ctroein89 · HackerTrans

2 lata temudiscuss

Good error messages are hard. You want to tell the user what to do, but if you knew that the error could be thrown, you probably should have been gracefully handling the problem. You don't know what information is useful to a hacker and you don't know how your error will be propagated. Meaningful errors at one level ("incorrect parameters passed" when calling an API) is perfectly useless at another level ("incorrect parameters passed" when interacting with a React UI). And if you respect all of the above, at some point you'll end up with an error message that basically says "I can't tell you what, why or how something went wrong, but it did."

ctroein89

2 lata temudiscuss

We still default to Objective-C in our SDK. We still support iOS 11, and I don't think we've been bothered enough by Objective-C to check which versions of Swift can be used on the versions of iOS that we support (I last checked a couple of years ago when we supported iOS 8, where the compatibility matrix was a problem for us). However, the examples are in Swift, and we're using Swift wherever the language doesn't matter. iOS's Objective-C support and Objective-C/Swift interoperability is good enough that there aren't business pressures to switch, and the code isn't changing frequently enough that refactoring to Swift would save us in overall time/effort.

That being said, we are going to refactor from Google's Closure Compiler to TypeScript on the JS side of the project: surprisingly, we've seen more discomfort with developing with Closure Compiler than we've had complaints with developing with Objective-C.

Objective-C is a really neat, old language. Initially I was very gungho about switching to Swift, but all of my pain points are with the Apple APIs that we're accessing (and not Objective-C itself). If Objective-C had dot-syntax for calling methods, some more modern typing, and the less verbose Apple APIs, I would have been very happy sticking to Objective-C.

ctroein89

3 lata temudiscuss

Twitch should have offered a merchandising business via Amazon. It feels like Twitch should have understood how their streamers make money, and ensure that all of that monetization happens via Amazon in some way shape or form, whether that’s a print-on-demand business or facilitating product placements.

ctroein89

3 lata temudiscuss

Video is expensive, and streamers don’t like ads.

Amazon has for years been saying that they think that Twitch is under monetized. In their minds, 20% of watch time could be ads, just like regular TV. Streamers don’t like ads: it kills the vibe when your audience gets a 2 minute timeout. So streamers aren’t running enough ad breaks, and try to support themselves via memberships, merch and other alternative monetization methods. And for some, Twitch is only advertising for the real money-maker on another site. So Amazon doesn’t get the ad money they think they should get, and they only get a cut of memberships.

So then it’s a question of how many servers and engineers are needed to support Twitch, because that will determine profitability.

ctroein89

3 lata temudiscuss

Mechanical ventilation refers to just using fans. The comment you’re replying to is suggesting that heat recovery ventilators (HRV) be used to transfer heat from the warm exhausted to the incoming outside air via a heat exchanger (or cools incoming outside air in hot climates). It reduces the need for heating or cooling while still getting fresh air into the building.

ctroein89

3 lata temudiscuss

That distance is London to Stockholm by road, which is going to be unfathomably far for most Europeans. Maybe that could be a road trip across the full length of Norway or Sweden, but generally that’s a once-in-a-lifetime multi-country road trip that one will want to enjoy.

I’ve travelled London to Stockholm before, and the only reason to do it is to travel with a family pet. Otherwise flying or taking the train will be faster, and cheaper.

ctroein89

3 lata temudiscuss

> While you are not wrong, those requirements are the same for all houses.

Not every house needs triple-pane windows and R25 insulation in the walls, sitting on a 8-ft deep basement, with a steep roof pitch for snow to slide off of. Generally, you want to cut corners, because building to code in New York would be overkill in Texas.

You could have unique plans for each climate zone, but then the slope of the land and the shape of the lot also matters. Ideally, you'd want to be situated on a southward facing slope, beneath the road, so you could have huge windows towards the back of the house to taking in winter sun, natural insulation from the hill, and smaller windows facing the street. If you can't, you'll have to compromise on something that makes the house less pleasant to live in and/or harder to heat/cool.

At this point, we might actually have 100 distinct home designs, for each climate zone and slope. If you're lucky, these standard might actually be compliant with zoning for your lot, and maximize the allowable use of the lot. Every town is different, and who knows what silly rules your town requires.

At this point, you still need a design that local builders know how to build. Builders talk about "communities of practice", where they know how to build a certain way in response to how all of the other contractors in that area will also build, so that a subcontractor doesn't ruin another subcontractor's work. If you hire builders to build in ways they're not familiar with, they'll make mistakes. Most mistakes will be fine, but they could add up to failing to meet the code or standard for which the house was designed.

Ideally, you want to find an architect and a builder who have worked together before, to design and build the kind of house that you want using the techniques appropriate for that design, with the builder having crews of subcontractors that he/she has worked with before. If you've reached this point, you might as well take the extra step to building the perfect house for you, and customize it just a little more.

ctroein89

3 lata temudiscuss

I love my DF64. I found it on sale, and informed my wife that it'd be her Christmas and birthday present to me: totally worth it. Even with a $100 DeLonghi EC155, the difference from the grinder is incredible.

ctroein89

3 lata temudiscuss

Sweden abolished inheritance taxes because the cost of enforcing the tax was greater than the taxes raised, and was passed by a left-wing coalition. At the time, it was considered a success of social democracy to not need inheritance taxes (and in fact, everyone, including the law, referred to dödsskatten - the death tax). 20 years isn’t ready enough time for wealth to consolidate like that via inheritance alone, and similar countries (like Norway and Germany) are seeing similarly rapid raises in their Gini Indexes for wealth, without chances to their inheritance tax systems. Something is broken in Western economies, but unfortunately, inheritance taxes in Sweden aren’t the problem.

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