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Out_of_Characte

787 karma · joined August 11, 2019

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Out_of_Characte··on Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
That probability is entirely based on the premise that the extradition treaties that the UK has signed with other countries would NOT follow UK law despite the treaty soley based on the premise of being a political refugee for their free expression. What will likely happen, and what often happens with other countries in the third world, is that 'politically problematic' people are being caught in neighbouring countries only to be sent back based on friendly geopolitics. There's no law for lawlessness. This is what happens when north koreans escape and get caught in china or russia. This is what could happen when you accidently post something of political consequence on a tiny motorcycle website that isn't usually being watched but one angry user could be someone's worst nightmare. Also, gangs of motorcycle enthousiasts havent been the most inconsequential group of people you could have used as an example.
Out_of_Characte··on Tuta Launches Post Quantum Cryptography for Email (2024)
I would agree with you if the risk was only the in-flight asymmetric crypto data. But as I understand it, when you use non-pq asymmetric crypto to roll the symmetric key in, then you would still risk the unbreakable symmetric encryption when the carrier protocol gets broken. Reusing the same key would be an amateur mistake. Now, 'just replace the asymmetric crypto' becomes, 'your data is only safe in-flight because everyone knows our shared symmetric key'

All of this is very low risk but anyone wishing to have post quantum encryption probaly wouldn't appreciate three letter agencies having all of the symmetric keys if you ever used the weaker algo versions in a post quantum world.

>You can just replace the non-pq asymmetric protection with pq asymmetric protection.

Would you really feel safe with that?

Out_of_Characte··on ChatGPT Saved My Life (no, seriously, I'm writing this from the ER)
To be fair, This is what AI is good at. No matter what problem you're trying to solve, AI will provide a solution.

In this case, lab result analysis was entirely based around standard care protocols that LLM is really good at regurgitating back to you.

Yeah sure, anyone could probaly promt feed this into a homeopathy solution which would have killed the patient as per their own predisposed will. You could argue a standard programmatic diagnostic evaluation would be better but its not entirely clear wether human decision making improves based on webMD above an agitated Chatgpt urging you to seek professional help.

And now that I think about it more, no one except doctors and AI could reliably improve diagnosis based on a picture and lab results side by side. So if your healthcare system doesn't provide a response then chatgpt might actually be the closest neighbour in time of need.

Out_of_Characte··on Tuta Launches Post Quantum Cryptography for Email (2024)
What many miss is that updating your encryption algorithm now means decrypting all your previous data and then reencrypting it with the new algo. This is very expensive, time consuming and is something that you must do before encryption is broken or before your encrypted data is stored for later decryption.

This move, hopefully, promises to avoid this headache if the algo is actually post-quantum.

Out_of_Characte··on US court upholds Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes's conviction
She could not have been charged with crimes against investors if the patient's blood work results were correct. She knowingly lied about the capability of these devices knowing it would garner investors. That's the crime she got convicted of, luckely no one appears to have died from the invalid medical testing.
Out_of_Characte··on Student refines 100-year-old math problem, expanding wind energy possibilities
OP claims this was not written in the paper because it was speculative, not quantitative. Nowhere in the paper did she ever claim to have made an x% improvement over the original work. Not making such claim in the paper itself is a testimony on how the scientific method should be applied. Of course anyone would hope to make a difference in the world, of wind turbine blades, and her comment does just that.

Its just classic HN reductionalism to reduce certain unverifiable claims down to its core principle.

some more equally valid remarks:

"Moving wind turbines just 50km closer to power consumers would decrease transmission loss by .5%"

"Building 102 wind turbines would be a 2% increase over the planned 100"

This is exactly the type of content I love to hate on HN

Out_of_Characte··on NASA Downgrades the Risk of 2024 YR4 to Below 1%
These types of probabilities aren't absolute in the same way that flipping a coin has 50/50 odds.

Its more like a monty hall problem, each door either contains an asteroid collision, or proof that its not going to hit earth. But we dont have perfect information on the size, albedo, spin or orbit of the asteroid so most doors are closed. Each time we open a door and do not find the asteroid, the probability of finding proof of an earth collision AND a proof that its going to miss will go up.

