Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | Todd's comments login

I see that was with Eric. I worked on his phone. It had two keys and the PM developed their own encoding. I strongly advocated for Morse. I wasn’t aware of this patent. Cheers


Eric was quite a character, wasn't he? Nothing was ever dull with him around. It was fun working with him.

I went to his memorial service. There was quite a crowd there. Eric created a ripple in the universe.


LF, MF, and so on are bands, or frequency ranges. AM is a modulation technique. It, like FM and others, can be used on any band (although regulations can limit this).


There was a thread on HN a week ago about this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32250203


A lot will depend on her aptitude and inclination. It sounds like you’re thinking that software is a likely direction. If she’s looking at college, a computer science degree will give her a lot of options. There are also two year and technical schools with similar curricula.

If she goes that route, there are many different types of work. Writing software is the obvious one, but there’s technical project management, engineering management, etc. Again, depends on where her interest lies.

One great thing about being a woman in tech is that it offers great job security and growth potential. For whatever reason there is a real dearth of women in the field, so if she’s good, she’ll be highly sought after.


I've been disappointed with DW for a long time. One of their ostensible goals is to promote the German language (see the Deutsche Welle Act, which governs it). Finding a live stream in German on their site is near impossible. I expect it's due to agreements with US cable companies, but I haven't been able to confirm that. I can't think of another reason for them to display "Es gab ein Problem Zugang zu dem geschützten Inhalt herzustellen" whenever I attempt to view live German content. Fortunately, some of it is available on YouTube.


For future reference, I did confirm from a support person that live streams are not offered in the US "due to legal reasons". You can only receive it through select cable, satellite, and other operators. Sad.


Microsoft is late to the party here. This has been core to Apple's business model for years. Here's an example of OS support for the MacBook Air:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Air#Supported_macOS_re...

The arbitrary cadence of abandonment is amazingly consistent and has no basis in hardware capabilities.


Exactly. I think part of this is driven by changes in Microsoft's business model.

Previously every couple of years they'd come out with a new paid upgrade. But since they basically made Windows 10 a 'rolling distro', they've been losing a lot of income on this side.

As Windows 11 will be free for existing PCs but new PCs will have licensing included in the price (as they did with Windows 10), they have a strong incentive to have as many people as possible buy new PCs. Just as Apple does. After all, macOS mainly exists to sell Apple hardware, not the other way around.

It's no wonder their support model is changing, but I think it's sad they are dropping models so young. Windows used to be great at very long term support on hardware. Probably the best of the commercial OSes.


Based on that article, every MacBook Air released since 2008 will receive a patch update and every MacBook Air released since 2015 will support OSX Monterey. Is that not reasonable?


I believe the patches are all community sourced. They tend to be well made but they're not something the average consumer would use. It's hit or miss as to whether they work with your particular model.


I think the patches are Apple’s security updates, not a community OS hackintosh thing


No, you are mistaken, the patches are prepared by dosdude1 (who should receive a medal for saving the planet a lot of e-waste from Apple products).


That's true, but if you compare the resale value of PCs and MacBooks, you'll find that MacBooks(even with outdated OS) have higher resale value. Therefore, this is a bit of a tricky situtation for PCs since they can't be sold for much.


It's a tricky issue. Supposed I want to buy an used MacBook now, for a good price and still running the newest macOS. I'll find lots of 4GB or 8GB MacBooks from 2015 for example that can't be upgraded. Or... I could move back to 2012 and upgrade RAM to 16 GB and insert 2TB SSDs. 4GB MacBooks are practically unusable for any non-trival task so that fact that you can run the newest OS and enjoy security updates means very little if you can't do any real work.


I’m not sure that’s a problem. I usually thoroughly wear them out before they go obsolete and quite frankly I don’t want to use a 7+ year old computer. They’re pretty awful.


Really? I still use my now over 8 year old Thinkpad (upgraded screen, hdd, ram and replaced the keyboard after an orange juice 'incident') and it feels as quick as my 2 year-old work laptop.

