waltteri's recent activity

  1. Comment on Without saying where you live, where do you live? in ~talk

  2. Comment on Are there any plans to publish an official API? in ~tildes

    waltteri
    Link Parent
    As an age-old Redditor, I must point out that nothing's stopping someone from creating a "Tildes Enhancement Suite" add-on. (You know, as in Reddit Enhancement Suite.) If Tilde had a set of...

    I would also contend that alternate methods to access the site (honestly even in the form of mobile apps) will remove some of the concious site design decisions that encourage positive behavior.

    As an age-old Redditor, I must point out that nothing's stopping someone from creating a "Tildes Enhancement Suite" add-on. (You know, as in Reddit Enhancement Suite.) If Tilde had a set of application design rules, and adhering to them would be a requirement for having API access, the first course of action for someone in dislike of Tildes' UI wouldn't be a complete wild-west no-rules Tildes-RES, but perhaps an app that has to adhere to at least some rules.

    One simple example is putting the 'Post comment' button at the bottom of the page. Its an intentional decision to nudge people to reading all comments first instead of just slapping down another. Once you have third party apps, that kind of design decision has less impact.

    I mean, the point absolutely resonates, and I understand where that's coming from. But I'm not sure if "one size fits all" is the correct approach for the development of a social media service. Especially if "one size fits all" is the literal case. As others have mentioned, having a touch screen device and using Tilde is not really accessible, and the small touchboxes cause a lot of mispresses. And scrolling down to the bottom of the page on some mobile browsers is not a great experience. And not to mention people with certain disabilities, for whom the mobile website might be a slight barrier to entry. And as I mentioned, having an API doesn't mean giving complete wild-west freedom to the developers.

    And as a final note, I'd also like to point out HackerNews, which is quite nice a place to discuss. I don't feel like their open-access API has really destroyed their culture or condoned some kind of toxic behavior.

    8 votes

  3. Comment on Can you set a clock using a light sensor to detect sunrise and sunset? in ~comp

    waltteri
    Link Parent
    Goddamn you were quicker than me :D my comment looks like a copy of yours

    Goddamn you were quicker than me :D my comment looks like a copy of yours

    3 votes

  4. Comment on Can you set a clock using a light sensor to detect sunrise and sunset? in ~comp

    waltteri
    Link
    Interesting idea, I have no idea how much that’s being done. There are satellites and radio stations that broadcast the current time in easily available digital format, and I’d hazard a guess...

    Interesting idea, I have no idea how much that’s being done. There are satellites and radio stations that broadcast the current time in easily available digital format, and I’d hazard a guess these are the most used ways of doing this.

    But of course, if you know your lat/lon and the current date, you could easily calculate the exact time (to the minute) of the sunrise quite easily. But due to changes in weather, it might be quite hard to actually detect the exact moment of the sunrise/sunset, as you’d likely have quite a noisy graph in front of you. How would you differentiate between sunsets and clouds, for example. You’d likely need to do a lot of processing to your data, unless you’re in the middle of a desert or something.

    One idea that comes to mind would be a kind of a sundial (a solar clock, in this case e.g. a box with a hole and a gnomon, pointed at the zenith in the sky), with simple light sensors on the plane upon which the time-telling shadow is being cast. Solar noon would be an easy thing to measure with that.

    5 votes