Hacker News: moftz

New comment by moftz in "Pocket P.C. – Ships first dev units"

moftz — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 02:56:24 +0000

To look cool carrying around a device that has the dimensions of a normal tablet but the processing power of a wish.com tablet. I'd much rather just carry a phone and a ultra portable laptop around than this stupid thing. Many companies tried to sell these kinds of devices back in the early 2000s but they never sold well because they sucked. They didn't have the power of a normal laptop and we're only marginally better than the smartphones of the time. What is this supposed to replace? It's not going to replace a modern smartphone and certainly doesn't have enough power to replace a laptop or even a flagship tablet. These are neat toys but that's really all they are.

New comment by moftz in "Apple didn't revolutionize power supplies; new transistors did (2012)"

moftz — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:29:48 +0000

Apple invented one people actually wanted to buy

New comment by moftz in "Apple didn't revolutionize power supplies; new transistors did (2012)"

moftz — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:28:22 +0000

If you are doing something so well and making tons of money, why spend money on what will absolutely ruin your core business? Personal computers weren't just going to supplement the copier business, they would seriously ruin it. But there was also a chance computers would flop so why spend the money on trying to ruin your core business and not succeed? People found uses for computers that the pioneers could never imagine so why would some CEO be any more imaginative? Disruptive tech usually doesn't come from the big companies, it comes from little guys who can take the risk because they have nothing else to fall back on. The big companies only get into it when they see that there is an actual market.

New comment by moftz in "Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors"

moftz — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 16:24:39 +0000

In some places, Uber is just a front-end for a bunch of taxi companies to let you hail them. I remember doing this in Athens, the app just calls a taxi for you. Although I don't remember if I paid through the app or paid the driver directly.

New comment by moftz in "Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say"

moftz — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 17:36:25 +0000

In an employee owned corporation, you would get some say in leadership. Although it's possible that in a large enough corporation, it would be an indirect democracy. You vote for board members who vote for the company leadership.

New comment by moftz in "Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)"

moftz — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 18:02:24 +0000

Even if you could manage to find some ADSL+ equipment, you are going to tap out at around 48Mbps, I'm not sure if you can push unshielded, twisted 2-pair wire any faster. One downside would be that all of the phone jacks in the house are tied together, it would be a A->B kind of connection. I regularly get much faster speeds with my powerline adapters and if you have multiples paired, they create an actual network on the powerlines.

New comment by moftz in "Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?"

moftz — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 01:56:29 +0000

The lingua franca comes from the dominant culture of the time. The massive colonial empire of Britain move things from latin to English and the rise and control of the US has perpetuated English even more so. If the Anglo countries all sank into the ocean, I doubt it would be very long until Mandarin developed into the dominant language. China would be the major trading power and without the need to work with America, there would be little need to continue with English as years progress.

New comment by moftz in "Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater"

moftz — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 17:46:24 +0000

I remember watching an episode where they planned to build a partially subterranean home all within some sort of triangle shaped junkyard that sat on the interior of a block of townhomes. Completely ridiculous idea but when you've got lots of money, why not? There were two basement levels and then two planned above ground levels except they ran out of money for the top floor and stopped there. Who wants to live in that terrible location in a house where most of the living space is in a basement? They could have built a lovely country mansion or even a very nice normal house in the suburbs. Instead, they waste money on unique but stupid ideas.

New comment by moftz in "Countries that have accepted the World Passport"

moftz — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 12:53:58 +0000

An interesting idea but the whole point of a passport is to prove which country are a citizen of. Countries set their visa policies to accept or deny based on passport origin. A US passport can get you a visa quickly in most places in the world but a North Korean passport would likely not. If I can simply pay for a World Passport, what incentive do they have to diligently verify my documents? Obviously a country could produce fake passports for their own citizens but that would be for some specific reason like espionage. Maybe a small country would produce a passport for me with a big bribe but I'm guessing the countries willing to do so are at the bottom of the list of "most accepted passports". Allowing anyone to get a passport with little scrutiny just devalues the passport. Perhaps in a more enlightened time, something like a UN passport would allow stateless people to travel easily to countries that would accept it.

New comment by moftz in "Apple unveils new iPad mini with breakthrough performance in new design"

moftz — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 18:59:31 +0000

We need to bring back the Turbo button.

New comment by moftz in "Our fridge just emailed us to say we opened its door too many times"

moftz — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 14:21:02 +0000

There is usually a setting for the rear seat reminder. It's to remind people to not leave their babies in the car. Maybe the volume is purposefully set a little high to wake the kid up just in case you forget.

New comment by moftz in "Our fridge just emailed us to say we opened its door too many times"

moftz — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 14:17:52 +0000

We bought an Instant Pot-brand air fryer. I love the thing entirely except for the buttons. They are not real buttons, just some sort of touch sensor but they sometimes just cannot detect a finger. You'd think that maybe the surface was dirty but it works just as bad when it's just been cleaned off and hands are washed. I beginning to think that the actual sensors are not aligned perfectly with the labels or that they are set to ignore someone pressing with their whole finger instead of the just the tip.

