Hacker News Reader

411mrcon A Summer Without Sunspots

If we had no sun at all, I'm pretty sure we'd be an ice ball, save for volcanic activity. These impacts from solar activity take some time to develop, as I understand it. If we are in some sort of grand minimum, just wait a decade or so. If the Earth was highly reactive to these events (like breaking cold records everytime a minimum happens), I'm not sure we'd be here. The oceans store/release a lot of heat over the short term (years).

411mrcon Facebook has been granted patent on shadow banning

It's gaslighting them. They have no feedback that the world is ignoring them. The crank on the public street corner saying the world is gonna end soon gets feedback when people walk right on by or put in their earbuds to ignore him.

411mrcon Hackers ship their exploits directly to their target’s mailroom

Just don't smile for the cameras.

411mrcon No more cardboard boxes? 3M invents an ingenious new way to ship products

Well it's multipurpose. One roll can ship many different things. Otherwise you need an inventory of various sized boxes. I'm guessing it will find an instant niche.

411mrcon Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

http://www.berkshares.org/

It's been around for a long time.

411mrcon Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

You're arguing for a demurrage currency, not a fiat, debt- leveraged fractional reserve one.

411mrcon Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

At this point, it's a feature to have things denominated in $. I'm likely going to buy a Purism laptop with bitcoin, but of course denominated in $. I spent a couple hundred on BTC years ago, which has generated a nice return. This will be my first purchase, and I'll have plenty of BTC left over. Holding a deflationary currency while the world operates on an inflationary one is fine by me.

411mrcon Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

A custom router can do this for all devices on your network. That is what I use.

411mrcon Myers-Briggs: The personality test that conned the world

This article is laughable. Knocking the developers by saying Myers and Briggs had no training is akin to knocking the first powered flight by saying Orville and Wilbur Wright had no training.

It's not difficult to imagine evolution has discovered a way to segregate us into different personalities for the advantage to form cohesive social groups with specializations for survival. Who hasn't observed the difference between introvert and extravert in their own interactions? Is it a stretch to envision a couple more dichotomies exist?

Ask people to answer questions that will sort them into 16 bins and isn't it logical to assume those bins might have traits in common?

There are plenty of problems with MBTI and by all means, develop a better science. I tend to characterize people into their MBTI type in order to better interact with them. I find it useful and understandable, even predictive. Parlor trick? Perhaps, but on a couple of occasions now, I've accurately predicted a new friend's MBTI type simply by observing them and then having them take the test to confirm. You then have a useful basic mental model of them.

Unfortunately, while I can fly in a 777 nearly halfway around the world now due in part to the Wrights, there is no personality tool 777 equivalent.

411mrcon A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

Eh, well, the declination theory is probably nothing. There is apparently another map blessed by him w/o declination and land ownership.

https://dalneitzel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Fennboree-...

He claims all you need is the map, then leaves more offline clues in interviews than on the map, e.g. above 5000 feet, near pine, near a road from which he could make two trips in an afternoon. That is sort of annoying - seems a treasure map /poem should be self-contained.

411mrcon A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

The map is unusual. It's rare to show magnetic declination lines - I suspect there might be a clue there. Land ownership is seemingly a clue too. Nobody who grew up in the west would hide treasure on someone else's private land and then claim he did it to get people outdoors. In many of these areas, people don't appreciate trespassing. Tribal land is out of the question too, unless he's crazy.

411mrcon In Racine County, houses are being designated ‘blighted’ to make way for Foxconn

Right, it is a pretty fair offer, but it's not SF real estate generous. That would work out to $16 billion or so.

411mrcon In Racine County, houses are being designated ‘blighted’ to make way for Foxconn

Hardly. https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/federalism-and-libertar...

411mrcon Bitcoin, the Biggest Bubble in History, Is Popping

This kind of volatility is nothing new for Bitcoin. This kind of volatility in an asset with that market cap is fairly rare.

411mrcon Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance risk than Facebook

I find having one piece of low-power hardware that is always on a handy tool. A homeserver+router, basically. I can decloud a lot of things. Having a beefier piece of hardware makes it a non-issue. I try to run things in Docker for modularity. Total hardware cost is competitive with a high-end router, but I think I get more.

Bind9 seems to be better for blocking. RPZ is made for it. I don't think dnsmasq supports RPZ though projects like Pi-Hole use dnsmasq. I'm not positive, but I think RPZ is more flexible. Bind9 seems to do anything you like. I may want to resolve DNS myself and not just forward.

