Hacker News: smackfu

New comment by smackfu in "Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains"

smackfu — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 01:38:33 +0000

I was very excited by the idea of an overnight train in Europe but the reality was a bit underwhelming. We went from Cologne to Vienna which was roughly from 10 pm to 7 am which wasn’t super convenient timing on either end. Also the cabins were super claustrophobic for me when the beds were folded down. Fun once but I would probably fly next time.

New comment by smackfu in "Major bank accidentally published a private package to the public NPM Registry"

smackfu — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 11:50:30 +0000

And kill dev productivity.

New comment by smackfu in "Update on Tesla Stores and Pricing"

smackfu — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 17:01:42 +0000

What a mess. Wait a week, maybe the price will go up or down another 3%. Who knows!

New comment by smackfu in "A Newly-Generated Create-React-App 2.1.5 App Has 1,568 Dependencies"

smackfu — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 11:55:33 +0000

You can’t say “it is good design to have small composable building blocks” and then complain about the number of those blocks.

New comment by smackfu in "The Man in Seat Sixty-One"

smackfu — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 17:45:11 +0000

I'm sure he also benefits a lot from feedback. Someone goes to book a route he suggests, and the connection now doesn't work, they are going to tell him, and he can update his page on it.

New comment by smackfu in "[dead]"

smackfu — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 17:42:47 +0000

And doesn't even mention Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who has some science cred. https://www.societyforscience.org/content/ssp-blog/intel-ise...

New comment by smackfu in "The Man in Seat Sixty-One"

smackfu — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 17:37:09 +0000

Amazing resource. And such a depth of info... we wanted to go from London to Vienna by train, and there is a page on that specifically, and three different options for the journey depending on whether you want a sleeper or want to go through Switzerland or want to go the fastest route. And then specific instructions for booking each trip on the various country's railway websites, and connection info for the train stations. Ridiculous.

New comment by smackfu in "As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants"

smackfu — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 12:42:10 +0000

If you don’t trust Facebook to do the right thing, that thread is not much of a defense, since it just says they will police their partners.

New comment by smackfu in "How Does setState Know What to Do?"

smackfu — Sun, 09 Dec 2018 15:38:23 +0000

Wouldn't you just be testing if they read the blog posts?

New comment by smackfu in "Japanese Woodblock Print Search"

smackfu — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 12:18:00 +0000

It’s pretty easy to get a simple setup to do single color prints at your local arts and craft store. Speedball brand sells the ink and press and various other bits and bobs. You can either carve in linoleum which is softer and easier but less precise, or in wood. We’ve done Christmas card this way a couple of times and the results have been great if a little “rustic”.

OTOH, doing multi block, perfectly aligned woodblock prints like the ones in the link is quite difficult. There’s no shortcut, you have to carve each color block by hand.

New comment by smackfu in "Japanese Woodblock Print Search"

smackfu — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 12:13:00 +0000

Been on the internet so long he has a great domain name: http://woodblock.com

I’ve bought many pieces over the years from David. He has slowed down a bit with his personal carving as he has gotten older but has taken up training a new generation of artists which is very admirable.

New comment by smackfu in "Tesla Model 3 is the top selling American car in the USA"

smackfu — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 08:25:04 +0000

Aren’t the three “foreign” cars ranked above it also made in America?

New comment by smackfu in "Cincinnati Joins the List of Cities Saying ‘No’ to Parking Minimums"

smackfu — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:28:09 +0000

I’ve noticed sometimes the parking minimum is essentially just used as a source of power for the zoning board. They don’t actually want places to build the required large amounts of parking, but they don’t want to have to rubber stamp developments that they don’t like. So they waive the parking requirements of people that make the changes that they want.

New comment by smackfu in "iOS 12 Safari Array reverse bug"

smackfu — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 11:36:46 +0000

I would say it’s exactly “halfway decent”. There’s very little feedback and bugs tend to get closed as duplicates but since it’s not public you can’t monitor the state of the duolicates.

New comment by smackfu in "Ask HN: How is Facebook's iOS app 491MB?"

smackfu — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 21:03:01 +0000

I’m sure part of it is A/B tests for tons of things. Doubled or tripled resources and code but any given user only sees one variety of them.

New comment by smackfu in "Bump-Canceling Bunk Beds Promise Smooth Bus Rides"

smackfu — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 21:34:27 +0000

We did a journey in Mexico where the first class buses go on the good highway and have extreme air conditioning and lie back seats. The second class buses go on the bad roads and use schoolbuses with no AC. But the second class buses made the trip in half the time of the first class, because they could go over the mountain instead of around it. Fascinating choices.

New comment by smackfu in "Fear the reaper: characterization and fast detection of card skimmers"

smackfu — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 14:18:08 +0000

I think gas stations are the only place I still see swipe, or small merchants who have old terminals. I don’t see it as predominantly magstripe.

New comment by smackfu in "SpaceX lands Falcon 9 booster on Just Read the Instructions drone ship"

smackfu — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 01:33:49 +0000

The ship names are pretty much the least interesting part of the Culture books.

New comment by smackfu in "What Went Wrong with the F-35, Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter? (2017)"

smackfu — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 22:21:21 +0000

There was a long twitter thread that was very anti F-35 going around.

New comment by smackfu in "Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies"

smackfu — Sat, 16 Jun 2018 13:55:13 +0000

You give men twelve weeks of paid leave after their wife gives birth, most of them are going to take it.