Calculating a spacecraft/asteroid trajectory is already precise enough to land a mars rover in the correct target area. But we know the exact properties of the spacecraft so all the doors are open.

Out_of_Characte··on Woman who had pioneering cancer treatment 18 years ago still in remission
That's great to hear but, your risk of cancer before diagnosis and after you're cured is, at best, the same.
Out_of_Characte··on After 20 years, math couple solves major group theory problem
Way ahead of you, pal. I am my own grandpa.

https://youtu.be/eYlJH81dSiw?si=NNPDjaWV-OzrP2JU

Out_of_Characte··on Saronic raises $600M in Series C to mass-produce autonomous warships
So far, from a technology demonstration perspective, it has become somewhat clear that more degrees of freedom makes autonomous operations easier. road vehicles suffer from terrible decision making in realtime whereas airplanes and drones seem to work sufficiently for cost effective operations. Ships are somewhere inbetween. As long as they are autonomous enough to return to base then maintenance shouldn't be a blocker. Also, the living space requirements on a ship is also a risk because of free surface effects on the interiour.

I think autonomous marine assets are as effective as their engine reliability.

Out_of_Characte··on A password generator inspired by the Xkcd password spec
I've had long form passwords cut short without informing me at all until I failed the account creation, login and password reset multiple times. I counted every character that was displayed during password creation and matched it exactly with what I've entered only to find out the login portal cut my password by one character.

It did give me inspiration for another infuriating username ^

Out_of_Characte··on After 20 Years, Math Couple Solves Major Group Theory Problem
They found their succession
Out_of_Characte··on Diablo hackers uncovered a speedrun scandal
Thats just not what a segmented run is. Just like any game that allows save-states, you could abuse save states to retry any part of 'the run' changing the entire save file to a different run and 'splicing' them together is splicing, which is not allowed. Tweaking fireball damage is literally hacking the game to get the desired result. Unless you find a way to perform ACE with your inputs. Which is not the case here.
Out_of_Characte··on Vim after Bram: a core maintainer on how they've kept it going
Our window of compatibility only seems to grow larger over time. Old systems mostly get replaced when they lose function or the replacement becomes cheaper. But the replacement usually expects to last slightly longer than what its replacing. We've seen this slowly creep up in home computers, phones and even servers. I would argue that this is a function of small incremental improvements in everything from hard drives to computing.

Lots of designs from the past can no longer connect to the internet in a meaningfull capacity but new hardware today might meaningfully last far longer than the developers could even anticipate.

Out_of_Characte··on ICE wants to know if you're posting negative things about it online
Its just a lose-lose situation for ice.

1) they have been prevented from deporting all illegal aliens directly due to political influences in so-called sanctuary cities and various state laws.

2) now ICE is required by law, legislation and trump to deport those who have been living there for years. Illegals have no recourse other than notifying the agencies that are trying to remove them.

3) This HAS to be done in order to naturalise those that are eligible for citizenship.

4) all draconian measures mentioned in the article are probaly entirely justified given that certain people have been driven in to a corner with no way out after being in the US for years.

Not assessing the death threats would be foolish, knowing who is very interested in avoiding ICE and lives in the US is also of utmost importance.

Out_of_Characte··on The year I didn't survive
>ive got like three major deaths in my family and more coming.

>this is just poetic literature

>theres nothing novel about this post

There's certainly something in there that I can agree with. Though I dont think you'd appreciate the irony as well as I do.

Out_of_Characte··on The year I didn't survive
I dont think the title is hiding its intend
Out_of_Characte··on An Infinitely Large Napkin [pdf] (2019)
This quite literally points out a thousand things I havent fully understood about mathematics in a concise manner.
Out_of_Characte··on Show HN: Matle – A Daily Chess Puzzle Inspired by Wordle
Managed to guess it on the first try after realising it looked like a real game. Bit sad to see only one puzzle per day.

Sharing the result also reveils the solution in copied text, maybe remove that so someone could share the exact puzzle without immediatly seeing the solution.