I'm starting to look into configuring Bind9 to have different blocking per user using "views." Some want Facebook, some don't, so I can block accordingly. I'm not sure you can do that in dnsmasq. I did discover subtle things break, like you can't block Facebook and still access Instagram, thus the "views" approach. I don't want to change hosts file on every device, especially mobiles, and can even provide some protection for guests this way. I might do a captive page for a blocked domain and let people bypass in their view if they like, then I can have a "block-first" approach.

I do like network-wide blocking for the malware lists - if anyone acquires malware, it can't phone home (if it's on the list) and I can detect via logs. DNS as firewall seems to be a trend. I'm looking into blocking IPs via iptables as well using public lists. Maybe I'll even setup Snort or Bro. The possibilities are endless.

411mrcon Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance risk than Facebook

Why would Amazon care? I think I've went to Amazon over Tor and had no problem. I never tried to log in, but they let me browse just fine.

411mrcon Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance risk than Facebook

As another poster said, go with a mini-pc like Qotom. Uses little power, configure however you want (memory, SSD). Most web pages load instantly, and it handles a massive blocklist (Bind9). I'm slowly adding a list of always on packages like sync tools. Also, you can use an AP instead of router attached wifi. Move the Power-over Ethernet AP where you want. Ubiquiti Unifi is far better coverage than my previous consumer grade wifi. Do it all in your favorite Linux flavor.

411mrcon Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance risk than Facebook

You can mitigate the speed issue by adding your own DNS local caches and then start blocking ads, trackers and malware sites and whomever you want (FB is added to the spyware list) using publicly available lists. All of this speeds browsing considerably.

A personalized router is very powerful.

411mrcon Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance risk than Facebook

It's well known, not the poster's personal claim:

https://boingboing.net/2017/11/08/involuntary-profiling.html

FB goes so far as to buy your data from others, which is why I block all trackers. I'm sure I still leak data to FB, even though I never joined, and never will.

411mrcon Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

I think the designer's own words are a better summary of the problem solved:

http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/11/

The magical thing is that you can actually know that the distributed system is consistent by how much work was performed.

411mrcon Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

"Hey, major waste company, how about you partner with Facebook and let us sift through people's trash using AI robots before it goes in the landfill? It's for....uhhh, science...yeah, thats the ticket"

411mrcon Designing better file organization around tags, not hierarchies (2017)

I am far too lazy to tag every file and I would despise such a system if forced into it. Some files I want to keep realizing I may never need them again. Tagging is a time waste. It's also difficult to anticipate future use and what tags are helpful.

Now a tagging system that could be built over time from search results could be very useful. Apply tags as you go in batches in other words to aid future searches.

If I were designing a new OS, I'd force each piece of software to auto-tag and index the file contents in meta tags and feed it to a global OS search function.

411mrcon Secret Service Warns of Chip Card Scheme

Merchant fee - cash back = net cost to consumer

411mrcon Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

It seems like the collective pack of Teslas would feed telemetry back to the mothership as unit tests for any new versions. In other words, any change has to redrive (simulate) a big sample of what has already been driven, especially where the human had to correct.

411mrcon Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

They probably need to be able to reproduce before they can write a compelling novel.

411mrcon Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

I have to sign documents saying who can view my info when I go for a checkup.

I'd find another doctor if Facebook ever showed up on there.

I would think it would be illegal for the medical side to share and for Facebook to use their massive data collection in this manner if it's not buried in their impenetrable privacy statement.

411mrcon Secret Service Warns of Chip Card Scheme

Get a good cashback card and it's not that much. Use your personal cashback card for billable business expense and you probably make money.

One thing it does do is incentivize the banks to monitor transactions. They know my card # has been stolen before I have a clue, calling me nearly immediately.

411mrcon Designing better file organization around tags, not hierarchies (2017)

Thanks. My subtle point was why use tags when you could use search? Search engines index the whole internet - millions of hierarchical file systems of all kinds. Why reinvent file systems?

I don't use Mac. Windows 10 "Cortana" is no match for where Google Desktop was 10 years ago. I rarely use it unless I have to. Google searched the contents. Cortana just searches filenames and tries to route searches to the web. Linux...I don't see anything - Ubuntu has Cortana-like feature, but it's not Google Desktop. It's very odd to go backwards technology-wise.

411mrcon Designing better file organization around tags, not hierarchies (2017)

Once upon a time there was Google Desktop, and it was incredibly useful. I wouldn't trust Google on my machine anymore, but an open source replace ment would be great. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop

411mrcon Patch runs ed, and ed can run anything

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/right-to-read/