BaRRaKID (u/BaRRaKID)

BaRRaKID commented on The World’s First U2 Spy Plane Photo Shoot at the Edge of Space petapixel.com/2023/09/05/... · Posted by u/khobragade

Thaxll · 2 years ago

HDR looks terrible on those photos. It looks seriously bad.

BaRRaKID · 2 years ago

I don't get how you go and get access to something that not many people get to see, and then you edit the photos so much that they look computer generated.

Looking at his portfolio it seems like he his better at photoshop than at taking photos.

BaRRaKID commented on Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/obscurette

dotnet00 · 2 years ago

Going against HN's usual anti-smartphone thing, I think this is incredibly dumb. Luckily no one really cares much about what UNESCO calls for.

Outright bans on smartphones in schools are no different from the video game, TV screen time, "kids will only play games on computers" and other related superstitions that were in vogue back in the early 2000s. All they did was make parents feel validated (without having to put in the work to understand their child) and make life difficult for most kids while building resentment.

As with most things, the decision of smartphone access for kids should come down to having parents actually understand their child, his/her needs and ability to handle the associated responsibility.

Especially as a teenager, pursuing my interests in computers was nothing but constant arguing with my parents because they were constantly being supported by outsiders (who had never seen what I was doing) on their anti-computer superstitions of the time (due to which they wholesale refused to understand that I wasn't gaming the vast majority of the time).

BaRRaKID · 2 years ago

I'm with you on this. I can understand controlling the use of phones during class because it's disrespectful for the teachers work, but a complete ban is just dumb and seems like virtue signalling. If this is a problem for you as a parent, you have the choice of not buying your kid the phone in the first place, or not letting him take it to school. I thinks that any rule or law that takes away from the parents the responsibility of educating a child is probably not good for the kid.

Also specially in the US with all the school shootings, banning kids from having phones that allow them to call for help seems like a really bad idea.

BaRRaKID commented on Logitech Partners with iFixit for Self-Repairs theverge.com/2023/5/17/23... · Posted by u/thunderbong

snailmailman · 2 years ago

I stopped buying logitech mice because the switches wore out in all of them. Multiple mice all stopped working after maybe a year and a half? Issues like "double clicking when should be single clicking" or "not clicking at all" or "clicking and dragging getting registered as just a click". If they either fix this, or make it easy to repair, they might be able to get me back.

These were what i considered "higher end" mice, not a cheap $15 mouse, and i got tired of buying them so often. I looked around online and switch issues seem common on a lot of mice. Every mouse company uses the same switches, and they all just wear out. I switched to razer, who apparently uses a different type of switch entirely. It hasn't worn out yet but i've only had it about a year. Fingers crossed.

BaRRaKID · 2 years ago

From my experience in tech support most of the issues with mouses and keyboards are because of accumulated gunk, specially if you have pets or smoke near the computer. Since they are normally simple devices on the inside you can just remove the screws and clean all the dirt and you won't break anything. I actually just did this 5 minutes ago to my mouse because middle click wasn't working. Found out it was just a bunch of cat hair stuck in the mouse wheel. Other common source of issues is the USB cable, and those can be replaced if you know how to disconnect the contacts from the main board and resolder them.

BaRRaKID commented on Deck.of.cards deck.of.cards/old/... · Posted by u/edent

ogab · 2 years ago

Any idea why this is the order?

BaRRaKID · 2 years ago

No idea, but it seems like it's intentionally made so that no matter the orientation of the deck (face up or face down), the first card you see (not counting jokers and ad cards) will always de an ace. The two suits of those aces are just the two most liked suits (ace and hearths).

The curious part is that this order doesn't mean anything for card players, in fact it would probably be better for most games if the decks where printed in random order, but for magicians this order is really important for many effects. For example, if you perfectly shuffle the deck 8 times it will go back to it's original order.

BaRRaKID commented on Deck.of.cards deck.of.cards/old/... · Posted by u/edent

pkstn · 2 years ago

Wow, thanks for sharing my Deck.of.Cards project! Just to let you guys know, this one is the old version. Newer version is in the root https://deck.of.cards

Old one has nicer animation treats, but the new one has multiplayer as well :)

BaRRaKID · 2 years ago

Bit of a nitpicking but the "sort" order is wrong. New decks come ordered Ace of Spades - King of Spades, Ace of Diamonds - King of Diamonds, King of Clubs - Ace of Clubs, King of Hearts - Ace of Hearts. The deck should start and end with Aces, and have two kings next to each other in the middle.

BaRRaKID commented on Bank run on Silicon Valley Bank techcrunch.com/2023/03/09... · Posted by u/albertut

BaRRaKID · 2 years ago

You do know that that video is from the TV COMEDY show Servant of the People, where he plays the role of a Ukrainian president BEFORE he was actually elected president?

BaRRaKID commented on ChatGPT passes MBA exam given by a Wharton professor nbcnews.com/tech/tech-new... · Posted by u/samwillis

BaRRaKID · 3 years ago

Besides the AI being able to interpret the questions, which is the entire point of a language model, isn't this just the same as someone googling the answers to the exam?

BaRRaKID commented on QuestPDF: Modern .NET library for PDF document generation github.com/QuestPDF/Quest... · Posted by u/nateb2022

BaRRaKID · 3 years ago

Are people really OK with writing code in C# for data presentation? How is it fine having to compile code when you want to change a font colour for example?

And just from looking at the examples you can see how quickly it becomes messy. It looks like something that would work fine for very simple document structures but would get messy really fast once you add any level of complexity. Imagine having to write code for a document with multiple levels of headings, tables and images with captions, parts of text that need emphasis, etc.

From my experience the best solution for generating PDFs in .NET are, as mentioned here before, wkhtmltopdf wrappers. Take a Razor view, add some document properties (page size, margins, headers, footers, etc) in code, and output to a PDF.

I would even argue that on desktop using Office APIs to populate word documents and output them to PDF is more efficient than this.

BaRRaKID commented on Juan Tamariz, the godfather of close-up card magic nytimes.com/2023/01/02/ma... · Posted by u/wallflower

amval · 3 years ago

As a Spaniard I had of course heard of Tamariz, but I had no idea there was an Spanish "scene", so to speak.

Are you also spaniard or just into the topic?

BaRRaKID · 3 years ago

I'm from your next door neighbour, Portugal. But I think that anyone that studies magic quickly realizes how amazing the Spanish scene is.