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tronjeon Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

My dad also quit a long time ago; he's really proud of it, because he just decided to quit one day and it worked, without ever relapsing and without very negative effects. Or so he says. I don't really believe all of it, but the point to take away seems to be that it's all about willpower.

Good luck to you!

tronjeon Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

I agree with you. The author's inability to write a breadth-first-search under stress, for example, very much highlights this, in my opinion.

I sort-of agree that these specific tasks shouldn't be used as an indicator of programming skills, but a breadth-first-search is really quite simple. It's mode of operation is in the name, and even if you haven't implemented one in a while, you should be able to derive some valid pseudo-code after a while. Especially if you do as much coding as this person claims, and thus are confronted with problems to solve on a regular basis.

tronjeon Lionsgate is making its films available on Steam

That's also a perspective I hadn't considered, but it doesn't explicitly say anywhere that they'll publish newer releases right away, and then there's the localization thing where UK gets a grand total of 11 movies. That's still in stark contrast to Mr. Packer's statement, which promised “commitment to remain at the cutting edge of innovation in delivering content to online audiences around the world.”

tronjeon Lionsgate is making its films available on Steam

For all I care it can be a million pounds, I probably won't use it either way. My point is that it's not a competitive price. For around £8 you can get a Netflix or Amazon Prime subscription (don't quote me on that, I'm not from the UK, but a few pounds don't weaken my argument, I believe).

These subscription-based services offer unlimited content for a month, whereas these £3.49 give you maybe 2h of entertainment. I'm just saying I don't believe it's a great business model in this day and age. I remember iTunes allowing you to rent movies for similar prices years ago, but that never became very popular, did it?

tronjeon Lionsgate is making its films available on Steam

Oh yeah, that's a good point I hadn't considered. I supposed it remains to be seen if enough people use it that (or another) way to make it a profitable endeavor.

tronjeon Lionsgate is making its films available on Steam

That too! I'm not located in either of those two countries, and I can only imagine how atrocious options over here will be, with a start like that.

I also prefer watching movies in original language, because even professional dubs are often terrible; it wouldn't surprise me if they offer limited language choices as well...

tronjeon Lionsgate is making its films available on Steam

Yeah, probably. But I think most people looking for some light entertainment will look for 'a movie', not 'this particular Lionsgate movie', and in any case, with Netflix being so wildly popular, and average Steam users probably being fairly well-versed in today's online entertainment options, I just can't believe that this is very significant at all.

tronjeon Lionsgate is making its films available on Steam

> according to Lionsgate’s President of Worldwide Television & Digital Distribution, Jim Packer, it’s just part of the company’s “commitment to remain at the cutting edge of innovation in delivering content to online audiences around the world.”

He says that, but renting a Lionsgate movie through Steam for 48 hours costs about half as much as a 1-month Netflix membership? I kind of don't think this was a particularly game-changing move on Steam's or Lionsgate's behalf.

tronjeon Dissecting a spammer's spam script

Maybe I'm too naive, but I really don't get why people do this (the spamming, not the dissecting). Whoever did this could probably land a nicely paying programming job, no? Is spamming that lucrative or what's going on?

tronjeon Founder of Blackwater's Drive to Build a Private Air Force

"According to the plan, the aircraft would have 12 hours of endurance to conduct operations."

I'm no expert nor have I done the calculations, but 12 hours sounds like enough time to cross the Atlantic. What I don't know is whether the fuel tank was expanded/replaced.

tronjeon Fixing C

C, to me, requires a lot of discipline about good coding style and conventions. I personally like that a lot, even though, of course, it sometimes causes one to shoot oneself in the foot. But, and I can't point to exactly why, I don't think I want to change anything.

Maybe Rust or something new will come along sometime soon to fix all the issues that exist with C.

Oh, and for those who haven't seen it, there was a cool guide to writing neat, modern C on here a few months ago. https://matt.sh/howto-c

Worth a read in my opinion.

tronjeon The Big Alien Theory

Thank you! I didn't mean to come across as overly critical, but I really think it is a much nicer reading experience now. Very cool that you considered my criticism :)

tronjeon Ask HN: Best ultrabook for Linux?

I'm surprised a lot of people are recommending the X1 Carbon, with little mention of the T-series. The T-series is a favorite among a lot of people I know, and the T460s is very similar to the X1 Carbon, offering a WQHD screen, similar internals, similar battery life, at a lower price point. It's just slightly heavier, but it also has a port for a docking station which the X1 Carbon does not have, if I recall correctly.

For a more low-budget option the Lenovo L-series thinkpads are also pretty cool.

tronjeon The Big Alien Theory

Please, for all our eyes' sake, change the color of the font to something darker! Light-grey on white is just terrible.

tronjeon America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

Not a native speaker either, but I spent a fair amount of time in the US and Canada; and I don't think I've ever heard that phrase. Usually it's "buy one, get one free" or some variation of that.

The phrase you mentioned would mean that you receive 2 units and pay for 1.5.

tronjeon C2: Affordable X86-64 Servers

I know, but the parent comment was explicitly asking about root servers; I agree, though, that I should've mentioned these, as they fit more into the price range (and I imagine they're quite good, as I've mostly heard positive things about Hetzner).

tronjeon C2: Affordable X86-64 Servers

I don't think there's much to compare there. Hetzner's servers are a completely different price range. Unless you get a used one here: https://robot.your-server.de/order/market (URL looks suspicious, but it's Hetzner, I promise). These are servers that are fairly old and out-dated and whose users have discontinued their contracts; now they're being auctioned off so Hetzner doesn't have to throw them out. But these, I'd say, are also difficult to compare because of the old hardware vs. the new but low-cost hardware of the scaleway ones.

tronjeon Super-Intelligent Humans Are Coming

That must be a somewhat daunting procedure for scientists in the genetic field; creating humans that are much, much smarter than themselves, likely rendering themselves obsolete very quickly.

tronjeon “Me”: The one word journalists should add to Twitter searches

I haven't personally experienced something like this, but I can come up with a few reasons.

1) maybe I just don't want to switch seats. Maybe I'm already settled in, maybe I like the fact that it's a window/middle/isle seat, etc.

2) imagine someone refuses to sit next to you, stating the reason as "that person is ugly" or "that person's choice of wardrobe disturbs me". If that happened to me, I'd certainly be offended and might refuse to move out of principle (though personally, I'd rather the flight was on time than make a statement). Those reasons are different from "I can't sit next to a woman", but they also refer to superficial, and frankly, childish, things.

tronjeon In Colorado, a look at life after marijuana legalization

Thanks. Should've come to the comments first. I just entered a mailinator address and 'signed up' with that. Kinda surprised that worked...

tronjeon Writing my own init with Go

> If you want perfect, you have to throw away your computer and somehow live inside Knuth's books.

Either that or wait for GNU/Hurd.

tronjeon Writing my own init with Go

Since init is the first process that runs, you can't use an interpreted language like ruby (since the interpreter would have to run first, which is impossible if your program itself is init). Maybe there's a Ruby-compiler out there somewhere, but as-is Ruby would be impossible.

tronjeon Death of a Troll

This was a lot more interesting and than I thought it would be. I never thought I'd see such a romantic story about a forum troll... Seems like most people involved are now in a better place than before. Good for them.