Hacker News Reader

antgianton Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

I live in a Hurricane/Typhoon zone and wanted a way to watch storm live status without all the panicked commentary. I had an old Chromecast laying around and discovered that it is just a web browser so I built a simple html image bouncer that auto refreshes the latest satellite image of the storm, lets you crop in, etc. It works amazingly well for days of peaceful live coverage. An unexpected side perk is my kids can now tell the category (strength) of the storm based purely on the satellite image. Turns out the code works for pretty much anything with a browser and any situation where there is an updating image at a static URL. So I’ve used it for a number of other things too. I put it all at https://github.com/antgiant/GOES-East-Big-Screen

antgianton Chasing Rainbows: Designing for Colorblindness

Simple rule of thumb in most cases is if you can convert it to grayscale and still tell it apart your colorblind users can too.

Barring that as a red-green colorblind person, yes red-green contrast is the worst, but way more common are colors that are only different by their red or green strength (especially red). The two most common by far being pink becomes white and purple becomes blue.

Your green-yellow-blue suggestion is actually making the same mistake as red-purple-blue just using green as the fade instead of red. Having said that in my experience red-green colorblindness is actually RED-green colorblindness. So, I would much prefer a green-yellow-blue interface to a red-purple-blue one. As I am much more sensitive to green than red.

antgianton Librarian's Letter to Google Security

That is perfect! Just need it to be opened up a little so that places like Google can enable it as a Lyn optional primary login.

antgianton Librarian's Letter to Google Security

If the US government created its own SSO system and mandated that all government website used it as primary while allowing third parties to use it too this could become a solved problem. It would be a credential that could be accessed via existing paper based systems. Places like Google allowing it as a sign in method would actually solve this case. Sadly I think the tech world in general is so allergic to losing privacy that even something optional like this would get lobbied out of existence just by tech companies alone.

antgianton Teams is killing my Mac every day

And the parent comment’s suggestion works with it to. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32085044

antgianton Guide to Web Authentication

>You definitely, 100% can make a backup of your iCloud Keychain and save it offline. https://support.1password.com/import-safari/ If and only if you have a Mac.

antgianton AT&T's website raising the price every time I refresh the page

Additional fun on AT&T’s website. The phone number to call and complete the order changes on every session. So you can often get a new phone number by refreshing as well.

antgianton Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

Can’t Apple just provide an option that lets you force “stalking” air tags to beep on command? Seems like doing that could essentially solve this whole class of it’s tracking me but I can’t find it stories.

antgianton Apple's plan to “think different” about encryption opens a backdoor to your life

I personally am a fan of Mylio for that. https://mylio.com/

antgianton Show HN: Hystoria – a Reddit-like site where all posts must be 5+ years old

This reminds me of an idea I’ve had for a restaurant, but know I will never actually build myself. Standard “Sports Bar” setup with TVs everywhere, but all of the TVs are playing the live broadcast from exactly 8 years ago. (I picked 8 years so that the news would match up with the US Political cycle, the Olympics, and most of the time the leap year cycle.) I always thought that it would be fun to watch the breathless reporting of long past news in real-time at a place like that.

antgianton Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

Looks like you are right! Thanks for the good news!

antgianton Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

I don’t know. Busy straining my biology knowledge trying to figure that out.

The paper seems to imply maybe not? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187962572...

antgianton Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187962572...

See the section on COVID-19 near the end.

antgianton Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

Did some more searching today and this one does in fact amplify just like the Imperial College one

antgianton Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

That is all true as long as the RNA doesn’t replicate itself and only produces antigens. However, I couldn’t find any papers at all that discussed if any of the current mRNA vaccine candidates self replicate their RNA to amplify the antigen production. I’d love some good references that address that.

antgianton Yelp Fired Manager After He Didn't Take Calls, Check Email 24/7, Lawsuit Claims

There is nothing in the Bible to change the day from Sabbath to Sunday. As others have already noticed that happened literally hundreds of years later.

As for homosexuality that is actually specificity mentioned several times in the New Testament. It is one of the very few Levitical laws expressly mentioned as still in force in the New Testament. However, in fairness those same passages also call out those who are adulterous, slanderous, greedy, and drunkards with equal force.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (NIV) 9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

antgianton Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

I think you misread that. Drone strikes which don’t provide something for terrorists to attack cause a significantly greater increase in terrorism attacks than troops on the ground do.

antgianton Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

Yep.

“over the past 15 years. Increased US efforts are correlated with a worsening of the overall terror situation. Statistical modeling indicates for every additional billion dollars spent and 1,000 American troops sent to fight the war on terror, the number of terror attacks worldwide increased by 19 (data available from the author). Furthermore, the model finds up to 80 percent of the variation in the number of worldwide terror attacks since 9/11 can be explained by just those two variables—US money spent and military members sent to fight the war on terror. The data for both money spent and troops deployed come from the Congressional Research Service publication, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11 by Amy Belasco. The number of terror attacks is from the Global Terrorism Database, hosted by the University of Maryland.”

“The data show countries the US invaded had 143 more terror attacks per year than countries the US did not invade. Similarly, countries in which the US conducted drone strikes were home to 395 more terror attacks per year than those where the US did not.”

https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/issues/Spring...

antgianton Acne Vulgaris: A Disease of Western Civilization (2002)

Vegetarian ≠ Vegan. Lots of dairy in the standard Vegetarian diet. The link you provided to the Mediterranean diet included lots of dairy (cheese, yogurt, etc.). Also, a lifetime of personal experience says that Seventh-day Adventists eat quite a lot of dairy.

antgianton SpaceX successfully launches and recovers second Falcon 9 in 48 hours

Any idea how I could get a copy of Stellarium 0.16.0 compiled for Raspberry Pi?

antgianton An Inferno on the Head of a Pin

As a mere desktop guy. Where could I find a quality resource on safe ambient temperatures for desktop computers? I tend to assume that the magnetic HDD would be the limiter.

antgianton Firefox 41 will use less memory when running AdBlock Plus

Perfect! Thank you!

antgianton Firefox 41 will use less memory when running AdBlock Plus

Is there a Chrome or Firefox equivalent to IE's "Personalized Tracking Protection List"? In short it tracks the resources loaded by sites you visit and if they show up on more than a configurable number of sites they get blocked. Basically, it only blocks what actually could be tracking you. I would love to have that functionality in Chrome or Firefox, especially if the tracking list could survive a reinstall (IE's cannot).

antgianton Tell HN: AeroFS - File Syncing Without Servers

Thank you. That's what I wondered.

antgianton Tell HN: AeroFS - File Syncing Without Servers

Thank you.

However, having looked at the wikipedia page on Version Vectors it appears that is a protocol for detecting conflicts. I was interested in how you resolve them.

A simple example is a zip file that I add file A to on one computer and later file B to on another computer. When I sync up do I end up with a zip containing no new files, file A, file B, both files or a corrupt zip file. (Does the answer change if the zip file is encrypted?)

antgianton Tell HN: AeroFS - File Syncing Without Servers

Two questions

1) How does this system handle two devices behind separate NATs? (aka a work device and a home device.)

2) What is the conflict resolution protocol if a file is modified in two or more locations? (Newest wins, automatic duplication for manual resolution, etc.)