Hacker News: jwdavidson

New comment by jwdavidson in "Is air travel getting worse?"

jwdavidson — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 01:53:25 +0000

As a teenager, I worked at a big box store that figured out how to monetize this: The department I worked in had a blank on the pricing form marked "Hand Placement Fee" that our company trainer taught us to call the "PIA Charge"

We were instructed to upcharge customers for being jerks, and use our own judgement to determine the fee.

New comment by jwdavidson in "USB 4 version 2 promises 80 Gbps speeds over existing cables"

jwdavidson — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 23:55:22 +0000

RJ45, part of the Registered Jack family of connectors designed by government-mandated telephone monopoly AT&T and codified in 47CFR-68 by the FCC, is free of bureaucratic regulation?

New comment by jwdavidson in "Inky Impression 5.7“ – Colour e-ink display for Raspberry Pi"

jwdavidson — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 03:54:42 +0000

Commercial displays are more like $700-$1000 in this size class, and power isn’t free, so there is presumably some crossover point in total cost of ownership.

I’ll gladly replace my menuboard 43” TVs with eInk displays if they ever reach the rough price neighborhood ($1500?) and have a single-digit-seconds repaint time

New comment by jwdavidson in "I made a simple geolocation service"

jwdavidson — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 16:12:44 +0000

I have exactly one non-shady use case:

I work with an event org with a fairly common name, and another city in our region has an event with the same name. For some years, we’ve outranked them for major keywords and getting their confused customers was becoming a headache for us.

So now if our website thinks you’re in the other city, a little banner appears above the content asking if you’re looking for the other site, and offers the link.

This has saved us ~10 phone calls per day in season. Before adding this link we all got to the point of just doing their customer service for them and helping people buy tickets because it was less drama than trying to get them to call the right people.

New comment by jwdavidson in "The fall of Quibi: how did a starry $1.75B Netflix rival crash so fast?"

jwdavidson — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 02:15:49 +0000

This is literally the soap opera model. Soaps actively solicit fan feedback and run productions with composable sets and flexible casts.

New comment by jwdavidson in "Vulnerability in the Mac Zoom client allows malicious websites to enable camera"

jwdavidson — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 02:18:21 +0000

Unfortunately in this case "uninstall it immediately" does not actually mitigate the vulnerability, since it will just reinstall itself if you come across a triggering link.

New comment by jwdavidson in "Tech press misses Google/Amazon name grab"

jwdavidson — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 03:58:24 +0000

"soy" is Spanish for "I am"

Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

jwdavidson — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:14:55 +0000

Article URL: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57364330-281/judge-americans-can-be-forced-to-decrypt-their-laptops/?part=rss&subj=latest-news&tag=title

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3503431

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Pre-Crime comes to HR

jwdavidson — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 14:19:23 +0000

Article URL: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/print.php/12297_3905931_2/Pre-crime-Comes-to-the-HR-Dept.htm

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1750471

Points: 2

# Comments: 0