New comment by moftz in "Our fridge just emailed us to say we opened its door too many times"

moftz — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 14:10:13 +0000

Waze has been pretty good at finding gas stations along my route and organizing them by distance from me and distance from my route. Like it would show a gas station 2 miles off the highway from the next exit but it will also list out a gas station that is 15 miles away right off the highway. Either option is up to you based on how much time you want to waste versus how soon you need gas.

New comment by moftz in "We still believe in private offices (2015)"

moftz — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 14:00:32 +0000

My building has a lot of "private offices" but due to overcrowding, you end up doubling or tripling up in offices meant for one person. These are traditional offices with a window and solid wood door. Honestly, I'd rather just have my big cubicle from before the last time I got moved around. I don't need an actual private office, I just want some sort of semi-enclosed space where I can't hear my neighbor on the phone and just enough room for my desk, some boxes of hardware, and maybe a guest chair. If that means a cubicle with great soundproofing, so be it. A window would be great but I'm also content with just some natural sunlight somehow entering my space.

New comment by moftz in "20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?"

moftz — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 14:07:40 +0000

Some travel credit cards will pay for TSA Precheck for you.

New comment by moftz in "OnlyFans Is Not a Safe Platform for ‘Sex Work.’ It’s a Pimp"

moftz — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 03:57:36 +0000

Both of those jobs are very often performed my people with little to no other option to escape poverty. A poor kid growing up in WV in some bumfuck town may only have the option of mining coal like generations before him or joining the military to escape the town. Of course he could just leave the town on his own but now he's out in the world with no family or friends to support him with a high school education that puts him at the bottom of any job applicant pool. These kids are at the same level of advantage as poor kids in inner cities. Poor education and possibly a poor home life leads to limited opportunities which leads to a cycle of poverty that's hard to escape. Things like basic income and free college can really help those that wish to succeed and escape their economic class. To simply ignore the situations that drive people to join these jobs is ignorant at best and classist at worst.

New comment by moftz in "Apple iMessage Zero-Click Hacks"

moftz — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 03:45:57 +0000

I imagine that iMessage isn't executing the code but the malware is packed into some part of the metadata that some dumb library needs to parse and some sort of buffer overflow attack is accomplished. The library is probably assuming the data is safe to parse.

New comment by moftz in "Micro-GPS: High-Precision Localization Using Ground Texture (2018)"

moftz — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 03:39:25 +0000

This is an interesting idea but how does the cost compare both on computer resources and setup effort to scan the entire warehouse floor? Simply having robots with accurate motor encoders (and maybe IR sensors like in mice) and enough floor tags should allow the bots to move around the factory in safely defined paths. You can accomplish this with a basic microcontroller and can have robots quickly moving across the floor while scanning tags to update their positions. This image based system would allow more dynamic paths to be taken but now you need a much more expensive computer running image comparison and storing what I can imagine to be a massive image dataset.

New comment by moftz in "Time Card"

moftz — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 17:58:35 +0000

This is great, I've been looking for just this kind of solution in a small package. I don't always have a GPS antenna drop but I do have a rubidium source in my rack. None of the computers have a 1pps or 10MHz input except for the test equipment so keeping the Windows and Linux boxes synced up is a pain. Since GPS is pretty much never available, I've dropped the GPS receiver from the rack to make room for other stuff. One of the Windows machines runs an NTP server so at least everything displays the same time but without a proper reference clock, the time drifts and trying to do anything at perfect 1Hz intervals is not possible. So many cards or boxes on the market only rely on GPS or IRIG instead of just 10MHz or 1PPS so they are all worthless to me.

New comment by moftz in "My Tungsten Cube (2019)"

moftz — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 17:43:08 +0000

Diamonds do have significant markup depending on where it is purchased but they do still have some value. As long as the buyer can verify the certificate and the diamond is of significant quality, size, clarity, etc. it still retains value. A gemstone buyer may offer less than a private buyer (just like with cars) because they are in the business of selling the diamond later for a profit. Obviously, there is artificial inflation from the manufacturers but everyone else still has to play in the inflated market.

As for gold jewelry, this can swing both ways. An intricate piece with some sort of history attached may fetch a higher price from a buyer that is interested in that versus a scrap buyer that will just melt it down.

Similar analogies can be found with cars. A factory stock 1996 VW Golf will only be worth slightly higher than scrap value. Meanwhile, a 1996 VW Golf Harlequin will be worth $8-9k, its the same car but with a different factory paintjob. Effectively no difference in manufacturing costs since it was just made from different stock-painted panels but worth way more to a buyer simply due to the history and rarity. The cars both still have the same scrap value, a junkyard would buy both of them for the same price.