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tonyblundell

211 karma · joined October 4, 2012

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tonyblundell··on Chrome 59 has cross-platform headless support
Docs and a Youtube presentation...

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/lkgr/headle...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6biclFh0i0&feature=youtu.be

tonyblundell··on Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?
Lots, I guess highlights would be...

Pavane by Keith Roberts

The Spire by William Golding

Running Man by Stephen King

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

tonyblundell··on Show HN: Simple Postcard – Send a photo postcard from a text message
> Why do we send postcards?

Because our mothers are scared of smart-phones :-)

tonyblundell··on Microsoft and Canonical partner to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10
Cool! Linux with Viruses :-)
tonyblundell··on Show HN: Git-remote-dropbox – use Dropbox as a true Git server
This could be useful as a backup.

I don't know about BitBucket, but GitHub has suffered downtime before. If you have a second remote on Dropbox, you can also get to your files there and wherever it's automatically syncing them should your VCS go down.

tonyblundell··on Things to commit just before leaving your job
I once started a job where whoever wrote the codebase I inherited had used variable names like MrString, MrsInteger, SirArrayOfArrays etc.

Was hilarious :-|

tonyblundell··on React Color – Color Pickers from Sketch, Photoshop, Chrome and More
Which is exactly why we need a single new framework to rule them all!
tonyblundell··on Like Airbnb, but for algorithms?
Sounds more like $5 logos for programmers.

The technology behind it sounds really interesting - expecting programmers to chase bounties and work for nothing up-front with only the possibility of getting paid - not so much.

tonyblundell··on Facebook’s Laughable Data Shows ‘LOL’ Isn’t Funny Anymore
It definitely pre-dates the internet - I remember my mother and grandmother writing it in birthday cards at least 25 years ago.

Also, I know someone named Lol - apparently it used to be quite a common shortening of Lawrence.

tonyblundell··on The adblocking revolution is months away
True, but I don't think it necessarily follows that they'd pay for the same content digitally.

One thing the web has shown us is that people still value tangible things differently to non-tangible things.

You also have to consider the reason's people paid for newspapers... it might have been the only way to get reliable content... to purport a certain image, social status or political allegiance... to keep in-line with peers - did you see this? did you read that?.. simply to pass time.

If you have a smartphone and five minutes to waste, you can cover all those bases without paying for a news article. You can use Facebook, Reddit, Youtube and discussion forums for subjects that interest you, for example.

Remember in the 90s when online store catalogues were pretty much just uploads of print catalogues - designed with pages of content and no search functionality. Or when people tried to make 'online malls' - directories of stores people might want to use in one visit, like they would a brick and mortar mall? They didn't work because the analog to digital conversion isn't just a straight upload process. It's much more complicated than that.

People interact with and consume digital content different to paper content. Just uploading and charging a few pence to read isn't going to work IMHO.

tonyblundell··on The adblocking revolution is months away
The web is 20 years old. I think if this was going to happen, it would have happened by now.

Outside of a few niches, people just aren't willing to pay to read websites.

What I could see happening is premium content being bundled by ISPs. Pay for X package from Y ISP, get content from A, B and C websites. Kind-of like how TV channels are bundled.

In all likelihood though, I think advertising will continue as is. Advertisers will just come up with cleverer ways of presenting it.

tonyblundell··on Knwl.js – A JavaScript NLP
It doesn't make sense mathematically because it isn't a mathematical notation, it's linguistic in nature.

In Europe, '4th May' is shortened to 4/5.

In the US, 'May 4th' is shortened to 5/4.

Neither is right, wrong or illogical.

I'm from the UK, but have spent a lot of time working with US based clients/colleagues. They only way I've found to avoid confusion and ambiguity is to use YYYY/MM/DD.

tonyblundell··on Knwl.js – A JavaScript NLP
Yeah seems obvious, but I don't think it really makes sense to guess that it's a UK format date based on whether one of the numbers is bigger than 12. 4/5/2012 could be 4th May or 5th April and it would be impossible to tell programmatically.

People really need to start using yyyy/mm/dd :-)

tonyblundell··on Why do pub TVs have a pint glass in the corner?
Yeah this was in 07/08-ish - I think someone successfully challenged them in court since.
tonyblundell··on Why do pub TVs have a pint glass in the corner?
That's for a commercial license.

Home subscriptions are about £25.

tonyblundell··on Why do pub TVs have a pint glass in the corner?
My local did this, until he was caught, prosecuted and subsequently lost his job/business and something like £30-40k IIRC.
tonyblundell··on Why do pub TVs have a pint glass in the corner?
Ask for forgiveness, not permission!
tonyblundell··on $149 Chromebooks
I've never understood this argument.

You need a connection for web-based use-cases.

You don't need a connection for non web-based use-cases (document editing, etc works offline).

The same is true of any OS.

tonyblundell··on $149 Chromebooks
That something does more, doesn't make it better for a given task. In fact in some cases the extras make it less suitable.

When you eat a meal, do you use a knife and fork, or two Swiss-army knives?

tonyblundell··on $149 Chromebooks
Yes - https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

Personally I develop on a Chromebook by SSH-ing into a Digital Ocean server direct from Chrome OS. I don't use it full-time as a dev box though.

tonyblundell··on $149 Chromebooks
No, it isn't just about the cost.

If I had a choice between a £150 Chromebook and a £75 Windows laptop, I'd choose the Chromebook.

Windows isn't an 'upgrade' to Chrome OS.

tonyblundell··on Nukes of Hazard (2013)
It's been changed twice since then.

First it was changed to include one capital letter, one numerical digit and an asterisk.

Now it's correcthorsebatterystaple.

tonyblundell··on The Cornish beaches where Lego keeps washing up
UK English. We say Lego or Lego bricks, rather than Legos.

Same way we'd use sand & grains of sand as plurals.

tonyblundell··on Kindle Unlimited
Does anyone have any info on how royalties will be calculated yet?
tonyblundell··on Amazon Fire Phone
It's always much more expensive direct from the network.

Here you can buy the 16GB iPhone 5S for £0 up front, on a £33pm contract.

http://www.dialaphone.co.uk/plans?upfrontPriceRange=Free&tar...

tonyblundell··on Amazon Prime Music
To buy the amount of music I listen to on Spotify would cost hundreds of pounds each month, so I prefer to subscribe for £10. I can still buy the obscure/local/unsigned music I want to listen to that isn't available on there.

To me the idea of owning music is tied to the need for physical media, which we don't have any more. We don't worry about owning TV shows for example because they weren't traditionally broadcast that way.

tonyblundell··on Amazon Prime Music
They'll probably run it at a loss until they have the subscriber numbers to make profit.

As long as they get usable web/phone/xbox apps this will kill Spotify.

tonyblundell··on Ask HN: what is a simple link saving app?
Chrome bookmarks are sync'ed between your chrome devices automatically.

Kippt is good (https://kippt.com/).

tonyblundell··on Microsoft Will Soon Bring Back The Start Menu In Windows 8.1
Drag from top of screen.
tonyblundell··on Microsoft Will Soon Bring Back The Start Menu In Windows 8.1
I still think that a lot of the fuss is because people don't realise you can just hit the windows key and start typing to search in Win8. It's much quicker than using a menu.
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