Hacker News: thekingofh

New comment by thekingofh in "Privacy preserving attribution for advertising"

thekingofh — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 19:58:51 +0000

Here’s the problem with aggregation. Even if the if is not attributable to you as an individual the data can still be used as a weapon against you. I’ll give an example: Imagine that you are a gay person living in a country that kills gay people by law. If gay people are frequenting websites that indicate they like to hang out at a particular bar, this gives authorities more than enough to target that group while still not using your personal data directly. The indirect aggregated data is just as harmful as if they had targeted you personally. This is where companies try to fool you into thinking you are safe to give them a “non identifiable” advertising id and aggregating your data before selling it. It’s not safe.

New comment by thekingofh in "Astronomers discover a strange galaxy without dark matter"

thekingofh — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 04:14:38 +0000

In this case we could verify if the ratio of dark matter is always the same. The article would suggest that it isn't. So this might lend possibility to the idea. There was a video a while back about what can happen in higher dimensional space when a volume would pass through a "fold" for lack of a better word. It would be right there next to you but not visible. I wonder why this can't be a more popular hypothesis or maybe we're missing something.

New comment by thekingofh in "GameStop appoints chief technology officer and two additional executive hires"

thekingofh — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:11:12 +0000

This is the only play I can see working in the long term. Become their own content creator, aka game studio and publisher.

New comment by thekingofh in "Philosophy of the GNU Project (2018)"

thekingofh — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 16:19:44 +0000

The only model that seems to work with GNU's philosophy while also compensating the developer fairly is that you have to create the software, or a demo of the software, and then do a kickstarter style fundraising effort BEFORE you release it. You can have it completely done, but in essence the first customer doesn't get the software until you get paid. Then they are free to do whatever they want with it once you release it. Updates can be released on the same model. NOBODY gets it until you can support yourself on the income before releasing it into the wild, because once you do, there's no way to get compensated without some kind of support contract (which is no guarantee) or restricting the user from doing what they want with their own bits.

New comment by thekingofh in "The cult of the free must die"

thekingofh — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 16:20:44 +0000

Then someone can dual license the code. Something like AGPL for general development and commercial licenses via request. This way the source is open at all times and companies that want to use it and modify it for commercial purposes can get a commercial license for that. In this case the biggest issue is copyright assignment. In order to dual license you require everyone who's contributed to agree. In large projects that's difficult. In a company, copyright can be handed over to the company, but anyone outside the company who contributes has to either sign over copyright or agree to letting their contributions be dual licensed.

The best option looks like a tight copyleft license combined with a contract for copyright assignment and revenue sharing for contributors and dual licensed for commercial use. The most difficult part of this would be gauging developer worth based on contributions, but that's something that happens in every company anyways.

New comment by thekingofh in "Ask HN: How did you learn x86-64 assembly?"

thekingofh — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 02:03:20 +0000

Start by writing very simple C code and compiling that to assembly with the C comments. Then follow the System V ABI to learn what registers you need to pay attention to when calling functions. Start small. Once you learn the simple stuff, the more complex stuff is a matter of using it when you run into it.

New comment by thekingofh in "The return of the $70 video game has been a long time coming"

thekingofh — Sat, 11 Jul 2020 00:45:16 +0000

I used to play on consoles, typically would have 2-3 of them each generation and buy up the biggest AAA titles. God I can't imagine how much money I spent during those years. These days I spend most of my gaming on the PC, where I don't feel this constant urge to keep up. The games are reasonably priced and there's plenty of free-to-play options that actually end up being the more fun games anyways. If I feel like spending money on in game items I will, but generally I spend a small fraction of what I used to. There's no way I'm spending $70 on a video game unless it's something I see myself playing for years on end. Think Elder Scrolls. Suspect the vast majority of games don't fit into this category though.

New comment by thekingofh in "Neutrino Particles May Be a Link to the Dark Sector"

thekingofh — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 17:10:33 +0000

Dark is just a placeholder until we find out exactly what's causing it.

