Hacker News: vitd

New comment by vitd in "TV Loses Grip on Eyes and Ads That Want Them"

vitd — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 05:35:22 +0000

It depends on what you mean. The OP was talking about prime time programming on the 3-4 major networks. That's very different from what's being produced on pay channels like HBO or Showtime, or on Netflix. I agree that the high quality stuff is better than 10-20 years ago, where everything was a Friends or Seinfeld ripoff. But I think most of the high quality stuff is on non-major networks these days. Though maybe that's just my perception. I find myself watching less and less stuff on those networks, and more and more on the other networks.

New comment by vitd in "Stack Overflow Outage Postmortem"

vitd — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 16:43:42 +0000

Nice find! Another one I heard about was that Microsoft's Windows keyboards, when used on a Mac, will sometimes insert a Control-P into the middle of your typing if you press the Windows key. Most apps just ignore it, but apparently not all!

New comment by vitd in "Mossberg: I just deleted half my iPhone apps"

vitd — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 15:57:55 +0000

I personally don't want a bunch of personal data, like photos, in the cloud where hackers can steal them, the cloud provider can go down, or decide I don't deserve access anymore. And I also travel on planes that usually don't have wifi. So I keep my podcasts and music local on my device. (I'm less concerned with keeping music in the cloud since it's not that personal in the way that a photo of my family is.) I was just running out of space on my 64GB device when the 128GB model came out. I upgraded, and find I'm just a tiny bit over 64GB 9 months later. So I guess I found my equilibrium (at least until I decide to start keeping something else local!).

New comment by vitd in "Ori – Robotic transformation of interior spaces"

vitd — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 03:54:21 +0000

That and if you have a spouse/roommate/etc., you're boned if you want to use the "living room" and they want to use the "bedroom."

New comment by vitd in "“Give me 15 minutes and I'll change your view of GDB” [video]"

vitd — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 22:49:42 +0000

Well, I have to use OpenGL for my development, and it's a giant state machine that works mainly via side-effects. It's notoriously frustrating to work with, but that's life. I realize not all code works that way, but I'd bet the majority of code does. So I stand by my statement that it's a terrible way to debug, maybe with the caveat "unless you can work with only pure code and no state."

New comment by vitd in "Interviewing my mother, a mainframe COBOL programmer"

vitd — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 18:43:00 +0000

I recently watched a video on social media that was about raising awareness of people with disabilities and encouraging people to use their votes this election cycle to make a difference. It was very moving until the end where they had "#CripTheVote"[0], and I was like "WHAT?" Isn't "crip" short for "cripple"? And isn't "cripple" considered insulting these days? Is this some sort of "take back the word" movement?

[0]https://twitter.com/hashtag/cripthevote

New comment by vitd in "“Give me 15 minutes and I'll change your view of GDB” [video]"

vitd — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 16:09:06 +0000

When you say "alter code and re-compile on the fly," do you mean and continue debugging without stopping the app and re-running? Because if so, that's a terrible way to debug. You now have state that may not be possible to achieve with the new binary you've made, and you may be debugging something that won't every exist in reality. And it may be very hard to tell that's the case. That doesn't sound very useful. It sounds very dangerous.

New comment by vitd in "“Give me 15 minutes and I'll change your view of GDB” [video]"

vitd — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 16:06:44 +0000

Amen! And it makes you wonder what it's doing to our young programmers? I first used gdb in college and had I not already been using Turbo Pascal and Lightspeed C's debuggers, I would probably would have decided that debugging was too much trouble. I see this a lot on Stack Overflow, too. People writing fairly complex code who don't know how to check the value of a variable in the debugger. It's both shocking and depressing.

New comment by vitd in "Why People Block Ads, and What It Means for Marketers and Advertisers"

vitd — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 20:13:17 +0000

There are other options. For example, I used to be a poor college student who had no money. I listened to NPR sometimes, but didn't pay. Now I have a good job, and I pay to listen. I don't mind at all that I'm supporting people who can't pay. Some of them will pay eventually, some will continue to get it for free. It's not an either/or proposition.

New comment by vitd in "Why People Block Ads, and What It Means for Marketers and Advertisers"

vitd — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 20:06:59 +0000

It's not really equivalent since you taking one diminishes the number left for other paying customers.

