Hacker News: jboles

New comment by jboles in "HP printers try to send data back to HP about your devices and what you print"

jboles — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 02:03:22 +0000

Agreed, I have an at least 10 year old Brother laser printer and while it doesn’t support any new standard like AirPrint, their iOS app can still print to it across the network, direct from an iPhone/iPad, despite it being made likely before iPhones/iPads could even print.

New comment by jboles in "McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs"

jboles — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 16:38:38 +0000

It’s happened. At the McDs I worked at we’d put the rest of the burger on the tray used for hotcakes.

New comment by jboles in "American Phrase Book"

jboles — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 08:29:13 +0000

“Not bad” - something is pretty good, or at least better than expected. Had to laugh when I saw that phrase on the linked page.

“Not bad at all” - something is really good

“Munted” - trashed or unserviceable

New comment by jboles in "How Did a Nissan Leaf Beat a Tesla Model S in a Race?"

jboles — Sun, 08 Sep 2019 03:30:21 +0000

Kinetic energy rises with the square of velocity... and the Porsche is much more likely to be driving unsafely/like an ass than the truck, or in my experience, even a BMW...

New comment by jboles in "Door blows off Boeing 777X during stress test"

jboles — Sat, 07 Sep 2019 01:49:52 +0000

They are plug doors, as with all other passenger jet airliners today. The door goes in at an angle (eg. 737) or part of it slides up/down (eg. 777) to fit through the door frame.

New comment by jboles in "USB4 Specification"

jboles — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 05:58:18 +0000

Windows 7 did for USB2 devices plugged into a USB1 port: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/usb-speederror/

If the computer can identify the device’s capabilities (using some kind of bus command, I’m not very familiar with the USB protocol) separately from speed testing the cable+device combination, no reason why it couldn’t work for USB 2/3/4.

Of course, this approach relies on the device accurately reporting its capabilities, which may not be the case for the more cheap-and-cheerful gadgets.

New comment by jboles in "Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS"

jboles — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 14:17:40 +0000

Not really, no. Python/Ruby/Perl interpreters are not “integrated” into the OS like AppleScript and Automator are. They’re just some binaries sitting in /usr/local/bin.

New comment by jboles in "Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card"

jboles — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 01:13:12 +0000

The humans are too distracted by non-work activities maybe? This article paints a bizarre picture: https://thefederalist.com/2018/01/10/19-insane-tidbits-james...

New comment by jboles in "Are Men Singing Higher in Pop Music?"

jboles — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 02:28:24 +0000

As an elder millennial, I agree with your last paragraph, still a funny name for it though.

New comment by jboles in "Stop Paying for Gas with Your Debit Card"

jboles — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 01:50:18 +0000

Another reason: pre-auth will deduct up to $125 from your available balance, no matter how small the actual purchase is, which you won’t get back for a couple of days.

New comment by jboles in "Are Men Singing Higher in Pop Music?"

jboles — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 00:47:53 +0000

Perhaps everyone is?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennial_whoop

New comment by jboles in "Mast Brothers: $10 a bar for crappy hipster chocolate (2015)"

jboles — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 20:26:22 +0000

Literal cargo culting!

New comment by jboles in "A Map That Made Los Angeles Make Sense"

jboles — Sun, 11 Aug 2019 03:58:14 +0000

I think it’s one of those things you learn from your parents by riding in the car with them, and the relative age one starts driving vs moving far from their childhood home.

I did both - learning names of roads, landmarks and routes from the back seat, then later studying their Gregory’s (Sydney street directory), more than my parents ever did, and navigating for them from the back seat.

To this day some of my friends think I’m some crazy human GPS for being able to remember how to get somewhere after traveling there only once, sometimes 10+ years earlier.

New comment by jboles in "How much equity should I get as the first employee?"

jboles — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 19:25:43 +0000

10-30% doesn't even seem excessive if there is no product today.

There are so many startups that post on this board with an open-ended title similar to "Looking for an engineer to build our product", then you go to their website and they're offering 0.5% equity. It's almost insulting.

New comment by jboles in "Australia's high-speed rail dream leaves a bitter taste"

jboles — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 19:11:24 +0000

It's not so much the trains that are terrible as the 1800s-era track geometry that is terrible. There are mountains all the way down the east coast; any high-speed line is going to be (a) necessarily built inland and separate from any existing line and (b) phenomenally expensive.

New comment by jboles in "Host Protected Area"

jboles — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 19:25:51 +0000

Even before SSDs it was also used to short-stroke spinning HDDs for better random seek performance.

New comment by jboles in "A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign"

jboles — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 21:22:48 +0000

Once did a project like this that grabbed Seattle's realtime data for some bus stops around my place. It was an old Windows CE PocketPC thingy, so the tools were primitive (.NET compact framework 1.0, basically).

Maybe a bit too primitive. It worked pretty well for about a year, until I found that the CompactFlash WiFi adapter was only 802.11b and there was nothing newer available that was compatibility with the PocketPC. It ended up being a choice between keeping the gadget running, or being able to run my WiFi network at 802.11g speeds with modern (WPA) security, so the latter won out.

New comment by jboles in "A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign"

jboles — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 21:08:13 +0000

I have done exactly that! (but not for London): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fte7w0r8d_k

(Not my video; someone made it using the program I made)

New comment by jboles in "MIT Fellow Says Facebook ‘Lifted’ His Ideas for Libra Cryptocurrency"

jboles — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 06:09:10 +0000

Yeah, I once had an idea for auto-scrolling based off tracking eye gaze through the webcam. I never told Microsoft or Samsung about it, but they totally stole my idea!!1eleventyone

New comment by jboles in "The Titanic Compared With a Modern Cruiseship (2014)"

jboles — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 02:31:16 +0000

It’s a British turn of phrase meaning any kind of party costume, not even necessarily anything “fancy”.