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wtf's comments
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wtf  ·  3269 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What is the story behind your username?

My username is self-explanatory.

wtf  ·  3330 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Microsoft no longer lets you opt-out of a Windows 10 upgrade

As someone in comments on the article points out, this only happens after the user "orders" Windows 10. As in, they have claimed their free upgrade. Don't claim the free upgrade, and nothing will happen.

wtf  ·  3340 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A grammar of AAVE

Despite my descriptivist training/tendencies, I'm excited for AAVE to influence "Standard" English in each of its major regional forms, as AAVE includes several simplifications that I have long desired. Reducing pointless conjugations (e.g., habitual be), removing other irregularities (e.g., hisself, oxes), and many of the other changes from "proper" English seem to me to have no downsides save angering prescriptivists.

Then again, many non-native speakers struggle with forms such as "finna", and its more common cousin "gonna". Hell, even native speakers struggle to understand all of AAVE. I can typically understand it fine, but my mom would struggle quite a bit with most of the bigger differences.

wtf  ·  3358 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Marco Arment removed his successful iOS ad blocker because it "just doesn't feel good"

Who'd have thought charging people $3 to remove the need to pay for other unrelated services would feel bad?

I hate ads as much as the next guy, but people gotta eat in our capitalist society. So if you are using a service, you need to pay for it, either directly (with money) or indirectly (with personal data or ad views).

Edit to add: If ads on a service are bothering you enough that you want to block them, then stop using that service.

Windows (and many other places) uses GB when they mean GiB for historical reasons. Until 2008, the IEC had not standardized the binary SI extension (KiB, MiB, GiB, etc) and so computing professionals used whatever was most convenient for them. This meant most software folks used K = 1024, and many hardware folks stuck with K = 1000 for consistency with the other times they would encounter SI prefixes.

The old convention persists in part because bits and bytes already indicate binary to a lot of computer folk, and there isn't really any confusion about 1024 vs 1000 until people start trying to apply the exact SI standard to non-SI units. Personally, I use KiB and friends whenever writing the unit symbol, but I refuse to pronounce them the way IEC wants me to. Instead, I use words like "kilos", "megs", "gigs" and let context fill in the other details about bits vs bytes and 1000 vs 1024.

wtf  ·  3374 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Apple Is Not-So-Secretly Working On A Virtual Reality Headset

    I don't think a VR setup will require an entire room.

Valve's will, and I think any that want to reach that level of quality and immersion will also need a room. Granted, you could probably have some other stuff in that room as well, but the more cluttered it is, the harder it is to use for VR.

wtf  ·  3374 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Apple Is Not-So-Secretly Working On A Virtual Reality Headset

While competition is usually good, I'm starting to get sick of the sheer number of different (and incompatible) VR headsets that are being made. We have Valve/HTC, Sony, Oculus, Razer, Samsung, and now possibly Apple all working on competing headsets. And you just know that they are going to compete primarily via anti-consumer "platform" exclusives. When consumers decide which expensive VR kit to get based on what exclusive content they care the most about, every other piece of content exclusive to a different device loses a sale. This makes it hard to see a profitable future for VR.

Console exclusive video games only work because of the limited number of consoles and the relative ease of owning multiple consoles. Quality (injury free) VR tech is likely to require a dedicated room and more involved setup, reducing the reasonable number for most people to own to zero, or maybe one. Two or more VR setups is going to be reserved for the wealthiest enthusiasts just because of the real estate requirements.