Recent submissions

Comment · 5 years ago
Comment · 6 years ago
The article makes an argument for why you should consider Pixel series phones that still have official support from the vendor if you are in the market for Android phones.

While it may not have been the point of the article it gives no reason why you should consider CopperheadOS.

This is my perspective taking the article at face value as a complete layman in Hardware and OS security who cannot provide any critic or judgement on the technical content of the article.

Comment · 6 years ago
I noticed today that youtube-dl was no longer working. I am on the latest version so there is no update that will fix things right now.

It wasn't hard to whip up a cli wrapper for NewPipeExtractor which I am already using on my phone for Youtube via Newpipe.

It is pretty limited currently, but sufficient for my purposes.

Comment · 6 years ago
There is correlation between surnames (or the lack of one), language dialects, dietary habits and caste. But the signal here is very noisy and unreliable except for a few cases like having a well known surname.

To my knowledge there is no correlation to place of birth. While there may be statistical differences in the distribution of characteristics such as say skin colour among communities which I am unaware of, you will find a reasonable representation of all physiognomies? in each community.

Comment · 6 years ago
Most of the Indian population lives in small towns and villages where everyone knows one another. People would notice if you suddenly start claiming to be from a different community.

The classification of higher and lower caste itself is an oversimplification.

Wearing the thread implies that you are from a Brahmin community. Brahmin is just one of the many communities that exist in India based on geography, language (including numerous dialects), wealth and religion (including different sects). Each of these communities think they are better than some subset of indian ethnicities.

Some groups (Dalits being one of the prominent examples) are unfortunately at the receiving end of biases from almost everyone else.

Comment · 6 years ago
If you are living in the more progressive parts of the country (generally more urban) being found out things will make things... awkward. Not in the sense that there will be consequences, but you will have aired out your insecurities to others.
Comment · 6 years ago
I feel that you are making a mistake that many native language speakers make in saying that their language has a complex nonlinear history compared to other languages which they happen to not know much about.

It just seems so for native speakers as they know a lot more about the history of their language than others.

English speakers seem particularly susceptible to it since its lineage has been extensively studied.

It may also just seem so to me since I hang around primarily in the English speaking Internet.

Comment · 6 years ago
I have noticed a tendency among people to rationalise things that suck in life to actually be good for you. Phrases such as "It builds character" or "It is necessary for the society/people/..." are not too uncommon.

It seems to be a universal characteristic of people to co-opt largely harmful activities such as smoking for useful things such as social interaction or relaxation.

Comment · 6 years ago
Android Chrome and Firefox (via add-ons) have dark mode options. I do not know about iOS Safari.

While a dark mode option made by the website itself may be able to handle certain edge cases that the browser dark modes may miss, for most part part the browser dark mode features handle most cases quite admirably.

I feel that rather than going behind individual website developers, making the need known to the platform browser developers is a more scalable approach. Even if HN gets a dark mode, what about the websites it links to? Do you also plan to ping the the Devs there for a dark mode option?

From my experience multiple independent dark mode toggles for each website I visit are a pain to manage. I never use them. Dark mode is purely and globally handled by browser extensions.

Comment · 6 years ago
I am a bit tired of seeing this topic come up again and again on Reddit or HN. You may have as well, asked if someone preferred blue or orange.

The choice of a programming language (without considering specific details of the application) is very subjective with a low signal to noise ratio. What looks aesthetic or ergonomic for others will most likely not apply to you.

For most practical applications things like the runtime, library ecosystem and other factors become more important and just "Rust or Golang for backend development?" isn't very helpful.

Comment · 6 years ago
My aunt and mother use a bunch of websites I've never heard of for free streaming of movies and TV shows. They may not be the most informed about potential hidden costs of these services, but they are definitely resourceful in finding them. I think you overestimate the difficulty of using technology. All you need to do is learn to type "How do I get $web_service for free?" in the search bar.
Comment · 6 years ago
Like all other internet bans in India I doubt this one will have any teeth. Everyone has a "Free" VPN app that they use to bypass these restrictions.

Most people own Android phones where they can sideload apps downloaded from some third party APK website (of questionable trustworthiness)

iPhones have negligible penetration in India so are not even a part of the equation.

Comment · 6 years ago
Comment · 6 years ago
I do not think a typical Indian farmer would own anything close to 2000 acres of land. Most farming in India is not mechanised but is instead highly dependent on human labour. From what I know a typical farmer would probably own only a couple of acres of land (many in single digits? anecdata with no citation) which is cultivated by their family subject to further fragmentation when inherited by the next generation.
Comment · 6 years ago
The majority of Desktop browsers support extensions that provide support for dark mode. On mobile I know Android Chrome (via chrome://flags) and Firefox (via extensions) support dark mode. Don't know about Safari and other mobile browsers but I feel that overall there are plenty of options for dark mode on HN without a separate site specific implementation.

I also have noticed that I never use the site specific Dark mode implementations as it is a lot more convenient to globally enable dark mode (at night) rather than playing around with toggles for every website that supports it.

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