Hacker News: metageek

New comment by metageek in "The DIY Danes planning to launch a man into space"

metageek — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 15:07:33 +0000

IIRC, it takes just as much energy to reach L4 (or L5) as to reach the Moon--they're in the same orbit.

If you've got settlers on the Moon, or beyond the Earth-Moon system, L4 is probably a good place to build a commercial and industrial outpost; but, for your only space installation, something lower down is much cheaper.

New comment by metageek in "AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs"

metageek — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 14:31:50 +0000

That makes more sense, thanks.

New comment by metageek in "Nokia acquired by Microsoft"

metageek — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 20:59:55 +0000

Back at Netscape, Jim Barksdale hated the term "browser war", on the grounds that a war justifies extreme behavior. He didn't want us believing the browser war meant we should be breaking the normal rules.

New comment by metageek in "AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs"

metageek — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 19:01:22 +0000

>Seriously if AT&T doing this, there is no reason to believe that other providers do not.

The article says AT&T has the data for any telco that uses AT&T switches. This is a little odd, given that the company currently known as AT&T is not the same company that used to manufacture switches; but, if this has been going on for 26 years, I suppose the government would have insisted it continue across corporate splits and mergers.

New comment by metageek in "Obama Plans to Take Action Against Patent-Holding Firms"

metageek — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 15:14:49 +0000

ARM doesn't make anything physical--but neither do most software companies. ARM makes products that their customers actually want. Patent trolls don't.

New comment by metageek in "US Secret Service rumbles into action against Bitcoin facilitators"

metageek — Wed, 29 May 2013 14:52:45 +0000

If LR operated as described in the indictment, it didn't really have information about its customers, so those records might not have been all that useful.

New comment by metageek in "Mozilla and Samsung Collaborate on Next Generation Web Browser Engine"

metageek — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:59:49 +0000

paddy_m said browser engine, so Chromium doesn't count. And WebKit wasn't actually new; it was based on KHTML.

New comment by metageek in "Comcast injecting JS"

metageek — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:57:55 +0000

Isn't JS injection a copyright violation, since it creates a derived work? Or has that idea been shot down before?

New comment by metageek in "Tesla Unveils New Finance Product"

metageek — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:47:00 +0000

Or as soon as the states close the loophole so that this program is treated the same as a lease.

New comment by metageek in "Military Aircraft Hit Mach 20 Before Ocean Crash, DARPA Says"

metageek — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:16:55 +0000

It did have one, but it ablated.

New comment by metageek in "Box's 65-Year-Old Android Engineer Gives Your Startup Some Unsentimental Advice"

metageek — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:53:36 +0000

"Neesh" is taught as Correct in the US, though it's not universally used.

New comment by metageek in "Introducing Netflix Social"

metageek — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 19:53:26 +0000

I agree, except for the "focus" bit. The engineers that worked on this alleged feature would not have been much help signing new content distribution deals.

(Well. I'm generalizing. I'm an engineer, and I know I wouldn't be.)

New comment by metageek in "Introducing Netflix Social"

metageek — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 19:50:50 +0000

My main Netflix player is a Blu-Ray player from 2009. I don't think Samsung is going to push an update to add the Don't Share This button. I'm just not going to connect my accounts.

New comment by metageek in "Craigslist Suing Padmapper"

metageek — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Doesn't that run afoul of the same problem as Righthaven? There is no bare "right to sue" that can be transferred without transferring the copyright.

New comment by metageek in "Craigslist Suing Padmapper"

metageek — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 19:42:40 +0000

>I'd apply the same copyright principle as phone books

So would I—phone books are not subject to compilation copyright, because there's no editorial choice going on. That was settled in the _Feist_ case.

New comment by metageek in "Let Maya Speak For Herself"

metageek — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:24:32 +0000

And presumably the autistic community knows about ASL, and the children who can learn it, do—it'd be greatly preferable to carrying around a multi-thousand-dollar device. I think we can assume that this child's problems leave her unable to learn ASL.

New comment by metageek in "Taxi Medallions: New York's taxi system makes fares higher and drivers poorer"

metageek — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 13:48:04 +0000

Yes, but that sort of regulation doesn't require medallions.

New comment by metageek in "Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors."

metageek — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:41:54 +0000

>One may argue that Europe went too far with their "social" expenses (hence, the current financial meltdown).

I'm not sure Greece in particular went too far, as such; isn't the problem that they've got a massive epidemic of tax evasion, and no political will to tackle it? If they were enforcing the tax laws on the books, maybe they'd have the money to pay for the services they're providing.

>So, we "saved" on a silly, cheap follow-up, but ended up spending a huge amount later. And guess what? These patients can't pay their bill anyhow, so we have to write the expense off.

Hear, hear.

New comment by metageek in "It Takes 6 Days to Change 1 Line of Code"

metageek — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:24:35 +0000

Nor is "how not to be interrupted" covered in the CS curriculum.

New comment by metageek in "It Takes 6 Days to Change 1 Line of Code"

metageek — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:21:47 +0000

Interesting; I've encountered "yak shaving" as meaning something slightly different: it's when your main task depends on a subordinate task which is long, difficult, and stupid--e.g., in programming, it's something which the tools should be doing for you. (Bonus points if you know that, on a different OS, or in a different language, the tools would be doing it for you.)

The original MIT meaning is closer to what I recently heard described as meta-yak-shaving, which is when, before you can start shaving the yak, you discover that each hair of the yak contains a subyak, and each subyak has to be shaved individually.