HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

wvbdmp

575 karma · joined May 1, 2024

submissionscomments
wvbdmp··on Azulejo
Lapis Lazuli is cognate, both come from the same Arabic/Persian root. Apparently “azure”, “azul”, “azzurro” lost the L because it got confused with the common “l’” article,
wvbdmp··on Htmx 4.0, the first JavaScript library to release exclusively on the Game Boy
I’m amazed at how cheap this is. How is this possible for what I’m assuming is a relatively low-volume physical product? I don’t suppose it’s produced on-demand, but also Carson Gross probably doesn’t have 1000 of these boxes at his home, or I would have seen the pics on twitter.
wvbdmp··on Future euro banknote design proposals
I mean of the proposed designs. Actually, why not have Hitler. I wouldn’t mind a “never again” series with infamous faces from every country. Could be fun, lol.
wvbdmp··on Future euro banknote design proposals
So shuffle them around. We already have a million coin designs. One side can remain constant, no problem.
wvbdmp··on Future euro banknote design proposals
I sort of disagree, the faces SHOULD foster a unified identification as European. And at least on paper they do kind of nicely, imho. No one can argue with Da Vinci. Curie is Polish-French. Callas is internationally beloved and Greek. Beethoven is potentially the second-best known world-wide behind Da Vinci, and can be claimed by the whole German-speaking area, at least Germany and Austria. Cervantes is perhaps more obscure as a face, but well-deserved and everyone knows “quixotic”. Von Suttner is the most obscure and probably overrepresents the German-speaking countries, but it’s Europe, so the pacifist angle is hard to argue against.

Everyone can think of similarly deserving people. They should do it like the coins and just have an abundance of motifs from every country. Since they’re too scared to put english text on them, put a QR code link to some short text in every language. I cringe at the idea of QR codes in general, but what are you going to do.

The buildings are all the same steel and glass bullshit and represent nothing if not the widely despised bureaucratic aspects of the EU. The birds at least look nice, but they’re boring and hyper-harmless.

wvbdmp··on Half-Life 2 running natively on HaikuOS
Old-ish Source has a pretty generous license, no? https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013/blob/master... GoldSrc is there somewhere as well. I’m definitely grateful for it. I’ve read some of it myself and watched a bunch of Youtube about it.
wvbdmp··on Deir El-Medina Strikes
Before the American meaning became ubiquitous, corn used to mean (and still does sometimes) just any grain. In fact it also survives in other languages like German, where “Korn” is a singular kernel, or an uncountable amount of grain, as well as the figurative meaning in “film grain”.
wvbdmp··on Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again
We have all those things in Germany, including the converse stereotype that Brits like to queue and act proper and polite.

Guess we both need to redirect our fantasies of civility to Japan or something.

wvbdmp··on Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
Don’t know about tiny subset. Every enterprise workstation in the world would probably be running it.

Also the OP specifically fantasizes about unchanged compatibility.

Really there would be no reason not to use this, so it would likely have to be more expensive than the regular spyware/adware version. Thus it couldn’t get away with the name “Lite” and would end up being called “Professional”.

wvbdmp··on 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
Apparently this was an exercise book he made for a parisian tutee, who later fled the french revolution, leading to the confiscation of the notebook by the revolutionaries.
wvbdmp··on Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs
Idk, it is a media player. I’m not mad about it keeping a ton of cover images and audio stubs in memory for immediate playback. Plus probably metadata of the entire library, with various indices. Makes sense to me.

We might expect newer players to cache less because SSDs are fast, but perhaps this is offset by the increasing use of network storage, whether it’s internet-based or a local HDD NAS.

wvbdmp··on An interview with an Apple emoji designer
What’s next, a cowboy emoji? A ninja emoji? But seriously, as much as I like emojis, I kind of feel like they should stick to emotions. Maybe other intangible things. They’re hard to convey verbally (and succinctly), simple concrete nouns are good for a bit of fun and for UI icons, but really not very useful if we’re being honest. Unless you’re texting with a lizard, or my lazy elementary-school niece who shouldn’t really have a phone anyway…
wvbdmp··on Macaroni – a single HTML file messenger
The paragraph doesn’t really explain the rationale for forbidding WTFPL and even Public Domain and CC0? They’re all fine for commercial use, aren’t they?
wvbdmp··on Splash Is a Colour Format
Using a LUT to harmonize raw “working” colors is actually kind of genius. Interesting.
wvbdmp··on Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity
Maybe Greek and Latin vocabulary is just overextended at some point? I don’t really see the issue with Snap, Crackle and Pop. The potential confusion around Magic seems much greater, although when you consider the vastly more common opposite effect, where specific scientific terms become popular and quickly gain wholly different colloquial meanings, perhaps it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

