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gherkin0's comments

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

Those kinds of modifications are of a completely different category than modifications to an autonomous driving system. There aren't serious civil or criminal penalties to deter "ridiculous wheel/tire packages" because they don't really have the same potential to cause serious problems.

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

Realistically, you handle such things via deterrence. When an accident happens, the car's software can be dumped (in some cases), and criminal/civil liability can be assessed based on the results. The risk of heavy fines or jail will probably keep most people from hacking their self-driving cars to be more aggressive.

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: New Electric Motor That’s Super Light and Powerful for Electric Airplanes

> I believe you're required to keep something like 30-45 minutes worth of fuel beyond what you need to get to your destination.

> I've noticed that people who work on electric aircraft express some annoyance with this.

As someone who was just on a plane who was recently on a plane that was diverted to another airport due to dangerously bad weather, I'm glad those requirements are there. There's all kind of things that can go wrong that could delay a landing for a half hour or more.

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: Tech job listings are down 40% on several job boards

I think the bigger bias at play is the just-world fallacy. Employers assume that everyone who is unemployed must be unemployed justly because something is wrong with them (e.g. they're incompetent, slackers, toxic, etc.). That's the problem my friend had: the company that eventually hired him admitted they spent a long time trying to figure out what was wrong with him, even though they liked him.

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: Apple unencrypts more of iOS 10 in Beta 2

I'm not so sure. Wouldn't leaving the bootloader/root filesystem unencrypted make the device more vulnerable to physical tampering by a non-Apple party that could compromise user data?

I'm assuming that these things were previously encrypted/signed with a key that only Apple controls. I could be wrong.

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: Tech job listings are down 40% on several job boards

There's also a bias against the currently unemployed. It took 6 months of hard work for a friend of mine to find a job after he quit one after 3 months without anything lined up, because it was such a bad fit that it was making him depressed. Up to that point, he had zero problems finding a job, the only difference was his employment status while job hunting.

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: Are Police Allowed to Robot-Bomb Suspects?

From what I've read, the shooter was contained and did not have hostages. They didn't need to bomb him to death because "negotiations failed," they could have kept him under siege until he was forced to surrender due to lack of supplies. The fact that they had to drive in a bomb is a strong indication that the shooter was not an immediate threat. If he was, a sniper could have got him.

I think the police should never use lethal violence if there are any passive options available to them. This guy was obviously guilty of murder, but I'm more worried about other cases where the police might decided to use techniques like this in the name of safety, such as a "drug bust" against "armed and dangerous criminals" that happens to be carried out against innocents at the wrong address.

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

That may be part of the reason why it was so good. In 1998, they had to make it playable on 56k modems, and a lot of those optimizations probably transferred over to smooth play over better connections.

Now there are fewer incentives to optimize to that degree...

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: Defending Our Brand

> I see "Start Encrypt" as a capitalist answer to a competing product with (very) cheesy marketing

Also with very cheesy and bad grammar.

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: Home Depot Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Visa, MasterCard

Honestly, I thought things were a whole lot better (from a UX perspective) when you just handed the cashier the card and they operated the card reader for you. They know their system's idiosyncrasies; the customer doesn't.

I'm unhappy that stores have been pushing more and more cashier work onto the customer without adopting an industry standard UI for their payment systems.

gherkin0 | 9 years ago | on: Why Health Care Costs Exploded After World War II

And all you'll get from the front desk is the hyper-inflated "list price" (for the uninsured). If you have insurance, your (insurance negotiated) price is treated as Top Secret confidential information until you're actually billed. Neither the hospital nor the insurance company will disclose it to you in advance.

I have a HSA, and I've had to get stitches twice (two on a cut finger both times): one time it cost $400, the second time $1200 (same city, but different hospital and insurance). Outraged at the second price, I tried to figure out which hospital would be cheapest with my current insurance, and utterly failed.

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