davidp (u/davidp) - Readit News

davidp commented on Show HN: I open sourced a game I just released on Steam, written in Lua github.com/a327ex/SNKRX... · Posted by u/adnzzzzZ

davidp · 5 years ago

The day-by-day dev log[0] is worth a read on its own. It's impressive what a single developer can do with the right determination and discipline.

[0]: https://github.com/a327ex/SNKRX/blob/master/devlog.md

davidp commented on Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes zdnet.com/article/opera-b... · Posted by u/snaky

bongobongo · 7 years ago

It is absolutely anti-competitive garbage, and you should be prepared to see more and more of it (and increasingly anti-consumer iterations if it) until people wake up and start demanding that their political leaders do something about it.

“Companies will regulate themselves” is a cute libertarian bedtime story.

davidp · 7 years ago

You're right that this is potentially anticompetitive, but

    “Companies will regulate themselves” is a cute libertarian bedtime story.

I've never heard libertarians say that. Rather, they say that consumers have the potential to regulate companies if they choose to do so, by voting with their feet. We should do so more often than we do; when there's a free market (monopolies are not free markets) it feels pretty good to tell a company to go screw themselves.

Personally I switched back to Firefox when Chrome tried to force login to my Google account, and I haven't missed a thing (other than some dev tools, e.g. websocket inspection). Firefox Quantum is really good, and their bookmark sync has replaced my previous usage of the now-defunct Xmarks.

davidp commented on Pelagic Thoroughbreds newcriterion.com/issues/2... · Posted by u/quickfox

twic · 7 years ago

Online - i am definitely not keen to do this trip:

https://archive.org/details/IrvingMcClureJohnsonAroundCapeHo...

davidp · 7 years ago

Superb video, and in the public domain. Thanks so much for the link!

davidp commented on Five Corrections to The New York Times reich.hms.harvard.edu/fiv... · Posted by u/kauffj

Svip · 7 years ago

Does the US not have a Press Complaint Authority? In Denmark, we have Pressenævnet[0] which handles complaints against media outlets.

If an article is found to be at fault, the publishing outlet will be required to publish a retraction/correction/apology, depending on the offence. During the review, the outlet can make their case against the complaint.

Does the US not have something similar? Because these complaints sound like the perfect fit for something like this.

[0] https://www.pressenaevnet.dk/

davidp · 7 years ago

I certainly hope we don't.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and the press, including the freedom to make mistakes and even outright lie. There is no godlike authority that can tell truth from fiction without fail, and having government censors telling people what they can say (especially w.r.t. political speech) would invert the relationship between the people and their government, making government the master instead of the servant.

Instead, we rely on an educated readership to identify bias and mistakes and call them out, as has been done here. People get the journalism they deserve. To the extent we're failing to teach our children critical thinking skills, we're putting our democracy at risk.

The NY Times and other resources currently considered "credible" have earned that credibility from the people not through government permission but by generally providing a useful service to its consumers, despite all the mistakes they make and biases they present.

The NY Times in particular has unfortunately been burning through that hard-earned credibility capital at an alarming rate, even long before the current last few years, with the result that there are large portions of the country that no longer trust it like they did, with good reason. More recently they have taken the bait proffered by Trump and his ilk and lowered themselves to his level, spinning most articles I've seen with more political or oppositional bias than in the past.

I can only hope this is a cyclical phenomenon, where the citizenry/readership becomes ignorant of the related history and its challenges, simply because we've lived through a period where the battles were won and we could take such things for granted. Just like our predecessors, this generation is going to painfully relearn that everything printed (or typed) should be taken with a grain of salt and cross-checked against multiple sources.

davidp commented on Goodbye, EdgeHTML blog.mozilla.org/blog/201... · Posted by u/__michaelg

davidp · 7 years ago

Seriously, switch to Firefox. It's good again, and prioritizes privacy.[0] After Chrome's forced-sign-in debacle [1] I switched away from Chrome on all my platforms (Windows, Linux, Android) and haven't missed a thing.

[0]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055161

davidp commented on RHEL is deprecating KDE jriddell.org/2018/11/02/r... · Posted by u/trasz

Symbiote · 7 years ago

Does multi-monitor mixed-DPI work in Gnome? Because that's the only thing that I couldn't get working in KDE about 2 years ago. (The problem was most easily solved with a new monitor.)

I restart perhaps every six months due to some problem that could be KDE; I find it very reliable both at home and at work. Granted, both machines are desktops, I use a laptop so rarely that I usually shut it down after use.

> titlebar integration

This is personal preference, but that's a showstopper for me ever using Gnome (or Mac OS) for anything beyond web browsing. I use focus-follows-mouse, which is incompatible with a titlebar outside the relevant window.

davidp · 7 years ago

Nothing built on X does mixed DPI well, because X itself (in most configurations) treats multiple monitors as simple viewports onto a single screen. A single screen with multiple DPIs doesn't make sense virtually any more than it does physically.

Wayland is supposed to help with this, since it has a more modern take on screen virtualization (a la Windows or Mac). Getting all the user software to work on Wayland (via XWayland) is a nontrivial ongoing task. I'm not sure what Gnome Shell's state of affairs is w.r.t. Wayland, but I do know the ecosystem missed the boat with Ubuntu 18.04, which elected not to make Wayland the default due to stability and usability issues. So it might be a while before a major stable distro makes the move.

davidp commented on Jepsen: MongoDB 3.6.4 jepsen.io/analyses/mongod... · Posted by u/aphyr

wenc · 7 years ago

Mongo works well as a straight-up JSON store for store-and-retrieve use cases (with no analytics). It is horizontally scalable, avoids the overhead of relational databases, has indexing capabilities, and provides a strong consistency model. The big improvement came with WiredTiger, which addressed many of the issues that plagued earlier versions of Mongo.

