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User: ottothecow

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  1. Re:Pretty quickly on Objective-C Use Falls Hard, Apple's Swift On the Rise (dice.com) · · Score: 1
    I much prefer cross-system languages.

    You can't even write Swift cross-system. Even though you may be writing an app for a phone, you are forced to do your dev work on a Mac (unless you want to resort to stupid solutions like renting a machine that you can remote desktop in just to write code).

  2. Amtrak on Google Partnering With Indian Railways To Provide Wi-Fi Hotspots · · Score: 1

    And yet, here in the US, we can't even manage to get reliable/functional wifi on amtrak.

  3. Re:Sync to the audio on Ask Slashdot: Synchronizing Sound With Video, Using Open Source? · · Score: 1
    Did you guys even read the post? That is exactly how the $200 software he mentions does it.

    It will sync up the crappy audio from the camera with the fancy audio from the recorder (and also can sync multiple video streams based on their audio).

    His problem is that it costs $200 and doesn't run on linux. Also, probably that he has a single-camera setup and thus the features that sync video frames are not really necessary for him.

    He isn't asking for some magical software that lip reads his video and syncs the audio (or even knows how to find the frame where a clapboard closes and sync it with the audio spike). He just wants something that will line up the audio. And, as others have mentioned, there may be clock-sync drift issues...would be nice if the software fixes that too.

  4. Re:Actually, they didn't learn anything new. on MIT Physicists Have Finally Cracked Overhand Knots · · Score: 1
    Ashley is a fantastic resource for learning which knots work for a task (although it has notable flaws when it comes to certain modern synthetic ropes...would love to see someone update the text), but it does not teach you how and why those knots work.

    These knots have all been thoroughly tested. We know their breaking strength, we know their ease of untying, etc. But I don't think anyone knows how to predict the forces besides testing. If I designed a new knot, would anyone be able to model the attributes? What about if I designed a new kind of rope--would anyone be able to model knot performance on that rope without physical testing? This is similar to what goes on with un-sheathed dyneema--a bunch of old knots, that worked great on old ropes, are entirely useless because they slip on dyneema.

    This is like saying "we already know which natural medicines work in which situations, no sense in actually studying why they work"

  5. Re:No description on Ten Dropbox Engineers Build BSD-licensed, Lossless 'Pied Piper' Compression Algorithm · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Yeah, but I've got to say that it is nice to see a bunch of comments actually talking about the compression algorithm.

    The tiny bit of slashdot community that is left still talks about the actual things. If this were on Reddit, it would just be a stream of lame, overused references to the Silicon Valley show. Somebody would say "This guy fucks". Somebody else would make a joke about "Optimal tip-to-tip efficiency". Then somebody would ask "Do you know what tres commas means".

    Those things were hilarious when put forth by a group of comedic actors. They are incredibly lame when they are overused every single time something even comes tangentially close to referencing them.

    So while this particular story still sucks...it could be a lot worse.

  6. Re:Latency not a deal breaker on Why In-Flight Wi-Fi Is Still Slow and Expensive · · Score: 1
    Yeah, people forget that in the web2.0 AJAX world, this has changed.

    Between loading 50 billion off-site tracking/utility scripts and having a bunch of interactive page elements that don't load their content until you click/scroll/mouseover...just browsing HTTP sites can still be a huge pain with high latency.

    I'm sure someone will come and argue that "well that's now how we should be building the internet and sites should be designed better"...but that doesn't help me much when I am on an airplane with shitty wifi trying to use someone else's even shittier website to answer a client's question.

  7. Re:No Compromises on OnePlus Announces OnePlus 2 'Flagship Killer' Android Phone With OxygenOS · · Score: 1

    I dunno...my phone and my tablet have opposite orientations. I imagine other phones and other tablets similarly flip that around however it best fits in their circuit board design..

  8. Re:Kickstarter forever on Razer Acquires Ouya's Storefront and Technical Team · · Score: 1
    There does seem to be a difference though.

    Some of the earliest kickstarters I kicked into fell into two buckets.

    1) Something like "We want to make a second season of our video series, please kick in, we've got rewards at various tiers." This is great...I'm not really buying anything because the reward values are less than what I am paying. Also, they were generally making followup work or were established people starting a new project...so you knew what was coming.

    2) Some craftsman wants to make something cool, but maybe he needs certain parts or materials which have a large order minimum. So he does a kickstarter. If at least 150 people want to buy one, he meets the minimums and starts working. If not, everybody gets their money back (like any unsuccessful kickstarter funding).

