Hacker News: TheMiller

New comment by TheMiller in "How to build a printer"

TheMiller — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 12:47:19 +0000

This thread made me laugh. I worked on network printing software in Banyan VINES a century or two ago, and my wife always wondered why I hated printing software so much. Everything about the printing software stack, especially in Windows, is terrible.

New comment by TheMiller in "Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes"

TheMiller — Sat, 13 Aug 2022 03:09:33 +0000

Washtenaw is certainly an affluent county, but not that rich. I live in another part of the county and used to work in Mauch's part of it; it's by no means mostly millionaires. I think the simplicity of the project's goal -- every household served, no exceptions -- is one of the reasons that it got off the ground.

New comment by TheMiller in "Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases"

TheMiller — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 12:21:57 +0000

A minor correction: West was bought by Thomson (no "p"), which later merged with Reuters to become Thomson Reuters.

New comment by TheMiller in "Has UML died without anyone noticing?"

TheMiller — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 02:27:21 +0000

Well, I still use some UML diagrams fairly often. Not so much for permanent or comprehensive system documentation, but to help me think through specific features or behaviors, and communicate these designs to others. I usually use a smallish subset of UML, because this usage doesn't require deep details.

I did give up on WYSIWYG tools for this, though. PlantUML support in VSCode is pretty good.

New comment by TheMiller in "A uBlock Origin update was rejected from the Chrome Web Store"

TheMiller — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 17:30:20 +0000

I do get it. I've been using it for several months, and I run into problems fairly often. Nothing wrong with the implementation, AFAICT, but it takes a fair amount of thought to assign sites to different containers, and you can easily end up following links that cross container boundaries and then don't work right because of the context change. I've even run into several corporate sites where federated authentication simply won't work in a container, at all.

New comment by TheMiller in "Comparing Database Types"

TheMiller — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 12:24:26 +0000

I think this is a mischaracterization. The relational model which motivated relational DMBSs is based on predicate logic. Mappings to graphs are obvious, but are not the organizing principle. This was one of the strengths of the relational model, encouraging a more flexible view of the data than graph databases had previously offered. In a complex relational schema, you can discover and work with all kinds of implicit graphs that were not originally intended by the schema design.

New comment by TheMiller in "The gig economy is quietly undermining a century of worker protections"

TheMiller — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 03:15:18 +0000

> UBI is cargo cult finance. It's a broken mental model that will kill the system.

Such dismissiveness is unwarranted. There's a lot of intriguing research on the topic that indicates that it may be a cost-effective replacement for the byzantine social support systems of modern governments, with benefits for both recipients and taxpayers. It only seems like a broken model if you /start/ with an overly simplistic model of the current situation, e.g one that ignores both the existence and desirability of social support systems.

Unfortunately much of the research is frustratingly incomplete. Search e.g. for information on Mincome.

It also seems like a reasonable transition mechanism, from the market economies that have brought us increasing productivity, to a hoped-for post-scarcity future.

New comment by TheMiller in "RSS Is Better Than Twitter"

TheMiller — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 21:29:36 +0000

I second the recommendation for TheOldReader. It's where I eventually ended up after Google Reader's demise.

New comment by TheMiller in "Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research"

TheMiller — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 19:52:34 +0000

At least, it's not the normal case in the U.S. We call that a "holding tank", not a septic tank.

New comment by TheMiller in "ACLU Report: The Public Internet Option"

TheMiller — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 14:45:59 +0000

The rural township that I live in is considering the possibility of providing municipal broadband; hence my interest in this report.

From a security point of view, I am skeptical about the ACLU's recommendation in this report to provide open WiFi access points. Due to the danger of MITM attacks, I don't think it's a good idea to promote the use of open APs.

ACLU Report: The Public Internet Option

TheMiller — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 00:48:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.aclu.org/report/public-internet-option

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16863720

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by TheMiller in "HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece "

TheMiller — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 21:32:18 +0000

Discover had a service like this more than a decade ago, which I used quite a bit. But they shut it down after a few years.

New comment by TheMiller in "Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S."

TheMiller — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:34:49 +0000

It's no more of a "technicality" than the fact that some people happened to be born within the somewhat arbitrary borders of a particular nation, through no effort of their own, and thus happen to be considered citizens of that nation.

New comment by TheMiller in "The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations"

TheMiller — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 23:11:02 +0000

Actually, in that scenario, the campfire is more likely to be a health threat to asthmatic members of the public (about 7% in the U.S.) than the cigar!

New comment by TheMiller in "PostgreSQL Scalability: Towards Millions TPS"

TheMiller — Tue, 10 May 2016 23:12:54 +0000

> It was created by people who had no experience in databases and are learning as they go[4]. As they started adding things that are essential for database they realized it's not that simple.

This sounds exactly like what MySQL development looked like to me early in its rise to popularity.

Google open sources its AI engine, TensorFlow

TheMiller — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 15:40:02 +0000

Article URL: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/google-open-sources-its-artificial-intelligence-engine/?mbid=social_fb

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10533593

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

The Ocean Cleanup

TheMiller — Thu, 21 May 2015 21:13:50 +0000

Article URL: http://www.theoceancleanup.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9585417

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by TheMiller in "Dropbox accesses all the files in your PC?"

TheMiller — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 10:51:33 +0000

SpiderOak. When I decided I wanted auto-syncing cloud storage, I chose them exactly because of the temp file issue. I ended up also liking their security policies and pricing quite a bit. https://spideroak.com/

New comment by TheMiller in "What are your favourite sci-fi books?"

TheMiller — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 13:04:20 +0000

I agree with many of the recommendations here, but am surprised to see no mention so far of "the three B's": Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, and Ben Bova. All excellent hard science fiction authors.

New comment by TheMiller in "The $3500 Shirt – A History Lesson in Economics"

TheMiller — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 15:18:08 +0000

"... but those other states' property taxes rise with the value of the houses every year, ..."

In Michigan, it's a bit more complex. The assessor calculates a State Equalized Value (SEV) on which the tax is based, and that cannot rise faster than the rate of inflation, or 5%, whichever is less. I assume lots of states have odd property tax quirks.