Recent submissions

Comment · 2 years ago
And an operating system that's designed for it, because if you want to you can hook up those things now you can cobble something together hooking up those things but to call that experience "desktop like" is mostly held back by how much consideration iOS has put into the concept of a "cursor" designed for clicks. If you hook up a mouse to iOS and want a cursor, you need to turn on some assistive touch accessibility feature to get a circle that's about the size of an index finger tip, with about 10 times the click surface of an ordinary cursor. If you can activate a setting that feels like a hack and get past the bad cursor, only done 2/3 at a given time myself, but I'd imagine if you hook it up to a bigger screen, the resolution probably won't adapt and your cursor will be massive, but you can mirror an iPhone screen to a monitor. As far as using a wireless keyboard though, no issues I've really noted there, behaves like I'd expect a keyboard to, I was surprised when I could CMD-Tab to switch between apps on iOS like a desktop machine, surprised that feature exists in iOS because I don't see how you would invoke that except without an external keyboard, i.e. via touch, so it exceeded my expectations there by supporting that shortcut. If Apple elevated the cursor to less of an afterthought it would open things up a lot more.
Comment · 2 years ago
If this for your side project and your just using machine translation anyways - if this saves you steps, go for it. When it comes down to an actual product, as a consumer, most would rather buy a product that's been proofread by someone for the language/region they use it in, quality can only improve. I'm not against bootstrapping translations with AI, but they are more than strings that serve functions, they are human language that evoke emotion and associations - proofreading is important to me in something I might have to pay for. And human language is super important sometimes, and most of us can really only think/feel in a singular one. If my language comes across wrong here, it will undermine my point.

I don't mean to be critical, sounds like something I could actually use occasionally. I sometimes feel like I'm the only one putting up this common sense fight: if designers can spend hours crafting something carefully worded, tailored in English for something, why would it make sense to just take that and auto-translate it into something that if it's wrong gets discovered in the market as some very awkward in-app experience where the words don't make sense so much someone complains? My only gripe is people thinking AI is the total substitute for localization, it's not a silver bullet, but sure is better than nothing.

Comment · 2 years ago
What a lazy comparison and article. No relevant facts, critical thinking, connective tissue or argument being made: it's "Hey kids you remember 1998, right? No? Well, it's just like 2024 but I can't tell you how." Perhaps the author is referring to being able to install a different browser on their iPhone or paying an Apple tax from their store. In 1998, smart phones didn't really exist nor did digital distribution. I can only guess we are comparing computers to phones - why? Shouldn't we be comparing phones to phones?

2006 is a good inflection point, before the iPhone came out, I could install apps on phone from the Verizon store over cell signal which were all around at least 30 bucks per app (there was no such thing as a "free" app). I could go on the internet, via cell tower and pay through the nose to get a slow stream of data on a small screen that was totally unoptimized and tested for my dumb phone. If there was antitrust issue then, it was the cell phone companies.

When did Apple become Microsoft 1998, was it really just this year 2024? Where are the facts that give rise to the criticisms the author presumes can be levied at Apple? Because I think it was 2007 when the iPhone came out, but if you made the argument Apple 2007 = Microsoft 1998 you'd be laughed out of the room. The author needs to make an argument, I can't believe this is at the top of HN right now

Comment · 2 years ago
If the purpose of ice cream and air conditioning is to make the user feel cooler, then wouldn't it be logical to say the more ice cream they eat the less air conditioning they'd use and vice versa? That seems like a causal relationship to me that's being glossed over, but maybe I'm missing something.
Comment · 3 years ago
This article's word choice using terms like "larping" and "cosplaying" to talk about Mark Twain on a history site seems like a less than ideal writing style; it made me stop reading and facepalm for a moment.
Comment · 3 years ago
I didn't see it mentioned here, but worth pointing out if it wasn't obvious it's the 4th quarter of the fiscal year and hiring drops off - it's the worst time of the year to land a job. That being said, I may have some advice as far as how to land a job under less than ideal circumstances - it requires a bit of salesmanship, both in how you layout your presentation and who you are speaking to/targeting.

Are you creating a custom cover letter for each job you apply to? How do you apply - do you submit a form or do you try to get your resumé to someone's email either HR or someone related in the department where the position was posted for? If you're willing to work for low pay, are you sorting job listings where the bad pay shows up first? Are you labeling yourself as a "mid-level" engineer in your application or do you use your cover letter to demonstrate your comfort and experience with the skillset or domain?

Creating a nice cover letter that shows sincere interest, thought and understanding of the industry and the duties that come with the job then getting it into someone's hands who knows who to pass it along to or is a decision maker is your best bet.

Writing all those cover letters though can be draining, I know, I once did it manually and could get one a day done, maybe - never got a job that way. At some point, I realized all the best cover letters stuck to a format, and job listings weren't too different either. I made a spreadsheet that could draft cover letters for me, I'd just add a row for a job listing in my spreadsheet, select from some dropdowns (or add to the list as necessary) and then it would pull some statements relative to those parameters in and generate a cover letter that usually needed less than 5 minutes of editing (the cover letters could get long winded and sound conceited sometimes, good problem to have) to be ready to send out. I also added some job/skill type parameters where I could rank my compatibility for a job, like if two jobs were the same except one used PHP (not that experienced) on the backend, and one used Ruby (more experienced), I'd be able to prioritize the one that was a more likely fit. Once I built this spreadsheet to generate cover letters and rank jobs, I literally got the first job I applied to despite being mostly self-taught and trying to break into the industry. I just sent it to [email protected] and got a callback in 10 minutes too, FWIW. Pretty sure the general gist of this advice applies to any job - send a nice cover letter!

