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Aaargh20318

4,926 karma · joined February 6, 2016

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Aaargh20318··on Good EU regulations
> For your use case, the Citroen Ami is comfortably sub 10k.

That car is not suitable for my use-case. Any situation where I would use that car is one where I would use my e-bike instead. I basically use my car for those occasions where I just need to transport a bit more than I can take on my bike. It doesn’t have to be huge, but that Ami is just not enough.

Aaargh20318··on Good EU regulations
> Because you're potentially moving several thousand kilos at huge speed

No, I’m not. My current car weighs less than a thousand kilos (945 to be precise) and the speed limit in basically the entire city is 30km/h.

Newer cars are ‘several thousand kilos’ especially because of all the regulations. Just being an EV adds a significant amount of weight due to the battery.

Aaargh20318··on Good EU regulations
> “Cars must include modern life‑saving tech like automatic braking and lane‑keeping.”

I rarely drive my car. When I do, 99% of the time it's within a few kilometers of my house. I have no need for lane keeping or automatic braking in city traffic, it's barely moving to begin with.

My car is also getting old and will soon need replacing. Ten years ago you could buy a brand new small car for well under €10k. Sure, it didn't have all the bells and whistles but I have no need for those anyway. Nowadays, you're looking at €30k+ for a new, small car precisely because of the safety regulations, emission standards and the fact that it's practically impossible to buy a car with an ICE anymore.

I understand the need for these things for cars that are driven daily, but why do they have to apply to cars that are mainly used for short trips to the grocery store? It's making cars unaffordable for the vast majority of people.

Aaargh20318··on Control shopping cart wheels with your phone (2021)
> just buying what you need every day

Not just for the whole day, I ofter make a trip in the morning for breakfast/lunch and another in the evening to get whatever I need for dinner.

Aaargh20318··on Control shopping cart wheels with your phone (2021)
> Supermarkets that have a step-less escalator (e.g. to go to the parking lot in the basement) also use these locking wheels to make sure the cart never moves on the escalator.

we have a Jumbo near here that is below a parking garage and they have something similar, but it's an entirely passive system. The sloped movable walkway to the parking garage floor has this grooved pattern in it's surface anyway (so you don't slip) and the wheels have a similar pattern so they just sink into the grooves on the walkway. There's a brake pad next to each wheel just above the floor and as the wheel sinks into the grooves the brake pad touches the walkway locking it in place. At the beginning/end of the walkway there are these sloped protrusion into the grooves on the walkway that lift the cart out of the grooves as it reaches the end. No fancy locking system needed.

Aaargh20318··on Turn any website into an API
I’m not sure what that would solve? Your API call is still broken. Best case you’re serving stale data.
Aaargh20318··on The End of Handwriting
I we had the same here in the Netherlands. Never helped me one bit. I even had to go to after-school handwriting coaching. My handwriting is still horrible.

I think my main problem is that handwriting is so slow. I get impatient and rush it turning it into a mess. Reading it is also slow, even when written by someone with good handwriting it's a PITA to read cursive. I hope it dies out sooner rather than later.

Aaargh20318··on Custom telescope mount using harmonic drives and ESP32
They have become popular in the last few years. They are smaller, lighter and thus more portable than traditional mounts. They also don’t need to be balanced with a counter-weight (although they usually allow for a counter weight to increase payload capacity, they don’t need to be perfectly balanced). This all saves in set-up time.

One disadvantage compared to traditional mounts is that they absolutely need guidance, and with a pretty fast guide loop at that (like 0.5s). You can’t do long unguided exposures with a strain wave. But anyone who’s serious about astrophotography is guiding anyway so that’s not really a big deal.

Aaargh20318··on Custom telescope mount using harmonic drives and ESP32
Cool project. Strain wave mounts are fantastic. Just ordered a wave 150i myself. Can’t wait to not having to waste time balancing my scope anymore.
Aaargh20318··on Self-Guaranteeing Promises
I'd say it's way more obvious than using a 3rd party email service.

And that's another thing: if you use a 3rd party e-mail service then you have to trust a 3rd party not to abuse that. If they have control of that email address they can take over your account. If it's a temporary address, who's to say when that address gets reused?

If you don't use a 3rd party service then you have to have your own domain for that e-mail address, that domain name can then also be traced back to you.

If you want it to be anonymous, you shouldn't use e-mail at all and only allow passkeys.

Aaargh20318··on Self-Guaranteeing Promises
You can throw away a passkey just as well as you can throw away an email address.
Aaargh20318··on Self-Guaranteeing Promises
But so can the email address.
Aaargh20318··on I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C
No, it’s not based on anything. A QC charger will output 5v by default and only increase the voltage after a negotiation. This is exactly as described: a USB-A style charger brick only it outputs 12v instead of 5v, no negotiation, nothing preventing you from plugging in a device expecting 5v and getting 12v. The only ‘safety feature’ is that it has ‘12V’ printed on it.