I've seen high-speed machine data stored in Mongo for logging and visualization purposes. It's an improvement over writing csv files to disk.

However, if you ever need to perform non-trivial analytics, Mongo's weaknesses quickly become obvious. For machine learning, typically you would want to first ETL the data into a dataframe-like structure (which is a structure native to SQL databases).

davidp · 7 years ago

  It's an improvement over writing csv files to disk.

This is not a high bar.

davidp commented on Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought theatlantic.com/science/a... · Posted by u/ciconia

wlib · 7 years ago

This is extremely obvious and it's surprising how long it took for this to be noticed. If you clear a section of a forest, the area becomes as hot as a desert because of the lack of shade. This is a "microclimate". The more area you clear, the larger this hot microclimate becomes. This is the reason why there is desertification all over the globe.

Whether you believe it or not, it is just as easy to create a desert from a forest as it is to do the reverse [1], it can even be a passive process [2]. Deserts rain occasionally, and when they do, it becomes a flash flood. If you tame the flash flood [3][5], you can change deserts. There are projects that do this and have proven its effectiveness, while also being able to solve the water crisis in arid lands in Africa [6].

Trees are incredibly important not necessarily for their reduction of carbon dioxide, but because of the microclimate each tree creates. They filter harsh light for the undergrowth, they cool the general area, and they transpire around 99% of the water they get, leading to more clouds and then more precipitation in other areas [4].

The reason why projects like this aren't so popular and aren't subsidized is not because they aren't effective, but because it is hard to make money from actually saving the environment.

[1] https://youtu.be/3RqsUD6fyGk [2]https://youtu.be/ZSPkcpGmflE [3] https://youtu.be/zqKaRg3GTqg [4] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/trees-amazon-make-th... [5] https://youtu.be/_4oKKs8FfI0 [6] https://thewaterproject.org/sand-dams

davidp · 7 years ago

This is not intended to contradict your point, but the first video is an obvious marketing fluff piece almost certainly funded by the Chinese government (China Daily is not an independent news source). It is designed to manipulate foreign opinion in favor of China and distract from their pollution problem. The video does not represent scientifically persuasive evidence in favor of your point.

"As we get closer, I can feel the temperature change. Here it's not just cool, it's actually a little cold."

Well no shit; those mountains you're strolling through peak at 7000 feet and higher [0].

[0] http://en-gb.topographic-map.com/places/Hebei-7042315/

davidp commented on Almost 70% of Millennials Regret Buying Their Homes cnbc.com/2018/07/18/most-... · Posted by u/paulpauper

jandrese · 7 years ago

A lot of times it comes down to conflict of interest. They are hired by the agent who is only interested in selling the home and getting the commission.

Even when they aren't, finding a reputable one who will actually do a good job is extremely difficult. Most are just looking to run through a house as fast as possible and collect their fee. There isn't some directory of problems they've missed. As far as I know there isn't any way to recover costs from them over issues that they missed and caused you to buy a home that you would not have given the problems. This makes them quite prone to being a rubber stamp and yet another fee for home buyers.

davidp · 7 years ago

  They are hired by the agent

You can and absolutely should hire one yourself. Additionally, if you have a buyer's agent, don't make the mistake of using theirs either -- the buyer's agent has the same conflict of interest that the seller's does, despite the fact that in most cases they have a fiduciary responsibility to you, the buyer.

Another complication to be aware of: Inspectors can face "blackballing" by banks or realtors if they scuttle too many deals by finding bad things. If you find an independent inspector, don't balk at paying a little more -- they may need it to make up for business lost from being honest.

davidp commented on America’s Millennials Are Waking Up to a Grim Financial Future bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/Deinos

milennialthrwy · 8 years ago

Here's my grim reality I'm just waking up to now as a millennial.

Married with $100k in student loans between the two of us. Her first job out of college paid $30k with no benefits. No matter, I had the money making tech degree, we'd be fine. My first job out of college was $100k, so I didn't see a problem there.

Three year later I'm facing mounting healthcare costs incurred even with top notch gold plated tech insurance. Most of my salary the last 3 years went to my landlord and the government. The remainder went to student loans and medical costs, so I don't have much in the way of savings even after earning $300k. And somehow I still owe $100k in student loans.

And my $100k tech job didn't come with retirement benefits so I don't have any retirement savings yet. It did however come with a generous stock grant. But then again, the company folded and now I don't have a job or insurance.

And now I'm a full time caregiver for my wife, with no health insurance, trying to get a job, with $100k in non-dischargable debt, looking to get on welfare, but at the same time reading about how our government wants to take even that away.

So that's what I'm doing this weekend.

davidp · 8 years ago

These struggles sound much harder than what I've had to deal with; please accept my sympathy.

About the student debt: That's a lot of debt. I suspect you and many other millenials were lied to when you were told that getting that much student debt is normal and necessary, when it is in fact neither. For example it takes longer to graduate when the student alternates semesters of school and work, but it does get them through (especially if the school has a strong co-op program), without nearly as severe a crushing debt load. Second, the overall benefit of an education goes way beyond the differences between schools, i.e. for many careers an inexpensive school is just as good as an expensive one. (Counterpoint: if you want to be on the Supreme Court someday, you apparently have to go to Harvard Law School...)

I confess that I'm puzzled when I hear about such high debt numbers from new grads, and the main explanation I can think of for what's different now from when I came up is that people are systematically being told that any college debt is a good investment (and loans are freely granted on that basis), when it plainly is not (and they should not be).