Let's do a realistic thought experiment that's actually fair:

Imagine you have a movie that you love. It's showing tonight on an over-the-air channel that inserts ads throughout it. You decide to record the show and watch it later.

Do you skip the ads?

New comment by vitd in "Why People Block Ads, and What It Means for Marketers and Advertisers"

vitd — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 20:00:13 +0000

FWIW, I "block" TV ads by either watching the show over the internet and paying not to have ads (iTunes, Netflix, etc.), or by recording them on a DVR and skipping the ads. I avoid newspapers and magazines both because of ads and because the need for ad revenue has compromised the quality of the product.

New comment by vitd in "On Being a Black Man"

vitd — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 22:32:38 +0000

I'm a white guy who used to have long hair and lived in the South of the US. I would often get the stares, and they were often from people trying to intimidate me or who felt threatened or disgusted by my hair. Apparently many of them thought it meant I was gay or transgendered (even though I dressed like every other male around me), which they felt was wrong, and gave them the right to look at me in ways or say things to me that they wouldn't have otherwise. I can totally understand how not enjoyable being stared at everywhere you go is. Heck, even celebrities don't like all the attention they receive just going about their business.

New comment by vitd in "On Being a Black Man"

vitd — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 22:29:40 +0000

Another great essay on the same topic from someone who works in VC in Silicon Valley:

https://medium.com/@Mandela/my-white-boss-talked-about-race-...

New comment by vitd in "On Being a Black Man"

vitd — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 22:28:26 +0000

Why should that matter? You could say the same thing to a transgendered person. He or she can wear the clothes for the gender people assume they are. They have a choice. That doesn't make it any more right for people to be prejudice against them.

New comment by vitd in "Tell HN: New features and a moderator"

vitd — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 22:14:15 +0000

Looks good! Thanks!

New comment by vitd in "Uber to suspend operations in Hungary due to govt legislation"

vitd — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 22:12:33 +0000

I can give 2 examples:

1) They had a big party a couple of years ago where they had a large display that showed where several famous tech people were at the very moment in Uber cars. They did this without notifying or getting permission from said people[0],[1].

2) They rented the building next to ours for training. We rent several parking spaces in the lot on the other side of our building from the city. They repeatedly parked in our reserved spots and told their drivers to park there even after repeatedly being told they were reserved (purchased by us) and not to park there. They would literally move their cars, wait 5 minutes, then move them back. During breaks they would stand in front of the door to our building smoking and acting surly as if to try to intimidate us. I don't know how high up the management chain our people went, but it was clear they weren't going to do anything about it. Eventually our neighbor kicked them out!

[0] http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/04/opinion/schneier-uber-privacy-... [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/god-view-under-spotlight-as-uber-in...!

New comment by vitd in "C++14 for the Commodore 64 [video]"

vitd — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 20:32:07 +0000

Oh man, I remember trying to understand AppleDOS and 6502 Assembly on the Apple II+ when I was a wee lad. It was so confusing what all these hex memory locations were. Being able to give them actual function names (or even just named constants!) would have made things so much easier!

New comment by vitd in "Rigged YouTube videos can use Siri and Google Now to hijack your phone"

vitd — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 20:19:50 +0000

Yes, I personally find Siri very useful. I almost always interact with Siri through my watch and I do things like start a cooking timer while my hands are covered in raw chicken juice, set a reminder to do something tomorrow, or reply to a text via voice while driving.

New comment by vitd in "Two Factor Auth List of Websites"

vitd — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 18:30:41 +0000

I see that Charles Schwab is listed as having 2-factor authentication via hardware token, and Citibank is listed as not having it. Both of these are only partially correct. For example, Charles Schwab allows it on their brokerage accounts, but if your company sets up your 401k with them, then it's not supported.

Citibank does support it, but only on their "Gold" accounts.

New comment by vitd in "Tell HN: New features and a moderator"

vitd — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 20:13:51 +0000

Just curious - why are things like "Gitlab is hiring" not hideable? I don't plan to apply for a job there, so I don't care to see that story anymore today. But I don't see a way to hide it.