andrewgioia's comments

andrewgioia | 2 years ago | on: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

Cool study, I've got this question before from my 7yo and had no idea :P

If I'm reading it correctly, insects don't fly toward the light, they turn the front of their body toward it. Under natural light, this helps them fly correctly ("maintain proper flight attitude and control"), but with artificial light they end up just constantly flying around the light source?

andrewgioia | 2 years ago | on: Robot Dad

This is so cool! Thanks for sharing the code.

I wish ElevenLabs didn't require a subscription to test voice cloning but I might try it out this month and see if it's cool enough to continue. It could be a really fun way to get my 7yo exposed to stuff like this.

andrewgioia | 2 years ago | on: YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

While technically true this is hardly an option... Both of those "alternative" plans exclude YouTube TV while charging considerably more. How many users who enjoy paying more for less did they sell to here?

$350/year for Sunday Ticket with YouTube TV included vs. $450/year for just Sunday Ticket, delivered via regular YouTube it seems.

Their pricing page: https://tv.youtube.com/learn/nflsundayticket/#id-plan-matrix

Image if you can't access it: https://i.imgur.com/0nsQZxA.png

andrewgioia | 2 years ago | on: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

> "How does a brand show up in somebody's DMs or Discord server if they're not invited?" Haberman said. But in many ways, that's the point. People can still go on Instagram to check on their favorite celebrities and influencers, but young people don't want brands and marketers infiltrating the closed communities where they spend most of their time.

All people don’t want brands in their closed communities!

Anecdotally I strongly agree with the article. I pretty much only use Discord and group texts anymore among friends and family (though I do self host and share on Mastodon/Pixelfed/Lemmy it’s a fraction). Any time I poke around on traditional social media it just feels like a wasteland, 90% ads/curated content. Fine if you want to go read a magazine for a bit I guess but a shell of what it was like a decade ago.

andrewgioia | 2 years ago | on: Woman with untreated TB finally in custody – held in “negative pressure” room

Yeah agreed, odd to not even address that when it's no doubt the first question anyone would have here.

From another article[1] it sounds like psychological issues:

> [The woman's attorney's] filing stated, "She has not acknowledged the existence of her own medical condition. Because counsel is bound to represent the respondent's stated interest, a guardian ad litem would be able to provide representation of her best interests, which are not currently clear."

> [ . . . ]

> The filing added that when "the respondent has joined proceedings, she has spoken out of turn with rapid, disorganized speech."

> It noted, "She has primarily focused on how she dislikes papers coming to her home, and not the import of the process in which she finds herself. She has repeatedly threatened suicide in relationship to papers being served upon her home."

[1] https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article272657405.h...

andrewgioia | 3 years ago | on: Feather – open source icons

Lucide[1] is a very active fork of Feather and what I’ve been using for the past few years instead.

Feather is great as are their design guidelines, but it needs way way more icons. Lucide picks up beautifully where it left off.

[1] https://lucide.dev/

andrewgioia | 3 years ago | on: You can now ask Google to remove your phone number, email or address from search

> Google says a removal request will be considered if the search result in question includes the presence of “explicit or implicit threats” or “explicit or implicit calls to action for others to harm or harass.”

Apparently they've always had a process for bank account info and other related things, but I can't get some of the newly included items, like login credentials, removed unless I can show actual or implicit threats of harm?

andrewgioia | 3 years ago | on: Researchers find Amazon uses Alexa voice data to target you with ads

This should be standard info at this point if you buy one of these things, but I still find Amazon's specifically-crafted responses to this so frustrating.

Out of one side of their mouth is the standard obfuscation with not selling _personal information_ or _requests_ per se:

> "We are not in the business of selling our customers' personal information and we do not share Alexa requests with advertising networks."

But out of the other side is indeed confirmation that they're sharing the "results":

> "Developers get the information necessary to fulfill your requests within their skills, such as answers when you play a trivia skill, or the name of the song you want to play..."

Maybe they're not actually sending raw audio or transcripts (or they are in some cases or with some partners, I would not be surprised about that either), but they're sending some amorphous amount of "information necessary to fulfill [our] requests" with no specifics obviously. A non-shady company would clearly articulate what they're sharing.

How do you trust this at all, or not just assume it's all going to the "41 advertising partners" they currently share it with?

andrewgioia | 3 years ago | on: Robinhood reports 43% revenue decline

Whether it was right for them to do or not, I left their platform because of it paying their ridiculous $79 transfer fee or whatever it was. Now with Fidelity and have recommended them 3 times since I've switched.

andrewgioia | 3 years ago | on: Tell HN: Gmail flagged my Firefox account MFA email as “dangerous”

Their AI or whatever algorithm they've built for spam (or in this case, phishing) is getting worse and they have no incentive to care. Gmail users aren't leaving Gmail over this and their market size means everyone must cater to Gmail.

Somewhat related but I finally relented this week and now route my self-hosted email through SMTP2Go thanks to a tip from another commenter here. Over the past few months I've noticed an acceleration of my email going to Gmail user's spam folders and just couldn't deal with it anymore.

Perhaps given how big Firefox is they actually prune this one.

andrewgioia | 3 years ago | on: Snap launches its first drone

Gotcha, I have no experience with drones so that's a bit of a bummer but you're right—this would not be hovering continuously so if the "total play time" could be over an hour with a fast battery switch that could be enough.

andrewgioia | 3 years ago | on: Snap launches its first drone

I think this is such a fun/playful idea, kudos to Snap!

Their first hardware product pretty much bombed but this is oddly one of the first consumer tech toys in a while that I've felt I wanted. I can definitely see this being a fun thing to bring out in the backyard or to cookouts/parties, especially as a dad with young kids too.

A couple things I'd be a bit worried about:

* Battery life would need to last long enough to use this on and off for a few hours. If it's like 15 mins then no way.

* Would there be an audible hum in the video it records from the 4x propellers?

andrewgioia | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: What to do about Gmail blocking my email?

Same exact issue, I could write the exact same thing word for word. I even "contacted Gmail support" 3 weeks ago to see if I could get anywhere on it, whatever void that message went to. Same "no data" in Postmaster Tools presumably because of my low volume, messages just variously go to spam in Gmail. The last one was a message to 9 Gmail recipients I had never contacted before which I guess was the issue.

It's been so frustrating that I'm contemplating going back to a provider, or at the very least paying for one of the "warmup services" mentioned here. If anyone has experience with those for non-business I'd love to read about it.

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