    I know there is a place for the more ambitious projects. But they tend to get much further away from #2. They are no longer a leatherworker who needs a bulk discount on brass hardware to be profitable or a board game creator who has already completed their game but can't find a printer that is going to do less than 500 printings for a reasonable price. Instead they are people who maybe have a working prototype for some complicated electronic device, but they don't have a finalized design, and they definitely don't have working software to control it...they hope to pay for that with the kickstarter funds (I bought something like this...it eventually got delivered and the physical product is high quality, but the software was borderline unusable so I eventually gave up).

    At that point you are asking for venture capital from strangers who have been promised an actual product--you are doing preorders without an obligation to deliver. Make your product sound really cool but set your funding goal low enough, and plenty of people will sign up.

  9. Re:Please Stop on Pro Gamers To Be Tested For Doping · · Score: 1
    The problem I have with following any team video game is that there can be many points of focus.

    In pretty much every televised sport, the ball is the point of focus. If the ball goes to one person, the people on the other side of the field don't really matter. In CS:Go or a MOBA, you can have a lot of stuff going on simultaneously that is not easy to follow.

    That goes double if you are trying to display it TV-style where it can be followed from a distance. It is one thing to watch a HOTS match fullscreen sitting in front of your computer: you can see the minimap, you can see the respawn timers, the objective timers, etc., and maybe you can look at talent pics and ability cooldowns. Compare that to when ESPN2 televised it. Losing the minimap and that meta information and having to rely on only what the "cameramen" showed you made it hard to follow as someone who has actually played the game a little bit. I imagine it was next to impossible to follow for someone with no familiarity.

    If you took an american sports fan, sat them down in front of Australian rules football, and told them to root for the red team...they would be able to follow the action. Some rules wouldn't make sense, but they would know when their team made a good play or when they were getting hammered. Same would be true if you showed them many other rarely televised sport that they weren't already familiar with (lacrosse, field hockey, ultimate frisbee, etc). Hard to watch Dota, LOL, or HOTS without being an avid fan who is familiar with not only gameplay, but also the abilities and interactions of 30 different characters.

  10. Re:US on Cashless Adoption Growing In Europe · · Score: 2
    Yup...last september, in advance of foreign travel, I got a travel-oriented credit card. This thing advertises 0% foreign currency fees, travel miles, has a international collect phone # on it for any issues, etc.

    The damn thing showed up with only a mag stripe and a 2017 expiration date. This is well after all Target stores switched to chip-compatible readers (after their data breach) and it is well known that the standard abroad is chip and pin.

    Even so...my friend on the trip had a Chip+Signature card which was equally annoying. Sure, they can read the chip instead of the magstripe, but they still have to go and find you a pen (waiters often didn't carry them with the CC reader since nobody has to sign things anymore). And it doesn't work on vending machines for things like parking or train tickets since it doesn't have a PIN.

  11. Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap on Recycling Is Dying · · Score: 1

    Just FYI re step 5: they already have machines that sort out aluminum cans using eddy currents.

  12. Re:In other news on The Tools Don't Get You the Job · · Score: 1
    Yeah. I particularly hate the tendency on reddit for users to delete their own posts if they start getting downvoted.

    Grammar edits are one thing...but deleting your post because other people don't like it? That does nothing to encourage discussion or a diversity of opinions. All it does is leave a bunch of orphaned responses that no longer make sense (unless they quoted the OP...but why should you quote the OP if your comment is nested right below theirs?).

    No accountability for your posts either...so feel free to fling mud and provide false information...you can just delete any trace of your behavior later.

  13. Re:Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syr on FDA Bans Trans Fat · · Score: 1
    I think there are 2 big issues:

    HFCS is strong stuff, so it is easy to add without affecting other parts of a recipe or texture/consistency. Isn't that hard to sugar things up via other sweeteners (or plain sugar), but adding a little more HFCS is almost the same as sprinkling a little MSG on your chinese food.

    HFCS is made from corn. Corn subsidies are crazy, which makes HFCS incredibly cheap, but large scale corn farming relatively attractive despite low prices. If you didn't have these corn subsidies, sweetening everything with gobs of HFCS would not be as cost effective. But as long as the first primary is in Iowa, I doubt that will happen.

