rsch (u/rsch) - Readit News

rsch commented on What we talk about when we talk about sideloading f-droid.org/2025/10/28/si... · Posted by u/rom1v

cb321 · 2 months ago

I would say the situation is worse as this "subscription-esque" model is "spreading" to areas beyond software. Exercise equipment like ellipticals and bicycles - whose software is/could be borderline +/- resistance level trivial - has been moving to "only works with an online subscription" business models for a long time.

I mean, I have had instances that controlled resistance with like a manual knob, but these new devices won't let you set levels without some $30+/month subscription. It's like the planned obsolescence of the light bulb cartels of the 1920s on steroids.

Personally, I have a hard time believing markets support this kind of stuff past the first exposé. I guess when you don't have many choices or the choices that you do have all bandwagon onto oligopoly/cartel-like activity things, pretty depressing, but stable patterns can emerge.

Heck, maybe someone who knows the history of retail could inform us that it came to software "from business segment XYZ". For example, in high finance for a long-time negotiated charging prices that are a fraction of assets under management is not uncommon. Essentially a "percent tax", or in other words the metaphorical "charging Bill Gates a million dollars for a cheeseburger".

EDIT: @terminalshort elsethread is correct in his analysis that if you remove the ability to have a platform tax, the control issues will revert.

rsch · 2 months ago

That planned obsolescence thing on light bulbs isn't the entire story. Light bulbs will last longer if driven less hard, due to the lower temperature. But that lower temperature also means much lower efficiency because the blackbody spectrum shifts even further into the infrared. So some compromise had to be picked between having a reasonable amount of light and a reasonable life span.

But yeah agree, this subscription thing is spreading like a cancer.

rsch commented on The magic of through running worksinprogress.news/p/th... · Posted by u/ortegaygasset

rsch · 6 months ago

Auckland has an almost finished through running project in its city centre, which will greatly improve its railway network. It currently has only one terminus in the city, but trains from one side (the west) have to do an awkward dog leg around the city centre, including a reversal.

Brussels got its through running project in 1952, a 6 track tunnel under its city centre between North and South (aka Midi) stations. That was back when disruption and demolishing things were just things that happened, and it is one of the reasons why ‘brusselization’ is a word. By now operates near its max capacity of 96 trains per hour.

rsch commented on How I pwned a major New Zealand service provider mrbruh.com/majorprovider/... · Posted by u/MrBruh

girvo · 9 months ago

That reminds me of all the SQL injection vulns that we used to blame on PHP. As PHP becomes less popular, and the same/similar vulnerabilities remain, I realise it's more just bad practices (though ~2000-early 2010s PHP really was pretty rough when it came to creating those holes, but that might just be a function of how popular it was!)

Nice work on finding it :)

rsch · 9 months ago

PHP was blamed for a good reason: for a long time it did not by default support prepared SQL statements. You could install the mysqli extension to gain such support but that was almost never available on shared web hosts.

rsch commented on How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-) merriam-webster.com/gramm... · Posted by u/Stratoscope

rsch · 9 months ago

Today in “typesetting before we had typewriters”: …

At least we have dedicated O/0, and l/1 keys now. But we still see a lot of "straight" quotes instead of “those smart quotes Microsoft Word likes to generate”. And dashes. Did you know there is a dedicated ellipsis character? This is often set with slightly more space between dots than ..., and it by definition never wraps across a line between those dots. You still see (C) instead of ©.

It is one of those things that doesn’t really matter for readability, but although they can’t necessarily put a finger on why, people may still notice that some documents or pages appear to be set with more care for details than others.

(edit: I guess if you don’t have to search on Google what the hell a ‘Microsoft Word’ is, then you’re officially old)

rsch commented on Apple's Software Quality Crisis eliseomartelli.it/blog/20... · Posted by u/ajdude

mindok · 10 months ago

What did it for me was a period of: “I see you are delivering an important presentation. Let me force install an update and reboot three times. Right now.” I’ve spent too long watching reboots to have Windows in my life for my limited time on the planet.

rsch · 10 months ago

Yeah one wart about Windows is that you always have to lookup these weird registry hacks after getting a fresh install. Disabling this automatic reboot was one of them. Otherwise that would make your computer completely useless for things like

- gaming - watching movies - presentations - anything where you want to let some calculation run unattended for a few hours - anything where you really don't want your PC to shut down unexpectedly while you’re working…

Well that covers pretty much everything I guess.

