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RupertSalt

157 karma · joined February 9, 2026

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RupertSalt··on Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
Now whenever the cameras detect a lost dog, all your neighbors' phones begin playing "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan
RupertSalt··on [dead]
How Dare You!
RupertSalt··on Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver
The latter.

They appear to be distinguished externally by the vehicle model and new sensor design. Currently, the production fleet in Phoenix and elsewhere consists of the Jaguar I-PACE.

The sixth generation would have been in testing phases -- closed tracks, simulations, and supervised driving. Now they're deploying on the Waymo Ojai (Zeekr) and Hyundai's IONIQ 5.

This is way more fun than I ever had in my Corolla.

From the company who got the world "go-goo"ing like infants, I, for one, can't wait to say "O HAI" to my new ride, or "Isn't it IONIQ, don't you think?"

RupertSalt··on What's the difference between a "disc" and a "disk"? (2023)
A disc jockey is an entertainer who spins records or compact discs to play music.

A discothèque is a nightclub where disc jockeys can perform live, spinning to create a party atmosphere for socializing and dancing.

In the United States, the word was quickly shortened to "disco" and became closely associated with the mirror ball on the ceiling and the eponymous style of music and dancing.

So when new styles of music overtook the nightclubs, they shed the "disco" appellation as well. It seems to still enjoy a lot of use in European cities, though.

RupertSalt··on America's Cyber Defense Agency Is Burning Down and Nobody's Coming to Put It Out
Traditional malware relies on delivery of “payload” with a custom program and data, and/or establishing persistence by installing files to local storage.

These behaviors generate distinctive evidence of compromise in-progress, active, and after the fact, so your AV software or forensics team can identify it.

“Living off the Land” means minimizing or eliminating the payloads and the system modifications, and leveraging anything and everything that is found already existing in the system.

Obviously while presenting extra logistical challenges, LOL can be stealthier and easier to deploy on your target systems.

RupertSalt··on Show HN: A free online British accent generator for instant voice conversion
During an opening scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Dr. Jones is surrounded by hostile Russian soldiers, but he immediately observes that Dr. Irina Spalko [Cate Blanchett] "isn't from around here" and he goes on to describe her unique accent, correctly naming her origin as Eastern Ukrain[ian Soviet Socialist Republic].

https://youtu.be/Wr6VlTfdhxw?si=Eqy8j6jz49-vAA5x

RupertSalt··on Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport
I tried writing a comment to explain the Chicano perspective, but since I am a non-Chicano American, I was just making things up.

Suffice it to say that the Chicano experience and perspectives on nationalism are different than that of typical Americans. And that Americans cannot understand the political relationships or the border states or the Chicano enclaves without accepting that our perspective is not shared by them, and their worldviews on race, ethnicity, culture, territory, nationalism and legal status has led us to this point in 2026.

Our national motto is "E PLURIBUS UNUM" and our structure is a republic with 50 states. But like the Internet is a network of networks, the United States is a nation of immigrants, where not everyone is playing by the same rules.

RupertSalt··on The missing digit of Stela C
Now that piques my interest. Could you be more specific?

Using Stellarium, set the location to Tres Zapotes, but not knowing how far off the calendar's reckoning would be, the closest I have come is a partial solar eclipse, after 9pm on September 1, -23.

Stellarium literally indicates a "Year 0" so BC years could be off-by-one, or off-by-Julian-and-equinox-precession, I just have no idea.

Wikipedia doesn't list any [Lunar/Solar] that are anywhere near 32 BC.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45922610

RupertSalt··on Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
Ireland currently has a population of approximately 5,501,000 people. There is great news: Bono and the rest of his band have agreed to provide subsidies for the 5,499,000 citizens who aren't receiving the BIA funds, and they'll brand this supplemental program as U2BI.

The website will be established shortly as https://ww2.u2bi.ie:212/ as soon as the registrars can correct the typos.

