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taylortbb

130 karma · joined March 27, 2015

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taylortbb··on Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team
The transcoding isn't just about bandwidth, it's about compatibility. I store most media in H.265 because that's the most space efficient, and most things can play it, but a decent number of devices still need H.264. I also have older content with DTS soundtracks, which isn't supported by a bunch of new devices.

Plex/Emby/Jellyfin will handle that compatibility by converting on the fly.

Plus, when using a Fire Stick, or Google TV Streamer, or old Chromecast it just isn't easy/possible to browse a SMB share.

taylortbb··on U.S. pulling ocean sensors a 'shock' for Canadian research as El Niño nears
> Honestly, at this point, having natural disasters with destruction and death is probably the only way to make people care

We already have them. People just claim they're chance effects with no connection to climate change.

The problem with refuting it is that they are chance events, there's no way to definitively say "this was caused by climate change", because it's always possible it would have happened anyways. It's the upwards trend in frequency and severity that we can definitively point and say "that's caused by climate change", but that's too abstract for most people to understand.

taylortbb··on Tesla reveals two Robotaxi crashes involving teleoperators
At least for Waymo, the remote control is not nearly that direct. The human operators suggest a route through a confusing scene, but the self driving remains in control for executing that suggested route, and may reject it.

A remote operator driving directly, via a racing sim setup or an Xbox controller, just isn't safe. Too much latency, lack of visibility, and connection unreliability.

taylortbb··on Signal Secure Backups
Doesn't MTP require plugging in a USB cable? KDE Connect works wirelessly as long as your phone and computer are on the same network.
taylortbb··on US tech tariff exemption may only be temporary, says Lutnick
But then you risk tariff policy changing, and suddenly you're undercut by foreign factories again, and you lose all your investment in the American factory. It still needs certainty that the tariffs are staying.

The uncertainty only works to return manufacturing where America is cost-competitive without tariffs, and that's a tiny slice of manufacturing.

taylortbb··on British Museum gems for sale on eBay – how a theft was exposed
> I guess I was assuming almost $20k a year back then would have been livable back then, like it was for much of the US excluding a handful of cities like NYC or SF at the time.

You're excluding the reasonable comparables. London is the UK's equivalent of NYC or SF.

taylortbb··on London Drugs closes stores until further notice due to cyberattack
They're a pharmacy, they get directly reimbursed by customer's drug insurance plans and only charge customers for the uninsured amount. They need to submit prescriptions to insurance, and find out how much insurance is covering, before filling prescriptions.
taylortbb··on TfL's simple pop-up message led to a significant drop in paper ticket sales
> it won't (logistically can't) work when you have literally run out.

While I believe you're correct for the iPhone, that it won't work, it's actually not as impossible as you suggest. The NFC-capable BlackBerrys that supported the very early tap-to-pay with a phone had the concept of a default card, which could be programmed onto the secure element and would work even if the phone was totally dead (even if the battery was removed). The NFC field was enough power to boot up the secure element, just like it's enough power to run the chip in your bank card when you tap it.

Later phones dropped this support, as it took a bunch of engineering effort and customers largely didn't care. But if customers ever start demanding it, so they can totally stop carrying a bank/credit card, it is possible.

taylortbb··on More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
> Why are you including only US airlines for comparing a plane model's safety? That seems very convenient

737 MAXs are not identical worldwide. There's a number of optional add-ons, which even discount US airlines will pay for, but emerging market discount airlines will not.

Specifically for the 737 MAX crashes, it was from a faulty AoA sensor. Neither of the crashed planes had the AoA disagree alert option, but all US airlines paid extra for it. It's not something you're supposed to need, hence being an optional extra, but for obvious reasons budgets aren't as tight at North American airlines as discount airlines in emerging markets.

This isn't to say we're guaranteed that an AoA disagree alert would have avoided the problem, it was undeniably a faulty design, but it probably provides an additional layer of safety. There's a reason that when the MAX returned to service it became standard equipment for all MAXs sold.

So, it's not entirely correct to totally exclude planes from other countries. But there is a fair point in putting more weight on similarly configured planes.

taylortbb··on FAQ on Leaving Google
> Chrome/Chromium was developed for quite a while using Webkit. Chromium was created in 2008 and only after Google had already captured a third of the browser market share (according to Statista) did they fork it (April 2013).

I think you missed the point, there's two forks in the history of Blink (Chromium). Yes, Blink is a fork of WebKit, but WebKit is a fork of KHTML. So it's not like it originated at Apple either, it originated at KDE.

taylortbb··on OpenBSD KDE Plasma Desktop
The point is that they're not really comparable. Mint/Ubuntu/etc all ship the same Linux kernel, that's why they're called distros. They're different distributions (distros) of the same software (Linux kernel, etc).

The different BSDs aren't distros, they are different kernels that are developed in parallel. Obviously there's shared history there, and some shared userspace, but FreeBSD and OpenBSD aren't just two different BSD distros of largely the same software.

taylortbb··on iPhone that fell from hole in Alaska 737 MAX flight is found, still open to Mail
The post says the phone was in airplane mode, and was found by chance as someone walked past it.
taylortbb··on ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehearsal
SpaceX has a median turnaround time between landing and re-launch of about 8 weeks, with some as low as 3 weeks. That includes time for returning the landing platform to port, unloading, payload integration of the new payload, etc, so refurbishment is some fraction of that.