  14. Re:"Crunch Time" == Bad Project Management on Stress Is Driving Developers From the Video Game Industry · · Score: 2
    And really, I don't think people making less than $50k/yr as a programmer should qualify to not earn overtime.

    To be exempt, you are supposed to perform exempt job duties. These include things like: Managing employees, hiring/firing, preforming a job involving specialized education (excluding skilled trades...which is more of what programmign is...you don't need a DR's license to be a programmer), or work in administrative support (which core business programmers don't by definition). I suspect a lot of companies bend the "Professional" category to include programmers even though that is really for things like doctors/lawyers/nurses that require specific training and licensing.

    The real problem though is that there is a "Computer Employee Exemption" which throws all of those rules out the window as long as you are a programmer and get paid at least $455 a week. I don't know why programmers are specially carved out....a fresh undergrad getting paid even double that should be getting overtime pay...if you want to work them twice as hard at crunch time...then you should have to pay for it. Even that rule is pretty incongruent. An hourly programmer has to make more than $27.63 to be exempt. Working 40 hour weeks at 27.63 would pay you well over $50k, while a salary of 455 a week gets you 23k a year before you stop being overtime eligible.

  15. Re:Someone Please Provide a Better Explanation on Volvo Self-Parking Car Hits People Because Owner Didn't Pay For Extra Feature · · Score: 1
    Modern dishwashing detergents (and sensor based cleaning cycles) require some amount of gunk on your dishes to function correctly. In trying to meet environmental requirements over not using certain chemicals, they have switched to heavily enzyme based mixes that require some food and grease to actually do anything. Additionally, to save water, they have implemented sensors that run the cycle just until the dishes are clean and then stop--only if most of the dishes are already too clean, the sensor will end the cycle too early and the few really dirty dishes won't be fully cleaned.

    Most dishwashers still let you specify a Quick/Normal/Heavy clean instead of sensor...but it negates the energy savings. On the detergent front...no way around it, enzymes are the way of the future.

  16. Re:Yeah.... on Massachusetts Governor Introduces Bill To Regulate Uber, Lyft · · Score: 1

    Apparently they also forget that the liability coverage (and Uber already does provide $1m, this law would just prevent them from cutting it in the future) doesn't just cover them. When a driver is with a fare, it is thought that their own car insurance won't cover anything. So that $1m is also for the driver and any 3rd parties that are involved in an accident.

  17. Re:Let's not forget Mercurial on 10 Years of Git: An Interview With Linus Torvalds · · Score: 1
    I'd say at this point...it is all about github.

    I like mercurial a lot, but there is nothing quite like github. Bitbucket isn't awful, but it is no github. Given the choice, I'd say that mercurial has a better way of doing things, and is much easier to learn how to use. Anyone who knows how to use git, basically knows how to use merucrial, anyone familiar with cvs/subversion should have little trouble figuring it out, and someone who has never used it will find it much more pleasant than git....but with github being *the* place to dump your code, git becomes the better choice.

    That then crosses over into projects where you don't care about public hosting. More things have git integration, more people know git (or at least have heard of it via github and will thus consider it), windows git is still kind of lame, but it is functional.

  18. Although anyone who is mugging you is probably going to take your phone too. At least most of the crime reports I see say something like "suspect demanded victim's phone and wallet before fleeing the scene"

  19. Re:It is time to get up one way or the other on Obama: Maybe It's Time For Mandatory Voting In US · · Score: 1
    And crazy special interest groups don't have to rile up that many people to get their agenda passed.

    If you want to see some crazy people, take a look at the LA school board and city council. When your local elections only have single digit turnout (as a % of registered, which is even lower than % of total, especially since a lot of places allow non-citizens to vote in municipal elections), that means your winners have less voter mandate than Ross Perot or Ralph Nader do to be president. There is a district headed to runoff (so there will have to be some further agreement on a candidate) where by my estimates, the front-runner candidates received about 1% of the registered vote.

    At least here in Chicago we had a whole 33% of people turn up. And this is voting for politicians you can actually go talk to. If you are having a problem with the gas company, or you want reserved parking for your moving day, you can contact your alderman as one of the few thousand people who voted for them. There were races here where 30 votes were the difference between victory and a runoff....and people can't be bothered to vote for that? "My vote doesn't matter anyways" is just an excuse for laziness.

  20. Re:It is time to get up one way or the other on Obama: Maybe It's Time For Mandatory Voting In US · · Score: 1
    I suppose you could make the first question on the ballot something like "Do you give a shit?"

