mrob

18 ms·

391.
by mrob 1y ago
The only way you can justify public bell ringing is by appeal to tradition. Church bells are very loud and are placed in tall bell towers to be heard over a wide area. Despite the disruption and annoyance they can cause, this is an importan
392.
by mrob 1y ago
How would you handle context switching? You've got a whole lot of exposed state scattered throughout the whole CPU.
393.
by mrob 1y ago
To put this into perspective, five FMAs per sample is enough to implement a biquad filter. This is a very common DSP building block that can implement an idealized version of any of the 2nd-order filters that were ubiquitous in analog synth
394.
by mrob 1y ago
The most important element of the CRT look is the fast phosphor decay. This is why CRTs have so little sample-and-hold blur. No other hardware can simulate it perfectly, but a 480Hz OLED display comes close: https://blurbusters.c
395.
by mrob 1y ago
It's much less important for VGA games than for console games. Most used 320x200 resolution, which was line-doubled to 320x400 then displayed on a monitor capable of at least 640x480, so you had distinct and moderately sharp pixels. Th
396.
by mrob 1y ago
If any country gets ASI first, nukes won't matter. For an ASI, most tasks are more reliably accomplished with all biological life dead. Making a safe ASI is vastly more difficult than the default option of letting it kill everything, s
397.
by mrob 1y ago
None of the animations described in the article are of this type. Opening a text input area or changing desktop should be instant on all modern hardware. If you genuinely have something that can't be accomplished within one frame it&#x
398.
by mrob 1y ago
I use keyboard and mouse. Unlike touchscreens, these always work reliably. And if you're using animations as indications of correctly functioning hardware, why not just use useful work as the indication instead?
399.
by mrob 1y ago
UI animations actually do have one valid use: clarifying UI state changes to third parties. When you're the only person using the computer, UI animations are pure time-wasting anti-features. You obviously know how the UI state changed
400.
by mrob 1y ago
Homework only works as discipline building for people who don't need the help anyway. For normal students all it builds is resentment.
401.
by mrob 1y ago
Does anybody actually use the three plate method with granite? It was originally done with cast iron, and I thought cast iron was still the standard material. The plates are covered with dye and rubbed together to find the high points, whic
402.
by mrob 1y ago
IMO, software should look unpolished, to match the quality of the code and set realistic expectations. Almost all code for general purpose use is broken in some way. Writing non-trivial correct code without formal verification is a hopele
403.
by mrob 1y ago
There's no way to profitably bet on the whole economy collapsing.
404.
by mrob 1y ago
Consumer SSDs idle at very low power, but SSDs intended for data centers generally idle at several watts.
405.
by mrob 1y ago
nickpsecurity's post is currently flagged so I can't reply directly, but I think it's important to clarify that traditional Christian sexual morality aims to maximize population growth. The full list of sexual sins includes o
406.
by mrob 1y ago
>Usually the size of general purpose registers is what defines the bitness of a CPU The Motorola 68000 has 32-bit registers but it's usually considered a 16-bit CPU because it has 16-bit ALU and 16-bit data bus (both internal and ex
407.
by mrob 1y ago
I think it's unreasonable for any app to be so slow to launch that this matters. Modern SSDs have 7000MB/s or more read speeds. Assuming a ridiculously bloated app of 100MB, that's enough to load the whole thing into RAM in l
408.
by mrob 1y ago
120Hz limit for high refresh rate support seems strange. The most common refresh rate for high refresh rate monitors is 144Hz, and faster refresh rates are available. If you run a 120fps animation on a 144Hz monitor you'll get duplicat
409.
by mrob 1y ago
All browsers are fast enough once you block all the useless web bloat.
410.
by mrob 1y ago
I disagree. The more browser engines in use the less damage any one security exploit can do. This matters even with memory safe languages, because logic errors can be just as damaging, e.g. the Log4j exploit.
411.
by mrob 1y ago
You can get perfectly playable electric guitars in the $100 to $200 price range. It might need some setup first but you can learn to do that yourself from online videos. Modern mass production means popular instruments can be excellent valu
412.
by mrob 1y ago
Good UI latency used to be standard: https://danluu.com/input-lag/ (most recent HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33683278 ) The fact that it requires niche hardware and software (not
413.
by mrob 1y ago
UI on phone apps still is terrible. Have you ever used a desktop with high-end gaming peripherals (fast monitor/keyboard/mouse), running a light desktop environment such as LXQt on Xorg, with animations disabled? The feeling of re
414.
by mrob 1y ago
I prefer all the iPhone examples. The wider angle lens gives more of a 3D appearance, and the greater depth of field means I have greater choice in where to look instead of the photographer trying to force me to look where they want me to.
415.
by mrob 1y ago
You can get fountain pen inks that chemically react with cellulose for complete water resistance (there may still be a little smudging from unreacted ink washing off the paper). Noodler's Black is a famous example. I like this kind of
416.
by mrob 1y ago
I think the Rotring 500 pencils are better than the 600s. They're very similar except instead of a full metal body, only the grip is metal, and the rest plastic. This makes them lighter, and moves the center of gravity closer to the ti
417.
by mrob 1y ago
The main preservative for processed meats, and the one that reacts with other compounds to form carcinogens, is nitrites not nitrates. Nitrates are sometimes used too, especially for meats that are cured for a long time, because some bacter
418.
by mrob 1y ago
If you use uBlock Origin on Firefox, it's very easy to remove that kind of annoyance using the "element zapper" mode. See: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Element-zapper
419.
by mrob 1y ago
Your browser should allow you to override all CSS on the web. Here's how I disable CSS animations in Firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33223080
420.
by mrob 1y ago
I think people underestimate the impact of air pollution because it's so easy to get desensitized to it. Try wearing a respirator with good seal and filter in an urban area for 10 minutes or so. When you take it off you'll probabl

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