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springogeek | 2 days ago | on: Show HN: A tiny multiplayer experiment where everyone attacks the same dragon

This is pretty cute. It'd be interesting to have slightly more "collaborative" mechanics in the next version.

Maybe rather than directly attacking the boss, damage boosts can get stacked up for other players to use? Or maybe "shields", which reduce the cooldown / timeout.

Is there a way to get notified about future versions/updates?

springogeek | 2 years ago | on: Lets Have Three Abstraction Layers

I like this approach to thinking about abstractions. It's easy to forget /why/ you are abstracting something, and this gives some perspective and structure to it.

springogeek | 2 years ago | on: Pixel Tablet

I've had bad experiences with the hardware maintenance of Google devices. Things break down and Google don't provide good ways to repair them if the device is older than a couple years, so while it's cool, I don't think I'll go for this.

springogeek | 2 years ago | on: Bloomberg sponsors curl with 10K USD

What I read of the developer's blog suggests that it does. In addition to the resolution of various vulnerabilities, web standards are constantly changing and updating, and curl has to keep up, which is pretty hard part-time.

Mature doesn't mean it's static.

springogeek | 3 years ago | on: Supreme Court asked to strike down immunity for police who brutally beat student

That's actually why Qualified Immunity was originally introduced: To prevent courts filling up with potentially spurious cases raised by defendants of other cases or participants of interactions with police.

It was originally conceived to have a much less heavy-handed scope though, but has been strengthened over time to something near-impossible to thwart.

springogeek | 3 years ago | on: My grandmother died at home, just as she wanted. It cost $145,000

You're right, but it isn't a helpful comment for the discussion at hand. The story in that article, and many like it, are symptoms of a larger problem, but it's not because of public vs private healthcare.

The system works, assuming it's adequately funded, which it hasn't been for a while. Salaries aren't high enough to live on (thanks to the conservative government and creeping privatisation), and then brexit and other immigration policies have caused a shortage of trained professionals and no one willing to fill the vacancies.

There's a whole heap of issues (I've left out quite a few) stacked up against the NHS, and yet it powers on, doing its best.

springogeek | 3 years ago | on: My grandmother died at home, just as she wanted. It cost $145,000

The actual phrase for describing the NHS is meant to be "Free at the point of use", but people are likely shortening for convenience. People are paying for it, but not in a tangible way.

The main thing is knowing that if you need any procedures, services, an ambulance, critical or emergency care, etc, you'll not be asked up front to pay for it, you'll just be treated. Seeing that principle erode over time is heartbreaking and terrifying.

(rant) Healthcare as an industry doesn't function properly under a capitalist model, which expects that competition and consumer choice will encourage innovation and further competition, leading to a better outcome for the consumer. If you need healthcare, you don't really have a choice in it, or your choices are artificially restricted by circumstance, so you can't benefit from a competitive marketplace. It's a broken system, as far as I am concerned.

springogeek | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

* It (usually) doesn't have to be perfect the first time. Programming is an interative process and your first attempt is going to have bugs, or make faulty assumptions about the problem.

* A design which can be generalised is inherently more complicated, and is often unnecessary (you probably won't make use of that generality, leaving you the burden of maintaining it), so you'll be glad you made a simpler first pass.

* I don't like working with docker/containers personally. It makes me feel so far removed from how services are deployed that it's basically magic.

springogeek | 3 years ago | on: Using A Very Old Machine

I acquired a D620 at the start of the year to use as a semi-regular hobby machine. I love how user-servicable it is. Pretty easy to take apart and fairly modular design. I swapped out the processor for its maximum spec (a Core 2 Duo T7600) and 4GB of RAM.

I use Badwolf as the primary browser, which comes with built in toggles for disabling images and JS loading, and that makes web browsing tolerable most of the time. I've even managed to stream from it to Twitch using ffmpeg without much of a problem!

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