    With electronic voting machines, anyone who answers "No" could be immediately given a receipt without seeing a single ballot option. If these people already don't care at all, why are they going to want to spend time going through a list of candidates for president, senate, house, local senate, local house, elected judges, water reclamation district, non-binding ballot questions, etc. They will say no and GTFO.

    Of course I still can't get behind mandatory voting. You should be free not to, and still having to show up and check the "No" box is not a valid substitute. Make it a holiday (not on a monday or friday, as people will just turn them into long weekends and not even be in town for voting); some people still have to work on holidays, but it takes a lot of the pressure off. Or figure out how to do it from home without fraud (Estonia figured this out...and we already do it from home if you count mail-in ballots). Otherwise you will just have a bunch of uninformed idiots voting. Maybe you will get lucky and they will all vote for joke candidates...or maybe they will all vote for the guy who runs on the platform of "Lets end mandatory voting".

  21. Re:It is time to get up one way or the other on Obama: Maybe It's Time For Mandatory Voting In US · · Score: 1

    Don't forget about all of the local elections where you actually do have a choice. Many of those are on the same ballot as the president, and by not bothering to show up, you don't get to vote for them (and they might actually have more of an impact on your day to day life).

  22. Re:UberX in NYC is Different on Data Research Reveals When Taking a Yellow Cab Is Cheaper Than an Uber · · Score: 1
    In Chicago, the taxi driver's license is a written test involving things like being able to tell you how to get from the current location to XYZ intersection or a famous landmark. The taxi commission loves to parrot about the fact that their drivers have special licenses like it is a safety feature...but those drivers didn't take any actual additional driver's training or pass any skills tests. They took the same test as the rest of us, and most of them did so with *less* training since they are primarily immigrants (and immigrants often don't have to do any of classroom and behind-the-wheel driver's ed stuff that teenagers do since they get their licenses after turning 21).

    Sure, it is annoying when you tell your driver to take you to a major intersection and they have no idea how to get there...but you summoned them with a GPS-capable phone. Now both Uber and Lyft let you type your destination into the app, and it will pop up directions on your driver's phone--you don't even have wait for them to type in your address.

  23. Re:Been the opposite for me on Data Research Reveals When Taking a Yellow Cab Is Cheaper Than an Uber · · Score: 1
    Uber X in NYC is expensive compared to Chicago. Almost as expensive as a yellow cab and has an $8 minimum so if you are only going a mile or 2, it isn't necessarily cheaper (and uber charges for time the car is moving in addition to distance...yellow cabs only charge time when the cab is stopped). I still don't understand why these researchers used estimates since they could have calculated exact fares for exact rides...their $35 figure seems like bullshit. If there is no surge, it will almost always be cheaper as long as you are going past the $8 minimum. If there is surge, it will cost more...but it doesn't take a team of researchers to multiply a number by 1.75.

    But of course half of the reason people use them is because they are clean, the drivers don't smell, complain, or yammer on their phones, payment is handled instantly and automatically and you don't have to step outside to hail one. Uber X fares used to be higher than yellow cabs in NYC IIRC and people still used them.

  24. Re:Always more expensive? on Data Research Reveals When Taking a Yellow Cab Is Cheaper Than an Uber · · Score: 1
    Upon a bit further analysis, it looks like there is one variable that makes it stop being an easy algebra problem....NYC cabs charge time fares only when the car is not moving. Uber X charges time for the entire ride. So if you had a 10 minute 5 mile car ride, there would be a difference between one where you crawled along at 30 mph and one where you got on the highway and went 60 but spent 5 minutes waiting at lights getting on/off.

    Uber also has an $8 minimum fare in NYC...so any trips less than a couple of miles are going to be cheaper in a taxi.

    But still, you could calculate exact fares for an Uber using the Taxi sample data. Using Uber's fare estimates when you already know exact time and distance is silly.

  25. Re:Makes sense on Data Research Reveals When Taking a Yellow Cab Is Cheaper Than an Uber · · Score: 1
    What?

    The driver has no way of knowing how long of a trip you are taking until you get in their car. At that point they can't kick you out (well, they *can*, but if they make a habit of them, uber will fire them).

    Besides, short fares aren't bad unless you have to drive a long way to pick them up. Like a yellow cab, there is a flag pull fee just for sitting down in the cab. A half mile ride is worth like 75% of a mile ride. Payment is instant in the app, so its not like you lose time while they fish for money, give change, etc.