hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Apple: Person-to-person experiences do not have to use in-app purchase
hn_check's comments
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Why ‘Civilization’ is a political masterpiece
I loved playing Civ while developing on my laptops, without it spooling up my fans, burning my lap or impeding my other processes. Playing it in the cloud was the perfect solution, and it has the perfect "lag doesn't matter" gameplay where a bit of latency doesn't diminish the enjoyment.
Whatever their pissing match is, after playing Civ in the cloud I just could never get back to playing it locally. I was spoiled, and as a result I haven't bought two of the most recent Civ expansion packs.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October
My MBP has the intel integrated graphics, and AMD discrete graphics. I imagine as Apple moves to Apple silicon it will be the same arrangement at tiers that currently have discrete graphics, with the intel integrated just being swapped out for Apple integrated, leveraging the discrete graphics when appropriate.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Letsencrypt, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Of course that was a bit trenchant, however you're complaining about a promise that was never made. No one ever promised that you could setup a old certbot instance and it was out of sight and mind for perpetuity. There are any number of issues that can occur, and honestly if one expected certbot to run without issue, having it automatically updating as well seems to be a base minimum.
Also worth noting that LE was early with ACMEv1, but a lot of alternatives started with ACMEv2. ACMEv2 became the common standard.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Getting Fiber to My Town [video]
Great initiative and project, with a wonderful outcome. This is great HN material.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Covid vaccine makers commit to not seek approval until complete Phase III trials
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Noita – roguelite where every pixel is simulated
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Getting Users Is Hard
In the sunscreen example, someone could absolutely be designing packaging, securing suppliers, building a workforce, etc, during the winter, but if they went to the door to door phase at the same time it would be a completely disastrous exercise. It was the door to door phase that I was comparing to.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Getting Users Is Hard
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
This is probably the case. DAZN took over NFL streaming in Canada and for the first two years seemed to use their existing European soccer processing chain (they might still --- I gave it a try to years straight and then gave up). So the 60/30 NFL stream was re-encoded to 25/50, and then on playback on my set would be displayed at 30/60. It was brutal, and even if displayed at 25 or 50 FPS was still brutal because they were seriously corrupting the NFL stream.
I tried it across a number of devices -- AppleTV, Chromecast, different TVs, pads, laptops -- and it was just unbelievably intolerable to me. Every panning pass was the horrendous juddering mess. Yet somehow no one seemed to have a problem with this! In discussions it seemed to be a non-issue.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account
This may be true at times, but the assumption of the same is the root of a lot of the toxic behavior. You cannot be neutral or even in agreement with Apple's position without being a "fanboy", or giving into the "cult of Apple", etc.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
How don't more people complain about this? I avoid streaming on the Apple TV because it does some sort of bizarre framerate thunking that is just brutal for panning. Do so few people use the product that it just goes unnoticed?
My LG 4K TV has fantastic Netflix, Prime, and Disney+ clients. HDR, 4K, etc.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Is TDD Dead? (2014)
It's an incredibly easy sale. The whole basis of TDD is that it's an approach that makes your development efforts faster, with higher quality. A million graphics of the amount of time that development spends fixing errors are what sold TDD to the masses.
The theory of TDD is exactly what sells to the suits and the money counters.
The theory doesn't mesh with reality, though, and it's that engagement with the enemy (reality) where TDD falls down.
As an aside, in my own career I've seldom been able to incorporate TDD because each project has been novel enough that trying to define tests up front was just not possible. Yes, if I was implementing the re-invent the wheel "sum two numbers" type example, it's trivial. But most of the time it's a vague API for a vague need on an uncertain technical foundation, and until the clay has taken form we really weren't sure what we were dealing with.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: A Chrome feature is creating load on global root DNS servers
They'd be right, but that's neither here nor there in this contrived strawman.
And yes, a lot of people would have a serious problem if Google baked in their own DNS. That would break a lot of stuff. And it would make the notion of checking invalid DNS entries rather unnecessary, wouldn't it?
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store
The court has blocked it because there could be greater harm in the short term (although that is grossly overblown -- the UE wouldn't stop working in the short or even medium term), but don't be confused into thinking this isn't a completely rote, normal response.
>The fact that fortnite is built on UE doesn't have any significance here.
You understand that Fortnite and UE are made by the same company, right? The canard that it has anything to do with what engine Fortnite uses is absurd noise.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: Microsoft backs Epic in court filing
Note that Microsoft is not backing Epic in their court case against Apple, because that would be quite the glass house given the xbox (which is a 70/30 split, with virtually identical restrictions as the App Store). Instead they are merely backing them for the injunction to prevent Epic from losing immediate access to development tools.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: TikTok Inc. vs. U.S. Department of Commerce
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: TikTok Inc. vs. U.S. Department of Commerce
I replied to someone saying "ha ha isn't that weird they can contest it in the US look countries like India just went ahead and banned it and there's no recourse". Great. Other countries can talk about it, go through a legislative process (in Japan lawmakers aren't even going to start talking about their possible options until September), then there are legal challenges and normal processes to go through, etc.
hn_check | 5 years ago | on: TikTok Inc. vs. U.S. Department of Commerce
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi
India is no benchmark. There are far worse countries, but if someone cites India's actions as an example, it falls flat.
Independent software development was an absolute wasteland. It was extremely hard to get a user to give you money outside of a few extremely fortified ghettos (Steam, for instance, which takes a 30% cut as well). Begware was the most common tactic.
Even now with multiple options, while everyone piles on Apple, we should note that iOS was the single most profitable platform for Epic, across all platforms. Apple did more to liberate payments from a user than any other platform. Through trust, through standardization and normalization, and even through things like the wide availability of App Store gift cards (which are often heavily discounted - $85 for $100 of App Store gift cards at Costco many times through the year).
Elsewhere people are arguing that Windows is a wonderful platform because look, it's so open. Okay, go and make money from Windows users and see how great it is. Unless your name is Microsoft or Adobe, you are in for a really, really rough time of it. You'll get 100% of nothing.
As always, of course this is downvoted. Anyone looking to HN for rational, reality-based discussion might find it a bit disappointing. Here apparently the Windows ISV market is a vibrant, lucrative market. Everyone here is profiting from it, right? (LOL -- close to none of you are). This is farce.