Hacker News: potmat

New comment by potmat in "Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous"

potmat — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 20:32:58 +0000

Really? Seems very different. There are some leaseholds on reservations near my cottage and "owning" one does not mean what you think it means. On a normal property as long as you pay your taxes it's yours in perpetuity, and the value tends to rise over time. With a leasehold it's never "yours" and can be taken away at a future date. The value approaches zero as the lease approaches its end date, since there's no guarantee it will be extended, so the property depreciates over time. This also has the effect of making any buildings on the property fairly dilapidated as the end-date nears, as the buildings can/will be confiscated with the lease (there's no incentive for the owner to maintain them).

New comment by potmat in "An updated Node-WebRTC that works with Node Stable"

potmat — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 19:05:06 +0000

I maintain a Homebridge (community built system to bridge IoT devices to Apple HomeKit) plugin for Google Nest devices. The newer Nest cams use WebRTC for video streaming. This makes viewing the cameras in Apple Home a bit complex, as the bridge must setup and connect to a WebRTC stream, transcode it, and then send it out to your iPhone etc. as an RTSP stream.

https://github.com/potmat/homebridge-google-nest-sdm

Since this is for home automation the system runs on all kinds of weird devices, from RPi's to NAS's to old laptops etc. When I tried to use anything requiring platform specific binaries it was a complete mess, most of the time things would not build.

The problem may not be insurmountable if you're being paid, but since this is just done in my spare time it's not something I wanted to deal with.

New comment by potmat in "An updated Node-WebRTC that works with Node Stable"

potmat — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 13:55:56 +0000

> it may use a custom API that does not line up with the spec

Not sure about that, but it's been working brilliantly for me so far.

> API compatible with browser RTCPeerConnection

Fair enough, though I'd be curious what you'd be doing with Node not in a browser that requires this...

> Also, when you say native, I guess you mean just in Node, right?

Yeah, sorry I guess "native" was the wrong word there.

> C++ or wasm binaries are going to be faster

True, but if you are trying to distribute your NPM package to lots of users, and it requires platform specific binaries or, God help us, node-gyp, you're in for a lot of GitHub issues :)

New comment by potmat in "An updated Node-WebRTC that works with Node Stable"

potmat — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 13:17:15 +0000

There's a native implementation that requires no binaries here: https://github.com/shinyoshiaki/werift-webrtc

Maybe I'm missing something but how Node-WebRTC preferable?

New comment by potmat in "Apple will no longer fix the $17,000 gold Apple Watch"

potmat — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 14:19:04 +0000

Not even that hard, there are many jewellers who will gold plate an Apple Watch for you: https://quickjewelryrepairs.com/articles/what-you-need-know-...

Almost certainly much less than 17k.

New comment by potmat in "One in 10 Japanese Now Aged over 80, Population Report Shows"

potmat — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 18:38:33 +0000

Canadian here. Housing costs have increased so dramatically this would still put you back to only maybe five years ago in terms of disposable income. This is just a wild guesstimate, but you get the idea. Anecdotally I've heard that other countries, particularly in Europe, have tried subsidized or even free daycare and that it failed to have any effect on birthrate.

New comment by potmat in "Cold restart whole system after total outage"

potmat — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 14:19:09 +0000

Neat! I just looked it up now, it's a Westinghouse SPB-100 (https://jurassicpark.fandom.com/wiki/Circuit_Breakers).

I always thought that the main breaker looked much more real than the "individual park systems". Turns out it was! The other "breakers" with the backlit names are definitely from the prop department

New comment by potmat in "Cold restart whole system after total outage"

potmat — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 21:13:04 +0000

Still the best non-fiction TV ever produced in my opinion (the whole series I mean).

New comment by potmat in "Cold restart whole system after total outage"

potmat — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 20:48:56 +0000

"Under the words 'Contact Position' there's a button that says 'Push to Close'".

"Push it."

When Spielberg was on he was ON! Who else could take a scene like "they have to reset the circuit breakers" and make you absolutely on the edge of your seat over it.

New comment by potmat in "The story in pictures of the Hughes H-4 Hercules, 1945-1947"

potmat — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 15:43:22 +0000

https://www.evergreenmuseum.org

New comment by potmat in "Amazon racist doorbell: User locked out of devices"

potmat — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 20:47:48 +0000

According to the person the driver didn't disable anything, he made a report to Amazon. Amazon disabled the person's account: https://medium.com/@bjax_/a-tale-of-unwanted-disruption-my-w...

New comment by potmat in "Cities: Skylines II [video]"

potmat — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 14:50:31 +0000

For anyone who read that last sentence and thought "What?": https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/fully-automated-luxu...

New comment by potmat in "DEI Brings Kafka to My Law School"

potmat — Thu, 11 May 2023 19:06:14 +0000

> Besides his claim, what basis do you have for describing this as a “fact”?

None other than the same info is repeated by a third party as another commenter noted: https://www.thefire.org/news/professor-suspended-reasons-unk...

Your other points may be valid, I was just speculating. There may be additional protections here other than the handbook since he seems to have tenure, which brings additional special protections (obligatory "I'm not a lawyer")

New comment by potmat in "DEI Brings Kafka to My Law School"

potmat — Thu, 11 May 2023 19:03:27 +0000

Sounds reasonable, as I said, it was just speculation.

New comment by potmat in "DEI Brings Kafka to My Law School"

potmat — Wed, 10 May 2023 15:12:52 +0000

Possibly, but the fact that they are refusing to tell him why he's being removed makes this suspicious. Seems like they would not need to hide it if the reason was "you're being removed due to excessive litigation against the school and your peers". They would have a reason to hide "you're being removed because you disagree with us".

This is all just speculation of course.

New comment by potmat in "NYPD Can Now Shoot GPS Trackers at Your Car"

potmat — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 20:35:53 +0000

It might work if you can get one officer ahead of the vehicle, waiting for when it goes by, and shoot as it's coming toward you or passing close by. This should be pretty easy if the suspect is driving down, say, an interstate. Call ahead and have someone waiting for him to pass by.

Edit: By "easy" I mean easy to call ahead, not necessarily to hit with the tracker.

New comment by potmat in "Apple, Goldman Sachs Debut Savings Account with 4.15% Annual Yield"

potmat — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 20:18:45 +0000

Too bad. But I suppose Apple couldn't really solve this without actually setting up their own bank.

New comment by potmat in "Apple, Goldman Sachs Debut Savings Account with 4.15% Annual Yield"

potmat — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 19:00:30 +0000

I've heard a lot of people in the USA are "unbanked". I'm willing to bet a fair share of those people have an iPhone (if not necessarily a top-of-the-line one). Does this make it any easier to get an account? Or do you still have to jump through hoops. (not US citizen so I have limited knowledge of getting banking there).

New comment by potmat in "Canada is seeing violent crime like never before. What's behind the crime wave"

potmat — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 12:58:25 +0000

I believe the article goes on to make the point that while violent crime overall has been worse, the difference now is that many of the victims are not themselves violent criminals. In other words, whereas previously violence was largely confined to violent people, now, random innocent people are involved.

New comment by potmat in "Ever-expanding animation of the life of the 796th floor of a space station"

potmat — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 14:00:09 +0000

Click on the "Racer 796" game in the arcade to actually play the game.