And to add insult to injury, Windows 10 for a while took away the ability to Update & shut down. It’d go into some sort of hybrid sleep so you’d keep getting a reboot prompt right after starting up again.

rsch commented on Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco vincentwoo.com/3d/sutro_t... · Posted by u/akanet

rsch · 10 months ago

That looks rad.

One bit of feedback: don't move the camera if someone clicks one of the circles, that is super disorienting. There is also a bug that if a drag to move the camera happens to end on a circle, the popup opens.

rsch commented on The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action gitlab.com/fedora/sigs/fl... · Posted by u/TheFreim

thayne · 10 months ago

> Fedora views shipping EOL Qt as unjustifiable neglect

That's rich, coming from a project very closely tied to Gtk, which has a history of massive breaking changes, and outright removing functionality, leading to many projects continuing to use older versions of gtk for a very long time.

rsch · 10 months ago

One of those project is the OG — GIMP.

rsch commented on Take the pedals off the bike fortressofdoors.com/take-... · Posted by u/bemmu

somerandomqaguy · a year ago

I just googled the same thing. Quite frankly I don't blame OP for getting it wrong, because the top result is from Cornell University.

> The accepted view: Bicycles are stable because of the gyroscopic effect of the spinning front wheel or because the front wheel "trails" behind the steering axis, or both.

https://ezramagazine.cornell.edu/summer11/researchspotlight....

If you're not already read into bicycle or motorcycle dynamics, the top google result sounds reasonable. Which makes it all the more ironic because they're talking about research which demonstrates, among other things, that it's a misconception to believe that gyroscopic forces are necessary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcZCzr9ExKk

rsch · a year ago

It is quite confusing because there are strong points in favour of either POV.

Point: you can ride a bicycle without hands. That would be completely impossible without gyroscopic effect. Or you can push a bicycle forward without a rider.

Counter-point: kickscooters exist, with tiny little 6″ tyres which have almost no gyroscopic effect, and yet you can balance those in the same way as a bicycle.

rsch commented on Take the pedals off the bike fortressofdoors.com/take-... · Posted by u/bemmu

analog31 · a year ago

The typical quality of kids bikes in the US is appalling. I wouldn't trust a bike made with hand brakes unless I could adjust and maintain them myself, which I can. But a lot of parents can't. And the weight is inexplicable, given how much smaller they are.

rsch · a year ago

Oh yes it may very well over half your kid’s weight. These things are ABSURDLY heavy.

This makes starting hard (an already hard problem when learning), it makes falling off worse because there is so much weight pulling down, and then they get pinned under all that weight so it can be hard to get up again. It makes walking the bike uphill physically impossible so if it is hilly you can't actually go out for a ride.

There will be at least some people out there whose road bike weights less than their toddler’s bike.

rsch commented on Show HN: iFixit created a new USB-C, repairable soldering system hackaday.com/2024/09/12/r... · Posted by u/kwiens

dpedu · a year ago

I am completely confused by your example. Buying a better knife doesn't make you a better chef. Buying a faster car doesn't make you a better driver. Buying a more powerful laptop doesn't make you a better developer.

rsch · a year ago

That is a common fallacy, I suspect it comes from having enough budget to not having to think about being able to afford something decent.

It is like photographers with $5,000 worth of equipment in their camera bags telling you that equipment doesn’t matter. I mean, there is a reason why they spend all that money right? Of course a good photographer will be able to get good results with a cheap camera, but only in situations where that cheap camera can actually capture the scene. For example, if it is not sensitive enough to capture enough light at night time, you are not getting night time shots, period, no matter how good you are. (this very much used to be a thing 10 years ago)

If you employ programmers, you will buy fast workstations because it will make them MUCH more productive. A slow computer will interrupt your work by making you wait.

I think it is in fact the exact opposite, the better you are at something, the more likely it is that you become limited by your equipment. I will probably not be able to cook better if I get very expensive knives. But I would speculate that an actual professional cook or butcher will be able to work better with sharp knives that keep their edges well.