New comment by thekingofh in "U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation"

thekingofh — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 16:59:28 +0000

I had the pleasure of driving through and visiting Oklahoma a decade or so ago. Some people don't like the rural states, but it felt so serene out there. We stopped at a shaved ice place off of some random exit and just sat there on the hood staring out at the plains. There's not much out there but it felt so peaceful. It felt like home.

New comment by thekingofh in "Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate"

thekingofh — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 14:30:39 +0000

Because hiring an American requires you to treat them like a human being.

New comment by thekingofh in "U.S. mulls paying companies, tax breaks to pull supply chains from China"

thekingofh — Wed, 20 May 2020 18:07:20 +0000

We should use Mexico. Wages will be low. Shipping can come on trucks or rail. The labor pool is plenty large. And if we get into a large war it's close enough to more easily defend our factories. And the country is on good standing with the US, no aggression between the countries.

Mexico is preferable to China in almost every way. We start by lowering the tariffs there and raising them on a timetable in China. There's nothing that says it has to be all-or-nothing USA manufacturing. If we find another country to build up, there's only room to benefit. This is all within the scope of government powers.

The long term solution I'd mainly prefer is to directly subsidize the industries that we deem important to a manufacturing base, but beyond that at least lets find a country that doesn't threaten to destabilize what we've got going on.

New comment by thekingofh in "Ruby Next: A Transpiler for Ruby"

thekingofh — Tue, 05 May 2020 14:55:25 +0000

In 5 years there'll be another shiny thing everyone will flock to. It's part of the fun, but there are some languages that just do that particular thing just right. Ruby/Rails is bittersweet to me. It does that thing just so right, but it feels like there's an evolution around the corner that could be an upgrade when it comes to the ecosystem. It certainly doesn't feel like Rust is a good replacement if you enjoy Ruby syntax and dynamic typing simplicity. Ruby reminds me a lot of how Perl 5 is a great language, yet finding jobs in Perl 5 is becoming more and more difficult.

I'd love to think that Raku (formerly Perl 6) would be that language, but it doesn't seem like the trajectory is there.

New comment by thekingofh in "Study: Low Carb Diet May Prevent, Reverse Age-Related Effects Within the Brain"

thekingofh — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 15:13:45 +0000

How do you start? I can't seem to find a consistent diet plan that isn't insanely difficult to get into.

New comment by thekingofh in "NASA officials 'baffled' after space cameras catch UFO following ISS"

thekingofh — Sun, 23 Feb 2020 16:05:13 +0000

Yes, NORAD keeps track of every object above a certain size in orbit. Their data is essential to keeping spacecraft from hitting each other.

New comment by thekingofh in "Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’"

thekingofh — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 20:14:29 +0000

Is that the same as discarding constants in big O notation?

New comment by thekingofh in "UFO: Pilot who spotted famous Tic Tac breaks silence after 15 years"

thekingofh — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 20:59:18 +0000

I'm thinking if you concentrate 10 powerful lasers at one point in the atmosphere it would be possible to generate a plasma that could be moved around at speeds that would be impossible for an aircraft. What I don't know is if that would be detectable via radar, which supposedly this phenomenon is.

New comment by thekingofh in "Is China Beating America to AI Supremacy?"

thekingofh — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 20:24:54 +0000

No.

New comment by thekingofh in "LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity"

thekingofh — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 16:33:01 +0000

Firefox Lockwise is very new and quite frankly doesn't have very many features that people require such as import, export, etc. At this point I don't even know how to get all my password manager passwords into Lockwise even from a simple comma delimited file.

Right now, it's still impossible to switch to it for a lot of people.

New comment by thekingofh in "LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity"

thekingofh — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 18:50:07 +0000

Because there's not a replacement that syncs well and is easy to teach your non-techie parents/spouse how to use to log into their shared accounts.

New comment by thekingofh in "Will We Run Out of Helium?"

thekingofh — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 14:28:50 +0000

The rule still stands: Any headline with a question mark at the end can be met resoundingly with the answer - "No".