Out_of_Characte··on How does fentanyl get into the US?
>fent sales would plummet

None of what you've described is how any of this works in the real world.

There's an entire world of behaviour from a seller's perspective for every drug and an entire set of behaviour from a user's perspective. They match closely to how 'legal' alcohol production and consumption works. Biggest profits are from the biggest addicts of alcohol and their suppliers are all on the stock exchange for everyone to see. Beer almost never kills anyone, same with the production from large reputable companies. but if you find a great deal of homemade hard liqour make sure you test for ethanol and methanol. Thats simply how addicts die no matter the product they are using.

'some white powder' could literally be anything and everything. Idiots could cut it up wrong and what previously got you high just fine might potentially be a lethal dose right in front of you in the form of a powdery white line with no way to tell. Theres the mostly harmless chemicals used to reduce dose to cut the dealer more profit but could still not be mixed properly so new users wouldn't be able to notice. Then theres the nitazenes and other stuff that most tests only detect 'presence of' but not the dose so you would still have to throw everything out even though it might be mixed and dosed properly. And then theres the less addicted group who doesn't even bother with anything ever and only wants the pure stuff in large single batches in order to test fully and properly. Those people never get screwed over because thats what they pay for.

Out_of_Characte··on NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients
Life uses the exact same chemistry as any inorganic process exept life is far more competent than random reaction products. This is why the expected origin is inorganic as left handed and right handed are equally likely to occur in an inorganic process. So occams razor suggests that either 1) life must specifically balance their left-right handed molecules 2) Other processes that favor any handedness must not be present.

or the process is inorganic which we know couldn't favor left or righthandedness in the first place.

Out_of_Characte··on String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
Someone who follows politics to anticipate possible consequences is considered 'rational' think of the 25% tariffs trump enacts. You dont even need to have an opinion on the matter but you shouldn't be suprised when the bill comes around. What I think people consider political destruction of the mind is when someone is consumed by the actions of a character that does not and should not have influence over their behaviour.
Out_of_Characte··on Impact of Low Temperatures on the 5nm SRAM Array Size and Performance
On earth, difficult as you need to pay the price of being inside a 300 kelvin enviroment. But there's no such temparature in space, just the size of your radiator you'll need anyway. So there may be a very real performance improvement from doing math in space.
Out_of_Characte··on What happened to the world's largest tube TV? [video]
Would that really be better than letting your family sell it to the highest bidder? The only real concern I see if its value falls below the metal it contains or the mover breaks it. If a family cannot sell and does not value it then whats the point of keeping it?
Out_of_Characte··on Cerebrum: Simulate and infer synaptic connectivity in large-scale brain networks
I would agree if their goal indeed is to put a mind in a jar but, I've not read anything in the article that could indicate that. So may I suggest my own interpretation:

Accurate understanding of 'normal' brain behaviour might lead to increased understanding of brain diseases. Thats why alzheimers was mentioned. But more importantly, if our understanding of the brain becomes good enough, we might be able to make a neural net understand our thoughts if we can adapt to it.

Out_of_Characte··on A visual proof that a^2 – b^2 = (a + b)(a – b)
Negative area's can be the only practical solution. Imagine the worst case: a 10*10 room with a pillar in the middle. How would you calculate that?
Out_of_Characte··on Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'
Some people have the most bizarre hobbies. From photographing bigfoot to ufo's or planespotters. I dont intend to understand all of them but photographing drones might be one of the more moral ones in this century. Just imagine drones filming your living room, or military installations like feared in the article. Having someone record such incidents is appreciated.
Out_of_Characte··on NAND Flash Targets 1k Layers
>export rules restrict stacks of more than 128 layers. So countries subject to those restrictions get an end-around by simply stacking 128-layer modules

I'm interested in the story behind this.

Out_of_Characte··on AMD Disables Zen 4's Loop Buffer
You're probaly right on the mark with this. Though even desktops and servers can benefit from lower idle power draw. So there is a chance that it might have been moved to a different c-state.
Out_of_Characte··on Security researchers identify new malware targeting Linux
A backdoor is a literal door that the building was designed with. Whatever purpose it served, criminals could sometimes use it to gain covert access.
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