Comment · 4 years ago
Yeah, when I read this my thought was that is probably the act of coughing somewhat uncontrollably after surgery probably doesn't help things heal properly. I wonder if the results would hold if they limited it to people who consume edibles exclusively.
Comment · 4 years ago
I'm a native English speaker but I went to Spanish camp here in the USA in high school for four weeks so here's what I found anecdotally about that experience helpful - in a nutshell what happened is I started having dreams that were in Spanish, which helped me a lot as far as being able to access words/phrases quickly in the context of speech because I was starting to think in Spanish too. Academically, when I went back to school it didn't really make me a better Spanish student, but in the real world having to listen/speak it's a game changer.

As far as to the why/how I started dreaming in Spanish, I think it was how the camp was structured, the camp counselors from Spanish speaking countries made you speak Spanish if they caught you speaking English, which we did since everyone there was a native English speaker, but I just remember counselors rolling up and saying "En Español!" all the time if they caught you, so we'd have to speak it. If there was one strict rule of Spanish camp it was "En Español! No Ingles!" (paraphrasing here perhaps)

If you're not dreaming/thinking in English yet, I'd recommend trying to get there as a measuring stick because then you can literally improve in your sleep. It certainly used to be a commonplace occurrence when you were "immersed" in something, but a knee-jerk hypothesis might be that it is harder to be immersed in today's always-on + connected world. You can probably binge watch any TV show from your homeland, talk to anyone in your native tongue without insane long distance charges or waiting for the mail to be delivered, etc.; it would be understandable, but those things probably have a counter-effect to the goal I'm describing, and those things require some discipline, at least to teenagers at Spanish camp from my experience.

Comment · 4 years ago
So the author registered this "webtwoboomer.com" domain and says their mission is "Poisoning my brain with web3 so you don’t have to." Skepticism is fine, but the bias is cringe. I can't see what value the author is adding to a thoughtful discussion, these web3 antagonists always think they are making some great points that no one has considered, but they aren't and they have a hard time moving past it. I don't see the value in this biased blog.
Comment · 4 years ago
Another factor could be the fact ENS names expire and require a renewal fee, which didn't make a whole of sense to me given the immutable nature of the blockchain - there's more overhead involved in expiring them but more profit to be made for the next renewal. The price was also ridiculously high if you ask me for something so basic, just like a bytes => address mapping, doesn't require a genius to make, although it seems like they managed to get some partnerships/integrations behind it which add the main value as it seems like there's some integration with web3 libs to know how to leverage ENS.

Anyways, I agree it probably was a fad and such but the way it was structured for renewals also makes me think lots of people just don't own their .eth handle anymore, so it wouldn't make any sense to share it. I'd have probably gotten one if it was one time cost for a permanent static address, but that wasn't what they were offering. I think it was something like $250 per year (in ETH at the time) to keep it active, I never opted into that because it seemed like something I would want to opt out of in the future - I'm not surprised ENS has some attrition, it's built into their business model.

Comment · 4 years ago
Smart contracts came out in 2015 on Ethereum apparently. What came out in 2008? Bitcoin 1.0? Things do move fast in tech, you may want to keep up with the latest versions before writing off the web saying you've got it figured out based on your experience with the Mosaic browser. Sometimes opinions need updating too, everything evolves.
Comment · 4 years ago
Has it ever occurred to you that the scammers are just loudest voice in the room? They're not known for being passive.
Comment · 4 years ago
No you don't have any responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies, that's for luddites. You can speak out against cryptocurrency, NFTs, false promises and poor implementations of the technology, but to speak out against technology as if you're a point of authority on technology when you're really concerned with economics and society, is insincere to present if you've given consideration to it purely from that tech lens - it's an appeal to authority logical fallacy.

There are plenty of opportunities for people to "lose their shirt" in the current environment, but that's not technology's fault, it is the result of illogical human behavior falling to a scam artist selling something for more than its worth and someone falling for it because they are not informed. It can happen with any pseudo-commodity. If we go back to the popular "Tulip bulb bubble" analogy, if you were a horticulturalist would it be your duty to point out how Tulip bulbs need to be banned for everyone's safety, or would you be stepping outside your domain into that of an economist? Nothing changed functionally about tulip bulbs, except the price and that's not up to the average horticulturist.

By all means, remain skeptical when investing and do your own research, set expectations based on reason. You don't have to hate 100% things about crypto-currency when you really only hate 99% of it, you may find the 1% you do like has to do with purely technical things (technology) vs investor speculation (people). I hate a lot of things about the blockchain space, but technology is certainly not the reason, it's people's relationship/understanding of it and insanity/PR around low value/highly priced things that aren't innovative or useful - the noise + hype if you will is a bit nonsensical at times, not the tech itself, imho.

PS [edit] : And as far as a lot of the problems people have on the blockchain as far as trustworthiness can be solved by blockchain tech itself, it just hasn't happened. It is the "killer dapp" and I've given it some thought, but I won't give it all away unless someone wants to help me build it :)

Comment · 4 years ago
I believe you, sounds like a bit of a bother to train the new cats as well. Makes me wonder though if once one cat was trained, if you got a new kitten whether it could pick up the behavior from the trained older cat. That'd be pretty great - the gift that keeps on giving.
Comment · 5 years ago
I still play around with BBS's but I have to look stuff up - funny thing about this new post was the external link has an 'visited' property unlike most stuff that comes across my feed because apparently I've landed on this github page a few times in the recent past... useful information!

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