sparky_z

47 ms·

571.
by sparky_z 11y ago
Believe me I've looked. As far as I can tell, there's no way to make one that works for everything because the HTML5 standard* doesn't have a clear distinction between things that autoplay and things that don't, the way
572.
by sparky_z 11y ago
They don't work reliably (some things still autoplay), and sometimes they break the media entirely or don't discriminate between things you actually want to autoplay. For example, the one I currently have installed also blocks &qu
573.
by sparky_z 11y ago
I know everybody here hates flash (for excellent reasons!) and is happy to see it die. But, as a user who doesn't work in tech, I really miss the ability to enforce click-to-play loading of videos. From my pseudo-outsider perspective,
574.
by sparky_z 11y ago
I have difficulty believing that this is some ironclad law of economics without a lot of further study. Does it hold true for other countries? It would certainly be possible to pass laws that decrease tax revenue (just reduce all taxes by
575.
by sparky_z 11y ago
Well the GPS would be the part you add during the retrofit. It's not like they're that expensive anymore. Like someone1234 was saying, this seems like a problem that could be solved (at least as a prototype) by a smartphone app wi
576.
by sparky_z 11y ago
Does O'Reilly's critique not qualify?
577.
by sparky_z 11y ago
I've heard other lawyers give this advice. It may or may not be good advice, depending on circumstances, but I'm a little suspicious of the lawyer's motive. It sounds designed to ensure that every single traffic stop, no matt
578.
by sparky_z 11y ago
For a measurement device, "accurate" and "reliable" aren't binary conditions, they're continuums. Not every sensor in the world has to be medical grade. There are plenty of applications where a less accurate se
579.
by sparky_z 11y ago
That doesn't seem fair. What's a company supposed to do in that situation? Just close up shop? Makes me wonder if it would be possible to intentionally drive a company out of business by convincing a bunch of people to use their p
580.
by sparky_z 11y ago
Wouldn't that only be true if they replaced/upgraded everything every few months? You'd have to factor in the cost of that. And of course, it wouldn't work that way anyway because Moore's Law isn't actually con
581.
by sparky_z 11y ago
"this is so narrowly focused on the ultra rich" So was Tesla initially. That didn't make it unworthy of tech news coverage. As this sort of technology matures and become more accessible to the general public, it has a reasona
582.
by sparky_z 11y ago
That person you hire can't split themselves into 10 people on demand, nor are they easily replaced if they go on vacation or get sick. This seems to me the PA equivalent of using AWS rather than owning and maintaining your own servers.
583.
by sparky_z 11y ago
You probably know this but just in case: That wasn't his article. It was an essay by Mark Twain that was hosted on his site (probably so he could link to it from somewhere).
584.
by sparky_z 11y ago
A great title for the blog post, but not a very good title for HN. There's a difference.
585.
by sparky_z 11y ago
Back in the day, some friends of mine were stuck walking home from the movie theater after the buses stopped running. As they were walking past a Domino's, one of them had the idea to order a pizza delivered to their house and then hit
586.
by sparky_z 11y ago
Thanks for explaining the discrepancy to me (though I'm not sure why you started by denying its existence). It would have been nice if the article had included that info.
587.
by sparky_z 11y ago
But your link also says it had a $5.1 billion loss, and doesn't explain the discrepancy. So which is it? Did the postal service gain or lose money this year?
588.
by sparky_z 11y ago
I agree that his comment shows a rather callous disregard for the victim's feelings, but it doesn't really blame her for anything.
589.
by sparky_z 11y ago
If someone can vote for X and not for Y, then they're being voted on separately, not collectively.
590.
by sparky_z 11y ago
"...it's a little confusing to figure out what isolating a root would mean. " Well, to take an example from some of my past work as a structural engineer, say you wanted to find out how much wind load a structure could sustai
591.
by sparky_z 11y ago
This doesn't work if the output of the function you're checking is a noisy black box. For example, if fn() creates a finite element model, analyses it with an external software package, and post-processes the results to get an out
592.
by sparky_z 11y ago
Really good jokes often do. Generally speaking, the more of a "leap" you have to make to get a joke, the funnier it seems to you (all else being equal). This is a large part of the appeal of "inside jokes" and online mem
593.
by sparky_z 11y ago
The water doesn't evaporate, it is consumed in a chemical reaction. It's a fundamentally different process, not an arbitrary linguistic rule. In fact, you have to be careful that the concrete doesn't dry out during the curi
594.
by sparky_z 11y ago
Expanding on what x3n0ph3n3 said, concrete doesn't harden because the water in it evaporates away. Rather, the water is consumed in a chemical reaction. In fact, you have to be careful that the water doesn't evaporate too much dur
595.
by sparky_z 11y ago
That's because . is a method call, + is addition, and comma is a list separator. Which of those would you give up? So yes, the ~ is a little unique to Perl6, but at least they were thoughtful enough to pick something with more than one
596.
by sparky_z 11y ago
Yes, usually you can tell. But the times you can't are very annoying. As a writer, you can be forced into awkward circumlocutions to avoid ambiguity.
597.
by sparky_z 11y ago
>One can have only heard "begs the question" used properly, but if you weren't familiar with the phrase, easily and understandably take it to mean "a question is begging to be asked", then go on to use it incorre
598.
by sparky_z 11y ago
The colloquial usage doesn't erase the technical usage. They can coexist. I dare you to construct a normal sentence in which the particular usage of "begs the question" is not entirely clear from context. (This, by the way, i
599.
by sparky_z 11y ago
Honestly, I'm a pedant about most language rules, but the "begs the question" rule is just dumb. There's no reason why a phrase can't have a very specific technical meaning in a particular jargon (debate theory) whi
600.
by sparky_z 11y ago
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