There's no way they're stripping the whole thing down and replacing 30% of parts in that short of a timeframe. Especially given they do it in Florida, and don't bring them back to the factory. So it's hard to say for sure, but the time can give us some sense of what they must be doing.

taylortbb··on Exploring the Internals of Linux v0.01
I'd start with https://wiki.osdev.org/Expanded_Main_Page . There's a whole community of people writing little OSs, and many OS 101 articles as a result.

VMs would be the most common target, but the Raspberry Pi is also quite popular.

taylortbb··on Meta blocking news links in Canada
Meta and Google both have Canadian offices full of Canadian employees, so it's not like they have a purely virtual presence in Canada.
taylortbb··on Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
> Tesla has dealerships too right?

Tesla has corporate owned stores, which are different from dealerships which are independent businesses. The staff there will help you order a car, but ultimately they're just clicking through the website with you. All orders are processed through the website, and go into the same central queue.

taylortbb··on If Silence Is the Cost of Great Ramen, So Be It
There's space between "stops the spread" and "doesn't affect the spread" .

Current vaccination levels are inadequate to stop the spread, but they do significantly reduce it.

taylortbb··on Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?
Due to the current chip shortage they've moved to a vision-only system, as they had difficulty getting radar units in the quantity required. Until recently however, all Teslas had radar since ~2014. The high profile crashes are mostly/all radar-enabled vehicles.

The thing about automotive radar, and this isn't just Tesla, is that stationary objects are normally excluded. Otherwise the system brakes for things like overhead signs that have high radar reflectivity. Stopped cars, concrete barriers, etc are all basically invisible to most automotive radar.

Tesla also isn't the only manufacturer taking the vision approach. Subaru, for example, was doing vision-only emergency braking in 2016.

taylortbb··on Excision's CRISPR HIV therapy is heading into human testing after FDA clearance
> There are numerous bodies of data supporting waning immunity at this point.

Why that happens is less clear though. Is it a fault of mRNA tech itself? Or the dosing schedule? 21 days is very close together for a 2 dose vaccine, most are 6 months or years apart.

Using 21 days was a good way to get the trials done fast, if they'd used 6 months we'd be where we were 5 months ago, but this was one of the risks. Canada, which spaced doses out further, isn't seeing nearly as high of a rate of breakthrough cases.

I'm not saying we can conclude definitely that dosing is the problem, but it's a question worth investigating before coming to any firm conclusions that mRNA vaccines aren't good enough.

taylortbb··on $28.50 Beer at LaGuardia Sparks Audit of New York Airport Concession Prices
United frequent flyer status doesn't start til 25k/year, and top tier is over 100k/year. I don't think it's a typo for 20k.

I hit 50k/year just going back and forth between SFO and YYZ once a month. I'm just a software engineer, with a lot of collaboration between our SF and Waterloo offices.

taylortbb··on Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic
I think if one is going to always use their phone, then they probably bought a Chromecast at 1/4 the price. Unless they have a really strong attachment to the Apple ecosystem.
taylortbb··on NASA completes engine test firing of moon rocket on 2nd try
That's less of a "FH can't be human-rated" and more of a "there's not point in human-rating FH right now".

FH is heavily derived from the human-rated F9, but what capsule would fly on FH? Crew Dragon flies fine on F9, and NASA isn't looking to fly Orion on FH. If the latter part changed I'm sure SpaceX would undertake the human rating.

taylortbb··on Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
That's why we run trials. Over 20,000 people got this vaccine months ago, and have been carefully followed since. If it was going to wipe out 20% of people one month after injection we'd know already.
taylortbb··on Bluetooth Attack Can Steal a Tesla Model X in Minutes
The proprietary RF systems other manufacturers use aren't likely to be any more secure. They're just less analyzed.

Keyless ignition is popular enough with consumers it's likely here to stay.

taylortbb··on America is stuck at home, but food-delivery companies still struggle to profit
90% of the time, I agree with you. Expensing nice restaurants I want to try is one of the best perks of business travel.

The other 10% of the time, my flight got delayed and I arrived at my hotel at midnight. I want nothing more than to eat something quick and simple, and get to sleep. That's where room service or a food delivery app comes in, and at a lot of hotels the room service after midnight is a lot worse than a delivery app.

taylortbb··on Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay
Google's announcement was 1000 Montreal, 1000 Toronto, 3000 Kitchener-Waterloo. Montreal and KW being the engineering locations. Both Montreal and KW have much more reasonable housing, and are far cheaper than Toronto/Vancouver.
taylortbb··on Why Are Canadian Construction Costs So High? (2018)
For more objective data, https://www.livabl.com/2019/03/torontos-condo-more-cranes-th... . Toronto does far outpace NYC in the current amount of high rise construction.
taylortbb··on WeWTF
In Toronto if you're looking at WeWork look at Workhaus as well. My employer just rented with them and I'm pretty impressed. Definitely not boring suburban spaces.
taylortbb··on Why a Typical Home Solar Setup Does Not Work with the Grid Down
Yes, in fact they're already in use. They're called pumped storage systems, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...