Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | thewebcount's comments login

I know what you mean! One of the things I loved about the TV show “Connections” was how it followed one thread to get you from some seemingly random starting point to whatever the final thing was. It would be interesting to see some of these threads plotted together.

The other thing that makes this tricky is that any given event or phenomenon may not happen everywhere all at once. Just think of the popularity of a pop song, for example. It might have started in New York, and spread westward as more radio stations started playing it. Then it kind of died out in New York just around the time it was picking up steam in LA, or whatever. When you read about these things they often make it sound like one day someone played the song on the radio and then it was on every radio in the country simultaneously for the next 10 weeks before falling off the charts. But of course, that’s not how it actually happens. So it can definitely be hard to contextualize some of this stuff. And getting an accurate picture can be hard because we may not have all the details.


Many web pages have loading progress bars. They're usually only 1-2 pixels thick and take up the entire top 1-2 rows of pixels on the page. Some stuff loads asynchronously, so it can be easy to miss them, but I see them all the time. Just today, I was using Jenkins and it does that!


Christ on a cracker, Axis' website is horrible! I saw one model that looked interesting, but can't find a price. You have to click on "How to Buy" to get redirected to another page where you then have to click on "Find a Reseller Near Me" which takes you to a form you have to fill out with a bunch of personal information and then send to them, and maybe someone will get back to you. How do these companies stay in business?


You aren't their target customer. Installers and resellers already know them or have a lower friction way to buy. They want you to work through resellers and not have to bother with supporting you directly.


By selling mostly to business clients, where that sort of nonsense (no prices up front, contact for a quote) is more of a norm. Entities that are buying a dozen or dozens of cameras and other items to outfit a building, and plan on negotiating on volume.


The price isn't listed because it depends on bulk, anticipated support and support contracts (ongoing revenue), anticipated future sales etc.

If an independent shop wants 2 cameras you charge them enough to make a profit on the overhead of dealing with them (or point them to a retailer if they want less than a pallet).

If Walmart want 2 cameras to try out you give them (or loan them) to them for free knowing if they like them you'll be shipping them by the pallet for years.


The security camera industry works through a network of integrators that install the cameras for end customers. These companies are primarily B2B, they don't have any interest in B2C sales of just a couple cameras.


Axis doesn't sell to customers directly (not even to businesses), they sell exclusively to distributors that in turn sell to well-stocked online computer stores from where you can buy them like any other tech product


> Walmart online is sometimes cheaper, but also sometimes more expensive. Makes it really hard to make the switch.

I respect that you have to make decisions based on your own financial situation. For me, getting a few things for less money with the possibility that you might suddenly get hit with a big charge for something you didn't actually sign up for voluntarily is not worth it. To me it's like putting off fixing a car problem. You're saving money in the short term, but it could cause other much more expensive (or fatal) problems later. It's just too much risk for me. (But I have also been in a position where I had to put off a car fix because I simply didn't have the money. It absolutely sucked.)


>I respect that you have to make decisions based on your own financial situation.

Idk, I worked for a lot of companies, and I'm not sure any would pick the same product when its more expensive elsewhere under the fear of an unexpected charge that has never occurred before.

I suppose I should be preparing for a volcano to emerge in the north east US too. :P


Yeah, I got hit by this. I use Amazon maybe once or twice a year when I absolutely can't find something anywhere else. They are absolutely my last choice of where to shop, but sometimes, it's the only option.

In any event, despite knowing that they'll try to get you to join Prime at every interaction, and despite trying not to do it, I accidentally clicked on the "Yes, sign me up for Prime even though I've been telling you no for literally years" button instead of the "No, just take my money and give me my stuff" button. It instantly signed me up for Prime. It didn't add it to my cart, or take me to checkout, or ask, "Are you sure? It's going to cost you $x per month." That was the really shocking part to me. The button didn't say, "One click purchase" or whatever they sometimes say when you're viewing a product. Absolutely no indication that it would be immediate and irrevocable.

I immediately canceled and had to go through 5 "Are you really really sure you want to cancel?" and "Can we just suspend it for now?" pages before I actually got to cancel. Not the worst I've seen, but certainly scummy and deceptive.


No, that’s just stupid. If someone sings off key, I have every right to say that person is singing off key and it sounds bad even if I also cannot sing on key. If I see a bad movie or read a bad book, I have every right to criticize it even if I cannot direct a movie or write a book myself.

I don’t need to have attempted any of those things to know that what I experienced was sub-par. I’ve heard better singers, seen better movies, and read better books.

If what you said were true, only movie directors would be able to criticize movies. That’s not helpful.


At the same time, most people aren't saying "he's singing off key", they say "he's a hack, can't sing, and is a bad person".

At some point the criticism isn't just useless, it's spiteful and just an excuse to get in your own soapbox. That's why the stereotypical Karen isn't exactly praised for their "criticisms". If they left it at "this steak is done and I wanted medium rare", such stereotypes wouldn't exist.


Yeah, that's fair. I get the frustration with that sort of criticism.


Thank you.

I see gps sentiment more often than I can understand, and it horrifies me. Especially as regards creative mediums (music, art, etc) where the point is to entertain. I may not know exactly what's wrong with a work, but I'm obviously qualified to critique it.

But even in other areas. It's easier to tell if something is good than to make a good thing. With a limited number of exceptions, I can tell if something someone did is crappy or not with a fairly limited understanding of their field.


