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a2tech

5,012 karma · joined May 30, 2009

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a2tech··on I don't like passkeys
They’re bad and I wish places would stop being so aggressive about them (I’m looking at you Amazon and PayPal)
a2tech··on “It works better in the app”
Yeah usually that’s for fire parking etc. loading zones don’t usually get the super high fine treatment.
a2tech··on “It works better in the app”
Just don’t pay. I stopped paying for street parking a long time ago (around the time they started insisting on apps). You get a ticket once and awhile but it all works out.

Mail in a check a few times a year and park whenever you want.

a2tech··on Dolly Parton has died
She wrote that song and Jolene on the same day. Basically cemented her legacy and future with one afternoons worth of work.
a2tech··on Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows
He could have done this with 10-15 minutes of googling instead of spending 4 hours prompting a LLM.
a2tech··on One Oakland police officer made $490k in overtime
I agree that in this case its VERY likely to be fraud.

However, there are many jobs where you might be stuck at work. Being at work == getting paid. Thats not really that shocking of a thing. My wife's dad worked at a children's 'training school' (kid jail) and they often had lock downs or were legally required to have certain number of people on site for certain operations. So he might be there and simply couldn't leave, but might not be 'working'. He was paid for those hours, which I think is pretty reasonable.

a2tech··on The Cipher Behind Qsyrupwd: Reconstructing IBM i Password Hashes
This is more than I ever wanted to know about the internals of a password hashing module in the ibm I series.

A+ nerd shit. Really solid technical writing.

a2tech··on More German than many Germans
That sounds like an excellent solution for locals.

But it also seems very inefficient because of the need to keep rolling stock in reserve, ready to go just in case. That’s a lot of maintenance, staff, and machine time to burn.

a2tech··on A pharmacy chain in Vermont implemented AI for efficiency
They are in large setups. Including mail order and bulk dispensing places (like Walmart pharmacy—most pills are dispensed at central locations and delivered to the store prepackaged).
a2tech··on So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
I'm not comfortable disclosing them because we don't want our 'secret sauce' to be leaked and let people know we're on to their BS.

I will tell you that it's mostly the ones you expect if you're heavily engaged with Reddit and moderation. But there are several new gathering places that I didn't know about until we started spelunking on the most annoying posters histories.

This is one of the places where a tool that scrapes reddit and lets you see deleted comments is absolutely clutch--these people are very good about removing the worst of their vile spewing on reddit, or changing their comments to look innocuous after people have gotten worked up. It's all about making people they disagree with look like bullies and idiots.

a2tech··on So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
We're maintaining a space where people with actual skin in the game can have conversations about hot button topics. We do not maintain the subreddit for large numbers of outside agitators to parachute in, shout down local discourse, and then fuck off immediately.

There is room for people on any side of an argument to come in and discuss. They can do so in a civilized, adult manner, or they can fuck right off. Call it censorship if you like.

a2tech··on So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
Inside of Reddit itself? Not with the tools we're given from Reddit. We know Reddit has internal tools to block spam/bots, so I believe what we see is the most sophisticated ones (they're not too sophisticated mostly, but they're not the zero effort bulk spam that reddit catches easily).

Something that would make things far easier for mods would be if the posters hashed IP was shown/made available to mods. Thats mostly for more localized bad actors/astroturfers and not large spam/scam rings with proxy networks.

Things we've done that have made a difference with the tools we've got from Reddit:

1) we don't allow new accounts or ones with negative accounts to post in our subreddit

2) any posts that match criteria or hit the front page are automatically put in a mode where you must have a positive subreddit karma over a threshold to post. This helps filter out brigading and low effort shit posting from front page plebs

3) we're using a reddit app that allows us to remove posts from people that have posted in identified subreddits. Right now we're just experimenting with this and we're in a data collection mode, but we can see that the people its catching (while some of our most prolific posters) are also some of our most problematic posters, so I think we're going to go from data collection to just straight up having the bot remove comments from people that post in those troublesome subreddits.

a2tech··on So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
I'm a moderator on a moderately popular and active subreddit, and I can assure you that there is an unreasonable amount of bot activity on reddit. They range from just spam (usually obvious) to bulk astroturfing. We try to stop what we can, but plenty gets through.
a2tech··on Apple is going to raise device prices, but when?
OS 9 running Microsoft Internet Explorer! I can remember the puck mice and the noise of the hard drive grinding away while pulling up Ebay and the campus webmail (Horde/Roundcube debates going on and on...)
a2tech··on The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
Airbnb has the same exact problem. Also doesn’t seem to give a crap when they’re reported.
a2tech··on Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
My understanding is that the s&p 500 were the only ones unwilling to change their rules.
a2tech··on 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building
I’m just working with an EDA client to upgrade their almost decade old machines to run the cadence tools…it’s grim. Real real grim. I was pricing out servers this morning with 64gb(!) of RAM for almost 20k. The machines were running now, some of them have almost a terabyte of RAM. I think the designers are just going to have to suck it up and use the slower machines
a2tech··on Decades of Effort Restore Steelhead and Salmon Passage on Alameda Creek
You want to have fun, get two fresh water fish biologists in a room and ask them if steelhead and rainbow trout are different species. Everyone has a different opinion they believe in passionately.
a2tech··on Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels
Try to open the file, say ok to the ‘can’t check for malware’ prompt, go to settings, security, approve running the software.

