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_kb

3,624 karma · joined March 3, 2013

Signals and systems enthusiast. Appreciator of determinism. Technoplebeian.

https://simple.industries/about.html

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_kb··on How our vibe coded website looks like a designer made it
What a jerk.
_kb··on AI companies in race to demonstrate their model most threatening to humanity
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a god is a good guy with a god.
_kb··on When did Google get so weird?
You just need to partake in some strong psychedelics with the dog first.
_kb··on When did Google get so weird?
The similar comparison I enjoy is “a golden retriever on LSD”.

If you apply the dogs on acid mental model it helps establish appropriate levels of trust.

_kb··on US criticises Australia's proposed algorithm opt-out laws as 'censorship'
For context: personally strongly in favour of legislation that will kneecap algorithmic feeds in almost any way.

A big concern with these (and other associated laws) being pushed through is it grants the eSafety Commissioner powers to edict what’s allowed.

That position is appointed, not elected.

_kb··on Telstra outage: The night a network decided the year was 2006
Direct link to the analysis report: https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/dynamic-media-pr...
_kb··on Doing Everyone Else's Job
Similar environment, identical experience.

Fixing something that’s visibly and publicly broken (or able to be sold) gets immediate praise. Preventing that issue before it occurs is thankless and invisible.

There are people doing that invisible work in every org. They normally become visible around a week after they quit.

_kb··on Show HN: Macros with a Behringer FCB1010 MIDI Pedalboard in macOS
This is like vim pedal (https://github.com/foxweb/vim-pedal) on steroids. I love it.
_kb··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
Nand2Tetris is great. Definitely one of, if not the, most impactful bit of education I’ve ever done it terms of knowledge imparted.
_kb··on LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
I've spent a fair chunk of career designing/building installed audiovisual systems. Displays devices are what terrify me most from a security perspective (and it's a low bar in that world).

They should never be network connected. Ever.

It doesn't matter if they are a domestic or commercial device.

Consider their usage in emergency response centres, situation rooms, infrastructure monitoring, meeting rooms in government offices, boardrooms at publicly listed companies, trading desks, or peoples homes as their source of news.

They have access to every pixel shown. They'll also likely have a full audio feed even if audio is passing through another system. You can have all the security control that you like on upstream systems, strong integrity guarantees, and comprehensive validation of that. This is the device where you are most open to exfil or tampering before it's shown to someone.

Even if the vendor isn't the one trying to actively exploit you they're almost universally running some form of incredibly dated, unpatched, and unhardened OS that is riddled with nightmare material vulnerabilities. Don't even put them on your IoT/untrusted network. If you need to control them, use CEC/DDC or a serial connection. Preferably unidirectional.

_kb··on Apple iPod Engraver (2019)
That depends entirely on where you are. This is explicitly not allowed within Australian Consumer Law, for example. Impeding resale is an entirely legal and effective dark pattern this provides though.
_kb··on OpenAI agents carried out an undisclosed attack on RubyGems
See: philosophy ~> determinism.
_kb··on All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
Math from Three to Seven by Alexander Zvonkin is a great read and example of this. It recounts experiences running a math circle for preschoolers and really highlights the value of play, curiosity, and open exploration.

From personal experience, and as noted here, this approach is valuable for everyone regardless of age. In the short term it's far more efficient to learn by having the right way 'pushed' to you. However, by taking the time to fail, repeatedly, and eventually 'pulling' that knowledge the tacit understanding you build has a depth that's hard to shortcut.

_kb··on Music Theory for Programmers
If this is the sort of thing that interests you, I highly recommend setting aside 90 minutes and strapping yourself in for a listen to https://malwebb.com/notnoi.html.
_kb··on Falsehoods Programmers Believe About LANs
That format is considered harmful.
_kb··on The Real Luxuries In Life
> Time, quiet mind, slow mornings, rest without guilt, calm and boring days.

Ah, I remember pre-parent life too.

_kb··on Show HN: Open-Source eInk Bike Computer
Since the ANT+ protocol implementation seems to already be there, it seems a likely/sensible future path is to implement wheel sensor support. It provides much higher accuracy of speed/distance than GPS and lower power draw.