  /s
RupertSalt··on The missing digit of Stela C
Well good work, you insightful claude!
RupertSalt··on The missing digit of Stela C
Okay, my fault for skipping a lot of stuff in the middle, but a question began to burn in my mind. They have determined the full inscription, calculated the Olmec date, and correlated it to our Gregorian reckoning. The end of the article says:

  So, while 32 BC seemed awfully early for the Olmecs to carve this stone, there’s no way they could have done it later. (Or earlier, for that matter.)
But I am not sure if this resolves the burning question: what makes everyone believe that the inscription corresponded to the current date? Certainly, that is a common custom when erecting a monument, but what if Olmec logic said "let us commemorate this auspicious event that occurred 300 years ago!" or "Let us anticipate the far future in 5,000 years from now!" for example.
RupertSalt··on Rare, dangerous side effects of some Covid-19 vaccines explained
This is a salient point: the mRNA method of inoculation is radically different from conventional "vaccines" as invented by Sabin and Salk (peace be upon them).

The traditional vaccines rely on a large industrial supply of chicken eggs or other precursors, even human stem cells. The manufacturers of traditional vaccines need to culture trillions of colonies of virulent strains, and store those viruses colonies long enough to weaken/kill them and then assemble a vaccine with the remnants. Sorry, I meant "contain them with biohazard safety facilities and protocols" which are euphemistically known as "labs".

I found essentially no moral objection to mRNA inoculations, unless you consider that the fungible funds we pay are going to the same pharmaceutical virus factories that manufacture and store influenza, polio, pertussis, tetanus, and other dangerous organisms. It would be really cool if we, as a civilization, could move past that stage, or at least enact treaties and disarmament protocols for the nations which are stockpiling them. But somehow, the general public doesn't see it that way.

RupertSalt··on Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
Well, they would have the legal right to force-choke your account, or chain your partner to a golden bikini, when they discover that you weren't abiding by the Terms and Conditions which you agreed to. Seems fair.
RupertSalt··on Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
Neither nation promises universal income: 8,000 Irish artists applied, and 2,000 were accepted.

Likewise, with the NEA, since they offer grants, you'd need to qualify, apply, and justify your work, and probably renew on an annual basis.

Ireland selected the applicants randomly. I would suppose the 8,000 needed to meet qualifications first.

Ireland promises €325/week. The NEA grants seem to be on a project basis.

So neither of these programs are anything like UBI. UBI is the buzzword that sets us all atwitter with eager hopefulness and aspirations.

Artist grant programs are more like "publish or perish" research scholars. Most grant recipients view the application process as daunting and stressful, especially when it's not in their wheelhouse. "Grant writer" is a job title and a profession unto itself these days. Even charities and welfare organizations depend on grants themselves, so their recipients may be cut off if the grants don't come in on time and fill their budgets.

Ireland's program is like being on the dole. "Here's enough to subsist on while you do your art and try to establish yourself." After 3 years, they're cut off for 3 years, so the incentive exists to become self-sufficient in that time.

Subsidizing the arts has been the realm of religion, including Christianity, for thousands of years. Michelangelo and Bernini were among thousands and thousands of artists who were funded by the Church to create music, sculpture, architecture, images, and any other sacred object in their service. If socialism or communism are the first thing to spring to your mind, please rethink and consider that these philosophies sought to supplant the original collectives: religions; and the religious leaders and patrons were distributing wealth to every possible artisan and artist and composer and performer, in the service of truth, beauty, and goodness. Nobody knows the pain of shrinking churches like Ireland does, and so it really is incumbent on their secular government to pick up the tab here, lest the hands of artists become idle and restless.

RupertSalt··on Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
Now look at them yo-yos,

that's the way you do it

You play the guitar on the MTV

That ain't workin',

that's the way you do it

Money for nothin'

and your chicks for free

We got to install microwave ovens,

custom kitchen delivery

We got to move these refrigerators,

we got to move these Color TVs...

Dire Straits, Money for Nothing, 1985

Guest artist: Sting

https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Dire-Straits/Money-for-Not...

RupertSalt··on How to make a living as an artist
In the days of the Beatles, and throughout the heyday of the recording industry, the artists and their management pursued "hits", to be sure, and wanted to be seen on the Billboard charts and in rotation on the radio. But that was secondary to sales figures.

It was the RIAA that certified sales figures and awarded the Gold Record, Platinum, and Double Platinum prizes. There were various formats that records could be distributed in, but let's simplify to the "album" and the "single".

A single was typically one song on each side, A/B, and the A-side was considered desirable and marketable. Singles were purchased first by radio and dance DJs so they could be played individually on demand. There was a secondary retail market for singles, so consumers could purchase them as well.