Perhaps Magic is even so ridiculous that it’s immune to co-option by charlatans. After all, they choose sciency words to lend an air of credibility. OTOH the perceived ridiculousness could also change rather quickly. It’s just the nature of language use…

wvbdmp··on Most men lie about how tall they are
I always explicitly quote my government ID.
wvbdmp··on Several Injured in Boeing 787 Nose-Gear Collapse in Frankfurt
Delicious, thank you!
wvbdmp··on Several injured in Boeing 787 nose-gear collapse in Frankfurt
Yikes, mojibake in 2021.

edit: actually, how did that happen? The apostrophes show up correctly, they’re just all preceded by a  that doesn’t seem to represent anything?

wvbdmp··on Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
The other point of view is that the burden is on those who suggest that biological consciousness is somehow special. What makes it so, and if the answer isn’t metaphysical, what’s stopping us from constructing it artificially?
wvbdmp··on The death of the brick and mortar toy store
I see this also, but I don’t get it. An empty building still costs a bunch of taxes and upkeep and still rapidly deteriorates without tenants looking after it. Aren’t these people hemorrhaging money? What do they have to show for it? My city actually handled a majority of the rent so a business could revitalize a large-ish property that had been empty for years. Of course it failed as soon as that deal ran out.
wvbdmp··on Show HN: Number Gacha, a gacha game distilled to its essence
On mobile, I would appreciate the numerical keyboard for the math problems.
wvbdmp··on Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation
For the christmas decorations, yes, but the imagery I meant is mostly custom, apart from some shared memes. Images and videos of themselves or their dogs in some style or doing something or being somewhere. Some of these honestly betray some mental unwellness if you ask me, but the point is, people eat this shit up and see it as harmless fun. Which it is, of course, in the same way many things are if you ignore the externalities.
wvbdmp··on Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation
This is what Amazon did for many physical products. It just takes time.
wvbdmp··on Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation
Idk what people you interact with, but my personal sample of “normal people” post AI generated pics and videos in their WhatsApp status and adorn their homes with AI generated imagery for christmas. They may not actively use LLMs or even know what they are, but they’re satisfied with Google’s AI overview and they love using voice assistants. These aren’t people from any particular sphere I sought out or which self-selected, but neighbors, colleagues, extended family, the chef at a local restaurant etc.

People with disdain for AI are probably largely limited to one “elite” or another. Of course this goes for practically any cause. It’s basically impossible to to get large-scale momentum behind anything that goes against prevailing economic interests.

Of course he was still out of touch with that particular group, and if they all try really hard, maybe they can get some narrative out there, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Unless corpos discover how they can use these clashing views for market segmentation or something.

wvbdmp··on Greek Alphabet Cards
B/V shifts or mergers are very common, notably in many Spanish variants they will, for example, write “vaca”, betraying the latin root “vacca”, but very clearly say “baca”. Coming from a language that clearly differentates between these sounds, it’s surprising how close they are.
wvbdmp··on Europe built sovereign clouds to escape US control. Forgot about the processors
They still don‘t fab them though, AFAIK they go through TSMC.
wvbdmp··on David Attenborough's 100th Birthday
Oh yeah, you’re right, I just gave it a quick scan for balls and thought they were all from 1970.
wvbdmp··on David Attenborough's 100th Birthday
Amazing. It’s relatively easy to find color photos of this, for example one of the very last pics here, from 1970: https://www.esquire.com/sports/g36954688/wimbledon-1970s-pho...

But what is the oldest color photo of white ball tennis?

Also, do we have a good source for this story, because it’s not mentioned on Wikipedia: ”In 1972, the International Tennis Federation introduced yellow balls, as these were easier to see on television. Wimbledon continued using white balls until 1986.”

wvbdmp··on Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
Sure, but the explanation is still Poland’s potential and its capacity to fulfil it. You could be free all you want and still plateau on some immediate post-war rebound gains.
wvbdmp··on Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
The revenge fantasies were for being bullied, not justly punished, and by different people. Not that I condone corporeal punishment.
← PreviousPage 2 of 8Next →