Moore's law is long dead for consumer perception of speed, even other components have stagnated lately. RAM size and HDD space has not really moved much in the last 5 years for a regular laptop; CPUs have gotten a bit faster but the average user will not notice the difference in their every day workflow.


Thats just ignoring a lot of the market. We've gone from dual cores to 16 thread laptops since then. 5400 rpm drives to many GB/s nvme ssds, etc.


I’ve got a T440 here but I don’t use it because it’s slow. It’s for an SSD and 12Gb of RAM in it. The removable battery will no longer work due to a problem on the motherboard. The plastics are having worn.

I don’t want to use it any more so I don’t.

I’ve got a T495 Ryzen but I mostly use a M1 MacBook Air. If you think that there is stagnation in the last 5 years then you need to reevaluate that. These things are stupid fast.


You forgot that every MacOS release gets 2-3 years of security updates after the next version comes out. So just because you can't update to the next release doesn't mean you are unsupported yet.


How is that any different from Windows?


French has a related word with the same meaning, "glisser". Both the German and the French term appear to come from the same original word. The French word "glacier" and the English word "glide" are also derived from it.


As is the German "Gletscher" (glacier).


I had the privilege of working for Eric at one of his startups. He had an outsized personality. He was the most gregarious person I've known. He could be very intimidating until you got to know him. He was also positive and generous, and his enthusiasm was contagious. We will miss him.


Constructor-defined properties of records are implemented using auto-implemented properties with the new init keyword, so:

    public int MyProp { get; init; }
instead of

    public int MyProp { get; set; }
Apparently those are implemented using readonly backing fields while still retaining property setters.


This originally aired on the PBS series Frontline in March. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/

Watching this made me very sad. I feel like I've been lied to my entire life. Of course, I'm also to blame for not spending more time seeking out the truth. Marketing is indeed very effective. This show changed my perspective and has made me want to redouble my efforts with regard to my impact on the environment.


Graciously stolen from Michael Malice.

The major red pills in approximate order are

1) I'm being misled systematically

2) I've been misled since school

3) They are fully aware of what they are doing

4) Given the choice, they would prefer me dead over defiant

I welcome you to red pill #3. The next trick is overcoming the Gell-Mann amnesia effect for all the future stuff they tell you.


> This show changed my perspective and has made me want to redouble my efforts with regard to my impact on the environment.

At this point, the only effort worth making is reducing consumption. Reducing travel, reducing use of everything across the board. Of course, our whole society is setup so people need others to consume more and more so they can feed their family, because all the debt has that growth baked in in order to break even.


No. Participate in politics to force industries to adopt environment friendly practices and production. Be more full proof and apply the same rules to import/export.

This is how oil, fast food, meat, luxury, etc industries want you to behave. Recycle, reuse and reduce was a failure which was proposed the same way you did. Consumer responsibility could be an additional measure but not the main focus.

It's their fault first and foremost.


The problem is, conservatives and others worldwide oppose this because it imposes costs on business in just one country, leaving businesses there with a disadvantage in world markets. Policies like these need to be coupled with import tariffs to countries with dirty industries, else we just end up legislating all our industry away and instead buy from countries who have no problem with polluting the environment.


> Participate in politics to force industries to adopt environment friendly practices and production.

In my opinion, there is no environmentally friendly practice that allows the world to consume at the pace it wants to. You can’t have multiple annual flights to vacation destinations, large vehicles, and quarter acre lots per family.

Not only can the tiny proportion of the world enjoying the above not have it anymore, but to mitigate the damage already done, we probably need to come to a near stop rather than just slow down from 80mph to 40mph.

All while a few billion people in the developing world are looking forward to their children being able to fly to destinations for vacations and enjoy a backyard and nice car.


A high carbon emission tax can force people to reduce their useless flights. Aviation industry's global emission is at 2 percent and only tiny percentage (3-5%?) of world population travel by air. A lot of problems is also due to inefficient traffic control and laws. Plus, that include air cargo. I can't find anything that accounts only for consumer flights.