My suggestion would be to not learn git. Go with just about any other version control system if you’re not using it professionally. I’ve used cvs, Subversion (svn), Perforce (p4), and others. Honestly, Subversion and Perforce were both significantly easier to setup, learn, and use than git. While they all have their growing pains, it took me about a week to get used to Perforce. It took me more like a month or two to get used to svn. I’ve been using git for years and still find it very hard to use and strongly dislike interacting with it.


I second Subversion - though only because it is the closest to an open source alternative to Perforce. Otherwise it has a bunch of problems, like three separate half-baked implementations for shelving and aside from TortoiseSVN every other GUI front end has been either abandoned or on life support with a bunch of bugs.

But unless you have to work with other people in places like github, etc, it beats having to bother with git - especially for games that have a ton of binary files (which, unlike what some people will tell you, you want to have both version controlled and in the same repository).

Hell, if you really want a DVCS go with something like Fossil, it is still much easier than git, simpler to setup (just a single binary) and has more features (wiki, bug tracker, forum, etc) that you will find useful anyway.

Though personally the best experience i had with VCS is with Perforce, at least in gamedev: check out the latest version, merge any local changes, make modifications in a changelist, shelve the changelist in case i want to stop working on something and work on something else, use the shelve to send a WiP version to a coworker to merge with his changes (or see if things work as expected) or for code review, etc.

Sadly Perforce seems to be bound in a company that tries to sqeeze it for all its worth, adding a bunch of stuff of questionable usefulness, etc. It'd be nice if there was an open source alternative to it that allowed for the same or very similar workflows, all the issues i had with P4 over the years (e.g. merges between streams) were due to how P4 seems to be implemented, not due to anything inherent in the workflows themselves. There is no reason for an alternative to copy all the bugs.


Hard disagree. Subversion is awfully complex compared to git.

Yes, Subversion is initially easier to learn and use than git. It's not easier to set up as it's client-server while git is fully local. Also Subversion is an incongruous mess.


Subversion's CLI is actually sane and much easier compared to the abomination provided by Git. Additionally, Subversion can be used entirely locally, without the need to deploy and configure any server application.

It seems that you are comparing apples to oranges. Building your own SVN server from the ground up can indeed require some effort. Doing the same for Git demands more or less the same level of effort on your part. So, I believe you are comparing building an SVN server from the ground up to something like installing Gitea or GitLab, or using Git locally.

Again, you don’t have to install an SVN server. Just run `svnadmin create REPONAME` and use the `svn` client to import your data into the repository.


You don't have to set up a database for Git, either, and it works entirely locally. Git init, edit or copy in some files, git add, git commit, boom you're done. Optionally add a remote, push to the remote, pull from the remote if needed. If you're working alone, as I do, this is about 95% of the Git I need. Occasionally I clone to a different machine, or use Working Copy on iOS.


So? You've just described exactly the what's achievable with Subversion. The only missing part is adding remote repositories.

> You don't have to set up a database for Git, either, and it works entirely locally.

What database? Subversion doesn't need any special database to work. Just the repository and its working copy. Both can be local and can be created with two commands.


You're just talking past each other. You were responding initially to another user saying Subversion needs a server, and you responded that it doesn't. A different user responded, thinking your statement meant that you thought Git needed a server.


I disagree (with your advice, not your experience). I'm a total amateur and use Git for versioning prose. It is the only SCM that I can easily use across multiple devices and platforms. I don't use it for complex operations, mostly clone, commit, pull, push, branch now and then. I taught myself to use it from the command line. I guess being curious and persistent helped me get to whatever minimal level of utility I have with it.


I like Perforce it is fairly easy to use.

If you want to go old school there is RCS or SCCS. GNU provides source code (for SCCS there called CSSC). Though *CS are per file not per logical commit.

IIRC Perforce actually used RCS under the covers for storing the deltas.


> It was a very crappy experience to not be able to remark on a single thing to each other.

That was caused by your baby, not by the devices. 2 people in a small apartment together with their own devices watching what appears to them to be a movie-sized screen would definitely be something many people would like. No big device on the wall. No shaking the people in the apartment next door with your sub-woofer. And you can still comment to each other all you want. (Obviously the price will need to come down for that to be common.)


> That was caused by your baby, not by the devices.

It was both. The earphones we were wearing meant we couldn’t hear a word the other was saying, irrespective of whether we’d wake up the baby. The Vision Pro has speakers on the side of it too.

I guess I’m not a huge fan of the wall space wasted on my TV but I can’t say it bothers me enough that I want my entire family to strap a headset across our faces every time we want to watch something. Cables coming out the back, a two hour battery life… I’m not doubting the Vision Pro will have uses but I cannot imagine it being a preferable movie-watching experience than a TV.


If the earphones were AirPods you would be able to hear each other talk wiht transparency mode turned on. It doesn’t block external sounds.


I'm reasonably wealthy and live in a single family home on the coast. (Well 1 mile from the coast.) So this is not about me. But the truth is, I probably couldn't live anywhere else (beyond living a couple hours away and having a horrendous commute) because:

1) My job is here and they won't let me work remotely. While I don't need this specific job, I've lived in cheaper areas and the jobs available were few and far between. You can find them, it's just a huge pain in the ass and they don't treat their employees nearly as well. I've even worked for myself, but it's a lot more work and not everyone is cut out for it. I threw in the towel after 5 years because it was burning me out so much.

2) My spouse has medical issues that even the best doctors in the big cities are having trouble treating. There's no way they'd be able to treat her in the sticks. You just can't get the types of services needed for some things in lower-cost-of-living areas.


I did that for their World Cup coverage, and it did not block the channel. There was a World Cup banner with scores and stuff for a month. At that point I noped out and haven’t touched it since.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: