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3eb7988a1663

3,260 karma · joined September 5, 2024

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3eb7988a1663··on The Return of Sail Power: Cargo Ships Are Turning Back to the Wind
The article did mention suction sails for the Maersk Tankers, but it does seem like the bulk of the article was about the rotating tubes.
3eb7988a1663··on The Return of Sail Power: Cargo Ships Are Turning Back to the Wind
If anyone else was confused why those pictures were of giant tubes and not canvas sails, you are not alone. Apparently those are some version of "Suction Sails". The vendor's website has a graphic that explains it, though it was fighting my ability to scroll.

https://bound4blue.com/esail/

3eb7988a1663··on Doing Everyone Else's Job
Significantly larger, yes.
3eb7988a1663··on Reversing Factorio's RNG
At the conclusion, he said he spent two years on this! That's a thesis.
3eb7988a1663··on Reversing Factorio's RNG
I am failing to find the article, but some early online poker systems used the server time as the seed coupled with a weak PRNG. With the information of the hole cards + community cards, after a few hands, could quickly determine exactly what seed was being used and perfectly predict everyone's cards.
3eb7988a1663··on Doing Everyone Else's Job
I can think of at least two people in my career who were, ahem, load bearing for the company. They did all of the BS, non-sexy work required to keep the place running. Never wasted time on vanity projects, just showed up day after day doing the actual necessary things.

They were criminally under appreciated by management. Their career trajectory significantly worse than those who engaged in the highly visible projects.

3eb7988a1663··on Let's make quality the norm again
Skyrim came out in 2011 and is at this moment, the 55th highest player count on Steam. Just playing top tier single player games over the past twenty years could keep you incredibly busy.
3eb7988a1663··on US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
That's exactly how it was revealed that a high quality image intentionally leaked by Trump came from a satellite and not an overhead plane.

Press article: https://www.livescience.com/secret-classified-satellite-trum...

Blog write up: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2019/09/image-from-trump-tw...

3eb7988a1663··on Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here
From a purely efficiency standpoint, yes, but practically, electricity->heat is a lot cheaper to install. Plumbing is messy, and bolting on a water circulation system to a roof is harder than delivering more joules over the wires.
3eb7988a1663··on Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here
Yeah, but the important question is where would Putin be after that?
3eb7988a1663··on Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here
Right after you get that DOGE check.
3eb7988a1663··on Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
The systems must be separate if they were able to disable some of the network connectivity but maintain GPS.

I thought GP was talking about if they had to reconnect the systems for some reason, would archived telemetry suddenly be uploaded. Which is a real possibility, so I was suggesting poisoning the data. Even if you correct the clock today, the previously recorded timestamps cannot be automatically fixed. Even better would be to reset the clock on every startup event.

Which is all still a band-aid solution - a targeted analysis could mostly correct the time-keeping. This just prevents getting scooped up in a simple drag net kind of search.

3eb7988a1663··on Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco
Things are really about to hit the fan. The world has been surviving off of strategic petroleum reserves, but those are quickly hitting the bottom. The US last reported at 285M barrels[0]. There is a legal floor of ~250M, after which it is reserved for government national defense. Usage has been all over the place, but the drawdown has been somewhere in the region of 1M barrels per day. Public analyses have said that the cavern integrity becomes threatened once levels fall below 300M. Current government claims the "real" floor is at 70M, but I believe this is a transparent ploy to assuage markets.

The Saudi pipeline that was attacked had a capacity of 7M barrels per day. Gone for who knows how long. That 7MBPD that needs to come from somewhere.

Edit: Should add - the big tankers require ~month to move oil to most consumers. So, there is one month of breathing room before the new pipeline loss materializes.

[0] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=W...

3eb7988a1663··on Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
I did say lose the GPS.
3eb7988a1663··on Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
If you are willing to lose GPS, maybe you could set the car's internal clock to the year 2000. This might fool a cursory data dump that is looking for "last three months of driving habits". Would obviously not stand up to any real scrutiny, but mostly painless.
3eb7988a1663··on Libraries Run Rust Inside Python (With PyO3)
The Python cryptography library switched out C for Rust which invalidated some platforms[0]. 2021 story, so not sure if anything has changed.

   ...Since the Gentoo Portage package manager indirectly depends on cryptography, ""we will probably have to entirely drop support for architectures that are not supported by Rust"". He listed five architectures that are not supported by upstream Rust (alpha, hppa, ia64, m68k, and s390) and an additional five that are supported but do not have Gentoo Rust packages (mips, 32-bit ppc, sparc, s390x, and riscv). 
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26097153
3eb7988a1663··on David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models
The Houthis missile story coming out now also feels like convenient fuel for the fire.
3eb7988a1663··on Houthis used Claude Code to develop missile guidance software: Anthropic
The isolation was so good, many of the workers had no idea what they were doing. Interviews after the war with the rank and file contained quite varied speculation on what the plants were trying to accomplish. I remember one nurse who thought it was all just a cover to get blood samples.
3eb7988a1663··on US Customs supervisor busted for stealing hardware from Homeland Security PCs
IT tech was probably the one who suggested the approach.
3eb7988a1663··on Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard
Well this was back in COVID, sometime fresh after the always-open-port news had surfaced. Can easily believe the experience has been improved since then.
3eb7988a1663··on Houthis used Claude Code to develop missile guidance software: Anthropic
What is more difficult, building a military missile or the software that runs it? If they are already building weapons, not sure the software to run them was the impediment.

Presumably, the world used dumb munitions without any software for a long time.

3eb7988a1663··on Vintage Scientific Papers with LaTeX
Heh, I read the title and thought this was going to be about someone porting legacy publications into Latex code. Anything from Newton's gravity to Marie Curie radium.

Which would be nice - some seminal publications from not all that long ago are only available as terrible quality scans.

3eb7988a1663··on Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard
Not parent, but the web player used to be a down-graded experience from the native app. If you need Zoom for a professional setting, those functions could be important.

Do not know if this is still true, but at one point, the web player would only let you see one speaker at a time, while the app would show multiple people at once.

3eb7988a1663··on StarCraft returns in 2030 as an open-world shooter
!SPOILERS!

The trailer shows nothing. Mentions a couple of factions that have previously been established from the lore and shows some Space Marine montage footage that could have been a cutscene from the prior games. It is not gameplay and just as easily could be promotion material for a Starcraft 3 RTS.

3eb7988a1663··on LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
I have also wondered about the possibility of media emitting some kind of hidden identifier. Can normal speakers emit noise outside of human hearing that could contain a unique id? Would not even need to be a lot of data that could be broadcast.
3eb7988a1663··on Planet Labs' open satellite feed
Pretty close. Sesame Energy[0] make these shipping container boxes with solar panels + batteries so you can just drop them where you need no-supply chain energy. The boxes also synthesize hydrogen which can be used to power drones. The talk I heard from the CEO said the automated swapping of hydrogen canisters was not yet there, but they were working on it. Nothing in robotics is easy, but this feels like a very attainable goal that the military would pay to get working.

[0] https://www.sesame.solar/audience/us-military-allies

3eb7988a1663··on The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
I think elegance has to do with the technology of the time. Some clever design that is cheaper/better than you would otherwise think possible given the era. There are probably many elegant aspects to Roman aqueduct engineering, but they would still get replaced with modern materials during a retrofit.
3eb7988a1663··on We built our house for LAN parties (2024)
How big is your boat? I assume you have to make some sacrifices respect to showers, toilet, oven, fridge, etc, but it does sound appealing to me.

Do you actually drive it around or is it permanently moored?

3eb7988a1663··on Icy Moons Are Ocean Worlds
I was born in a water moon.
3eb7988a1663··on Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)
Even if he were still CEO, a message of, "This sucks", he does not have to explicitly add, "Fix it, please". That is well implied by the hierarchy. Your boss notes a problem, underlings try to correct.

The bear is sticky with honey, and people jump.

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