Hacker News Reader

_justinfunkon AI language models are struggling to “get” math

As someone who uses co-pilot daily - it often does print garbled nonsense (semantic nonsense, not syntactic nonsense - if you get my meaning).

_justinfunkon macOS is background scanning and following downloaded QR codes?

I think the idea is that it is a way for your IP address to leak without a user-initiated request.

I could send you a QR code that I've setup specifically to get your IP address.

_justinfunkon US National Debt Tops $31T

The 2020 number should probably be considered an outlier, since the dramatic drop in GDP in 2020 due to the pandemic increases the ratio.

Now that GDP is recovering, we are falling back onto the trend line towards higher and higher Debt/GDP.

_justinfunkon Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

Twitter is making two claims that seem to contradict each other:

1) The 5% number is right 2) Musk's number is wrong because bot counting tools are flawed because bot counting is very difficult.

So... if it's very difficult... perhaps your 5% number is wrong?

_justinfunkon James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

https://mast.stsci.edu/api/v0/index.html

Here's the API to access the boring original data.

_justinfunkon Newer, better sunscreens have not been approved by the FDA

Why is this being downvoted so heavily? Is this a known conspiracy theory? Does anyone have evidence to the contrary? Or a secondary source for the allegation?

_justinfunkon Newer, better sunscreens have not been approved by the FDA

And we all remember how the sun was invented in 1991.

_justinfunkon Starlink tells customers that a Dish 5G plan would make Starlink “unusable”

Consumer pressure would help to ensure that the FCC understands that people are paying attention to this decision so they should make sure they are confident in their analysis of the evidence. It's Friday before a long weekend, so I have my rose-tinted glasses on.

_justinfunkon Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade

The way you see it, unfortunately, does not make it so.

The constitution limits how the government can infringe on the rights of the people. If the courts say that a right to abortion is not in the constitution, then amend the constitution to add it.

Until that point, it is up to the representatives of the people (i.e. the legislature at the state or federal level) to make laws.

_justinfunkon My deepfake DALL-E 2 vacation photos passed the Turing Test

da da dummmm....

_justinfunkon Ask HN: Did Spam Win the Race?

Thunderbird has a whole page highlighting their features: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/features/

_justinfunkon Show HN: Pxl.to – A serverless link shortener with no limits and no downtime

I enjoy the "creative" use of the brand bar where people expect to see logos of your customers.

_justinfunkon Record-breaking camera keeps everything between 3 cm and 1.7 km in focus

The actual example images in the article look... bad?

Maybe someone who understands optics better could help explain why they look unnatural. Is it an uncanny-valley analogue?

_justinfunkon Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

I'm looking forward to http://thisincidentreportdoesnotexist.com launching sometime later this year.

_justinfunkon The Second Coming – William Butler Yates

> The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

_justinfunkon Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

Off topic, but I heard it said that Earth in the worst case of climate catastrophe would still be far more habitable than Mars. Seems to make sense.

If we could build a "bubbled" city on Mars, we could do it on Earth far more cheaply, it seems.

I'm not sure if that is the same case if a meteor strikes.

_justinfunkon Ask HN: Which password is more secure?

Practically speaking, why does compressibility matter in terms of password security?

Side note, in the comments the second password is being referred to the 20a password while the first password has no monicker, which validates the compressibility of 20a password

_justinfunkon Ask HN: Which password is more secure?

According to haveibeenpwnd.com my 20a password has been seen 2,154 in data breaches and the random one my password manager created has not.

_justinfunkon Ask HN: Which password is more secure?

This means that the same string can have a near-infinite number of entropy values? What is the value of entropy then from a password-strength point of view?

If I understand you correctly, the entropy of "H@ckerN3ws" is 1, if the process that generated the password is defined as: "The first letter is a capital H, the second letter is an at-sign, etc"?

_justinfunkon What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers

My first "hacking" success was with an ad-supported ISP called NetZero. The app logged you on to the web and had a persistent ad-banner on the screen. If you opened a full-screen app - in my case Starcraft - it would kick you off the internet.

However, I discovered that if you killed the NetZero application at just the right time (after connecting to the network but before the ad banner was initialized), you could stay online with no ad-banner and pwn some Zerg.

_justinfunkon Show HN: I Made a Stupid Game

3 quadrillion Saturn 5 rockets would be more than it would take to cover the surface of earth (standing up) - but would have less mass than the moon.

Sorry- this question blew my mind.

_justinfunkon Show HN: I Made a Stupid Game

I feel like modern statistics has taught me that no matter how big you think the moon is, when you have 3 quadrillion of something....

the moon weighs more than 3 quadrillion of the rockets that we used to get there.

space is big, human brains are small

_justinfunkon Show HN: I've made a design utility tool to measure anything on your screen

I am dissatisfied with my existing workflow to do this, so I would be excited to try it.

I would have downloaded it immediately if there were a free trial, something to consider.

_justinfunkon Show HN: I made a 90s version of my landing page

The counter is a lie.gif

(edit: i think it's clever)

_justinfunkon Show HN: I made a site that lets you discover micro-startups for sale

Any specific reason you aren't showing the actual selling price on the "Recently Sold Startups" section?

_justinfunkon AEG combi microwave unusable after update: device thinks it is a steam oven

My old range had two pilot lights under the cover, when the knob allowed gas to flow - the pilot ignited the burner. No electronics and no matches!

Unfortunately, there were 4 knobs - so you wouldn't be interested.

_justinfunkon System – A resource that aims to explain how everything in the world is related

I don't understand this. Surely there are lots of things that are connected in ways that aren't mapped here:

COVID-19 and Vaccination, Real Estate Price and Housing, Socioeconomic Status and Happiness are all nodes that are not connected in the graph - but are obviously connected in the real world.

Is this a WIP until everything is connected to everything else?

_justinfunkon Discovering a security vulnerability in a major grocery delivery platform

This is a very good point. It reminds me of when the US FBI was "hacked". Where hacking meant that you could send emails from the client-side.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/14/22781341/fbi-email-syste...

_justinfunkon Show HN: I Made Mac App to Hide Sensitive info while screen share

What happens if you were to scroll the webpage or move the browser window? Do the blurred areas track?

_justinfunkon Fingerprints can be hacked

Remember (on an iPhone) you can squeeze the power button and one of the volume keys for a few seconds. This disables biometric authentication until a passcode is entered.

This can protect you against this "attack vector".