Hacker News: ScottEvtuch

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "No GPS required: our app can now locate underground trains"

ScottEvtuch — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 17:46:38 +0000

I would imagine it's because your distance to the satellites changes more when you move along the ground than when you move up and down the same amount.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Why does Windows use backslash as path separator? (2019)"

ScottEvtuch — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 22:39:05 +0000

I think there are some tricks to ensure a list in pwsh for these sort of operations. I vaguely recall ending variable assignments with a comma to avoid this.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Anatomy of a credit card rewards program"

ScottEvtuch — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 12:54:23 +0000

Pretty sure you can only write off gambling losses to offset gambling winnings, which entirely makes sense. That way you only pay taxes on your net winnings for the year.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "RollerCoaster Tycoon at 25: 'It's mind-blowing how it inspired me'"

ScottEvtuch — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 00:00:51 +0000

You can hold down a key (Ctrl I think) to force snapping to the "world grid" now. That makes everything you place line up even halfway across the map.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Anti-aging drug for dogs moves closer to gaining FDA approval"

ScottEvtuch — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 15:33:09 +0000

That doesn't really follow. I have the legal authority to pay a junk yard to smash my car into a tiny cube, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be protected from auto body shops selling me fake repairs and non-functional parts.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Improving deep sleep may prevent dementia, study finds"

ScottEvtuch — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 20:52:39 +0000

I thought vivid dreaming was an indicator of sleep interruption, not quality sleep. IIRC dreaming happens during our deepest sleep when you would not normally be easily woken up. Remembering your dreams mean you woke during that time.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Wait, what's a bookmarklet?"

ScottEvtuch — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 20:17:20 +0000

They are worried about someone copying a mistyped email from the first form field and pasting it into the "confirm email" field, thus making the confirmation field pointless. I would suspect in the real world most people are typing their email by hand and not using a password manager or auto-fill so this becomes an actual problem.

A nice implementation of this would detect that you pasted/auto-filled the original field and not prompt you to confirm unless you typed it slowly by hand.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "An excruciatingly detailed guide to SSH (but only the things I find useful)"

ScottEvtuch — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 20:22:21 +0000

The remote port forwarding example seems wrong. It's specifying the loopback address which would be pointing to vuln-server (where we are connecting via SSH) and not internal-web, right? How is vuln-server accessing the site hosted on the loopback of internal-web?

Edit: Okay now I see that command is supposed to be run from internal-web and not campfire. I guess you would also have to ProxyJump through vuln-server to internal-web to even run that command!

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "The FCC responds to my ATSC 3 encryption complaint – they want to hear from you"

ScottEvtuch — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 20:07:44 +0000

My local cable company gets around this by strategically pricing everyone towards using their new cable boxes which are essentially digital TV over DOCSIS internet. The prices for the IP TV plans (which they still call "cable") are less than $100 per month, but I was quoted over $300 per month for a traditional cable plan that could use a CableCard.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Instagram Threads: The problem with the “everything for everyone” approach"

ScottEvtuch — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 21:14:04 +0000

I hear this defense a lot, but isn't it kind of problematic that a platform makes you go out of your way to tell them you prefer not to see soft-core porn? I didn't even know TikTok had a "Not Interested" button until someone told me in person. It's completely hidden.

I've personally seen this come up on a lot of different social media apps that feature video content. They all initially throw a bunch of vaguely pornographic content at you to start with and continue doing so unless you keep opting out for long enough. I kinda wonder how many users never make it past the initial onslaught and just assume the entire platform is like that.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "AI camera with no lens"

ScottEvtuch — Wed, 31 May 2023 19:43:45 +0000

This is basically the plot of "The Net" starring Sandra Bullock. A group of hackers steals her identity and creates a new one for her in various systems to cause the police to believe she is a wanted felon.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Citymapper Joins Via"

ScottEvtuch — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 16:12:16 +0000

I also live in Chicago and use CityMapper almost exclusively now. It gives way more detailed estimates for multiple transfers between bus and train and generally comes up with more/better routes for weird destinations.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb"

ScottEvtuch — Sun, 05 Mar 2023 22:38:30 +0000

Surely almost everyone does address standardization on user inputted fields, right? You'd be silly not to do this.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Tesla recalls 360k vehicles, says full self-driving beta may cause crashes"

ScottEvtuch — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 21:55:43 +0000

I think this is splitting hairs. Would it still be a recall if a mechanic drives to your house to fix a mechanical problem?

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens"

ScottEvtuch — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 15:04:12 +0000

If you buy the game on Steam but play using a Quest don't you count as a Steam user? It would launch using SteamVR.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Digital Signals"

ScottEvtuch — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 13:16:48 +0000

That sounds backwards to me. Don't you mean Y axis is time and X axis is frequency? Otherwise how could it play from bottom to top?

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "The 12-bit rainbow palette"

ScottEvtuch — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 14:10:43 +0000

Aren't something like 1 in 20 or so people color blind? I'd hardly consider that as an edge case. That's roughly the odds of being over 6ft tall in the US.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Gzip exceptions, but only on hot or rainy days"

ScottEvtuch — Sat, 12 Nov 2022 15:29:56 +0000

I think some AC to DC transformers bond the AC neutral and the DC negative.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "How to download all of Wikipedia onto a USB flash drive"

ScottEvtuch — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 22:32:04 +0000

I think the idea of "everything is about half its life" is to account for survivorship bias in longevity. The only units that make it to the 95th percentile lifetimes clearly got luckier with parts and can reasonably be expected to last longer.

New comment by ScottEvtuch in "Nix Team Creation"

ScottEvtuch — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 21:03:40 +0000

For what it's worth most of the "packages" on chocolatey are just instructions for downloading those same installers and executing them in their respective silent modes. No one is repackaging those apps except for maybe some of the ones marked as "portable".