The record album developed from a set of many 78 discs and coalesced into a single, Long-Play, 33.33 RPM record. Its capacity was about 6 songs per side, depending on their length.

There were various strategies for collecting songs into an album, such as a sampler of the artist's best, all their performances in a year's sessions, or even various artists. During the Beatles' fame, the "Concept Album" and "Album-Oriented Radio" (AOR) came into being.

So you could sell singles with one hit song, and this would propel the "B-side" into people's homes as well, so they may get curious, flip it over, and play the B-side, but B-sides were often considered lower quality, disposable, or less popular.

An album could sell great if it had one hit track. Recording companies would usually peel off the best tracks on an album to release as singles too, so that the radio play would promote the band and drive sales of the entire album. Many people who heard a hit song would be disappointed when they spent a lot of money on an album, only to find "filler" in-between, because the album format usually guaranteed a certain runtime or number of tracks.

When the Beatles produced "Sgt. Pepper" it was a foray into the "concept album" where all the tracks contributed to a cohesive idea or theme. This tended to enhance album sales over singles, because the single would be a peek into the larger "concept" and whet the public appetite for the whole thing.

When "Album-Oriented Rock" became popular, the DJs were freed from the constraints of playing "hit singles" in isolation and they were more encouraged to explore the unreleased tracks ("deep cuts") from albums, as well as tracks of longer duration that weren't appropriate for hit radio stations. In turn, AOR bands were under less pressure to release their "hit single" for every album and shielded from the phenomenon of "one-hit wonders" while instead their audience was, again, encouraged to invest in an entire album.

In the 1980s, a 45 RPM single may cost $1.50 or $2, while a full-length album was $8.99 to $12. The format switch to cassettes was sort of masterful, because for a while, the 2-track single format was abandoned, and consumers were kind of forced to get the entire album on cassette.

Yes I've ignored a lot of rough edges here, like the older 78s, and 8-track cassettes, and classical radio, but that was basically the landscape for pop artists, who needed hits but first and foremost, needed sales. The Beatles also capitalized on another enduring method of driving record sales: live performances and world tours. It wasn't called "The British Invasion" for nothing.

RupertSalt··on Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
In the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts has issued more than 128,000 grants, totaling more than $5 billion, to fund the projects of American artists. These subsidies have not lacked controversy, and were eventually challenged at the Supreme Court level, during the Clinton administration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_the_Art...

If you or your parents would like to sample a NSFW taste of your tax dollars at work, try this deep cut from Plaintiff Karen Finley: https://youtu.be/5gk6JCeGExo?si=FEqZtLlDiQDr0_XI

What criteria of artistic merit, cultural relevance, and common decency will Irish artists need to meet, in order to qualify for their basic income?

RupertSalt··on Reports of Telnet's death have been greatly exaggerated
Instead, they chose a classic, yet timeless pop-culture reference: Mark Twain in 1897.

http://isabevigodadead.com/ [That's right, kids. There is no HTTPS server.]

RupertSalt··on Reports of Telnet's death have been greatly exaggerated
This is, as far as I know, a completely accurate and factual take. It is also nearly irrelevant.

The two entities which have reported on this event are looking for tcp traffic on port 23, not TELNET protocol traffic. So indeed, as you say, if they are tunneled in VPN, or encapsulated or using an alternate port, tn3270 traffic will not be detect on port 23/tcp. Telnet over TLS is assigned to port 992, so any RFC-compliant implementation would be found there, and irrelevant, again, to the telnetd CVE reported this year.

There are two facets to January's incident: the vulnerability in the GNU implementation of telnetd, and the purported, widespread blocking of port 23. The original report went out because of the coincidence they perceived there, and especially because the latter preceded the disclosure of the vulnerability!

Mainframe tn3270 servers would not be subject to this vulnerability. If there had been a port filter in place, it only would've tripped-up the mainframes that still used port 23, which is evidently optional, and it says here that many admins want to keep AIX's telnetd bound to port 23 anyway.

So it is good to know that TELNET protocol, and its extensions, are alive and well. We may not actually know how many clients and servers implement the protocol itself, since MUDs made this a routine thing, but certainly the deployment of IBM systems is formidable, considering the sheer mass of the iron in their rack mounts.

RupertSalt··on Reports of Telnet's death have been greatly exaggerated
If you want a disinterested perspective from the Research & Education community, look to CAIDA, the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis: https://www.caida.org/

Also I just found "Hawkeye" the author of TinyFugue, Ken Keys, employed here! Cool beans!

RupertSalt··on Reports of Telnet's death have been greatly exaggerated
Were your MUDs on port 23? <runs and hides>

For Tiny* servers, "raw telnet" was considered a ghetto experience. The worst part was that the asynchronous output would just stream in whether or not you were done typing, and you'd invariably lose track of what your input line looked like. So the primary task of a TinyMUD client was to separate them. Some used a "split screen", and some just kept refreshing the input line as new output was displayed.

None of our MUDs ever appeared on port 23 and none of our servers ever spoke "The TELNET Protocol" as found in RFC 854. Telnet was simply the bundled TCP client that you could use for anything.

The other cool features for a MUD client was using macros to perform repeated tasks or say interesting things, and /hilite and /gag were indispensable. /gag silenced/muted a player or a pattern-match of your choice, and so to play with "raw telnet" was to unblock all your /gagged players and let them get under your skin again. A fate truly worse than death (well you got paid "insurance" for dying, so many people enjoyed the experience.)

Also popular in Tiny* clients was cursor line-editing and a command history. One client developer was sort of a troll, and so when he forked "tinywar" it began to feature some automation that could permit a player to make a real nuisance of themselves. But he was also a great programmer, and not all tinywar users were trolls, so it got put to good use.

Ultimately, Explorer_Bob wrote TinyFugue, and Ken Keys "Hawkeye" took over development, pushing it into amazing heights on a level with MUSH programming, and TinyFugue basically became the gold standard client for Unix and was also ported to Win32, and ultimately abandoned in an extremely stable state. I went to school with Ken. Miss you, man!

RupertSalt··on A shortage of tenors
I wouldn't say that the women are less valuable! Anyone who can play a pipe organ and has the other skills to put in hours on weekly performances and rehearsals, they are rare and indispensable to the place that has the organ.

If someone plays the guitar they can purchase their own guitar, maintain it and carry it wherever they play. Same for a violin or flute or any typical instrument. Piano skills are also fungible because anyone can buy a synth keyboard or an upright and practice at home just fine. While large, even a grand piano can be wheeled in and out of a building if necessary.

But a pipe organ is part of the building. More properly, the building is an inseperable part of the pipe organ. When an organ company builds a pipe organ, they put an Opus number on it because they're going to be unique to fit the space and needs of the community. They're going to last for decades or hundreds of years and they are not going anywhere. The community has come together to install it and commit to its maintenance.

I attended a church with a modestly-sized electronic (non-pipe) organ built in 1980. There was a praise band with drums, guitar, bass, and a very shiny grand piano. The organ had fallen into disuse and it was unclear whether it could be played. We limped along with that lovely piano for a long time, but the organ was finally rescued. Another church had installed a very lovely "theater" style pipe organ, that was also modestly small, and had chronic problems due to the climate environment in the loft. So eventually, it was retired, and a very impressive MIDI organ was also placed in the loft, while they were not really able to remove the previous one. Unfortunately, the leadership and the music ministers cycled rapidly, and they appear to have abandoned the loft entirely...

So, with an investment like that, a church cannot afford to be without an organist. Some are happy just to have someone who knows how to play. Often, an organist may have other roles, such as directing, singing, composing, or administrative. But the organ is the primary and lead instrument. They are always going to be the focal point of the music program. Male and female alike.

RupertSalt··on Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
They were not, actually.

IIRC, it went like this: the account creation screen prompted them for a birthdate. They entered a fictitious one and pretended to be over 13. (I saw my niece do this in front of me, and I just sighed a very heavy sigh. She was way more interested in Club Penguin.)

Then later, they let the cat out of the bag. They tell their friends "lol I'm only 10! Today's my birthday, so give me a hat!" or something. And so if they claimed they're 10 they got 3 years suspension.

I think there was never any verification done, and no verification was possible: think about it, under COPPA, a service in the USA cannot collect PII from children under 13, so what do you do when a kid gives you two contradicting datapoints? Err on the side of caution.

