partialrecall's comments

> Literally the one difference between the "official", Hitler-approved definition of "assault rifle" and an AR-15 is that the AR-15 doesn't support selective fire.

In case anybody isn't clear on what that means: one is a machine gun and the other is not.

Incidentally, the National Firearms Act (1934) was originally meant to ban handguns. The current regulation on short barrel rifles and short barrel shotguns are vestigial remnants of this intent (if you ban handguns, it only makes sense to also ban somebody chopping up their shotgun to make it handgun-sized.)

All* full sized rifle rounds are supersonic and cause the cavitation the 5.56 has become infamous for (e.g. bruh it goes so fast it's basically explosive! - overheard in a cafe). The terminal effects of 5.56 on flesh are severe, but not moreso than other rifle rounds. A full sized rifle round will cause more damage and can do it from much further away.

* excepting a few that are deliberately manufactured to be subsonic, because they are niche products.

A water-bucket trap can kill dozens of rodents in a single night. Your cat is not that effective.

From the perspective of a consumer, the difference is totally irrelevant. Why should the particulars of the exchange between the shill and the company matter to me? They don't.

> If not energy, by what metric could the latter be described as "high powered"?

Well the Browning Hi-Power was so named for it's large magazine capacity. But I agree with the substance of what you're saying. 5.56 is not a "high power" rifle if that term is meant to distinguish it from other sorts of rifles. For magazine capacity, you can find 22lr magazines with larger capacities than your typical AR mag, but calling one of those high powered would be a bit silly.

It's about as significant as IBM dropping out of the PC market because Dell,etc are preferred by consumers. The platform is standardized and the vast majority of AR-15s the public own have no Colt parts in them.

Colt are a big name, but from the perspective of the home consumer they are no longer significant.

fyi, methods being attached to structs/whatever is a property of single dispatch object systems, but not multiple dispatch object systems. The coupling/attached relationship derives from single dispatch systems privileging the first argument of the method.

> "PR and advertising are not the same thing."

A distinction without substance.

Watch out for the reverse too, ethernet over powerline is a thing!

"Recommendations" is just newspeak for advertising. I don't want my TV doing that.

Here is a novel idea: if your shit is so great for users, not contrary to their interests, why don't you ask them to opt-in?

> "I just wish they make a dump TV with superior image quality and let the other streaming devices handling the "smart" features."

They do, but from what I understand you'll pay more for such panels. As I understand it they're intended for commercial use.

If you don't want to use SD cards, there are plenty of other methods available; at this point you're being deliberately obtuse. But I do find it amusing that you appeal to the requirements of "the majority of middle class to upper middle class" not long after accusing me of being out of touch.

You don't have to implement every possible solution all at once; you pick one that works for you. If you prefer Plex, use Plex. If you prefer keeping everything on a thumb drive or your phone's SD card, do that instead. With non-DRM media you have the option to implement whatever solution you find preferable, not the obligation to implement those that you don't prefer.

And if my family can do it, I am quite sure your family can too. I think the attitude you're demonstrating here exemplifies a problem with the industry in general these days; giving non-technical people too little credit.

None of this stuff is complicated, but when a technical person such as yourself tells a non-technical person that they're incapable of wrapping their mind around something, it becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy as they're now scared of even trying. And without trying, neither of you will ever learn what their true capabilities are.

> Exercising your ability to sit down and Just Do It

Have you considered the possibility that he's a highly motivated person who simply has a more creative "It" in mind?

> "I know this is to simplify the UI"

Why is that even necessary? Youtube offers you the full list to choose from and I don't see users writhing on the ground clutching their skulls in agonizing confusion. Users can handle a list of languages just fine.

This industry thinks too little of users.

Virtually anything you pirate these days will be supported on virtually anything you might want to watch movies on these days. The obscure edge-cases are things that HN users might be aware of, but simply aren't a practical concern in practice. DLNA is generally the case where you might run into issues, but a transcoding DLNA server solves that problem.

Not to mention it greatly simplifies other matters. If you drop a bunch of movies onto your kids tablet, you no longer have to worry about being away from a cell tower or wifi AP. Furthermore, concerning this very article, there is the matter of too many streaming platforms existing. Maybe you only need Disney because you don't let your kids consume any other brand. But probably more likely, there are numerous desirable movies that are on one streaming platform but not another, or on none at all. And a movie that might be on a platform one year could be gone the next. A harddrive full of movies avoids all of this mess. Subscribe to two or three services a year and you'll be spending a lot more than $8 a month. Maybe it still seems trivial to you with an inflated tech salary, but I know a lot of people who think a single netflix subscription is too expensive so they share an account with other friends/family. This is pretty common.

> HN users seem to be way out of touch with the average user.

I am certainly not out of touch with my own friends and family!

Plug the hard drive into the TV or mobile device. I'm pretty sure mobile devices support USB harddrives these days, but I know for sure "smart TVs" do. If you prefer dumb tvs (as I do) plug an old computer into that. Or if you want to save power, plug a new computer into it. Or get something that supports DLNA (e.g. a playstation or I believe roku's and roku-like devices) and use a DLNA server on your NAS/workstation (I use minidlna, some people I know use Universal Media Server (cross platform GUI, GPLv2.)) Or use a more commercial DLNA-like solution such as plex.

There are many options here. That's one of the upsides of pirating non-DRM media. Storage is stupid cheap and anybody on HN should be able to figure out how to get an arbitrary mp4 file onto an arbitrary screen.

Users like code with fewer bugs and rapid response time for new feature requests, right? If you start firing people for taking the time to write readable and maintainable code, you'll be doing a greater disservice to the users than those developers were.

It shouldn't be a matter of choice for them. Obviously, if left to their own devices, they will fail to protect people.