HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Mithorium

229 karma · joined March 11, 2013

submissionscomments
Mithorium··on Boeing 787 Suffers Rare Dual Engine Failure on Landing
To save people the reading, the safety feature triggered was an automatic dive maneuver initiated by the flight computer as a result of an incorrect angle-of-attack sensor reading causing the plane to believe it was in a stall, when it actually wasn't

I didn't look into it any further, but based on that alone I would agree that this seems like a shitty feature, perhaps a loud alarm or other warning would be more appropriate than putting the plane in a dive without human intervention

Mithorium··on US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
I have coworkers like that too, guys who've been working for much longer than me (and getting paid more), without savings. We're not working at a minimum wage job, how do they even manage to spend all of that? Do they not plan on retiring one day? You can't possibly work till the day you die
Mithorium··on Richard Stallman: We Can Do Better Than Bitcoin
The evil seller doesn't ship the item but signs the product shipped message anyway. Who's gonna stop them, it's not like the blockchain knows if they actually shipped it or not. Or maybe they shipped a fake or non working item. Then what?
Mithorium··on A debt-collection machine that’s chewing up small businesses across America
>Bush’s contracts with Yellowstone show that the company advanced him a total of about $250,000 and that he paid them back more than $600,000.

how do people get tricked into agreeing to terms like this

Mithorium··on Google paid Andy Rubin $90M while keeping silent about a misconduct claim
Well I guess our disagreement is that the world at that point had the dynamic where any electronic item was to be confused with a bomb. I was alive in 2007, some LED lights arranged in a star would certainly not have screamed "bomb" at me, and I would not have expected anyone else to have been scared of it either. If she was carrying around a clock like that one kid made, maybe, but even by 2007 movie standards a bomb would at least have a countdown timer of some kind

I'm imagining her wearing something like https://www.flashingblinkylights.com/jade-led-christmas-tree... with a little less production value, if that can be mistaken for a bomb then those people better stay away from office christmas parties

Mithorium··on Google paid Andy Rubin $90M while keeping silent about a misconduct claim
Well, if in her view, it was just a nametag and not a scary piece of technology, then I think it's reasonable to not understand why anyone would be uneasy. Did people wearing google glasses back when that was a thing respond to everyone who harassed them about it? If you were walking with your phone in your hand and someone came up to you accusing you of trying to bomb them, would you bother responding or just roll your eyes and keep walking?

Or other similar airport stories I've read of people in an airport terminal remoting into work being accused of hacking because scary linux terminals are the tools of hackers who are trying to hack planes and crash them. If that happened to me, I'd probably ignore the person while thinking to myself "what the fuck is this guy's problem, have they never seen a computer before"

Mithorium··on Google paid Andy Rubin $90M while keeping silent about a misconduct claim
the only naivete I can find in those links is that of the airport workers thinking a light up nametag is a bomb. About as ridiculous as the time boston shut down over some light up LED signs [1]. Something has wires and LED lights? Must be a bomb, no other explanation possible

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic

Mithorium··on The NSA Called Me After Midnight and Requested My Source Code
Arguably stronger than the locks on most home doors, that could be picked in under a minute
Mithorium··on The NSA Called Me After Midnight and Requested My Source Code
I should hope he didn't roll his own encryption, pretty sure openssl existed in 2000, the NSA could have gotten a copy of that easily
Mithorium··on The NSA Called Me After Midnight and Requested My Source Code
not the master key, the schematics to the lock maybe. Assuming no bugs, I don't see how the source code could help in any way, they may as well have downloaded the source code for openssl.

He also didn't bother to verify whether it was a matter of life or death, he just immediately assumed he was helping break into a file containing the deactivation code for a bomb or something, who knows what the NSA was actually doing.

Mithorium··on The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says
No tether has ever been destroyed. While tether in its terms maintains that Tethers are redeemable "provided that you are a fully verified customer of Tether" [1], there is no known case of this ever happening, in fact it is a running joke that the tether signup page [2] is permanently suspended. Nor does anyone know who is buying them (and causing their creation). For example, when $250m of them were printed in june [3], which customer was it that deposited $250m USD? Or did they print them out of thin air? Nobody knows for sure.

But if they are in fact backed 1:1 with USDs, then it raises the question: if the tether peg is slipping below $1, why doesn't Tether or one of these alleged "verified customers" buy them up at a discount, redeem and destroy them for USD, and bank the difference?

The answer to this question is left as an exercise for the reader.

[1] https://tether.to/legal/

[2] https://wallet.tether.to/app/#!/signup

[3] https://omniexplorer.info/tx/bd9520b9aea701e9606ad8a8f4d6852...