I gave Yahoo! a false birthdate when I signed up. I was 27, but I also just felt they weren't entitled to knowing it. However, I soon found that maintaining a fraudulent identity is tiresome and error-prone. And Yahoo! wouldn't let me simply change my birthdate as often as I wanted to.

I once had a conversation with a friend about cheating on IRS taxes. She said "can you lie to a piece of paper?" like fudging numbers wasn't like lying to an auditor's face. It was a rhetorical question, of course.

RupertSalt··on US labels SpaceX a common carrier by air, will regulate firm under railway law
Don't worry. The SpaceX employees will never agree on how to pronounce "unionized".
RupertSalt··on Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
When I played an MMOG, if the admins found out that a child was underage, it was customary for them to suspend their account until their 13th birthday. I thought this was a clever policy, but I just can't understand the reverse of authenticating someone's age based on that of their account...
RupertSalt··on Waymo exec reveals company uses remote workers in the Philippines
Yes, the display will chime and indicate "We're working to help you get moving again" and "Sit tight and keep your seatbelt fastened." Support may call in if necessary. Or if you've reached out to Support, they'll explain that they're going to send a command to the vehicle or modify the route.

It's not unusual and it's quite a routine mode. It will happen if there's a jam in front of you, like a parking lot or narrow passage. Twice, we were behind a marked police car that was sort of double-parked. You'll know Support is imminent when the car is hesitating, and the virtual reality may indicate multiple-choice paths.

It happened to me once today at a "valet parking" stand, in a very busy drop-off circle. (I traveled about 25 miles.) I was also cracking up, because it chose a lot of backroads for the routes, which could've been done on arterials. So I was treated to a real "scenic route" at no extra charge. But Support never called in, and the delay so brief, I am unsure whether their input was necessary to clear the way.

I did once receive a human driver to move the car. The dropoff was in the wrong United States lot, and when I told them I couldn't exit there, they said the battery was so low it needed the American Depot ASAP and wouldn't obey, so an American human was dispatched from The United States of America, and moved it a couple hundred yards... or meters, if you're Pinoy. It was a distinct process for her to climb in and disengage the Waymo Driver, but otherwise just a normal American thing. I mean, she was required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, show her ID to the camera, and finish by singing the Star-Spangled Banner, but otherwise it was normal, and could've happened anywhere. God Bless Waymo.

RupertSalt··on A shortage of tenors
What does "easy" and "hard" mean? Approaching the range? Matching the pitch? Sustaining it for a time?

There are not many tasks that can be cut-and-dried as universally "easy"/"hard". "The Star Spangled Banner" is a more challenging melody because of its wide range. Also, because it's often sung solo, with minimal accompaniment, to huge crowds.

If I were singing falsetto notes, I could probably launch into the range, but could I match pitch and harmonize without AutoTune?

RupertSalt··on GPT-5 outperforms federal judges in legal reasoning experiment
Nine Unelected Neural Nets? https://m.xkcd.com/2173/
RupertSalt··on Reports of Telnet's death have been greatly exaggerated
Me neither.

I looked into their Support documentation and it explains how to run the app, not how it works.

I read a 2-slide "Whitepaper" and it describes the many advantages and sort of tells you how it starts in "Ring 0" and the TPM and uses public-key cryptography, but not how it works.

They have trademarked KTLS™, but Kernel TLS is also an extension of actual TLS into the Linux kernel, so good luck differentiating that. Isn't it fun how you can trademark your trade secrets, but if you attempt to patent them, that means public disclosure.

If I had to hypothesize about it, I'd say that there is a Ring 0 hardware driver that takes the USB data, encrypts it, and the encrypted data is tunneled to each application, where it is somehow decrypted transparently without modifying any of the user's applications.

I would research this more in-depth but gnomes have already stolen my underpants. UUU~~U~~~U+++ATH0+++ NO CARRIER

RupertSalt··on Single bone in Spain offers first direct evidence of Hannibal's war elephants
In 2008, I visited Manresa in Catalonia.

An uncited passage in Wikipedia explains how the French Troops, defeated during their Napoleonic Invasion (1808), burned and demolished Manresa on retreat, and the villagers simply rebuilt the buildings from the same rubble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manresa

I can attest that many buildings downtown are definitely rubble-y.

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