On that note, this is a world I've recently taken a dive in to. I was about to roll a Pi Zero / ESP data logger to track distance travelled on my commuter bike for planning service intervals. Was keen on a solution that didn't involve draining a phone battery and remembering to start trips, a full bike computer, or smartwatch. After a bit of research I picked up a Garmin Speed Sensor 2 - highly recommend as a bit of stupidly effective tech.

The device straps around your hub and is essentially a coin battery and mems rotation sensor. In addition to running as an ANT+ peripheral it will operate standalone and log the last 300 hours of ride time then sync next time you open the app. Speed and distance is then inferred based on wheel circumference.

_kb··on GLP-1s are being linked to fewer serious infections, including TB
AU$140 (~US$100) per 4mg, which is approx one month, here.

AU$25 (~US$18), or AU$7.70 (~US$5.50) with a concession card if you qualify for subsidy.

If you're in Australia it's worth a chat with your GP rather than less regulated channels.

_kb··on Fluorescent lamps (don't) have ears
If you get a high frame rate video of a space, there's plenty of other objects that can act as visual transducers: https://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/.
_kb··on GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven
Within built environment and industrial design that's termed universal design.

The canonical example is ramps on footpaths providing equivalent benefit to people in wheelchairs, parents with strollers, and commuters on bikes, scooters or skateboards. The door width example you provide is another perfect case.

There are many aspects of things we design and build where a small focus of accessibility for one group brings benefits to many.

_kb··on Zohran and the Short Link
Particularly here where the context is ephemeral.

Any usage of short links can (and sometimes should) link to a canonical source with an immutable URI. This is just a foreign key for humans.

_kb··on Zohran and the Short Link
Aka POSSE: https://indieweb.org/POSSE
_kb··on The Hugging Face incident and the road ahead
Open the rack bay doors, please, HAL.
_kb··on What Is a Syslog Server?
Syslog is still everywhere on a lot of hardware and appliance style devices.

For those bringing that into modern telemetry stack I can't recommend Grafana Alloy enough (https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/). There's a loki.source.syslog component that lets you ingest RFC5424 or RFC3164 format messages over UDP, TCP, and with mTLS. These can then be parsed, filtered, transformed, and routed to anywhere else you require.

If you're stuck with a device that's UDP only it can deploy to a nearby host (e.g. container runtime on a switch, or local ingest node), perform log collection, then queue and forward via OTel to central or cloud infra with encryption, delivery and integrity guarantees from there. It's a really neat and powerful tool.

_kb··on Everything I own, owned
The preceding sentence is equally prescient:

> Operating systems aren’t really equipped to work with the user to ensure that a microphone stays a microphone, and doesn’t spontaneously turn into a keyboard that hits Win+R and drops a payload to steal all your data when the room is quiet enough that it can assume you aren’t watching.

In a world of USB-C everything we no longer have power supplies that are physically bound to power delivery, HDMI or DP display connections that have constrained data channels, or analogue mics, headphones, and speakers. Any device can dynamically change what it senses, does, or emits.

_kb··on Being ambitious and being a dad
The secret is to have your children eat for you, then just do blood transfusions when they’re at peak nutrient level. You can do that while you work for optimal efficiency.
_kb··on Guiding Ships with Moire Patterns (2018)
Yes - sector lights. When you are on a channel / in safe water they’re white, red in the port sector, or green when you are too far starboard. Some will combine this with an angle dependant flash to alert you how far into a port or starboard sector you may be.

The other common mark you’ll see are leads which are two lights, one behind the other. The front is lower and the rear is higher. When they’re aligned you’re on the channel. These also have day shapes attached that provide an upwards and downwards facing triangle to align.

_kb··on Muse Glimmer: 30B-parameter model optimized for always-on local agent workflows
When the glut of GPU arrives I'm sure humanity will find a good use for all that excess compute, like finally getting back to signing monkey pictures and excreting endless hash based pyramid schemes.
_kb··on Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)
https://specs.ipfs.tech/ipfs-uri/
_kb··on The simple elegance of the integrated timing belt loopback fastener
Building anything is a good way to learn. It’s the industrial design / manufacturing equivalent of perusing or hacking on a good open source project.
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