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sosull

Personal experience: they get fifty bodies on a two-person job. The work is fine, but not good enough to learn from. Which actually makes sense if you think of their company as a machine that can adapt to whatever problem.
Re:iPod Classic 6G in QEMU on Friday September 11, 2026 @10:38AM (#49659256)
But that was the single hardest claim in the model register!
Re:iPhone Duo on Wednesday September 09, 2026 @06:04PM (#49635129)
The mini accounted for 3% of sales. Personally I’m a believer, and a buyer, but 3% isn’t a good number.
Re:Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude on Thursday August 27, 2026 @12:05PM (#49467067)
I really love this. It’s comprehensive, it consolidates the data to the point where the argument effectively ‘makes itself’, and the way it’s presented respects the reader’s time. It also makes for an interesting challenge (for me at least) to try to characterise the subject matter of a language problem so narrowly.

No ream of slides. No narrative. Just a lovely big painful conclusion.

Re:Apple Violated Antitrust Ruling, Judge Finds on Thursday May 01, 2025 @08:11AM (#43856626)
With only a passing knowledge of the field, I'm aware that the standard of monopolistic effect varies between the EU and US (neither specifically uses financial size as the standard). In the EU it's about whether there is sufficient competition in the market, whereas in the US it's about whether the price is sufficiently competitive.
Re:Apple Violated Antitrust Ruling, Judge Finds on Thursday May 01, 2025 @08:05AM (#43856582)
He has such a talent for brevity: "You know a judge is pissed when she busts out the bold italics."
Re:Apple Violated Antitrust Ruling, Judge Finds on Thursday May 01, 2025 @07:47AM (#43856429)
For me (IANAL), reading the judgment was initially shocking primarily for its facts and tone, rather than having any understanding of the legal consequences. I initially skipped over the phrase 'contempt of court' because the phrase seems so familiar from TV. But on reflection, it's the most consequential part of the document because, as you say, it has actual consequences for the people involved.
Cast iron, presumably.
+1. I read this a few weeks back and it really stuck with me.
Re:Making steel without emitting CO2 on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @06:41PM (#39282504)
The article is saying ‘kinda’. The process works in lab conditions with highly purified ore, but produces an equivalent amount of chlorine gas and iron.
I think there's a reasonable case to be made that consoles (and the vertically integrated business structure that they represent) inherently encourage more diverse kinds of games development while also attracting new buyers. Their business practices aren't ideal, granted. But it's not entirely clear to me that a walled garden constitutes a true monopoly. That is to say that the console makers aren't using their control over their own systems to force their way into adjacent, unrelated markets.

Also, the standard for what constitutes anti-competitive behaviour is different in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The US uses higher pricing as the prime signal, whereas the EU uses a lack of viable competitiors.

Re:Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page? on Thursday October 05, 2023 @08:46AM (#37777891)
It pulls at a compelling thread about the differential possibilities of design and the identities it's coded against. Anti-design is an inherently valuable approach to work. It can let us think about how to achieve the right client fit, the right product motivations, and the right overall system incentives. This isn't to agree (per se) that only bad clients want glossy design in prototypes, but rather to suggest that we as people self-segregate into particular visual cultures that may seem inherently bad to outsiders. Design, or the perceived lack of it, can be a form of (highly valued) in-group signalling that allows us to sieve out the wrong kinds of interactions.

And then sometimes bad design is just great on its own merits. By way of example: https://x.com/NCTreasurer/status/1577673238536245248?s=20

Re:Seven Sins of Writing on Monday August 28, 2023 @07:53AM (#37292663)
Book hack: some lengthy autobiographies have an ‘about the author’ section on the inside cover.
I would think that software engineering is the exception that proves the rule: people with domain knowledge are highly motivated to share what they know, ask questions, consolidate knowledge, and refine processes using the Internet.

Working in another field (public services might be a good example) it’s often not possible to test out hypothetical solutions, or find relevant expertise, or to even discover that whole areas of knowledge actually exist. In that context, relevant qualifications have a little more weight.

I can empathise. Telling them that you didn’t want a management-style position was probably the right move given all the reasons you laid out, but it’s also an implicit rejection of everything that the people around you are striving for. They equate management with productivity and respect. You’re thinking of it like the difference between a pilot and an air traffic controller. Jobs with vastly different purposes. But still, your decision called their value system into question in a very profound way. It’s not like saying that you don’t want that kind of job, it’s more like you didn’t want to work with them more closely. And most people, myself included, don’t have the emotional intelligence to handle rejection maturely. It all gets very petty.
Re:The contagious visual blandness of Netflix on Sunday January 22, 2023 @12:34PM (#34479883)
But not in Schitt’s Creek. Worthwhile things have always been rare.
Re:Gasoline Is Made of Carbon Sucked from the Air (2018) on Monday January 16, 2023 @06:31AM (#34399584)
I say this as someone living in Northern Europe in a wooden house: there’s a fairly good reason that the building industry uses brick rather than lumber here. The combination of humidity, temperature, and often densely-packed housing created both a skills base and a supply chain that has, over time, made it needlessly costly to build with lumber. And, a lot of our historic architectural styles prioritise brick, which is a huge pull factor when people are deciding on styles for new buildings.
Ah sure look.
Re:Typography for Lawyers on Monday November 07, 2022 @03:52PM (#33512263)
I've spent years admiring his work as a type designer. It's vexing work to create a serif that's versatile enough to compete with the simplicity and legibility of standard office-type fonts. I think he pulled the rabbit out of the hat with the Equity font. It's intended for lawyers, IANAL, but it's genuinely useful in a much bigger mixture of situations.
Re:Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go on Monday November 07, 2022 @08:02AM (#33505250)
It was a somewhat rushed point, admittedly. I was reaching for enlightenment-era imagery to challenge the seeming disavowal of morality itself. I note that OP extended those remarks elsewhere to claim that the law is the preferred source of moral constraint. I'm not even sure of what to say to that.