You can find it here: https://www.thermoworks.com/12volt-ac-adapter/

Aaargh20318··on I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C
> ThermoWorks products are made in China

Not sure what you are trying to imply here. Products manufactured in China are of poor quality? iPhones are made in China and it would be a challenge to find any device with higher build quality than that. On the flip side, we all know how terrible the quality of US made cars is.

Aaargh20318··on How we replaced Elasticsearch and MongoDB with Rust and RocksDB
> provide "space" between work and home

I don't get this. This idea that 'work life balance' should mean that the two should be compartmentalised to specific blocks of time seems counterproductive to me. To me it feels like an unnatural way of living. 8 hours in which I should only focus on work, 8 hours I should focus on everything else followed by 8 hours of sleep. I don't think that is how we are supposed to operate. Even the 8 hours of sleep in one block is not natural and a recent invention. Before industrialisation people used to sleep in multiple blocks (wikipedia: polyphasic sleeping)

The idea that you have to be 'on' for 8 hours at a time seems extremely stressful to me. No wonder you need an hour afterwards just to unwind. Interleaving blocks of work and personal time over the day feels much more natural and less stressful to me. WFH makes this possible. If I'm stuck on something, I can do something else for a while, maybe even take a short nap. The ability to focus and do mentally straining work comes in waves for me. Being able to go with my natural flow makes me both happier, more relaxed and more productive.

The key to work/life balance to me is not stricter separation but instead better integration.

Aaargh20318··on I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C
> This problem seems prevalent on cheaper devices.

I’ve seen it on plenty of higher-end devices as well; and even worse.

The worst offender I’ve encountered is the TermoWorks Billows. ThermoWorks is a well established brand that makes high end thermometers and is considered one of the best on the market. So I was quite surprised to discover how their ‘Billows’ product is powered.

The device itself needs 12v and has a USB-C port for power. You’d think it would do USB-PD to negotiate it’s power needs so you can just use any old USB-C adapter. Not the case. It comes with a USB-A to USB-C cable and requires a special adapter with a USB-A port on it that puts 12v on the pins that normally supply 5v.

I have no idea how they came up with this abomination. Why even use USB-A connectors if it’s not going to work with a standard USB-A adapter, and why supply an adapter that’s basically going to kill most USB-A devices you plug into it? If you have a custom adapter anyway, why not just use a simple barrel connector? Why put a USB=C port on the device if it can’t use USB-PD?

I can imagine some Chinese ali-express product using such an abomination to save a few cents on components, but why would a well-respected brand like ThermoWorks ship such a thing? It boggles the mind.

Aaargh20318··on Turn any website into an API
It’s not about the maintenance cost, it’s about continuity of service. If you scrape a website things may break at any time. If you use a proper API and have a contract with the supplier you will have the opportunity to make any changes before things break.
Aaargh20318··on Turn any website into an API
> I wonder if not just checking the site every day (or minute ) would solve for this.

No, because a webpage makes no promise to not change. Even if you check every minute, can your system handle random 1 minute periods of unpredictable behavior? What if they remove data? What if the meaning of the data changes (e.g. instead of a maximum value for some field they now show the average value) how would your system deal with that? What if they are running an A/B test and 10% of your ‘API’ requests return a different page?

This is not a technical problem and the solution is not a technical one. You need to have some kind of relationship with the entity whose data you are consuming or be okay with the fact that everything can just stop working at any random moment in time.

Aaargh20318··on Turn any website into an API
It’s a cute idea, but ultimately not very useful. An API is more than just an endpoint that gives easy to parse results. The most important part is that an API is a contract. An API implies that things won’t suddenly break without prior announcement. Any form of web-scraping, no matter how cleverly done, is inherently fragile. They can change their front-end for any reason which could break your scraper. As such you cannot rely on such an interface.
Aaargh20318··on Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords
> I’d rather granny needs to visit the bank to get access to her account again, than someone phishes her and steals all her money.

But granny can't go to a bank because they closed down most of their offices. Since 99% of what you need a bank for can be done using their app it no longer made financial sense to have a physical presence in most smaller towns and villages.

Lots of elderly were complaining about this when it happened because they were too lazy to learn how to use the bank apps. Hell, they already started complaining when you could no longer withdraw money at the desk even before they closed down the offices. Apparently even learning to use something as simple as an ATM was too much effort for them.