We’re in agreement that the way to solve the problem of overconsumption is to raise the cost of consuming by increasing taxes on fossil fuels.

Problem is any politician that proposes it will get voted out because people want to consume. So until a a large majority of people are willing to forgo the type of life desired based on what people are used to and currently enjoying, it seems impossible to impose the requisite level of taxation.


As I already pointed out, only a small amount of people travel by air regularly. So I really doubt that would be a problem for election.

For other industries, it's a mixed bag. Some will be welcomed such as reduction in planned obsolescence, better public transportation, more greenery, less trash on roads, breathable air, etc.

Most people won't notice inefficient coal power plants getting replaced by other better options. They want electricity at cheap and they will get it.


People with resources travel by air regularly, and they influence others. Also, people like to believe they will one day live the jet setting life, so taking that option away could be perceived as a negative.

People also prefer personal car transportation versus public transportation. Public transport requires living in high density environments, which means no personal backyards, no driveways for your 2+ car households, etc. Fossil fuels without the accompanying tax make cheap things possible, like household supplies and convenient packaging. Making fossil fuels more expensive hits everyone's quality of life, and we can see that when fuel prices go up and now everyone is complaining about increases in prices of food and materials.

>Most people won't notice inefficient coal powerplants getting replaced by other better options. They want electricity at cheap and they will get it.

If it was possible to offer electricity cheaper, why would it not already be the case?


> If it was possible to offer electricity cheaper, why would it not already be the case?

https://carbontracker.org/reports/how-to-waste-over-half-a-t...

> People also prefer personal car transportation versus public transportation.

I suspect it's because many countries don't have good transportation system. You are right, it would be inefficient to build large scale public transportation system in rural areas but considering that they don't account for as much pollution. I think it's an okay trade off for now.

Free public transportation also encourages more development as it benefits poor people (who are less likely to own and use their own vehicles) more.


Pushing down the cost of electricity would be a really good way to get folks to prefer it over other energy sources. Then making the grid more efficient and lower emissions benefits all the downstream applications without needing to wait for equipment replacements.

I just installed a new gas heating system (replacing my 1975-vintage hardware that died) because PG&E charges me roughly 6.4 cents per KWh delivered by pipe vs 44 cents per KWh delivered by wire. [1] Ironically, my red-state-dwelling parents are all-electric and are emitting less CO2e than I am because it's cheaper for them.

I moved out of walking range of a Caltrain station and honestly don't miss it. Tickets are always more expensive than driving, the service is slow, and living nearby is noisy. But it doesn't have to be that way. I only actually used it if I was going all the way to San Francisco, my bicycle was broken, or it was raining a lot - so a few times per year. There's just no will here to make the public transit experience excellent.

[1] Folks may notice that the $0.44/KWh is far above the stated rate. That's because there's tiers and fees. Other folks are quick to point to time-of-use as a way to solve everything, but that would actually increase my bill because most of my electricity use is either base load or peak-hours activities. And I dislike the cognitive burden of micro-optimizing everything all the time.


I agree with you that this should work, but it makes me sad that this kind of solution preserves access for the wealthy and excludes those who are not. Maybe clean energy can help reduce the divide eventually.


Just tax flights after your first one each year, and then make them increasingly expensive.


Personally I'd rather not promote additional tracking and surveillance. Simple measures, while they might not be perfect, at least have easy-to-predict outcomes. Directly taxing what you want less of (e.g., CO2e) doesn't require complicated mechanisms and can be rapidly and broadly applied.



Don't feel sad. Seek out the truth. As I posted in an earlier comment, I went a to a recycling plant over a decade ago, and the truth found me.

The triad of reduce reuse recycle is true, inasmuch as two parts of it should be emphasized. But consumerism a cruel mistress.


I've heard it stated as:

1. Reduce

2. Reuse

3. Recycle

In that order!


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: