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DerekBickerton

3,225 karma · joined July 9, 2021

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DerekBickerton··on Most AI Fear Is Future Fear
> a giant deluge of content spam

This is a small tweak in a search engine's algo that /detects/ AI and downranks it. Only organic human-crafted content should be allowed to surface in a search engine.

DerekBickerton··on Ask HN: What Are Alternatives to the Internet?
There's a few abstractions of the web you can use today.

https://freenetproject.org/

https://geti2p.net/en/

https://www.gnunet.org/en/

https://www.ipfs.tech/

DerekBickerton··on Ask HN: Subscription Strangulation?
I prefer lifetime licenses of software. That way I reduce the cognitive load of tracking subscriptions and I have lifetime access. I don't mind the high cost of certain serials/keys. I don't like when companies switch to subscription-only after selling buy-once-keep-forever licenses. (Looking at you 1Password).
DerekBickerton··on Pentagon leaks: US air national guardsman, 21, identified as suspect
Why is the Pentagon not a giant honeypot / decoy? They paint a huge target on their back. You don't want to advertise your core infra somewhere obvious. You need your core infra in obscure locations where people don't look. Military strategy 101.
DerekBickerton··on Ask HN: Why is clickbait like kryptonite on HN?
There are also interrogatives which aren't rhetoric/hyperbolic but make people click because they want to know the answer to a question. This very Ask HN is an interrogative.
DerekBickerton··on Limitations and websites
> We never speak about websites through the lens of CPU, RAM, power consumption, thermals, or FPS limitations

It's worth going for the 'mobile first' approach and assume your visitors have the bare minimum specs for browsing your website. Obviously if you're doing a big clunky SPA you need to warn your visitors beforehand. Also warn users with JS disabled using <noscript>

DerekBickerton··on Ask HN: What to Do with a Gifted Laptop?
- Old games (Maybe not as retro and far back as C64 though).

- Coding. Notepad++ plus a browser for webdev.

- Media Player. Hook a 4TB HDD up to it that's loaded with episodes of Friends, etc

- Home server. Use it as a home networking device?

DerekBickerton··on Tell HN: Fake websites are gaming Google's system
It's been known by SEO types for years that Google is gameable. Just setup several Wordpress blogs, add a few SEO plugins, build lots of backlinks, and then...wait. It helps if your content isn't thin and actually helps people though. Google knows that and incorporates that as part of their algo. (Hence, content farms)
DerekBickerton··on Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)
https://defacto2.net/file/view/ab3914?
DerekBickerton··on Privatizing our digital identities
> What I don't want about any kind of identity system is that I can only have one

The globalist types[0] are looking to implement such a system. From what I have gathered, they want a social credit score. Unvaccinated? Good luck getting a loan. Posted something 'wrong' on an online message-board? You can't travel. And the list goes on...

[0] https://id2020.org/

DerekBickerton··on Who is your favorite tech blogger/writer?
https://lea.verou.me/

https://www.kottke.org/

https://chriscoyier.net/

https://seths.blog/

https://sive.rs/

DerekBickerton··on Ask HN: What's the current best domain host?
https://njal.la/

https://www.gandi.net/en-US

DerekBickerton··on Ask HN: Tools you have built for yourself?
I manage multiple virtual machines, and whilst not coding, it sometimes feels that way, since you're bending a computer to your will, which is my definition of coding. Nothing more exciting than after a fresh install of Windows, and configuring the hell out of it to your liking (hardening it, de-bloating it, making it more performant, as-well as customizing it and installing choice applications to it).
DerekBickerton··on Ask HN: Trustworthy office suite that works
Maybe try LibreOffice? https://www.libreoffice.org/
DerekBickerton··on How do we experience the pain of other people?
As an empath, I have learned to observe, not absorb. Everyday life is filled with people in various states of pain, and it doesn't always have to be some obvious physical pain, they can show it just the way they speak and interact with the world, and through subtle body language.

Not that I avoid those types of people like the plague, only a select few I try to listen to and try to make their journey as painless as possible, and being an empath for everyone you encounter is obviously draining and can sap your energy, fast.

MDMA assisted psychotherapy looks promising, and people don't run the risk of overdosing or using contaminated pills, and they're in the company of trained professionals who are also prepared with medicine to counteract the effects of the drug incase someone has adverse reactions to it.

Mental pain is the worst type of pain IMHO. Physical pain for me is bearable, since it subsides, but there is a strange thing that happens with mental pain and it's the feeling that it's going to last forever and be recursive. Imagine being permanently subjected to mental torture? That's what it feels like, but like physical pain, it subsides, only we don't believe that when we experience mental anguish.

DerekBickerton··on Detect breaches with Canary credit cards
This is tangential, but still related: a few years ago I could buy disposable VISA cards which were these vouchers you bought in a store and were preloaded with a fixed amount. They didn't even have to be in your legal name.

I put the numbers on e-crime forums for people to snap up, and it was funny watching what kinds of transactions were being made. Most people were using it to buy cryptocurrency.

Most of the transactions were vague though and didn't mention the merchant in question, but with a bit of digging I discovered they were so called 'Discreet Billing' companies which are largely used for adult websites and used to mask the fact you were buying porn to people casually glancing at your CC statement.