Aaargh20318··on Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
Particles are indistinguishable, this means that the specific particles that make up a physical object (like a human) are not important, you could replace all of them with different particles, ship of Theseus style, and it would be the same object.

What makes an object unique then is the specific configuration of the particles that make up that object. This configuration is a form of information.

Fortunately, we already know how to transmit information at the speed of light; no new physics required. This then reduces the problem to transporting the ‘printer’. No generation ship required. You need something that harvests particles locally and can receive a stream of data with what to print. You can bootstrap this, send a tiny particle harvester/printer that can print a slightly larger printer, etc.

Aaargh20318··on About the BLOBs in Ventoy
It’s been a while since I set it up. I use dnsmasq as my DHCP server and if I recall correctly it includes everything needed to set this up.
Aaargh20318··on About the BLOBs in Ventoy
I have a bunch of network-bootable installers set up on my DHCP server. If I want to install a new machine I simply set it to boot from the network. From there I can just select whichever distro I want. I also added some utils like Memtest86
Aaargh20318··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
It covers 90% of the screen on iPad
Aaargh20318··on The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
Same here. I’m autistic and so is my best friend. When I had to move out of the dorms after graduation I knew it was a bad idea to live alone. I’m very comfortable being alone and if I wouldn’t share a home I would probably end up completely isolated. We’ve been sharing a house for two decades and it’s working for us.
Aaargh20318··on EU age verification app to ban any Android system not licensed by Google
> Don't need "copy" here for that. They can just do the verification on your device without any technical tricks

Yeah. that's where this system fails. It only stores a single attribute that you wouldn't mind putting on someone else's phone. In the full EU wallet the 'over 18' attribute is part of a larger set of credentials that is basically your entire digital ID. If you were to put that on someone else's phone they would be able to identify as you to numerous government and adjacent services. You'd be a fool to share that.

This whole scheme feels a bit rushed and not thought through.

Aaargh20318··on EU age verification app to ban any Android system not licensed by Google
You're missing the part where I describe the mechanism used to prevent replays, I'm just describing why it is necessary.
Aaargh20318··on EU age verification app to ban any Android system not licensed by Google
> if this verification wasn’t in place, could I just alter the source code or binary to always return “yes I’m 18” (or whatever) and completely subvert the intent of this tool?

Kinda, yes.

(slightly simplifying the mechanism here)

This seems to be based on the EU Wallet project, which is still work in progress. The EU wallet is based on OpenID (oidc4vci, oidc4vp). The wallet allows for selective disclosure of attributes. These attributes are signed by a issuing party (i.e. the government of a EU country). That way a RP (relying party) can verify that the data in the claim (e.g. this user is 18+) is valid.

However, this alone is not enough, because it could be a copy of that data. You can just query a wallet for that attribute, store it and replay it to some other website. This is obviously not wanted.

So the wallet also has a mechanism to bind the credential to a specific device. When issuing a credential the wallet provides a public key plus a proof of possession of the associated private key (e.g. a signature over an issuer-provided nonce) to the issuer. The issuer then includes that public key in the signed part of the credential. When the RP verifies the credential it also asks the wallet to sign part of the response using the private key associated with that public key. This is supposed to prove that the credential was sent by the device it was issued to.

Now this is where the draconian device requirements come in: the wallet is supposed to securely store the private key associated with the credential. For example in a Secure Enclave on the device. The big flaw here is that none of this binding stuff works if you can somehow get access to the private key, e.g. on a rooted phone if the wallet doesn't use a secure enclave or with a modified wallet app that doesn't use a secure enclave to store the private key. You could ask a friend who is 18+ to request the credential, copy it to your phone and use that to log in.

Aaargh20318··on Do not download the app, use the website
> I gather most people are just using the apps and have no idea how they’re built.

They may have no idea how they are built, but they do notice how janky and out of place they are. Take for example Microsoft Teams, have you ever met anyone who actually likes that app? It's insane that a simple chat app uses well over a gigabyte of RAM.

It's absurd that one of the biggest software companies in the world can't seem to produce a sleek, native app. It's purely a cost saving measure. They decided mediocrity is good enough for them and they get away with it because the people making the purchase decisions are not the people who have to use it daily.

Aaargh20318··on Do not download the app, use the website
> Web Apps need to become just Apps. Apps built with the free and open web need equal treatment and integration. Closed and heavily taxed proprietary ecosystems should not receive any preference.

That basically already exists on the desktop in the form of Electron apps. Those apps are universally hated because of it.

Web technology is not suitable for making applications. It was designed to format text documents and that's all it's really good at. That's why we have the web-framework-of-the-week problem, everyone is desperately trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Web apps are janky, fragile and feel out of place on every OS. It's a 'one size fits no one' solution.

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