A wide variety of main stream BluRay players support DLNA and media via usb.

Copyright being a killer kind of overlooks why we have copyright to begin with. I make movie, I get some limited powers to determine who can and can not distribute my work and how it's used. If I make a movie, you don't have the right to make a buck off my work with out my say so. Do you have ANY idea why that's kind of inherently unfair?

Also, if I don't want my work used to sell cigarettes or used to stump for some political candidate, then that should be my right.

That's not to say copyright reform isn't needed, or that copyright holders don't have disproportional bipartisan political influence or any number of things. However, as a leading issue of our time, it's somewhere near, "Are there too many Buicks on the road?" Fixing or repealing the DMCA is relatively easy. There are many issues that I can think of that just aren't.

taikion Dr. Dre Appears to Confirm Apple-Beats Deal in Facebook Video

EarPods are quite decent and the design is very ingenious.

However, the response is pretty neutral. I'd imagine the Beats acquisition is probably at least in part to make better headphones. I don't know if Beats' streaming licenses are transferrable.

taikion Replacing a Thinkpad X60 Bootflash Chip

D'oh. Somehow missed the fact that you were hardening the machine against attack.

taikion Replacing a Thinkpad X60 Bootflash Chip

why are you disabling the card bus, firewire and sd card ports?

taikion 2048, success and me

I'm just happy he's willing to give credit where it's due.

That to me, speaks volumes towards the dev's character.

taikion Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

I grew up in the Airforce and spent a lot of years all over. I now live in New York City.

If my keyboard thinks, just because I'm in New York City, that I meant to say, "Stand on line" instead of "Stand in line" it's insane.

taikion It's Different for Girls

I really REALLY hope that no one is ignorant to the fact that tricking people to touching their penis is wrong.

I'm REALLY really REALLY hoping.

taikion Steve Jobs, a Genius at Pushing Boundaries

By the time Apple showed up to any particular gadget segment, that gadget segment had existed for years, and sometimes decades before. iPad? Tablets had been kicking around since the 80's. iPhone? iPod? Smart phones and MP3 players had been around since the late 90's. Mac? Apple II? I think you get my point.

taikion John Carmack's former employer claims he stole tech for Oculus VR when he left

The exact nature of various FPS gaming engines from that era kind of gives me a massive headache.

Still, the point stands that this isn't unprecedented. John Carmack's has, in the past, just helped out potential competitors before.

taikion John Carmack's former employer claims he stole tech for Oculus VR when he left

Not unprecedented though. Carmack did once advise Ken Silverman on using sectors with his 3D engine. Which later became the Build Engine.

taikion Programming Sucks

I also meant to say that even if we do eventually make something cool, the crushing realities of working as a software developer still sucks.

Granted, if you're a Googler or Amazonite, or otherwise working for a decent company, this isn't true. But most software developers aren't Googlers or what have you.

taikion Programming Sucks

I'm struggling to find any sort of counter argument that isn't, "But we get to make something cool!" Which is wrong, because most of our time, we're coding up something that shits CSVs so someone can go into a meeting and highlight some menial point to other managers.

taikion Outbox vs. USPS: How the Post Office Killed Digital Mail

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/28/330524/postal-no...

There's a reason why the post office is going broke, and it's not necessarily bungling on their part. Blame Congress for this one.

I'm kind of shocked with how stark the PMG was though.

taikion Lemonade Startup – A satire simulator game

The instructions were cut off for me. screen on my machine is only 13"

taikion Lemonade Startup – A satire simulator game

how the hell am i supposed to make money!?

I just keep bleeding cash no matter what I spend my time on

taikion SF’s Housing Crisis Explained

you don't think it's unfair that a landlord can upend your life and make it complete hell just so they can get tenants who are willing to pay more?

This isn't about moving, this is about completely changing lives. How to get to work, who's in the neighborhood, what's the neighborhood flavor like... it's more than just "living in a specific area" it's about living life.

Income inequality is another issue all together. No, it's not fair that a fast food joint has the guys who flip burgers and run the cash register do all the work and get literally the least amount of money the business can legally give them. And yes, they could just go look for other jobs... if there were any. In a lot of places, there just isn't other work. For others, their particular field may have been decimated. A friend of mine was a bar certified lawyer in corporate finance. ... when he graduated in 2008.

