Hacker News: tjl

New comment by tjl in "App sizes are out of control"

tjl — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 04:07:40 +0000

They're working at making smaller apps on people's iPhones. They strip out all the graphics that don't apply to the given phone that's downloading on, plus bitcode is compiled for the specific architecture, so you don't have multiple architectures installed that you don't need.

New comment by tjl in "App sizes are out of control"

tjl — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 04:04:54 +0000

Often, it's really bad design. For instance, Facebook's app has 18k classes. In other cases, it's a lot of big 3rd party libraries.

New comment by tjl in "App sizes are out of control"

tjl — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 03:56:16 +0000

The base for iPhones now is 32G not 16G.

New comment by tjl in "Designing a Bottle"

tjl — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 04:48:46 +0000

That's the difference between a freshman design project and an actual design used in practice. It's unlikely he has the mathematics/engineering background to do a proper analysis of his design.

He's not thinking of the bottle as a pressure vessel (which it is).

New comment by tjl in "Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer"

tjl — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 19:14:50 +0000

The box set for David Bowie's Sound + Vision album included a fourth CD that included an extra video track in addition to three regular CD audio tracks.

New comment by tjl in "Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer"

tjl — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 19:12:26 +0000

The term "killer app" goes back a long way (back to the early 80s) and was first used for Visicalc, I think.

New comment by tjl in "Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer"

tjl — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 19:10:29 +0000

The term "killer app" goes all the way back to the 80s. Back then, Lotus 1-2-3 was considered a killer app as was Wordperfect/Wordstar depending on your needs.

As others have pointed out, it was also used as the file extension for "application programs" on NeXTStep (.app). It continued to OS X which is where "App" came from for iOS applications. It has nothing to do with the name "Apple".

New comment by tjl in "SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster"

tjl — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 16:12:59 +0000

I love that a technique that's so widely used now was the co-invented by a movie star. It's also used in cell phones.

New comment by tjl in "O'Reilly's Decision and Its DRM Implication"

tjl — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 22:02:42 +0000

Looking at the info about the formats for that book it seems that the ePub and PDF are unrestricted.

New comment by tjl in "O'Reilly's Decision and Its DRM Implication"

tjl — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 22:00:23 +0000

I've never really had a problem with the watermarking in the footer with the person who bought it. It's out of my way so I tend to forget about it.

New comment by tjl in "O'Reilly's Decision and Its DRM Implication"

tjl — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 21:57:19 +0000

Technically, they're saying Google will offer them DRM-free, but they're ePub and the PDFs are conversions from ePub. It looks like ebooks.com will offer ePub and PDF that are DRM-free too.

New comment by tjl in "O'Reilly's Decision and Its DRM Implication"

tjl — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 21:54:28 +0000

I love the Dropbox sync, although I found it hit or miss. Some books it wouldn't work. But, I've bought at least 50 books from their site.

I tried Safari when I was still in university, but found it terrible (but that was a few years back). I won't pay $400/year for a service like it. I could see maybe half that being reasonable. But, there are so many subscription services now.

New comment by tjl in "O'Reilly's Decision and Its DRM Implication"

tjl — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 21:47:23 +0000

I prefer PDF versions because they're formatted nicely. I find that ePub and Mobi versions of technical books almost uniformly terrible.

New comment by tjl in "O'Reilly's Decision and Its DRM Implication"

tjl — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 21:43:10 +0000

The Essential System Administration book was a regular reference for me. Thankfully, I was not the sendmail guy.

New comment by tjl in "Canada's top court backs order for Google to remove firm's website from searches"

tjl — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 05:01:53 +0000

You're kind of missing the bit about the engineer they hired used to work for the other company.

New comment by tjl in "Canada's top court backs order for Google to remove firm's website from searches"

tjl — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 04:52:07 +0000

That's not how it works.

New comment by tjl in "Canada's top court backs order for Google to remove firm's website from searches"

tjl — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 04:48:18 +0000

Except, they've fled the country and only can continue business because of Google's search results. So, Google is basically contributing to their business existing. That's why the order was granted.

New comment by tjl in "A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry"

tjl — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 22:21:21 +0000

I'm in Canada and I buy from an online grocery store, Grocery Gateway. They're run by one of the local grocery chains and other than a $9.99 delivery fee, it's basically just a regular grocery store as they carry what's in that grocery chain, including the supermarket brand stuff.

New comment by tjl in "A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry"

tjl — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 22:17:28 +0000

I just do my grocery shopping online. The company I use charges $9.99 for delivery and you have to order more than $45, but otherwise it's basically just a regular grocery store (they're owned by one). You have to do some planning since you won't get it until at least the following day, though. I order once a month.

New comment by tjl in "A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry"

tjl — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 22:13:59 +0000

Well, I'm in Canada and every restaurant near the university is less than $10/person. While a number of them are the normal fast food, both the Indian, Chinese, and Thai/Vietnamese places have excellent food. Last I checked, the Korean and Arabic places were good too, but since my dietary restrictions changed, I haven't been there.

I'd likely never buy a Blue Apron box for the simple fact that I have pretty tight dietary restrictions that I loosen a bit when I eat out (but not a lot). If I cook at home, I'm going to follow those restrictions pretty closely so most regular recipes won't work.