Mithorium··on SETI spots dozens of new mysterious signals emanating from distant galaxy
I don't know if I'd describe the speed of light as "low", more like the universe is really, really big
Mithorium··on Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling
Someone have a readable version? Article shows up for 250ms on my screen then disappears leaving only the reuters header, tried switching browsers and everything
Mithorium··on 385 Feet of Crazy: The Most Audacious Flying Machine
so the plane will tow the rocket beyond the environment? as long as the front doesn't fall off, seems like a good plan
Mithorium··on Show HN: Trends – A GitHub trending PWA
Never used next, looks interesting. So with this setup, the browser doesn't do any work, all pages are loaded as if they were static, and rendered server side?
Mithorium··on Airbnb could plan to IPO by late 2020
Late response, but I think it has to due with social pressure. You may meet the host in person, and feel bad about giving someone you know "personally" a bad rating. Additionally, they are also rating you as a guest, so it may be awkward if you gave a bad rating when they give you a good one, so people skew the ratings up.
Mithorium··on Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept
I also distinctly remember enjoying going to the mall as a kid because of the fountains and glass ceiling atrium, lots of seating spaces, is that not a thing anymore?
Mithorium··on “Good Luck with That” Public License
leave it to the lawyers to take the fun out of everything :(
Mithorium··on NPM proxy users receiving ERR 418 I'm a teapot
we are ALL teapots on this blessed day :)
Mithorium··on Gmail Icons are Hard
I was interested to see what that looked like and found

Opening down: http://www.mobiletechworld.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/...

Opening up: http://i.stack.imgur.com/gZdjo.png

I like it

Mithorium··on David Marcus Leaves Messenger to Focus on Blockchain Within Facebook
This reminds me of "lets do x, except in THE CLOUD" all over again. fight censorship by putting things in THE CLOUD where it can't easily be blocked, stream video from THE CLOUD

wasn't "the cloud" supposed to do decentralization too? hmm

Mithorium··on Buffett bashes Bitcoin as nonproductive, thriving on mystique
The technology has existed for many years already, and it has already made 'broader implications', see git. The only thing new about it is that people now call it 'blockchain' instead of a merkle tree. The reason banks and governments don't use better technology to track land titles or whatever other applications is that they're always slow to adopt technology, not because 'blockchain' is a new concept
Mithorium··on Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality
lazy actor: I print out the barcodes, and stick them on the paper rolls at random

bad actor: I manufacture the cheaper rolls, and stick labels for the expensive ones on, and scan them

How will "the blockchain" prevent either scenario

Mithorium··on Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots
I imagine something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MKcTbYDP7w except for bricks
Mithorium··on With SESTA/FOSTA, lawmakers failed to separate good intentions from bad law
What about airlines with online booking websites? People have travelled for sex tourism to countries with trafficked sex workers, and it's such a known phenomenon that there's no reasonable way the operators of an airline could be unaware of it. And yet, they still sell tickets. By the letter of the law, that can certainly "make easier or less difficult" the sex trade by facilitating the transportation of potential customers. Are they then criminally liable if someone is found to have flown on their airline for the purpose of sex tourism?
Mithorium··on Google bans cryptocurrency ads
All her tweets on the subject are great

>Internet rando 2: What about people who live under oppressed governments with unsound currency

>Me: Only if the problem with their currency is that it's not volatile enough and the transaction speeds are too fast

>"People are sick of the Federal Reserve, sick of bailouts, sick of inflation. You know what we need? Internet money with the usability of PGP and the stability of BART service"

Mithorium··on Questions for TSA after reports of laptop and phone searches on domestic flights
If it's been 2 years, can they even prove that he can still remember the password? He hasn't had to use it for over 2 years, it would be entirely probable his memory of it has faded.

How about this theoretical situation: I place an encrypted file in a hard drive belonging to someone I dislike, and then frame them circumstantially with the likely possession of contraband data on said hard drive. Since he owns the device, he may be so unlucky as to have the authorities believe he knows how to decrypt the file despite him claiming he has no knowledge of how the file came to be or how to decrypt it. If they will not accept that argument, this seems like a good way to place a political opponent in jail indefinitely by someone with the means to craft such a scenario

Mithorium··on Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet
on the contrary, popular opinions would gather more karma, thus allowing them to share their ideas more often, unpopular opinions will quickly have their posting ability removed via downvotes. Soon enough only the prevailing popular opinion will be found

I had the same idea at first but I don't think it would work in practice

Mithorium··on The brazenness of the LIBOR scam
wasn't there a judge somewhere that gave people a choice between a "creative" punishment and a traditional one? I found at least one example at http://abcnews.go.com/US/ohio-judge-unusual-punishments-peop...

Unsure what the legal justification is though

Mithorium··on Ending Bitcoin Support
Well, if people decide to use it that way nobody can stop them. In my opinion, that would be an inefficient way of using the network, since if you pay with XLM today you need to first buy some, taking a loss on the conversion since you have to go through either eth or btc, then the payee needs to sell it (again with another intermediate currency) to get the money to pay their operating costs, and they'll likely charge a processing fee for that, and at that point you may as well be using a credit card.

On the other hand, if you use it like intended by getting USD stellar tokens from an anchor, and paying with those, the merchant can more or less accept them at face value (if they trust the anchor to give them USD for the token)

Page 1 of 2Next →