Annoying, but if you’re delivering your app to semi-technical users, not really a problem.

a2tech··on Filing the corners off my MacBooks
I chew my fingers because I find the pain calming.
a2tech··on Peptides: where to begin?
Could you direct me to some resources you used to figure out dosing and sourcing? I’ve been interested in trying it out (need to lose a lot of weight) but have been paralyzed by too much contradictory information.
a2tech··on Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology (2019)
We only have discussions of the Chinese rolling out gait tracking widely. Basically you use existing facial databases to match ids to people in observed areas and capture their gait as they pass observed areas. Then it goes into the database. Using partial matching (non ideal observation of gait or face) allows for greater positive matching in non-ideal circumstances.
a2tech··on Bucketsquatting is finally dead
And we're paying extra for support!
a2tech··on Bucketsquatting is finally dead
AWS support seems to be struggling. I just came to help a new customer who had a rough severance with their previous key engineer. The root account password was documented, but the MFA went to his phone.

We've tried talking to everyone we can, opening tickets, chats, trying to talk to their assigned account rep, etc, no one can remove the MFA. So right now luckily they have other admin accounts, but we straight up can't access their root account. We might have to nuke the entire environment and create a new account which is VERY lame considering they have a complicated and well established AWS account.

a2tech··on Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR
At a local hospital the radiologists have been all Mac for a long long time. They refused to give it up and resisted all attempts to get them to switch. So it doesn’t surprise me at all.
a2tech··on The Israeli spyware firm that accidentally just exposed itself
Top notch work. I assume the person picture is a test account, but it still shows how deep these companies can get.

This surveillance tech is a real problem--it's making everyone unsafe and should be regulated. I know its too convenient and useful for government/big companies so it'll never happen...but it should

a2tech··on America has a tungsten problem
People in the US will do dirty jobs if thats what there are, but like people everywhere (in aggregate), would rather not.

We outsourced refining and mining to China because 1) it was cheap 2) it meant poisoning the ground and air and ripping up vast tracts of land somewhere else.

China's rare earth metals stratagem I believe grew out of this--it didn't happen immediately, but rather some bright bulb saw the growing reliance on access to the minerals and encouraged internal growth and acquisition competing resources. Absolutely, very clever.

a2tech··on America has a tungsten problem
The US has lots of tungsten and other minerals. The problem is mining them here--people really don't want to see huge holes in the ground, industrial run off, and ecological collapse.

If the fundamentals of international resource extraction changes (which because of the increase in wages and living standards and expectations in China is happening) then we might see wide spread and rapid mining happening in the US. My questions in that scenario are 1) who will work these mines? The US is running at very high employment right now, and mining is very hard work 2) where would our ore refinement equipment and skills come from? China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. They have infrastructure to BUILD the infrastructure for ore extraction and refinement. My understanding is that they're uninterested in selling that currently 3) then all the other local issues like where will they be able to sell locals on building giant mines, dealing with the heavy traffic, potential environmental concerns, etc.

a2tech··on America has a tungsten problem
This website has no author attribution and this is the only article on it. I would be very suspicious of its claims (not that I disagree with them, just that unattributed works on brand new websites are not ALWAYS the most trustworthy).

The United States has exported the dirtiest businesses internationally for quite a few years (raw mineral extraction is a dirty, nasty business, with slim margins). Now that China has become more adversarial and also more established (you mean people want to actually get PAID to slave away in a mine, or even worse, refuse to even work in a dangerous and dirty pit mine?!) the US is facing some hard decisions. We need many of these materials, and we have them, but we haven't had the will to mine them. Lots of people want to open US government lands to these resource extraction outfits, but there's right worry about the potential for ecological destruction.

a2tech··on 221 Cannon is Not For Sale
So the scam here doesn't seem to be ACTUALLY selling the land--it's basically engaging a realtor long enough to get earnest money on the table, then to disappear. Although if they could go far enough to get an entire amount wired to them I'm sure they'd take it.

Since a lot of people are doing all cash (non-financed) deals lately, I could see how a scammer and a lax realtor could possibly scam an overzealous buyer out of the full amount.

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