But I very much appreciate the depth of your point. I've always found validation (?) in the deontological aspect of Kant's idealism because I think it neatly describes why people feel obligations to those they interact with most closely (i.e. I feed my child because I should, rather than to avoid his hunger). I certainly take your point that the categorical imperative isn't the best or only tool for interpreting moral dilemmas. Honestly, I was bringing it up in part because it's a recognisable phrase that might infer that there's more to the question of ethics than unexamined instinct.

Re:Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go on Sunday November 06, 2022 @04:09PM (#33497189)
Immanuel Kant came up with the idea of a categorical imperative. It’s one of the foundation stones in the field of moral philosophy (or ethics). An example would be the moral requirement not to kill other people. The only way to successfully prove that there are no moral requirements is by arguing the point with people who don’t know any better.
Re:BBC: Twitter users jump to Mastodon – but what is it? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @03:57PM (#33497055)
Yes, you’re correct. I was wrong. Apologies.
Re:BBC: Twitter users jump to Mastodon – but what is it? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @02:52PM (#33496364)
Is there even a remotely balanced alignment between the number of users on a platform and that platform’s advertising market share? I think the answer is no. Google and Meta dominate ads. No-one else really has traction, irrespective of their platform’s success.
Buy insurance. Then try standing near to falling debris. If that doesn’t work you could try a phoney kidnapping.
Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution on Thursday October 27, 2022 @06:29AM (#33355585)
There are twenty-three states where judges all the way up to the State Supreme Court are elected, rather than being appointed. These include partisan elections, nonpartisan elections, and legislative elections.

https://ballotpedia.org/Judicial_selection_in_the_states

Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution on Thursday October 27, 2022 @05:05AM (#33355060)
Almost, but not quite. Brandenburg created a softer standard than Schenck. The offending speech would have to incite or produce imminent unlawful conduct. But there's an exception for political speech in Brandenburg, which handed people back their right to protest against (and urge people not to comply with) the draft.

Alito claimed* that the 'fire in a crowded theatre' standard should be applied to today's college campuses, essentially because he has strong views on how free speech should/shouldn't be regulated at college. It seems to me that he's taking issue specifically with the right of students to engage in political speech and protest. The current court seems to have a particular distaste for case law from the civil rights era. I think he's deciding to bring this exact issue up because he wants to signal to any prospective plaintiff what rulings and precedents the court is likely to focus on in a hypothetical case. But he did that by deliberately misapplying the relevance of a widely-known and easily-misunderstood civil rights-era standard. It feels like he's doing that to taunt his political opponents and signal his preference for an earlier legal regime.

My point is that it's fair to question whether the court is actually behaving like a legislature: it's concentrating on case law that specifically affects social policy and it's doing that because it has a majority's muscle. As a foreigner, I can't explain how insane this looks from outside. Judges don't get to just show up to cocktail parties or speeches and single out the precedents they'd prefer to ignore or dispense with. That's a politician's job.

* https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/justice-alito-takes-di...

Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution on Thursday October 27, 2022 @03:32AM (#33354389)
Watching this play out (as a non-US person), there’s very little comfort in the distinction between court ignoring the law and the court interpreting the law in a way that is different to historic precedent. The act of interpretation infers that the court is making some kind of justification – backing these changes up by explaining them. Typically this would happen via written decision or at least by stare decisis.

But then I saw Samuel Alito commenting just today about how the first amendment does not give Americans, and college students specifically, the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre. The fire in a crowded theatre standard was overturned in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). So it’s a little odd to hear that the Schenck interpretation from fifty years earlier is back on the menu.

I find myself wondering how that happened. What’s the fine distinction between interpreting the law differently to precedent and ignoring settled law?

Re:Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair on Monday September 19, 2022 @12:57PM (#32900892)
It’s a very fair point, but stranger things have happened. Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...
Re:Five Ways to Write Like The Economist [pdf] (2010) on Sunday August 28, 2022 @04:53AM (#32626838)
I’ll believe it when I see study after study after study.
Re:Lyndon Johnson’s Campaign by Helicopter (2016) on Friday August 26, 2022 @06:07AM (#32605378)
If anyone hasn't read Robert Caro's books about Lyndon Johnson, give them a try. They are a truly exceptional achievement in both storytelling and research. I had no concrete understanding of what the New Deal actually was until I read the (fourteenth chapter) of the first book. The stories about it are insane: judges being kidnapped, stripped and beaten by farmers etc. There is a whole book, Means of Ascent, that's devoted to this short period in LBJ's life – the Senate primary campaign that he ran against Coke Stevenson. The helicopter features heavily.

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