Yeah. life isn't fair, and maybe part of it is roughing it. But another part of it is also recognizing that the system has been inadvertently rigged towards the relatively wealthy and hyper wealthy.

There's reasons why there are protests in the streets of the Bay Area, and tone deaf responses like this are one of them.

taikion Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps

I don't want my system to crawl or my eyes to burn because someone decided that yellow on white or white on yellow or yellow on magenta was a good idea or that having a song from 2006 auto play whenever i browsed to someone's page was a good idea or...

If you want all of that, build yourself a home page. Tumblr and Livejournal did it right by offering ways to view someone's account with out their idea of what good taste is. Still, between NO customization and customization, I'll take the bland option.

It works great on Reddit for subreddits because if you get it wrong, you can just move to another subreddit or find a moderator who knows a thing or two about CSS.

I can't just up and find friends who aren't fucking colorblind.

taikion Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps

if ICQ was so wonderful to use then why did we flee to the next best thing to come along? My feeling was that ICQ sucked in a very horrible way.

I was never around for the Friendster days(I was a Livejoural user through and through, damn it), however the reason I suspect MySpace lost out is that they did do the GeoCities thing. Everytime I see people complaining about a new Facebook layout, I always think, "Is this worse than the best MySpace page?" Answer is always no.

It's not that we're reinventing ICQ or AIM or MySpace or whatever, it's that we're refining the, oh god I hate using this word, "experience" of using it.

Does Facebook have random flash things pegging my CPU to render a cube in 3D with my friend's vacation photos on each face? Does Facebook have auto-playing music? Does Facebook have the option of setting the page's colors to be hideously garish?

I also think Facebook is realizing this, and they're trying to retool their business away from Facebook this website you visit, to Facebook a thing where all of these neat services are wired up to. I don't know if they'll succeed, but at least they have the sense to know they're not going to be on top forever.

taikion 2048 on 8-bit Sega Systems

Z-80 ASM is arcane? Well, it is also has custom audio and graphics.

taikion SF’s Housing Crisis Explained

The problem is, you're asking people who've lived in a place for generations just to up and move because yuppies want easier access to bars and fancy coffee shops. Surely you can understand why this isn't so simple, I hope.

People who have roots are getting uprooted because they declined or couldn't get in on the sweet tech boom dollars. A lot of the locals are pissed.

I live in Brooklyn, and I live in a part of Brooklyn that really, if they figured out I worked in Tech, I wouldn't be shocked if they showed up with torches and pitchforks as a warning to others.

taikion Crashing competing media players on Android

Same's kind of true on iOS. Ultimately, the best solution seems to be on both platforms, ... VLC. Everything else seems to be based on ffmpeg anyway.

taikion SF’s Housing Crisis Explained

Reasonably regulated market where people are free to pursue economic opportunities but with oversight that protects the underclass and underprivileged?

taikion Creating a Bare Bones Bootloader

What about for EFI? Does this guide hold up the same?

taikion How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

"Full stack" in the entire 6 years I've been developing has meant front and backend. Not, "I can spawn VM instances and code."

taikion SF’s Housing Crisis Explained

This is why the Free Market just doesn't fucking work.

The "invisible hand" just doesn't care about marginal actors. Who cares if there's people being displaced? Free markets!@#*(_!@)#

jesus I need a drink

taikion When Life Gives You Lemons

Given just how bloody rich Elon Musk is, he should take the lemons, give them to his engineers to make combustable lemons AND BURN THEIR HOUSES DOWN.

(or something.)

taikion Slashdot is Port Scanning Its Users

Exactly my thought. I'm a creature of stubborn habit. I still browse when waiting for things or bored.

I'm just glad to see that a lot of GNAA and other crap has largely stopped.

Still see the Golden Girls spam posts, but, out of all the possible crap you could be clogging the internet up with, the Golden Girls aren't a bad way to go.

taikion The Galaxy S5 does not have temperature or humidity sensors

Customers aren't always idiots. However, there's a special kind of engineering idiocy that thinks that having a humidity sensor in a phone is a great idea.

taikion The Galaxy S5 does not have temperature or humidity sensors

Thinking from a consumer perspective, the temperature and humidity sensors aren't really useful. It's a phone, not a weather station.

I think though, this gets to the heart of the problem with Samsung. They throw a lot of shit at the wall with no care for design or even how the thing is supposed to be lived with.

(FWIW, I think LG, Nokia and HTC are doing decent work in mobile.)