Hacker News: mel919

New comment by mel919 in "Could 'Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from a protoplanetary disk?"

mel919 — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 21:00:32 +0000

The whole situation of us encountering Oumuamua and being unable to gather much information about it reminds me of one of the Lem's short stories about Pilot Pirx in which he encounters an unique alien object and is also struggling with recording data about it.

Here's a quote that works on imagination:

There are times when the human eye can behave like a camera lens, when a momentarily but brilliantly cast image can be not merely recalled but meticulously reconstructed as vividly as if viewed in the present. Minutes later, I could still visualize the surface of that colossus in the flare’s afterglow, its kilometers-long sides not smooth but pocked, almost lunar in texture; the way the light had spilled over its corrugated rills, bumps, and craterlike cavities—scars of its interminable wandering, dark and dead as it had entered the nebulae, from which it had emerged centuries later, dust-eaten and ravaged by the myriad bombardments of cosmic erosion. I can’t explain my certainty, but I was sure that it sheltered no living soul, that it was a billion-year-old carcass, no more alive than the civilization that gave birth to it.

This story (Pirx's Tale) is available on Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=n16z06cm1P0C&lpg=PT11&dq=%...

Temporary app permissions in Android

mel919 — Sun, 16 Dec 2018 22:30:11 +0000

Article URL: https://www.androidauthority.com/bouncer-android-app-905059/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18695657

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Astral: GitHub stars organizer

mel919 — Sat, 01 Dec 2018 20:42:11 +0000

Article URL: https://astralapp.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18578810

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by mel919 in "Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview"

mel919 — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 13:46:01 +0000

Let us not forget when Google tried to patent an algorithm for Assymetric Numeral Systems developed by an academic scientist with intent of making it available in a public domain. Seems like this kind of practice is more common with Google than one might think.

Here are some articles about that: https://www.inquisitr.com/4935898/google-accused-of-trying-t... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/after-patent-office-re...

And a HN link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751977

New comment by mel919 in "Why Apple and Microsoft Are Healthier Than Facebook"

mel919 — Sat, 31 Mar 2018 12:27:08 +0000

> Microsoft, with its cloud, software licensing and subscription businesses, is even less likely to go rogue in data collection because it no longer has a mobile platform to speak of.

But they have a desktop platform and they used it to go rogue with data collection, all the way. Just because they've failed on mobile doesn't automatically make them a privacy-oriented company.

New comment by mel919 in "Microsoft surges 8% after Morgan Stanley says it will reach $1T market cap"

mel919 — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 09:22:31 +0000

Looking at the deeds, not the words, I think Windows 10 shows quite well Microsoft is not that much into a strong privacy stance.

Skype contact leak

mel919 — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 09:23:41 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/Odaeus/status/946143583299670016

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16021108

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by mel919 in "Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year"

mel919 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 18:26:25 +0000

It wasn't stated explicitly. The assumption that I made was it related to the discussion about validity of the topic. Assumptions can be misleading but human language operates in a context. Formally, should the context be taken out, to operate only on the words of the post - you're right - it is not "tu quoque".

New comment by mel919 in "Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year"

mel919 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 15:22:14 +0000

Just a mere suggestion: you may look into how it's done in yeoman (https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093#issuecomment-22034...) and read this https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093 as there's lots of user input there.

New comment by mel919 in "Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year"

mel919 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 11:12:43 +0000

I'm not the author of the blog post. I think you're comparing apples and oranges, also this kind of reasoning is an example of "tu quoque" logical fallacy.

New comment by mel919 in "Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year"

mel919 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 09:50:44 +0000

Microsoft introduced telemetry enabled by default to .NET Core CLI.

Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year

mel919 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 08:23:50 +0000

Article URL: https://opinionatedgeek.com/Blog/2017/3/26/your-tools-shouldn-t-spy-on-you

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14836737

Points: 142

# Comments: 92

New comment by mel919 in "OneDrive has stopped working on non-NTFS drives"

mel919 — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 21:50:21 +0000

I highly recommend dropping it. Switching to a reliable cloud storage from OneDrive is an amazing experience until you reflect on time wasted trying to make 1drv work or waiting for it to start working properly.

OneDrive and Dropbox have been totally opposite experiences to me, heaven and hell. Also after more than a year with OneDrive I passionately despise it. It truly is Internet Explorer of cloud storages.

New comment by mel919 in "New Surface Pro"

mel919 — Wed, 24 May 2017 09:51:52 +0000

I hear you. OneNote uses OneDrive which is a huge mess itself. Sync to Dropbox would help so much... there's even ticket for that on their uservoice. OneNote also sucks massively at searching in notes...

New comment by mel919 in "Dropbox Reaches Key Profit Milestone"

mel919 — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 16:17:21 +0000

As a former OneDrive user the service was terrible, I've had issues with sync and all of the clients - web, mobile and desktop. I've read similiar opinions. From my experience the quality of OneDrive is really poor; it's not really a competitive product. Results my vary and most certainly will but that's the way I see OneDrive. Dropbox on the other hand... just works.

New comment by mel919 in "With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy"

mel919 — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 10:57:33 +0000

That'd be in line with Conway's law ("organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations").

New comment by mel919 in "Microsoft Edge records browsing history in InPrivate mode"

mel919 — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 10:18:40 +0000

Microsoft being a software company is amazing. There are plethora of issues with MS core products like Edge, OneDrive, Store not to mention the release of Windows 10 mobile in alpha state for some of their phones. It's just mind-boggling how broken software can a software company ship and show no signs of caring at all beside the generic responses.

New comment by mel919 in "CShell: A simple, yet powerful, C# scripting IDE"

mel919 — Fri, 09 May 2014 08:28:37 +0000

Looks like uppercased CS is a play on a file extension and a shortcut sometimes used for C#. Personally, I read it as CS-hell.

New comment by mel919 in "Oracle kills third-party JD Edwards reference website"

mel919 — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 12:50:34 +0000

MS-hating opinions come from the old times of IE6 and practices like FUD, EEE. A lot has changed since then but this hate still shows up sometimes.

There's an interesting article about this by Scott Hanselman titled "Microsoft Killed My Pappy": http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx