Hacker News: radley

New comment by radley in "Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips"

radley — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 19:11:05 +0000

> I am not exactly sure what is the timing of this for. Why now?

It's simply a clever way to satisfy the current administration's ambitions. Nothing had to change, just the semantics.

New comment by radley in "Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California"

radley — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 17:19:25 +0000

Most streaming audio already share the same peak volume. The problem is compression. You can compress the hell out of audio, make it sound extremely loud, and it will still have the same peak volume as uncompressed audio.

New comment by radley in "Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California"

radley — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:50:28 +0000

> those factors affect all the audio similarly... Output volumes can be calculated using standard curves... TV broadcasters have had to figure all this out years ago.

Sorry, but all of that is obtuse. The fact that some digital audio can be perceived as much louder than others –– yet it's all limited to the same digital range –– proves they aren't similar at all.

There is no such thing as a standard curve for compression. Source levels vary almost infinitely. Accurately separating and reducing sound after the fact, without turning the whole thing to mud, is considered to be an impossible technical challenge.

Next, TV broadcasters worked on a predetermined schedule with predetermined advertising. This gave them time to inspect and approve ads in advance.

Streaming ads are generally served just in time from third-party services to the streaming host. FFMPEG gets the output from the stream host, but the host has to combine content together from multiple sources (entertainment + multiple ad servers) into that single stream. Currently, sound-level is completely at the whim of each ad server, as well as each ad producer. Meanwhile, the final output is at the whim of the streaming host: 24-hour-news streaming sites probably have different audio standards than Apple TV+.

Ultimately, AI could potentially be used to solve it, since it can generate / make-up new sounds as part of reverse-compression. But it would still have to be done in advance by the third-party ad servers.

New comment by radley in "Canyon HUD helmet for road riding"

radley — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:37:22 +0000

Smart ski googles have had this for a while.

New comment by radley in "Gizmodo compromised, serving ClickFix malware capchas"

radley — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 02:00:42 +0000

When you click "I'm not a robot" it sends the following instructions:

To verify your request, follow the instructions below Use the keyboard in this order:

1 Press ⌘ Command HOLD + Space TAP 2 Press Terminal + Enter 3 Press ⌘ HOLD + V TAP 4 Press Enter TAP

Gizmodo compromised, serving ClickFix malware capchas

radley — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 02:00:42 +0000

Article URL: https://gizmodo.com/io9

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48605610

Points: 9

# Comments: 1

New comment by radley in "Google workspace threatening to block Firefox access"

radley — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 01:47:56 +0000

Very curious how you avoid supporting multiple browsers. Apple, Google, and Microsoft each require users on their platforms to use their native browsers for secure connections.

And if your company has any web presence or apps, you usually can't cherry pick which browsers your customers can use. That means some portion of your company will need access to other browsers for QA purposes.

New comment by radley in "Google workspace threatening to block Firefox access"

radley — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 01:42:37 +0000

> 99% of security experts I know use ad blockers.

But if they all use Chrome, wouldn't those be really weak ad blockers?

New comment by radley in "Google workspace threatening to block Firefox access"

radley — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 01:41:24 +0000

> My org (or rather, the org they pay to run their IT) blocked browser plugins with a security justification.

Same here, but only on Chrome. Firefox works fine.

New comment by radley in "Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks"

radley — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 01:32:13 +0000

> You submit useful diffs in areas that having nothing to do with your team, but not at the cost of finishing your official tasks.

> You write up what you learned in an interesting, useful and persuasive way.

Very curious (and appreciative) that some company cultures allow this. I haven't had such experience (although I work in a parallel role). It's usually just grinding out tickets.

New comment by radley in "Your ePub Is fine"

radley — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:24:10 +0000

Your source shows 1.36 billion people using the internet in 2007. In English, when we say "in the billions" it means more than a billion.

New comment by radley in "Your ePub Is fine"

radley — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:17:36 +0000

> The tech and the implementation was awful, and all credit goes to people who still managed to shine through it.

Sorry, that's simply not true. The tech was ahead of its time. The implementation was intuitive. Only developers and Steve Jobs hated it, because Flash made it way too easy for anyone to make something fun.

New comment by radley in "Your ePub Is fine"

radley — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 03:20:58 +0000

The editor was a scripted timeline, similar to a video or animation timeline. It was fantastic for creatives, but counterintuitive for programmers, so most devs hated it.

New comment by radley in "Your ePub Is fine"

radley — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 03:18:17 +0000

> No mobile OS could have run it solidly and without sucking batteries like no tomorrow.

By the time mobile could run Flash, it was too late. Between Apple & Adobe, it had no shot of making the transition. But before that, Flash was pretty amazing.

New comment by radley in "Your ePub Is fine"

radley — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 03:12:16 +0000

> People hated flash. Even non techies.

Billions of people enjoyed using Flash for games, video, music, and animated entertainment.

New comment by radley in "A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center"

radley — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:51:52 +0000

It will, just not in the U.S. Probably in private resorts in Albania, Saudi Arabia, etc.

New comment by radley in "WWDC 2026: Apple is Folding"

radley — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 04:00:42 +0000

At the very least, this is needed for iPadOS and macOS, since both have resizable windows.

I'm currently working on a responsive app in Swift and had to develop my own responsive layout system. SwiftUI simply isn't up to the task, except for one very specific, generic layout.

New comment by radley in "CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs"

radley — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 23:19:08 +0000

I've heard it as "once you think you're 90% done, you're really halfway done."

Tangential: it's always made me wonder about teams that believe "80% effort" is optimal.

New comment by radley in "APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs"

radley — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 04:21:26 +0000

I learned about the Pacific Handy Cutter from my local grocer. It's cheap and excellent. It has a dull edge for 95% of tape cutting needs, and a safety guide for when you need to use the blade. Admittedly, it's not useful for slicing up / cutting down boxes.

This model is right handed, but they make a lefty too.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HXLNCMM

New comment by radley in "The desperation of NYTimes"

radley — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:59:48 +0000

> I live in California, cancelled about five years ago, and they forced me to talk to a person who demanded a reason for my cancellation, and then argued with me about wanting to cancel.

That was 5 years ago. California's "click-to-cancel" law was amended in 2024, effective July 1, 2025.