DerekBickerton··on What's the most painful thing about online shopping?
The most painful thing I've encountered is having to register on multiple different e-commerce stores and fill in all my personal info again. Most consumers don't want an account, and most merchants allow you to buy without registering an account, but some don't do this and you have to jump through hoops just to buy something (filling address, e-mail, phone number, and confirming e-mail, etc). It adds too much friction, which is why people prefer Amazon. All their details are pre-filled and third-party merchants just grab those details for orders.
DerekBickerton··on Pomodoro Timer
> does anyone else feel like using a pomodoro timer ruins any chance at intense focus during the workday

You don't have to use it for projects where you're naturally in flow and can maintain intense focus without productivity tools.

The Pomodoro Technique is for those who /get out of flow/ easily and can't be productive without taking breaks often.

I've used it, and it was for tasks where I was able to hold the state of a program's structure even when AFK for ten minutes. I've noticed lethargy and fatigue sets in every 10 minutes, since I'm usually chaired and my wrists have mild RSI which needs to be repaired via breaks.

There is a law of diminishing returns the longer you are stationed at a desk doing focused work. Your boss might not like all your breaks, but you can calmly explain 'It's science!' to them.

DerekBickerton··on Ask HN: It’s been 4 years since Covid was discovered. How are you?
Lucky to have never contracted it. I'm a bonafide hermit anyways so social distancing wasn't 'new' or 'special' to me. I've also worked from home for as long as I can remember, and COVID-era lock-downs didn't affect my work. Again, lucky.

COVID reminded me of a few simple facts such as the importance of an immune system, and I double-dosed Vitamin D more than I should, along with probiotics and cultured/fermented foods like Kefir & Kimchi. The mental health aspect of it affected many even though they had a good immune system. Not being able to socialize affected many of the extroverted types. Glad to see they're thriving now though.

DerekBickerton··on The Quest for a Dumber Phone
It's not some burdensome 'quest' though. Just get a Nokia 105[0] which uses the Series 30[1] operating system and has no Internet connectivity. It comes preloaded with a few basic games so you can kill time waiting for things or pacify yourself in awkward social situations.

[0] https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-105

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_30%2B

DerekBickerton··on Pegasus: A Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy
I'm probably reading this HN thread from a Pegasus-infected iPhone right now, and I have no way of knowing! The only commercial solution to detect Pegasus I know of is iMazing's Pegasus detection tool[0] which borrows techniques from Amnesty International's Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT)[1] to detect Pegasus. Not sure how reliable it is though.

Anyway with something like Pegasus, all the forensic artifacts would be random and heavily mutated for each infected device, so it's not as easy as running a tool to detect its presence. Pegasus is known for doing anti-forensics under the hood.

[0] https://imazing.com/blog/detecting-pegasus-spyware-with-imaz...

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...

DerekBickerton··on Reasons for Decline in Firefox Usage
Yeah I use LibreWolf[0] which has all the Mozilla telemetry and services stripped out. Firefox should be shipped that way and have all those features opt-in only, but they won't do that since they're doing a data-grab.

[0] https://librewolf.net/

DerekBickerton··on Ask HN: How do you make your notes useful?
When I feel like I should be more productive, I take a glance at past notes. There's typically something in there I should be doing. Sometimes I don't feel like doing certain things, but 'The treasure is in the cave you don't want to enter'
DerekBickerton··on We could stumble into AI catastrophe
AI will always need humans in the loop to intervene. Remember the old IBM motto: 'A computer isn't accountable so a computer should never make a management decision'.
DerekBickerton··on The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012)
Link to the sound: https://oona.windytan.com/blogfiles/dialup.mp3
DerekBickerton··on Ask HN: How do you make your notes useful?
Nothing fancy. I use Standard Notes free tier and categorize my notes using tags. I even store code snippets in there, under the `code` tag so I never lose all those precious snippets. I also do bullet journaling, so an example would be:

- Signup for Mastodon

- Post more photos to Instagram

- Experiment with ChatGPT

DerekBickerton··on Discovering which parts of the brain are engaged when coding
> the chore of writing code

It's only a chore when you can't envision the end result when everything falls into place and everything just works with zero/minimal bugs and the program behaves just as you imagined. This is the payoff moment we all should anticipate when coding, not seeing it as a 'chore' but as a sort of delayed gratification exercise where we reap what we sow.

DerekBickerton··on The dark side of setting goals
> But in many cases, goals have economic rewards that make them more salient or powerful

If you're making a Faustian bargain / selling your soul and going against your own principles just to make money at all costs, then such goals are immoral. Instinctively we know what the right thing to do is, and aligning goals with your own moral compass is much better.

DerekBickerton··on I Lost All Faith in LastPass
For me, one cloud solution, and a local KeepassXC database as a fallback. Works like magic. If the cloud solution (Bitwarden) fails, then I fallback to Keepass.
DerekBickerton··on I Lost All Faith in LastPass
Bitwarden is great, and their commercial offering of $10.00 per year is so cheap as to be effectively free. My only issue is the fact their servers could be wiped and I no longer have access to my data, but that's where KeepassXC comes in. I keep one Bitwarden and one Keepass DB as a fallback, and keep them updated with the same login entries. I store my KeepassXC database in various cloud storage services, as-well as keeping various local copies.
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