dmitrybrant

8 ms·

61.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
If I'm not mistaken, the tape drive automatically adds ECC to each written block, and then uses it to verify the block next time you read it. So if there's bit rot on the tape (i.e. too much for ECC to fix), it will just be repor
62.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
Funny, I just recently did a similar thing: found an LTO-4 tape drive on eBay for $40, and a few used cartridges (2TB each) for $20. But before writing my backup to the cartridges, I tried reading their contents, and found that they actuall
63.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
New variants of viruses can arise at any point in the future, regardless of what we do. Any flu season in any previous year in history could have produced a deadly variant, and yet we went on with our lives. I think this is simply about re
64.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
Aw, sad. I found my current job (in which I couldn't be happier) on SO, and have also posted listings on SO for another employer before that. I haven't used it to search for jobs in a while, but I recall it being a super simple,
65.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
Neither black holes nor neutron stars extend any kind of magnetic tendrils. There can be jets of matter that are ejected from the vicinity of a black hole (due to the Penrose process or something similar), and those jets can have electric c
66.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
Off topic, sorry, but: Why do web designers think that they can provide a better scrolling experience than the default system behavior that the user expects in every other interaction? By the way, hijacking scrolling behavior often breaks
67.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
I was an early-ish adopter of the Model 3 (2018), and I couldn't be happier with it. I've had zero hardware quality issues, and one software issue where it did a cold reboot one day and forgot my personalization settings. But othe
68.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
While neutrinos are not very difficult to generate, they are extremely, astoundingly difficult to detect. Unless we discover a new type of matter that interacts more strongly with neutrinos, we're stuck with cavern-sized detectors tha
69.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
My prediction is much less wacky than predicting a colony by 2050. I think everyone overestimates the public interest and "excitement" over going to Mars. The reason we haven't been back to the Moon in 50 years is that the pu
70.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
Wait, a colony on Mars by 2050 that doesn't need to be resupplied from Earth? ...lol no. Strong, strong disagree that there will be any kind of "colony" on Mars by 2050, and my prediction is that we won't even have our
71.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
I scan everything pretty aggressively, since I hate physical papers of any kind lying around. Documents that are scanned within the last ~month sit unencrypted on a NAS, and organized in the style of "/2021/Taxes", &quot
72.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
Just my personal feeling, but the jitter evident in the video on the website already makes me nauseated. There is absolutely no way that this would be usable by me for any kind of sustained productivity during a work day. I might be extrem
73.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
By all means use dithered images on your website for stylistic reasons, but do not use them simply because dithering produces a slightly smaller PNG file. First of all, no discussion of minimizing PNG sizes is complete without `pngcrush` wh
74.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
I grew up in the Soviet Union until my family and I immigrated to the US. I have no particular loyalty to "the west", but I can say with absolute certainty that Western culture is objectively better than Soviet culture. The gener
75.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
...this is from April 2020, and I still have never heard of Cliqz until now.
76.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
Microsoft really wants to convince you that your phone and your PC are the same thing. But they've failed in the execution of this idea several times now. The fact that this partnership is with the Amazon app store, not the Google P
77.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
Absolutely not -- the Amazon app store and the Google Play store are completely different entities. The fact that Microsoft partnered with Amazon instead of Google for app store integration is a strong indication of how serious they are ab
78.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
This is a very cynical take (I'm cranky from my second vaccine dose), but: Imagine how much work, how much energy and effort, went into building an ML-based image cropping feature, just because an up-and-coming Designer decreed that a
79.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
Well sure, thankfully all these myriad ways of doing the same thing coexist without much issues, since they're all just wrappers around findViewById(). But I just wish they'd settle on a pattern that will endure for more than a s
80.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
All well and good, but only if you're just starting to build your app literally today . If your app was built more than ~6 months before the current iteration of Jetpack/AndroidX/etc, you'll never finish catching up wi
81.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
That's even more bizarre, since that uses the "v86" emulator, which can literally run in a browser tab with one click: https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows95
82.
by dmitrybrant 5y ago
I'm not sure why this keeps appearing on HN, but I hope it's some kind of postmodern critique of everything that's wrong with our field. This is taking Basilisk II (which is already a native app that runs on all major platfor
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by dmitrybrant 6y ago
I see what you did there.
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by dmitrybrant 6y ago
My god... a 200+ MB install footprint, 200+ MB of RAM usage, requires a beefy GPU just to render its window. How did we get here?
85.
by dmitrybrant 6y ago
Most people familiar with the US patent office will agree that it's totally broken. The reviewers are not scientists, and aren't required to understand what's being proposed in a patent. They simply perform a search for prio
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by dmitrybrant 6y ago
I'm not sure about that. A sane business would not give in to bullying tactics. Most small business owners I know have probably never heard of Trustpilot, and if they did, would probably consider any kind of fee for maintaining a decen
87.
by dmitrybrant 6y ago
Well of course they wouldn't advertise these sorts of practices in their pricing plans. But you can get certain hints from some of the verbiage. For example, they talk about "review invitations" -- this is code for review
88.
by dmitrybrant 6y ago
Perhaps a bit off-topic, but TrustPilot is a form of near-perfect evil. If someone leaves a negative review of your business on TrustPilot, you can have it taken down... for a measly $400 per month. If you refuse to purchase their premium
89.
by dmitrybrant 6y ago
Just a quick note about a very prominent user of vertical screens: Professor Martyn Poliakoff, known for the Periodic Videos channel (which I highly recommend). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy8ZMFXS_5E
90.
by dmitrybrant 6y ago
You mean you haven't been keeping your hard disks plugged into a power source at all times? Say goodbye to your data! /s

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