Hacker News: alirazaq

New comment by alirazaq in "Coding isn't fun – it's ethically and technically complex"

alirazaq — Thu, 25 May 2017 03:09:54 +0000

All skills take considerable effort to become adept at. And contrary to the author's belief, telling kids that programming is "complicated, technically and ethically" is a quick way to lose their interest. Anecdotally, I began programming because I thought it was fun.

New comment by alirazaq in "SpaceX Will Launch Its First Reused Rocket Later This Month"

alirazaq — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 03:11:48 +0000

Identifying those points of stress is the first step to building a better launch system.

New comment by alirazaq in "SpaceX to Send Privately Crewed Dragon Spacecraft Beyond the Moon Next Year"

alirazaq — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 03:25:46 +0000

The Outer Space Treaty was only meant to prevent governments from claiming ownership of celestial bodies. The SPACE Act echoes that:

>It is the sense of Congress that by the enactment of this Act, the United States does not thereby assert sovereignty or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body

New comment by alirazaq in "What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen"

alirazaq — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 03:02:52 +0000

Glad to know someone is giving them hell. I purchased a Vizio TV on black friday and suspected that all manufacturers would be doing something like this. For that reason I never configured it to access my wireless network. Scary to realize that it was actually happening and at this scale.

New comment by alirazaq in "How a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Engine Works"

alirazaq — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 14:28:28 +0000

Internal combustion engines tuned for hydrogen fuel also exist. However the benefit of a fuel-cell vehicle is being able to recharge the batteries with the fuel-cells, regenerative braking, or at a charging stations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_internal_combustion_e...

New comment by alirazaq in "Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script"

alirazaq — Sat, 17 Dec 2016 19:31:12 +0000

Except romaji isn't used to teach pronunciation, it's meant to help the student read while they are still getting familiar with kana; much like furigana for kanji.

Japanese characters have one pronunciation in all circumstances (excluding diacritical modifications). Respectively in romaji, consonants and vowels will always have the same pronunciation. Compare that to American English where accents have been removed and even native speakers can have trouble pronouncing new words.

New comment by alirazaq in "MacBook Pro"

alirazaq — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 18:57:39 +0000

I agree that their devices have been getting unnecessarily thin, but their aggressive push towards Type-C is for the best. The industry will follow Apple's lead as usual, and in a year's time most devices will be Type-C compatible.

In the interim, I don't see the big deal with throwing an HDMI adapter in your bag unless you carry your laptop around in your hand.

New comment by alirazaq in "Australian traffic button pushes beautiful design"

alirazaq — Sat, 10 Sep 2016 14:26:20 +0000

There is no feedback because those are not crosswalk buttons; they are for the blind.

New comment by alirazaq in "Is Reddit Dead? Welcome to the Propaganda Machine"

alirazaq — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 19:17:02 +0000

Ironically that is the real issue I see with reddit. Half truths or exaggerations shrouded in psuedo-intellectual rhetoric are taken seriously and as a comment passes a certain threshhold it becomes impossible to refute.

At least on HN, the community does an excellent job of downvoting low quality comments that don't contribute to the discussion. Although there are times where it seems like reddit is leaking into this site.

New comment by alirazaq in "Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics"

alirazaq — Fri, 29 Apr 2016 04:24:33 +0000

If you can't verify that Google are actually anonymizing the data then you can't claim this is "completely harmless". I don't trust Google and this requires me to. Is that unreasonable to you?

New comment by alirazaq in "Intel made a huge mistake 10 years ago"

alirazaq — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:43:42 +0000

> 6. No crapware

It didn't come with Windows?

New comment by alirazaq in "Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices"

alirazaq — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 17:59:15 +0000

Centralized IoT servers would be a lucrative target for hackers. And as much as I would like the luxury of setting my thermostat remotely as I'm leaving work; it's not worth making it accessible over the internet.

New comment by alirazaq in "Show HN: What every browser knows about you"

alirazaq — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 01:01:51 +0000

I didn't even realize the website was trying to obtain information because I don't use JS. It's ridiculous how much of a liability it is.

New comment by alirazaq in "Oracle wants $9.3B for Google’s use of Java in Android"

alirazaq — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 17:39:41 +0000

So progress should be avoided if it means throwing away everything else?

I can see Android rolling this out across two major releases. The first adding support for a new VM or app language and the second removing Java. Time between those releases will give developers the chance to catch up.

I just think it's silly that you are opposed to throwing everything away. That is what got us in this mess to begin with. Android was supposed to be a simple transition for existing J2ME devs.

New comment by alirazaq in "North Korea sentences US college student to 15 years' hard labour"

alirazaq — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 17:54:44 +0000

This idiot could turn out to be the Jason Rezaian of the DPRK. That is, the bargaining tool the North will use to join the rest of the world.

I would be amazed if Obama's legacy was restoring diplomatic ties with the last three isolationist states.

New comment by alirazaq in "PlayStation VR Will Arrive in October for $399"

alirazaq — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 00:52:40 +0000

There was a similar feature demonstrated with 3D TV's. Both users would have a fullscreen and to a viewer without glasses the images would be overlayed.

New comment by alirazaq in "Tesla Beats Delivery Forecast with 52% Quarterly Surge"

alirazaq — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 23:39:30 +0000

Air suspension is unnecessary? Seems useful for a car that benefits from a low drag coefficient.

New comment by alirazaq in "An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9"

alirazaq — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 09:07:18 +0000

Eleven seconds to load a single page is hilariously bad. Javascript puts far too much blind trust in developers.

New comment by alirazaq in "Duqu 2.0 Hits Kaspersky Lab"

alirazaq — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 02:14:24 +0000

While I do think it was silly of them to mention the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation, there were not many who openly opposed the Iran nuclear deal as strongly as Netanyahu's government.

His speech to congress was unprecedented and a sign he was possibly being kept out of the loop in the negotiation deals. I wouldn't blame Obama, Bebe's emotions (or delusions) seem to get in the way of any attempts at peace talks.

New comment by alirazaq in "Google ATAP: Welcome to Project Soli [video]"

alirazaq — Sat, 30 May 2015 10:49:27 +0000

They say the hardware is ready; so when can we expect developer kits?