Hacker News: markcerqueira

New comment by markcerqueira in "How to Synthesize a House Loop"

markcerqueira — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 02:49:29 +0000

If you're interested in this you may also be interested in ChucK [1] - a strongly-timed music programming language.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Mac(OS)talgia"

markcerqueira — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 21:49:44 +0000

I wonder how much of this sentiment is driven by Apple saying Snow Leopard was taking Leopard and focusing on performance and stability?

New comment by markcerqueira in "Niantic announces “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data"

markcerqueira — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 04:39:29 +0000

> They consistently incentivize you to scan pokestops (physical locations) through "research tasks" and give you some useful items as rewards.

There are plenty of non-scan tasks you can do to get those rewards as well but I do think Poffins (largely useless unless you are grinding Best Buddies) are locked behind scan tasks.

Source: Me. This is the one topic I am very qualified to speak to on this website.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Bus Lane Blocked, He Trained His Computer to Catch Scofflaws"

markcerqueira — Fri, 16 Mar 2018 18:51:11 +0000

Yeah, he certainly could've been more pragmatic because I'm sure ultimately he wants to see the problem solved, not figure out who to blame.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Google bans cryptocurrency ads"

markcerqueira — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 16:18:11 +0000

Do you normally apologize for people feeling offended about what you said instead of just apologizing?

New comment by markcerqueira in "Just start writing and the rest will follow"

markcerqueira — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 21:01:38 +0000

Funny running into your here Danny! :)

I run into a lot of people with the same situation as you and I always tell them to just write about whatever gets them putting words down and out there. Programming problems, pearls, learnings, video games, food, whatever floats your boat.

Ultimately almost no one will read it save for one person who runs into the exact same issue or loves the same exact dish at the restaurant you love. Fear of being judged shouldn't stop you.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Android beats iOS in smartphone loyalty, study finds"

markcerqueira — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 21:46:02 +0000

> If you're buying an Android device, you're statistically likely trying to save money and therefore a new iPhone isn't a realistic option.

Disagree strongly. Yes, plenty of Android phones come in at lower price-points so they will be more appealing to people looking to save money when purchasing a smartphone. But calling this is "statistically likely" is a gross exaggeration of the situation.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds"

markcerqueira — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 04:40:48 +0000

> Last time I pointed that out I was downvoted for some unknown reason.

Hard to believe but the number of votes something gets != the quality or accuracy of the statement.

New comment by markcerqueira in "The Dropbox Comp"

markcerqueira — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 19:09:28 +0000

> Not even Apple can make iCloud “Just Work™” the way Dropbox’s client apps and service work.

Not surprising. Apple's main business isn't building a file syncing service and while they're a much larger corporation I'd bet that Dropbox has more resources dedicated to its core product compared to Apple's iCloud file syncing offerings.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Introducing Airbnb Plus"

markcerqueira — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 17:42:56 +0000

No subtitles on the Shanghai video... 不好！

New comment by markcerqueira in "Austin, Denver, Detroit: Good Places to Be a Software Engineer Looking for a Job"

markcerqueira — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 00:01:30 +0000

When did you last do Android? I've done both for about eight years and while the development tools at first on Android were total trash I cannot stand Xcode and the iOS development ecosystem these days.

Throw in Swift and things get worse. On the other side, Java/Kotlin interoperability in Android Studio is great and the tooling keeps improving.

New comment by markcerqueira in "I've never felt less in control of my own hardware"

markcerqueira — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 20:52:31 +0000

This is a recurring theme here where people over-engineer their devices, workflows, and lifestyle. Then they get burned by it and blame everything except that over-engineering.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Common Lisp Brazil Community"

markcerqueira — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 07:30:46 +0000

Quick glance looks like it's a starter document for Common Lisp: what is Lisp, good resources for beginners, and projects to look at.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”"

markcerqueira — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 21:15:05 +0000

I'm surprised to hear a native Californian would say "back east." I thought only people from the East Coast (or I guessed who lived there at one point) would go "back."

New comment by markcerqueira in "Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)"

markcerqueira — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 23:16:07 +0000

> Couldn't you have give also vague, but accurate information as well?

Could you give me an example of what you consider "vague, but accurate information?"

New comment by markcerqueira in "Why we transitioned from Medium back to our own blog"

markcerqueira — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 19:00:13 +0000

> But I wonder if it has anything—even in small part—to do with the bad contrast on a lot of sites and the fact that browsers render highlighted text with good contrast. Even on high-contrast sites like Medium, the bright background combined with dark text can be tiresome on the eye, meaning that highlighted text will invert that yielding a more comfortable white text on blue. As someone who doesn't randomly highlight text, I often intentionally highlight text to quickly and nearly-effortlessly correct bad color selections by the site's designers.

Mostly to ensure I keep my APM high on HackerNews.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Kotlin: The Problem with null"

markcerqueira — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 01:05:19 +0000

> Only in the same instances you would in Java-to-Java. So the ergonomics aren't improved or reduced.

This isn't correct. For example you have a String that was passed as a param and were shoving it into JSONObject. In Java if it's null nothing bad happens (except shoving a null value into your JSON). Shoving a null into a JSONObject in Kotlin won't crash in the put operation; you'd get the crash as soon as the method is called and it does the Intrinsics check.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Kotlin: The Problem with null"

markcerqueira — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 20:54:54 +0000

> They could have gone hardcore and said any non-primitive, unanotated platform type is nullable but that would have made interop really ugly.

Instead you just get a crash if it is null which is worse in my opinion.

> And all of the null checks would have muddied up code and added (admittedly minimal) runtime costs.

This already happens automatically for parameters to a Kotlin function; check out the Kotlin Intrinsics checks.

New comment by markcerqueira in "A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance"

markcerqueira — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 23:10:12 +0000

> "We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize."

Really disappointed, but not surprised, with the wording of this post. We're sorry YOU FEEL disappointed. It's like apologizing for making someone feel offended instead of apologizing for offending them outright.

New comment by markcerqueira in "Self-Driving Ubers Driving in Bike Lanes"

markcerqueira — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 03:30:00 +0000

I always thought this was "basic driving" knowledge that some people just don't get. Is the solution really to add more markings and signs to the street? Do you need "Left lane is for passing" along hundreds of miles of a highway in California?